Rubblebucket official site | Rubblebucket on Facebook | Rubblebucket on Soundcloud | Rubblebucket on Twitter | Rubblebucket on Bandcamp

Delicate Steve official site | Delicate Steve on Facebook

When the world first met Delicate Steve in 2011, Steve Marion and the band he principled were an artfully crafted fiction. Tasked with introducing Wondervisions, Delicate Steve’s beguiling debut record of highly evocative and emotionally concise guitar-driven songs, Luaka Bop, the seminal David Byrne-owned New York indie label, balked. There was the music to get to; itself essentially reference-less and unqualifiedly unique. But what of the guy who created it? The guitarist who wrote the whole thing, who played every instrument. An enormous unknown talent without an attendant backstory to match the spectral and boundless qualities of his music. Enter Chuck Klosterman. The celebrated writer was brought on to completely fabricate a biography based on a band and album he was asked not to listen to.

While the record racked up high praise from outlets including The New York Times and NPR, nearly everything music fans read about Delicate Steve was a fiction. Listeners were left to the music alone to determine who Steve was.

As is often the case, some of the first people to recognize Delicate Steve’s music were fellow artists who became vocal supporters, as the young guy from upstate New Jersey began to develop a growing fanbase in small New York clubs like Glasslands, Union Pool, and Mercury Lounge. Following the 2012 release of Positive Force, Delicate Steve had cornered the status of ‘your favorite band’s favorite band’, as Steve himself became a fixture in and an on-demand collaborator among disparate scenes, players, and bands, making some of the most celebrated and forward thinking music today: Co-signs and work with David Byrne, Dirty Projectors, tUnE-yArDs, Mac DeMarco, Dr. Dog, and elder statesmen like Lee Ranaldo and Built to Spill. Likely the only guitarist alive who will cut records with Sondre Lerche and Death Grip’s Zach Hill. Handpicked to open a sold out North American tour for Tame Impala. And most recently, providing guitar on Paul Simon’s new record.

These wild artistic relationships came to be because Steve happens to be one of the most talented songwriters and guitarists currently working. But they are also a direct reflection of the person, the soul of a guy any artist or fan who’s met him will identify immediately. It’s the same soul that fills his songs.

This is Steve, Delicate Steve’s first new record in 4 years, and first for the ANTI- imprint, is an articulation of this spirit. Joy. Love. Positivity. Perseverance. Meditation. A general communion with the people and world around him. Easy to call such things hackneyed in this cynical time, but in Steve’s case, it’s very hard to separate the person from the art. It’s real. It’s pure. This, is Steve.

Melody begins with the needle drop on This is Steve, and it’s this hallmark as a songwriter on display in tune after tune that has defined all of Delicate Steve’s work. It’s his incredible capacity to write wordless songs that are impossible not to sing along to. He works in no genre, there are no words, but there is never a question as to what he is saying.

Tunes like “Animals,” “Help,” and “Nightlife,” establish their hooks immediately, and drop you with Steve as he runs alongside leopards, scales a Western peak, nurses a boozy Kingston come-down, before clocking out at under three minutes and depositing you somewhere else on a technicolor continuum. Throughout the set, Steve’s guitar melodies rise and crest, unguarded expressions of wonderment and positivity.

Steve produced and played all the instruments on this record. He created it as an introduction from himself to you, and named it appropriately. If there is a question as to who This is Steve’s creator is, you’ll find it imbued in these ten songs. As he has done from the start, Steve lets the music speak for itself. Without a word.

Mat Hall
August 22 2016

Hess Is More official site | Hess Is More on Facebook | Hess Is More on YouTube | Hess Is More on Soundcloud | Hess Is More on Instagram | Hess Is More on Twitter

“Top 10 Live Acts of the Year” – GlitterballNYC

“I believe I just witnessed the future of live dance music” – Petty Nobles Collective

“Top 10 Music of the Year” – Time Out Magazine”

“Where on earth did this material come from ?” – The Lowbrow Reader

These 6 musicians, with their unique instrumentation and unorthodox arrangements create a very danceable yet at times puzzling concert. Catchy melodies and chant like lyrics can haunt you for days…

Hess Is More started out as an electronic solo project for Danish musician Mikkel Hess. Through 6 albums and various tours and collaborations the project has developed into a full blown Transatlantic Live Music Ensemble, working with a more collective approach. Their latest release “Bearsong / Primate” (Gomma Records) is a celebration of the energy and interplay of the live ensemble – sounding in the borderland between electronic dance music, afrobeat, krautrock and jazz.

– The ensemble has performed at a long list of international festivals and venues, including concerts in Sao Paolo, Montreal, Istanbul, Moscow, Copenhagen, New York.

– Brothers Emil, Nikolaj and Mikkel Hess received the main prize “Album of the year” at The Danish Music Awards Jazz 2014 for their release “Music For Mum and Dad” with the group 3 x Hess.

– Band leader Mikkel Hess is also a prolific composer for film and theatre. Latest feature film score “When Animals Dream” was nominated twice as “Best Score of 2014”, by the Danish Film Academy / Robert Awards and by Carl Prisen.

Alexander F. on Soundcloud | Alexander F. on Facebook | Alexander F. on Twitter | Alexander F. on Instagram

Alexander F is an American new age punk band fronted by Alex Toth. While on an eleven-day silent meditation retreat in Quebec, a handful of Buddhist-themed experimental punk songs exploded into Alex’s head. Writing and demoing the record took three weeks post-retreat and involved wearing nicotine patches, meditating daily, reading the Tao Te Ching and listening to Pixies and Fugazi.

The whole project was pretty unexpected as Alex comes from a background of jazz trumpet and leading the large new wave band, Rubblebucket. The need for intense meditation came a year into his recovery as a sober alcoholic after a couple musician acquaintances committed suicide. The aggressive songs that emerged quite surprisingly are about freedom from self and freedom from the illusion that we’re separate entities. Freedom from being so lost in thought and in our egos that we hurt ourselves and those around us.

For four days in August of 2015, Alex and friend Steve Marion (guitar) went into Room 17 in Bushwick, Brooklyn to lay down the Alexander F songs with a bunch of friends including Dandy McDowell, Christian Peslak, and Noah Rubin who now comprise the touring band. Kimbra makes an appearance on the record and has been known to sit in with the band. The album was engineered by Joe Rogers and mostly mixed by John Congleton and Claudius Mittendorfer.

Alexander F has played with the likes of Speedy Ortiz, Perfect Pussy, Downtown Boys, Colin Stetson, Margaret Glaspy, Mac McCaughan, Delicate Steve and Reptar.

Kalbells on Facebook | Kalbells on Instagram | Kalbells on Twitter

Kalbells is the solo work of Kalmia Traver (Rubblebucket). The debut album Ten Flowers is cosmic bedroom pop written in Vermont in the dead of winter directly after a successful battle with ovarian cancer. It’s lyrics deal with joy, self-affirmation and dream healing, and sonically it is a kaleidoscopic desert scape of blips and bells, whistles, synthesizers, layered vocals and woodwinds. Co-produced by Ryan Power, it comes out July 14th, 2017 on NNA Tapes.