The Apples in stereo to Reissue Watershed Indie-Rock Record, Fun Trick Noisemaker, on Vinyl
January 24, 2011 – The Apples in stereo and Yep Roc Records are excited to announce the reissue of the watershed indie-rock record Fun Trick Noisemaker on vinyl on January 24. Originally released in 1995, the album has not been available on vinyl in over fifteen years. The reissue will include all of the original artwork, liner notes, rephotographed paintings by Steve Keene, and a four-color poster insert.
Upon its original release in the spring of 1995, All Music Guide called The Apples in stereo’sdebut full length “one of those records that marks a sea change in musical attitudes.” Fun Trick Noisemaker facilitated such a shift by moving the focus away from the negativity of the grunge era, towards a sunnier, more psychedelic vision of rock music. As one of the flagship members of the famed Elephant 6 Collective, The Apples in stereo spearheaded a seismic shift in indie-rock consciousness towards a more optimistic worldview. Their recordings echoed and helped revive interest in the likes of Brian Wilson, Van Dyke Parks, Arthur Lee, Syd Barrett and even Burt Bacharach.
“It was a concept album about growing up, about summertime and the end of summer vacation, sunny but bittersweet,” says Robert Schneider. “We spent our entire recording budget on microphones, compressors and an eight-track tape machine, with almost no idea how they worked, then we set out to create a perfect hybrid of Sixties psych-pop and the lo-fi scene we identified with, a fusion of Pet Sounds, Piper at the Gates of Dawn and Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain.”
The Apples in stereo have been a hugely influential force in indie rock for nearly 15 years. Fun Trick Noisemakerwas the first full-length installment in the musical journey that has grown out of front man Robert Schneider’sinfatuation with recording techniques; ranging from four-track bedroom recordings to100-track studio experiments, to creating newmusical scales and mind-controlled synthesizers. That creative journey continues until this day.But more than just a starting point, Fun Trick Noisemaker stands on its own today as a masterpiece and featuressome of the band’s most loved and indelible tracks such as “Green Machine” and “Tidal Wave.”
In the summer of 2009 writer, composer, and general architect of the group, Ari Picker, lost his mother, an artist in her own right, when she took her own life. Picker set about transforming the events into a musical tribute, composing and writing with his mother’s picture above his desk: the same picture that now graces the album’s cover.
“I wanted to give her a space, in the music, to be, and to become all the things she didn’t get a chance to be when she was alive,” Picker says.
The result is an album that can stand alongside, not only musical journeys like Neil Young’s “Tonight’s the Night” and Bon Iver’s “For Emma, Forever Ago,” but also such literature of loss as Joan Didion’s “The Year of Magical Thinking.”
While this might sound like a somber affair, A Church That Fits Our Needs is anything but. Picker, a classically trained composer, utilizes rhythm as its own emotional language, never losing the propulsive inevitability and vitality of great rock and roll. Above all this is pop music, in the way that “A Day In the Life” or Radiohead’s “No Surprises” are pop music, seeking to present complex ideas to the widest possible audience.
Lost In The Trees’ Anti-Records 2010 debut album All Alone In An Empty House was a triumph with critics and music fans alike. Bob Boilen of NPR called it his “surprise album of the year” and “mighty potent stuff.” The Washington Post said “the band’s rich, fully realized arrangements elevate Picker’s heartfelt songwriting to memorable heights.” While the Huffington Post said the record “is spellbinding in its musical ambition, touching in its intimacy, and often overwhelming in its emotional honesty. Lost in the Trees is verging on creating a new genre of music.”
As on All Alone In An Empty House, Picker has once again surrounded himself with musicians who bring his vision to life with verve and sensitivity. A special contribution comes in the vocals of Emma Nadeau, whose soaring wordless melodies counter Picker’s ecstatic vocals throughout. Recorded and produced by Picker in North Carolina, the album was mixed by the legendary Rob Schnapf (Elliott Smith, Beck), bringing out the lush tones of the orchestrations in their full grandeur. At end of day, A Church That Fits Our Needs is the album Picker set out to make, a moving testament to the power of music to heal and transcend.
(New York, NY): Nearly 40 years after its recording and release, Brian Eno’s Here Come The Warm Jets is just as relevant and exciting as ever. Recorded in 1973 and released in 1974, this epic finger-waving flip-off, rated 9.2 by Pitchfork and considered inspirational for musicians of all ages, has never have been performed song-for-song, note-for-note in live presentation prior to this production*. “Here Come The Warm Jets” makes its Joe’s Pub debut on January 8th, 2012. Showtime is 9:30 pm.
In early 2011, as a birthday present to himself, Rob Christiansen, a recording engineer (Labradford, Unrest, Tuscadero) for WFMU and WNYC (programs Spinning on Air, Soundcheck and New Sounds), and multi-discipline composer / sound designer (music:
East Ghost West Ghost, Eggs; sound-design: Sue DeBeer’s 2004 Whitney Biennial,
Christian Bruno and Natalja Veckich film scores, NPR’s Radio Lab) decided to transcribe the entire album and perform it live in keeping with Eno’s original thoughts on “Here Come The Warm Jets” – with special musical guests.
“…one of the things that I tried to do with Warm Jets was to bring musicians together who would normally never play together and to play a music that they couldn’t agree upon. The music would come from the chemistry,” Brian Eno, 1974.
To this end, the evening’s emcee will be WNYC’s John Schaefer (New Sounds and Soundcheck) and the first round of announced featured musicians will be Joan Wasser (Joanaspolicewoman), noted guitarist Vernon Reid (Living Color) and Travis Morrison (The Dismemberment Plan), as well as Sohrab Habibion from Obits (Sub Pop), Knitting Factory / Partisan Records upstarts Paul Duncan (Warm Ghost) and Dom Cippola (Phantom Family Halo). More performers are to be announced.
“Solid and throbbing primitivo all the way but with the strangest increment of avant-garding… Eno is the real bizarro warp factor for 1974…The drums are pounding and the guitars are screaming every whichaway in a precisely orchestrated cauldron of terminal hysteria muchly influenced by though far more technologically advanced than early Velvet Underground. Don’t miss it; it’ll drive you crazy.” – Lester Bangs, Creem Magazine, 1974
Check out this NY Magazine / Vulture article in which Greg Gillis aka Girl Talk has put together his Summer BBQ Mix. It includes The Apples in stereo’s classic “Tidal Wave” from their debut album “Fun Trick Noisemaker.”
Lost In The Trees: Re-Orchestrate Bon Iver “Lump Sum”!
Ari Picker, singer-songwriter for North Carolina classical folk rock ensemble Lost In The Trees has re-orchestrated the haunting track ‘Lump Sum’ off the acclaimed debut album For Emma Forever Go by Bon Iver. The song’s original recording was a Thoreau like tale of rebirth through isolation, with songwriter Justin Vernon isolated in a Wisconsin cabin alone with some instruments. Read Full Post »
Lost in the Trees Invited By Jeff Mangum To Perform At All Tomorrow’s Parties UK
Collective to Mark UK Debut Alongside Fleet Foxes, Boredoms, Low, The Apples in stereo, The Fall and Others
Chapel Hill music collective Lost in the Trees have been asked by curator and Neutral Milk Hotel leaderJeff Mangum to perform at the illustrious All Tomorrow’s Parties Festival scheduled for December 2-4 in Minehead, UK. It will mark the band’s UK debut.
Lost In The Trees to Accompany Jody Stephens, Mike Mills, Ira Kaplan, Norman Blake, Matthew Sweet and Others For Big Star’s “Third” Premiere In NYC on March 26th
Lost in the Trees To Open Show
“…a Rosetta stone for a whole generation” Peter Buck Read Full Post »
The Apples in stereo: Vintage Graphics Meet New Musical Scale in “CPU” Video
The Apples in stereo released a new video today for the song “CPU” from the recent album Travellers in Space and Time. The VHS-saturated video is directed by artist and experimental musician Robert Beatty (Hair Police, Three Legged Race, Ulysses), who made the video using a vintage broadcast camera, cellular automata software, screen projections, found glass objects and other lo-fi techniques. Read Full Post »
The Apples in stereo to Reissue Watershed Indie-Rock Record, Fun Trick Noisemaker, on Vinyl
Chapel Hill music collective Lost in the Trees have been asked by curator and Neutral Milk Hotel leaderJeff Mangum to perform at the illustrious All Tomorrow’s Parties Festival scheduled for December 2-4 in Minehead, UK. It will mark the band’s UK debut.
