The Seattle Times: Matson on Music

Jay-Z and Kanye West's 'Paris' video

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 14:32:15 PST

Warning: swearing

The great thing about Jay-Z and Kanye West's new "Good Friends in Paris"* video is that it accurately captures the dizzying thrill of their "Watch the Throne" tour, which I reviewed in December here. I also like that the vocal tracks are live, as opposed to layered studio tracks over performance footage, and appreciate the new, racing synthesizer arpeggios. They heighten the force and impact of a song that was already succeeding in both categories.

*Coinage by Seattle's DJ Hyphen

Stream the new album by Seattle's Earth

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 13:53:02 PST

"Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light II" is available for streaming below, the newest album by Seattle band/collective Earth. If you're looking to be transported to another reality, get sucked under its slooooow moving folk-music magma. The excellent album artwork comes from local woman Stacey Rozich, whose style you may know from the last Fleet Foxes video.

Via

'SpokAnarchy': punk rock individuality in 1980s Spokane

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 08:16:04 PST

The crowning achievement of the documentary "SpokAnarchy!" is that it's entertaining for the full hour and 20 minutes, despite being about music you've never heard of from a scene you never knew existed.

Besides being a definitive look at 1980s punk rock from Spokane, Wash., the movie (by filmmaker David W. Halsell and a team of co-directors) articulates the universal story of growing up in a conservative town where you'd get beat up for looking weird or having artsy aspirations. It's also about the positive things that can happen when you go for your dream. To hear unknown bands like Sweet Madness and PP-Ku tell it, if you wore straightened jeans and striped shirts, you dealt with beer bottles thrown from cars.

Spokane still has that social flavor, though much milder, just like lots of cities in America. But musically it's almost unchanged. The punks rebelled then against the same AC/DC cover bands rampant there today, and funk and disco, which the punks also deemed cookie-cutter. Listening to these old resistance-rock songs now doesn't have the quite the bite it once did, but the film draws you into the underdog energy of Terror Couple's anthem "This is Spokane, [expletive] L.A.," or the childlike experimenting of PP-Ku. It's also impressive how integrated the music was with shamanistic performance art and skateboarder culture, forming an outsider-art ecosystem.

It's fascinating to learn it happened, and it would be great to see a similar thing happen again. Crucially, "SpokAnarchy's" directors were there at the time, and so the film takes the city out of the mouths of cosmopolitan Seattleites — known to disparage Spokane as a wasteland — and transfers the narrative to the people who know it best. They paint Spokane as a blank canvas that creative minds can see as an opportunity, and where a lot of cool stuff has happened that hardly anyone knows about.

"SpokAnarchy" plays at the The Grand Illusion Cinema Feb 10-16; The Grand Illusion also hosts a Q&A with writer/publicist Chris Estey and filmmakers David W. Halsell and Jon Swanstrom Feb 11 at 8:30 pm.

Video: 'Solid and Strong' by Olympia's Kimya Dawson

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 20:46:04 PST

Seattle's Clyde Petersen and Forrest Baum made this heartwarming video for Olympia singer-songwriter Kimya Dawson's "Solid and Strong," filmed in Dawson's element outdoors and at Discover Aquatics in Olympia, Wash.

Download these: Trails, Fatal Lucciauno, Key Nyata

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 20:31:04 PST

Warning: swearing

Three free, local EPs of note. Click the links to download the music.

"Lake Crescent" by Trails (download Trails' EPs here)

Trails is Kyle Hargus from Seattle chillwave unit USF and Bellingham beatmaker ICUH8N. Together they make instrumental electronic music with a nice forward momentum, perfect for headphones, with songs named after scenic regional locales. Ride the light rail to it and see the sweeping views of south Seattle in a whole new way.

"Sinner's Prayer" by Fatal Lucciauno (download "The Message" EP here)

Who's the rapper you listen to when you want some of Seattle's best hardcore gangsta styles, but also something to activate your mind and soul? Fatal Lucciauno. He hasn't put out an album since 2007 but his name still rings from the Central District outward, based on local classics like "Black Hearted" and "I'm Here." His sturdy new EP "The Message," produced entirely by local heavyweight Jake One, functions as a prelude to his upcoming album "Respect," which he'll celebrate with a concert Feb. 17 at Chop Suey.

"C.O.T.S." by Key Nyata (download "Children of the Stars" here)

Sixteen-year-old Seattle rapper/producer Key Nyata reps hard for RVDXR KLVN, the movement emanating from Florida and tentacled all over the U.S. that takes stream of consciousness hip-hop, washes it with smoke and acid, and transports it to the '90s. It's fairly socially negative and wasted-sounding, harkening to old rap from Memphis, Houston and southern/northern California while being digitally damaged in its own special way. Key Nyata's EP/short album "Children of the Stars" precedes his upcoming, excellently titled album "Two Phonkey."

Art via the artists

Trend watch: Seattle music videos featuring animal masks

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 10:16:04 PST

Warning: swearing

Lots of Seattle music videos these days feature people wearing animal masks. Here are four by Perpetual Ritual, Brothers from Another, Avatar Young Blaze and Boomzzilla.