Tag: Castle Face Records

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Montréal-based psych rock trio Population II — Pierre-Luc Gratton (vocals, drums), Tristan Lacombe (guitar, keys) and Sébastien Provençal (bass) — can trace their origin back a long way and are inextricably linked to their teenage memories. After years of jamming to the point of developing a unique sense of telepathy, the trio began recording independently released material that caught the attention of Castle Face Records head and The Oh Sees‘ frontman John Dwyer, who released the band’s full-length debut, 2020’s À la Ô Terre, an album that saw the band displaying their mastery of improvised and sophisticated composition.

The Montréal-based psych outfit then spent the better pat of the next two years touring to support their full-length debut, which included stops at SXSW, Pop Montréal, Toronto, NYC, and Quebec City. 

This past winter, Population II signed with Bonsound‘s label, booking and publishing arms. The taste making Montréal-based label will be releasing the Canadian trio’s highly anticipated Emmanuel Èthier-produced sophomore album Èlectrons libres du québec. Slated for an October 13, 2023 release, Population II’s sophomore effort is reportedly much more straightforward than its predecessor, and sees the trio crafting heavy psych rock infused with feverish punk rhythms, a burst of early punk energy, a hint of jazz philosophy and a love of minor scales that channel the early roots of heavy metal. The album’s material also sees the trio continuing to showcase their deft musicianship and expertise of their instruments with the material effortlessly balancing between challenging compositions and memorable melodies.

Earlier this year, I wrote about the album’s first single, “Beau baptême.” Built around a fairly traditional and recognizable song structure — verse, chorus, verse, bridge, coda — “Beau baptême,” is roomy enough for buzzing power chord-driven riffs and mind-melting grooves paired with Gratton’s ethereal crooning. The song sees the trio deftly balancing jazz-inspired improvisational sensibilities with the tight restraint of a deliberately crafted composition.

The song explores the psychological journey around inspiration and focuses on the very genesis of ideas — namely how ideas are actually born and the opinions they generate. Throughout the song, the band’s Pierre-Luc Gratton sings about how writing can sometimes happen with ease and spontaneity and sometimes requires deep, long reflection. Fittingly, the song is rooted in a lived-in specificity.

Èlectrons libres du québec‘s second and latest single “C.T.Q.S” begins with a punk rock-like urgency with a relentless, driving rhythm and dissonant, 70s jazz fusion/prog rock organ with a slightly menacing, off-kilter vibe before veering into a krautrock-meets-psych ripper about half way in. Featuring tongue-in-cheek lyrics, the band’s Gratton taunts those who are too passive and have surrendered in the face of the world’s current, turbulent state.

“‘C.T.Q.S’. is the manifestation of the tribulations of the past among today’s youth,” the Montréal-based trio explain. “It’s the calm after the storm, the law of suburbia, the boomer’s victory lap. It’s searching the ‘Local business” category on Amazon.”

Population II will be embarking on a handful of dates with The Oh Sees. The tour includes a September 22, 2023 stop at Warsaw. Check out the rest of the tour dates below.

Tour dates
16/09/2023 – Chicago, IL – Thalia Hall •
17/09/2023 – Cleveland, OH – Beachland Ballroom & Tavern •
18/09/2023 – Détroit, MI – El Club •
20/09/2023 – Boston, MA – Royale •
22/09/2023 – Brooklyn, NY – Warsaw •
21/10/2023 – Saint-Hyacinthe, QC – Le Zaricot ° • Supporting Osees
° Double bill with Yoo Doo Right

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Montréal’s Population II Shares Mind-Bending New Single

Montréal-based psych rock trio Population II — Pierre-Luc Gratton (vocals, drums), Tristan Lacombe (guitar, keys) and Sébastien Provençal (bass) — can trace their origin back a long way and are inextricably linked to their teenage memories. After years of jamming to the point of developing a unique sense of telepathy, the trio began recording independently released material that caught the attention of Castle Face Records head and The Oh Sees‘ frontman John Dwyer, who released the band’s full-length debut, 2020’s À la Ô Terre, an album that saw the band displaying their mastery of improvised madness and sophisticated composition. Their heavy take on psych rock is rooted in their restless and relentless work on refining their imposing and unpretentious and sound and approach which frequently infuses feverish funk rhythms, jazz philosophy, punk rock energy and a love of minor scales that recalls the roots of heavy metal.

The Montréal-based psych outfit then spent the better pat of the next two years touring to support their full-length debut, which included stops at SXSW, Pop Montréal, Toronto, NYC, and Quebec City.

This past winter, Population II signed with Bonsound‘s label, booking and publishing arms. The tastemaking Montréal-based label recently released “Beau baptême,” the first bit of new material from the rising French Canadian outfit since 2020’s  À la Ô Terre. Built around a fairly traditional song structure — verse, chorus, verse, bridge — “Beau baptême” is roomy enough for buzzing power chord-driven riffs, mind-melting grooves paired with Gratton’s ethereal crooning. The end result is a song that sees the trio deftly balancing a jazz-like improvisational like sensibility with the tight restraint of a deliberately crafted composition.

“Beau baptême” explores the psychological journey around inspiration and focuses on the very genesis of ideas — namely how ideas are actually born and the opinions they generate. Throughout the song, the band’s Pierre-Luc Gratton sings about how writing can sometimes happen with ease and spontaneity and sometimes requires deep, long reflection. Fittingly, the song is rooted in a lived-in specificity.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: JOVM Mainstays Prettiest Eyes Pay Homage to John Carpenter in Visual for “Mr. President”

Over the past few years, I’ve written a bit about the Los Angeles-based synth punk act Prettiest Eyes, and as you may recall the act which is comprised of San Juan, Puerto Rico-born, Los Angeles, CA-based founding members Pachy Garcia (drums, vocals), and Marcos Rodriguez (bass, vocals) along with Ciudad Juarez, Mexico-born, Los Angeles, CA-based Paco Casanova (keys, synths vocals) can trace their origins back to San Juan, where the band’s founding members played in a number of local bands before relocating to Los Angeles to seriously pursue music. Casanova independently relocated to Los Angeles and joined the band to complete its lineup. And with the release of a couple of EPs and their first two albums,  2015’s Looks and last year’s Pools, the Los Angeles-based JOVM mainstays firmly established a reputation for crafting sleazy and primal synth punk that throbs with a muscular insistence.  

The band’s third full-length album, the aptly titled Vol. 3 was released earlier this year through Castle Face Records, and album single “Nekrodisco” was a off-center, post apocalyptic ripper, seemingly inspired by Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are DEVO!-era DEVO. Interestingly, the album’s first single “Mr. President” is a minimalist track centered around howled mantra-like lyrics, industrial clang and clatter and a relentless motorik groove that seethes with uncertainty and menace. 

Directed and edited by Andrew Frescas, the recently released video further emphasizes the song’s murkiness and menace — and interestingly enough, finds the video’s director and the band collaborating to pay homage to John Carpenter’s They Live!

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: JOVM Mainstays Oh Sees Release a Trippy and Nightmarishly Animated Visual for “Poisoned Stones”

Over the past nine years, I’ve spilled quite a bit of virtual ink covering the Bay Area-based JOVM mainstays Oh Sees. And as you may recall, the act, which is led by its ridiculously prolific founder and creative mastermind John Dwyer has a cultivated a long-held reputation for wide-ranging and restless experimentation that has seen the band dabble between a variety of genres and styles including lysergic-tinged folk, furious and sweaty garage punk rippers, sci-fi driven krautrock and more — with each successive album being wildly different from its predecessor. 

Face Stabber, a 2LP album is slated for an August 16, 2019 release through their longtime label home Castle Face Records, and the album’s first single “Henchrock” was a free-flowing, skronky The Yes Album-era Yes meets Return to Forever-like expansive bit of prog rock. The album’s latest single “Poisoned Stones” continues on a similar vein — skronky prog rock but this time delivered with a muscular and forceful insistence, as the track is centered around enormous power chords and thunderous drumming. 

The recently released video for “Poisoned Stones” features 8 bit video game graphic animation by Eaten Alive Illustrations that’s a surrealistic nightmare as it follows our motorcycle riding protagonist being chased through the desert — until the bat-like creature chasing him captures him and drops him off into the lair of a cloaked magician. After killing the magician, the protagonist escapes, feeds something to a wolf, who has a mind-bending trip and allows our protagonist to ride him until they arrive at a castle that will be destroyed by an even weirder, alien-like dragon. 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Los Angeles Synth Punks Prettiest Eyes Release Sleazy VHS-Styled Visual for “Nekrodisco”

Comprised of San Juan, Puerto Rico-born, Los Angeles, CA-based Pachy Garcia (drums, vocals), San Juan Puerto Rico-born, Los Angeles-based Marcos Rodriguez (bass, vocals) and Ciudad Juarez, Mexico-born, Los Angeles, CA-based Paco Casanova (keys, synths vocals), the Los Angeles-based synth punk act Prettiest Eyes can trace their origins back to San Juan, where Garcia and Rodriguez played in a number of local bands before relocating to Los Angeles to seriously pursue music. Rodriguez relocated independently and joined the band — and within their first couple of years together, the act released a couple of EPs and a couple of albums, including 2015’s Looks and last year’s Pools. Both albums established the band’s growing reputation for crafting sleazy, primal, synth-based punk that throbs with a nasty, muscular insistence. 

The band’s third full-length album, the aptly titled Vol. 3 is slated for a June 24, 2019 release through Castle Face Records, and the album’s latest single “Nekrodisco” is a sleazy, cretinous stomp featuring  a muscular and insistent motorik-like, chugging groove, buzzing synths, Garcia’s vocal delivery, which alternates between shouted commands, whispers and howls paired with jagged hooks. And while the new track will further cement the Los Angeles-based synth punk act’s growing reputation for off-center, post-apocalyptic rippers, the track also manages to sound as though it were inspired by Q: Are We Men? A: We Are DEVO-era DEVO. Directed by Shane McKenzie, the recently released video is grainy, distorted VHS scuzz and snow, complete with the members of the band vamping and strutting throughout. 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: JOVM Mainstays Oh Sees Release Nightmarish and Hallucinogenic Visuals for “Enrique El Cobrador” off “Smote Reverser”

Throughout this site’s eight year history, I’ve written quite a bit about the Bay Area-based  Oh Sees (a.k.a. Thee Oh Sees, OCS, The Oh Sees, The Orange County Sound, Orinoka Crash Suite and other variations) — and as you may recall, the band which is led by its ridiculously prolific creative mastermind John Dwyer has long-held reputation for a wide-ranging experimentalism that has seen the band dabble and bounce between lysergic-tinged folk, furious and sweaty garage rippers, sci-fi driven krautrock and more. And with each successive album generally being completely different from its predecessors, it makes the band difficult to pigeonhole.

Last year’s Orc was a muscular and darkly inventive turn for the current lineup which features Tim Hellman (bass), Dan Rincon (drums) and Paul Quattrone (drums), as the material balanced a trippy, cosmic vibe with some of their most hard-hitting and punishing tendencies. Reaffirming their reputation for being unpredictable, the members of the band quickly followed that up with Memory of a Cut Off Head, an album that found the band revisiting the sound and approach of their early years, best known as their “quiet” period; in fact, returning to one of the band’s earlier names — OCS — was meant to herald a return to –the lower end of the decibel meter. 

Last year, Dwyer and company did two shows with their quieter and lush incarnation at The Chapel in San Francisco and those live shows eventually produced a handmade, mail-order only live album OCS Live in San Francisco that was released through Rock Is Hell Records. Interestingly, the album will be re-issued and made available in a condensed 2 LP set and to support that effort, the OCS will play a limited performance run of mellow OCS tunes at The Murmrr Theatre in Brooklyn, as an octet featuring members of the early lineup, including Brigid Dawson (vocals), Tim Hellman (bass), Paul Quattrone (drums), Tom Dolas (keys), Eric Clark (violin), Heather Lockie (viola) and Emily Elkin (cello). (You can check those dates below.)

Also, Castle Face Records will be re-issuing a string of Oh Sees out-of-print Oh Sees albums from the quiet era beginning with The Cool Death of Island Raiders in February 2019. In the meantime, the band has released live footage of them performing the trippy and epic burner “Block of Ice,” that features some wild and unhinged guitar playing centered around a propulsive and steady groove. Quieter? I’m not so sure, as this one as a buzzing, garage psych quality; but either way I’m looking forward to catching Dwyer and company live. 

But before that, the ridiculously prolific Dwyer and his Oh Sees/OCS released Smote Reverser earlier this year, and album single “Enrique El Cobrador” finds the band meshing classic psych rock and prog rock in a way that brings JOVM mainstays King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard but with a muscular and frightening sense of menace at its core, as the song is centered by a motorik-like groove, explosive blasts of guitar, arpeggiated keys and Dwyer delivering his vocals with a guttural snarl. Directed by Alexis Giroux and featuring animation from Giroux and Massimo Colarusso is a hallucinogenic nightmare of murder, bloodshed and bright colors and other wild imagery. 

TOUR DATES
12/15/2018 Murmrr Theatre – Brooklyn, New York
12/16/2018 Murmrr Theatre – Brooklyn, New York

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Now, if you’ve been frequenting this site over the past few months, you’ve likely come across a post featuring the Austin, TX-based punk quartet PLAX. And as you may recall, the band, which is currently comprised of Michael Goodwin, a member of the OBN IIIs and eeetsFEATS; Chris “Anton” Stevenson, a member of Spray Paint, Dikes of Holland and When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth; Marley Jones, a member of the OBN IIIs and Sweet Talk; and newest recruit Victor Ziolkowski, a member of Skeleton and Nosferatu can trace their origins to when Goodwin approached his longtime friend Stevenston and current OBN IIIs bandmate Jones about the possibility of forming an unconventional, outsider punk band, inspired by  Wire and Dawn of Humans. The band’s founding trio quickly went to work writing songs for a demo — they eventually wrote 9 — but they felt were still in need of a vocalist to complete the project. At the time Marley was collaborating with David and Victor Ziolkowksi, the founding members and frontman of Skeleton, a constantly evolving project featuring the Ziolkowski Brothers and a rotating cast of collaborators and friends. Stevenson and Marley then recruited Victor Ziolkowski, who then finalized the project’s lineup.

 

Last July, the quartet played their first live show with  New Orleans punk act Patsy and they quickly followed that by playing with a number of national touring Texas-based bands including Crooked Bangs, Institute and Army and others — and building upon the buzz they were receiving, the band went on a January 2017 attention grabbing tour throughout Texas. And although Stevenson has recently relocated to Melbourne, Australia, the band has continued writing, eventually finishing their full-length debut Clean Feeling, which is slated for an August 11, 2017 release through Super Secret Records.

Wit the album’s first single “Boring Story,” the band revealed that they specialize in a scuzzy and sneering, garage punk that would be be perfectly at home on Goner Records or on Castle Face Records, complete with slashing power chords and punchily delivered vocals — and unsurprisingly, the album’s second single “Night Watch” continued along a similar vein, while nodding at the nightmarishly tense, piss vinegar, and PCP-fueled fury sound reminiscent of Ex-Cult’s Cigarette Machine and Negative Growth.  “What A Waste,” Clean Feeling‘s third and latest single “What A Waste” is a bruising punk track that evokes the bitter frustration of those who lives have stalled — often beyond their control; and sonically, the single much like its immediate predecessor will continue to cement the band’s burgeoning reputation for crafting scuzzy and forceful garage punk.