Rock & Indie 421 Items

Two years in the making, 25-year-old Angelica Garcia's album Cha Cha Palace is the result of an artist's need to SAY SOMETHING. The second song on the record, "Jícama" might only be a minute and 25 seconds in its entirety, but the message spans generations and is one that resonates deeply for Garcia with her Mexican and Salvadoran roots. Singing/shouting, "I see you, but you don't see me Jímaca, Jímaca, Guava Tree_I've been trying to tell ya, but you just don't see, like you I was born in this country," Garcia tells the reality for millions of Americans unapologetically and with passion.That feeling of being between places is something Garcia knows well having been raised between multigenerational, multicultural, homes with step-parents and half-siblings. Additionally, she made the journey from the West Coast to the East Coast and back again multiple times before finally settling down in Richmond, Virginia.She fondly recalls Mexican ranchera music always playing throughout her childhood. Ranchera was ingrained within the maternal side of her family with her Mother, Grandmother, Uncle & Aunt constantly singing the traditional music throughout the home of her Grandparents.Like Mitski, Lorde, Billie Eilish, and Rosalía, Garcia isn't afraid to tear pages out of her diary and express emotions that might be difficult and oftentimes daunting to share given today's social and political environment. Like her peers, she joins a new chapter of musicians who are connecting with their audiences on a level that lives outside the reaches of technology, trends, and social media, the daily experience of feeling torn between saying something and doing something, for being a voice and speaking with your voice, of being Latina while being American. And it's humanity and honesty that audiences are looking for and will find in spades throughout each note of Cha Cha Palace.

A sparsely documented yet iconic era for Ted Milton's psycho-funk afro punk fake no-wave pogo jazz group Blurt has been brought to life with an expansive collection of restored versions of live performances. Captured on early camcorders during the frenzy of counter-cultural activity that characterised Europe around the fall of the Iron Curtain, these recordings of Blurt, recently posted by fans on YouTube, are a visceral reminder of a scene whose influence is writ large on today's alternative music culture.

Ted Milton's trio have produced an impressive string of albums, not to mention his numerous solo recordings. Featuring 15 tracks spanning their extensive discography from their 1980 debut single – also the title of this collection – “My Mother Was A Friend Of An Enemy Of The People” to 1999’s “Eat Up Your House”, this live collection of performances have been digitised by whatever means available. The original sound captured by the inbuilt microphones of these camcorders and the videos concerned are in many cases the only documentation of an iconic era whose zeitgeist was so masterfully epitomised for many by Blurt.

Refurbished / restored/ repurposed using new AI tools there is a spectral roughness to them but surfing on these reconstructed waveforms, the inimitable machinations of Blurt ride out once again, emerging from a pixilated oblivion to put into perspective the peculiar absurdity of our human condition.

LP comes with download code. Released in 1980, ‘The Art Of Walking’ sees Pere Ubu ‘moving even further from the conventions of rock music - and from their own past - but still moving forward, without a doubt, and losing none of their integrity as a group.’ (Melody Maker, Chris Cutler). The album features in new box set, ‘Architecture Of Language 1979-1982’, released in March. It gathers together ‘New Picnic Time’ with its companion releases, ‘The Art Of Walking’ and ‘Song Of The Bailing Man’ plus LP of extras, ‘Architectural Salvage’. Coed Jail! Live dates mark the release of the box with a set list drawn exclusively from the recordings of 1975-1982. Tom Herman, guitarist from 1975 to 1979 and from 1997 to 2002, rejoins the band for the tour. The line-up is David Thomas, Tom Herman, Robert Wheeler, Michele Temple and Steve Mehlman. Wheeler and Temple have been in Pere Ubu since 1994, Mehlman since 1995.

The Stooges were a no brakes act who careered inexorably towards annihilation.They finally hit the wall in 1974, after the most horrible blow out imaginable at the Michigan Palace, where Iggy practically begged to be crucified by an angry mob. But remember this kids, Iggy hated himself so much he wanted to live.