Tag: Sunny Day Real Estate

News/Announcements by William Ruben Helms

Summer festival season is right around the corner. It’ll be sooner than you think! And of course, that means festival announcements. So let’s get to it!

The 50th edition of Bumbershoot: Seattle’s Arts & Music Festival will take place at the Seattle Center September 2, 2023 – September 3, 2023. Yesterday, festival organizers announced the daily lineups for this year’s edition, as well as a collection of new musical acts.

Saturday will feature Olympia’s indie legends Sleater-Kinney, an electronic set from globally renowned producer Zhu, Grammy Award-nominee Brittany Howard, Seattle-based indie outfit Sunny Day Real Estate, Durand Jones, Matt and Kim, shoegazer legends RIDE, Jacob Banks, AFI, and more. Sunday will feature the likes of The Revivalists, post-hardcore band Jawbreaker, Fatboy Slim, Phantogram, Seattle’s Band of Horses, Bomba Estereo, Uncle Waffles, A-Trak and more.

Festival organizers also announced some new additions to a stacked lineup that include renowned, feminist art rockers Pussy Riot, Maya Jane Coles, Shannon and The Clams and TV Star.

Full daily line-up listed below.

Full Daily Lineup

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 2

Sleater-Kinney

Zhu

AFI

Brittany Howard

Sunny Day Real Estate

Durand Jones

Matt and Kim

Maya Jane Coles

 Ride

Jacob Banks

Major League Djz

 DOMi & JD Beck

The Dip

Puddles Pity Party

Anabel Englund

Destroy Boys

Hunx and his Punx

Thunderpussy

Reignwolf

Screaming Females

Morgan and the Organ Donors

Sweet Water

Chong the Nomad

Slift

Girl Trouble

Radioactivity

Dave B.

Chimurenga Renaissance

Spirit Award

Pressha

Long Dark Moon

Breaks and Swells

Wimps

Scarves

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 3

The Revivalists

Jawbreaker

 Fatboy Slim

Phantogram

Band of Horses

Descendents

Bomba Estereo

Uncle Waffles

A-Trak

Valerie June

Pussy Riot

Benny the Butcher

The Rebirth Brass Band

Shannon and the Clams

Temples

Dandy Warhols

Algernon Cadwallader

Sol

Gustaf

Trinix

Debby Friday

True Loves

Modernlove.

The Black Tones

King Youngblood

Massy Ferguson

Cassandra Lewis

Them

Simone BG

Fouad Masoud

Black Ends

TV Star

Pink Boa

Beverly Crusher

The reimagined Bumbershoot Music & Arts Festival is a partnership between two organizers — non-profit Third Stone and festival producer New Rising Sun. Earlier this year, Third Stone launched the tuition free Bumbershoot Workforce Development Program in partnership with The UC Theatre’s Concert Career Pathways Program (CCP-X). The tuition-free, hands-on training program removes the barriers of entry into the live music business for young people 17-25 years-old from historically marginalized communities, supporting the next generation of music industry professionals while laying the groundwork for a more equitable and inclusive music industry. The six month program focuses on teaching the behind-the-scenes aspects of concert promotion and production, combined with job-shadowing and paid internships, which culminates with jobs at the festival during Labor Day Weekend.

The inaugural Bumbershoot Workforce Development Program’s 16 participants began a series of workshops, speaker series and shadow shifts in partnership with music industry professionals and organizations like Seattle’s The Crocodile and The Triple Door, as well as TeenTix. The program’s participants learn highly marketable skills such as event production, sound engineering, marketing, talent buying, event budgeting, and more. Using a “festival as classroom” philosophy, Third Stone’s vision for success is that in ten years, the festival will be managed by alumni of the program.

Single day tickets and weekend tickets are available for purchase here. In celebration of Bumbershoot’s 50th anniversary, Bumbershoot and Amazon are offering prices that are 50% lower than the last edition back in 2019. The idea is to create an opportunity for more folks from the Pacific Northwest community to attend and enjoy the festival. Third Stone with Amazon are also supporting the distribution of 5,000 free tickets that will go directly to nonprofits and underserved communities. And importantly, a portion of ticket proceeds will go towards supporting the Bumbershoot Workforce Development program.

 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Acclaimed Italian Act Porcelain Raft Releases a Lush and Cinematic Single

Mauro Remiddi is a Rome-based singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer, best known as the creative mastermind of the critically applauded electronic music project Porcelain Raft. And with the release of his five EPs and three albums, including his critically acclaimed Strange Weekend and his most recent album Microclimate, Remiddi has developed a reputation for being an artist that’s difficult to pigeonhole — while crafting gorgeous, downright cinematic work. 

Slated for a May 15, 2020 release, Remiddi’s fourth Porcelain Raft album Come Rain comes after a three year hiatus in which the acclaimed Italian-born artist lived on a mountain in Los Angeles, became a father and after the death of his mother, returned to homeland.   “After the loss of a loved one, I went back to Italy, where part of my childhood re-emerged,” Remiddi explains in press notes. “I found myself playing an organ made in the 1500s, I danced and played piano for a children’s show. By then, I had made a collection of songs that I thought I would never share.” 

According to Remiddi, the album’s material came together after several home sessions. “The lyrics came out fast. As a starting point, I used the instruments that didn’t need to be turned on, a classical guitar and a piano.” The acclaimed Italian artist enlisted an equally acclaimed cast of friends that includes Foo Fighters’ and Sunny Day Real Estate’s Nate Mendel(bass), Jim O’Rourke’s, Sufjan Stevens’ and Rone’s Gaspar Claus (cello) and longtime collaborator Matt Olsson (drums) to craft a huge sound while keeping things intimate. Mixed and mastered by Remiddi’s brother Manolo, Come Rain is a personal statement on the importance of finding shelter within ourselves, to find our inner song and without fear or reservation sing it aloud. 

Interestingly, the album’s release later this week has come as a somewhat last-minute decision, inspired by current world events. Because, the album’s material is reportedly the most personal he has written, he had been wrestling with whether or not they’d ever see the light of day. But the COVID-19 pandemic happened — and the impact on his homeland was profound and unsettling. “The world stopped. I managed to come back to Italy the day before the airports were on lock down. As I stepped in Rome I felt frightened, it’s surreal to see Rome silent,” Remiddi says in press notes. “You can feel how tense people are. On the other side you can tell there’s a lot of solidarity. Helping the neighbor with little things for instance. We have been confined in our houses and exposed to big numbers and huge scale operations. This is why I decided to share these songs now. What a better time to hear our inner voice. This album is my rain chant in the time of drought. Come Rain is an invitation to look inward, into our micro-cosmo, whatever we may find. To look for that place within us that is everything but hell, so we can give it space and let it dance.”

“Tall Grass,” Come Rain’s latest single is a lush and cinematic track featuring shimmering piano, Remiddi’s plaintive vocals, atmospheric electronics, a propulsive bass line, gently padded drumming and an enormous hook. And while sonically nodding at A Rush of Blood to the Head-era Coldplay, “Tall Grass” is centered around some of Remiddi’s most earnest, most heartfelt songwriting to date — while capturing the dizzying sense of nostalgia, loss and unease of our current moment. 

World Music by William Ruben Helms

Preview: Secret Solstice Festival 2017

With its inaugural run back in 2014, Reykjavik, Iceland’s Secret Solstice Festival has quickly become one of Iceland’s largest music festivals, featuring a diverse and eclectic array of established and internationally recognized artists, locally renowned acts and up-and-coming artists from all over the globe, performing in one of the most unique backdrops in the entire world – the roughly 72 hour period of near constant daylight Iceland experiences during the Summer Solstice, because of its proximity to the Arctic Circle. (After all, Reykjavik is the northernmost capital and administrative region of the northernmost country in the entire world.) Building upon its growing reputation as one of the world’s most unique music festivals, the fourth edition of the festival may arguably be one of the biggest and most diverse lineups to date as it includes Foo Fighters, Rick Ross, the UK electronic act The Prodigy, The Verve’s former frontman Richard Ashcroft, Pharoahe Monch, Chaka Khan, Foreign Beggars, Dubfire, Novelist, Rhye, Dusky and Chicago house music artist Kerri Chandler. Along with those artists, some of Iceland’s renowned acts, including Högni, Úlfur Úlfur, Amabadama, Emmsjé Gauti, GKR, Tiny, Aron Can, KSF, and Alvia Islandia will be performing. And adding to the 72 hour party vibe, the festival’s organizers have planned a series of electronic dance music takeovers and showcases featuring some of the world’s best party crews – including Ibiza’s Circoloco, Above & Beyond Records’ deep house imprint Ajunadeep Records’ dance floor collective Crew Love, ATG and Dubfire’s SCI+TEC among others.
Interestingly, for the second consecutive year, Secret Solstice is currently the only major music festival in the world to be certified CarbonNeutral®, as the festival sources almost all of their power needs from the use 100% renewable geothermal energy, hybrid vehicles provided by Toyota Iceland – and from offsetting any residual emissions through the purchase of high quality, verified carbon credits. Unlike any other festival I’ve attended or heard of, festivalgoers and artists alike can know that they’re being environmentally responsible while partying and catching some of the world’s most interesting artists. Of course, during a multi-day festival like Secret Solstice, it’s difficult and damn near impossible to catch everyone and everything, so consider me as a helpful guide – with some information on artists I’d love to catch while in Reykjavik.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Formed by its founding and primary member Christopher Crisi, the Lawrence, KS-based indie rock act The Appleseed Cast has over the course of 20 years and 7 full-length efforts developed a reputation for constantly changing lineups — while subtly refining and honing the sound that won the band major acclaim in the early 2000s and onward; in fact, the band’s seminal work Low Level Owl, Vol I and Vol II received a 9.0 from Pitchfork and it was followed by the critically applauded release of Two Conversations, Peregrine, Illumination Ritual and several others for a sound that at one point or another had been compared to the likes of Sunny Day Real Estate, Mineral and others as their material has meshed post-punk, emo rock, punk rock, shoegaze  with anthemic hooks, as the band’s current lineup featuring touring musicians Ben Kimball, Nick Fredrickson and several others.

Throughout October and November, the members of The Appleseed Cast will be on tour with the Beverly, MA-based sextet Caspian, who to only are making their last tour stops to support their 2015 release Dust and Disquiet; but the Beverly, MA-based band has also publicly cited Crisi and The Appleseed Cast as a major influence on their sound. And with the announcement of the tour, the Lawrence, KS-based project released their latest single “Great Lake Derelict,” a propulsive track that pairs shimmering guitar chords, played through gentle amounts of reverb, soaring synths, plaintive vocals and arena rock friendly anthemic hooks in a song that manages to possess intimate and earnest emotion while being cinematic.

As for the tour, check out the tour dates below. You’ll see that it’ll include a mid-November stop at Music Hall of Williamsburg.

Caspian + The Appleseed Cast 2016 tour dates
10.22 · Washington, DC – Rock and Roll Hotel (tickets)
10.23 · Raleigh, NC – Kings (tickets)
10.24 · Atlanta, GA – Masquerade (tickets)
10.25 · Nashville, TN – Exit/In (tickets)
10.27 · Houston, TX – Studio @ Warehouse Live (tickets)
10.28 · Austin, TX – Sidewinder (tickets)
10.30 · Phoenix, AZ – The Rebel Lounge (tickets)
11.01 · Los Angeles, CA – Teragram Ballroom (tickets)
11.02 · San Francisco, CA – Great American Music Hall (tickets)
11.04 · Portland, OR – Mississippi Studios (tickets)
11.05 · Seattle, WA – Neumo’s (tickets)
11.08 · Salt Lake City, UT – Urban Lounge (tickets)
11.09 · Denver, CO – Marquis Theater (tickets)
11.11 · Omaha, NE – The Waiting Room (tickets)
11.12 · St. Louis, MO – Firebird (tickets)
11.13 · Chicago, IL – Lincoln Hall (tickets)
11.14 · Grand Rapids, MI – Pyramid Scheme (tickets)
11.15 · Toronto, ON – Lee’s Palace (tickets)
11.16 · Philadelphia, PA – Union Transfer (tickets)
11.17 · Brooklyn, NY – Music Hall of Williamsburg (tickets)
11.18 · Boston, MA – Royale (tickets)
11.19 · Montreal, QC – Le Ritz (tickets)

 

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