Digital Skillet

Westside Daredevils

2005-04-09T17:50:00.000-05:00

Westside Daredevils

Knoxville's Westside Daredevils blend vocal harmonies together with a three-pronged guitar assault, creating a melodic, textured wall of sound. No power chords here. The 'devils are far more creative with their orchestration. The five-piece's arrangements are filled with thick harmonies, catchy pop hooks, and a variety of styles. This is guitar pop as it was meant to be heard.

Audio

Andrea

Heroes and Zeroes

Darling Currency

She's a Disguise

Todd Steed

2005-04-09T00:47:00.001-05:00

Todd Steed

Knoxville's Todd Steed is something of a modern day town minstrel. He writes and sings songs about his Southern hometown, capturing the love-hate relationship many have with the scruffy little city. Steed chronicles it all, from the underachieving populace to the friendly-spirited pubs to the bookstores that don't serve tea. Over a backdrop of unpretenious East Tennessee sound that flips a middle finger in Nashville's direction, Steed sings his anthems. On his latest album, Knoxville Tells, a veritable who's who of Knoxville musicians (Scott Miller, RB Morris, Tim Lee, Mic Harrison, Jeff Bills, John Baker, Jim Rivers, Kat Brock, Randall Brown, etc.) lend a hand to a disc of songs about the things, people, and places stumbled upon in East Tennessee.

Audio:

East Town Mall

North Knoxville (rock version)

North Knoxville (acoustic version)

New Knoxville Girl

The World's Unfair (Since 1982)

Longmont Potion Castle

2005-04-09T00:01:00.000-05:00

Longmont Potion Castle

Prank calls used to be funny. In some ways they still are. But calling up unsuspecting businesses and homeowners to berate them has gotten more than a bit cliched. Longmont Potion Castle does what so many others have failed to do: he breathes new life into a tired art form. That's not to say he's perfect. There's still something utterly obnoxious here. And he treads familiar waters at times. What sets Longmont Potion Castle apart, though, is his creativity, sheer silliness, utter disregard for logic, and an ultra-quick reaction time. Longmont Potion Castle abandons convention by editing out portions of the conversation, adding sound effects in the midst of utterly serious dialogue, and by asking businesses repeatedly for items that clearly do not exist (bottled squid potion anyone?). Sounds a bit childish, but it will make you giggle like a schoolgirl.

Audio:

Quite a few Longmont Potion Castle calls can be heard here. I'm particularly fond of LPC Best of Volumes 1 and 2. (The files are a bit cranky, so you may have to push play a couple of times to get them to work.)

Soul-Junk

2005-04-08T23:19:00.000-05:00

Soul-Junk

Soul-Junk aka Glen Galloway aka Glen Galaxy really is a mad rapper. Much like Half-Handed Cloud or Danielson Famile, he makes avant-garde music about God that is neither pretentious nor cheesy. It's the sort of religious music that even gets the athiest excited. Parts experimental Hip-hop, free jazz, noise, and indie rock, Soul-Junk is Beck if he were an acid-dropping rapper. Jumbled, jarring layers of loopy, whirring, lazy beats and psychedelic funk make this some of the most imaginative Hip-hop around.

Audio:

Hogging All the Islands

Sunk Fang Shuffle

ill-m-i

Inverse Square Dance

Netherjams

Dixie Dirt

2005-04-01T18:01:00.000-06:00

Dixie Dirt

Knoxville's Dixie Dirt does not sound as its name implies. The band does not play Appalachian melodies, country, or Americana roots rock. Rather, this band is equal parts Neil Young, Sonic Youth, Ragged Glory, with a little dirty Knoxville sound thrown in for good measure. Dixie Dirt makes organic, gritty, and ambitious songs that begin with soft restraint, building to grainy kaleidoscopic intensity. Lynn Point Records has Dixie Dirt's entire Springtime is for the Hopeless and other ideas disc available as a free download (including cover art).

Audio:

Fast Food Media

A Letter Put to Music

Whiskeydrunk

Bunky

2005-03-25T10:32:00.000-06:00

Bunky

Famous for its legendary live performances, San Diego’s Bunky makes larger than life fuzzy-sounds and slicked up pop explosions while all the neighborhood kids gather round to watch with curious faces. You’d think the gawking bystanders who amble up to listen hadn’t heard this sort of thing before, which is nonsensical. But Bunky has spit-shined its junkyard hybridization of garage punk, avant garde rock, ska and lovey-dovey balladeering in such a way that you might not even notice. Bunky is twitchy, erratic pop noise, flexible vocals, off-kilter beats and tunes that bulldoze through genre boundaries like a toddler shooting up sugar.

Audio:

BaBa

chuy

yes-no

Sleep Station

2005-03-19T18:18:00.000-06:00

Sleep Station

New Jersey’s Sleep Station makes lush, beautiful concept albums that communicate a sense of wonder and beauty. Lyrical, intricately subtle, and driven by obsessive musical impulses, the quintet pulls off the epic with surprising ease. From Hang in There Charlie’s take on a 1970s astronaut abandoned by ground control and left to suffocate in loneliness, to Von Cosel’s twisted romance about a deceased TB patient and the doctor who falls in love with the corpse, preserving it in formaldehyde for a decade, Sleep Station expresses empathy for fucked up characters, all over a poppy, wholly unsentimental musical soundscape. Sleep Station has an entire EP for free download (art included) here.

Audio:

Caroline, London 1940

Burden to You

Fading Out

My Last Desire

Silver Hills

Mustard

2005-03-16T21:25:00.000-06:00

Mustard

Once upon a time in the late-nineties Knoxville's bar scene was charmed by a three-piece called Mustard. Fronted by guitar wizard Chris Cook, Mustard was a collection of charming high-spirited guitar pop, infused with elements of 70s metal, blues, surf and garage rock. Sloppy, lo-fi, low-key, off-key, flashy yet restrained, and with an ample supply of fun and a danceable live show, Mustard is sadly no more. Fortunately you can download the band's entire first CD (complete with cover art) at Lynn Point Records.

Audio:

Roly Poly

Rock Star

I Make You Sick

Knox 5000

Honky Pride

Lou Can’t Read

Half-Handed Cloud

2005-03-16T19:02:00.000-06:00

Half-Handed Cloud

Half-Handed Cloud is Sunday School meets Sgt. Pepper's. A one-man band blending toy instruments, found sounds, guitars, cellos, pianos, breathy church organs, woodwinds, trombones, non-instrument sounds, eight-person choirs, sampled air conditioners in reverse, mini-discs and phone calls to friends, Berkeley-resident John Ringhofer creates two-minute whirlwind musical collages like no one else. The Old Testament has never been this erratic, or this much of a drug trip.

Audio:

Animals Are Cut in Two

Can't Even Breathe On My Own Two Feet

Once, Twice, Seven Times a Werewolf

To Love Like the Father and Son Love Each Other

We're Very Greatly Loved

Scout Niblett

2005-03-13T19:01:00.000-06:00

Scout Niblett

England's Scout Niblett is the sort of performer who makes you fall in love with music all over again. She wears a blonde wig onstage, records with Steve Albini, tours with Cat Power, and has the voice of an enthusiastic child. She wails over drum-heavy songs so gleefully that you wouldn't be surprised to see her rush off to play hopscotch with her friends. She's like a female version of Calvin from the Calvin & Hobbes comic strip: imaginative, hyperactive and unpredictable, all at once.

Audio:

Drummer Boy

FireFlies

Uptown Top Ranking

Jolie Holland

2005-03-13T18:00:00.000-06:00

Jolie Holland

Singer/songwriter Jolie Holland sounds like a black and white era starlet. Combining blues, folk, gospel, jazz and pop in totally inventive ways, Holland marks the emergence of a unique and important new voice in the music scene. Jazzy, pure, graceful, poetic and sensual, she's a quiet Nora Jones meets Billie Holliday mixing a little bit of New Orleans with a little bit of Texas.

Audio:

Black Hand Blues

I Wanna Die

Black Stars

Old Fashioned Morphine

Sage Francis

2005-03-13T17:07:00.000-06:00

Sage Francis

Sage Francis is many things to many people. He's a bisexual white rapper from Rhode Island. He's an Old School revivalist. He's a slam poet. He's a political pundit raging against Republicrats and Democrans. He's an underground phenomenon. He's a crybaby emo confessionalist. He's a verbose prophet who never quite hits the mark, yet who raps circles around anyone who can. He's a mindblowing talent who makes you remember how great Eminem used to be, back when every other line made you hit the rewind button over and over again.

Audio:

Slow Down Gandi

Dance Monkey

Makeshift Patriot

Hey Bobby (Reanimator Remix)(Radio Edit)

Threewrite (Remix Mikal kHill and Arit Harvanko)

Ibrahim

2005-03-11T18:35:00.000-06:00

Ibrahim

Instrumental music tends to fall into a few basic categories. You've got your quiet and pretty instrumental, and you've got your experimentally ambitious, verging on pretentious instrumental. Throw in a smattering of surf rock and math rock and you've got a rough skeletal of the scene.

Knoxville's Ibrahim doesn't really fit into any of these categories. Ibrahim is a rock band playing rock music, minus a vocalist. Ranging from the simple to the complex, with hints of Joy Division and Sonic Youth, Ibrahim is layers upon layers of beautifully textured sound.

Audio:

Rally Lines

Sharpton

American Samoa

Headphones

2005-03-10T00:23:00.000-06:00

Headphones

Headphones is the new side project of David Bazan (Pedro the Lion), Tim Walsh (Pedro the Lion, TW Walsh), and Frank Lenz (Starflyer 59). Constructed entirely from synthesizers and drums, Headphones finds Bazan in familiar lyrical territory, exploring the dark and gnarled soul of humanity. Deftly low-key and expectedly lyric-driven, Headphones integrates rock and electronic music into a arresting debut by three seasoned musicians.

Audio:

Headphones entire album can be heard via streaming audio here.

Royal Bangs

2005-03-07T22:04:00.000-06:00

Royal Bangs

Knoxville’s Royal Bangs used to be known as the Suburban Urchins. Now they’re not. No matter what you call them, the Bangs produce a refreshing mixture of jerky garage rock, Beatlesque creative prowess and abrasive high-octane youthful zest. Melodic, zany, jagged, careless, passionate, post-punk, the Royal Bangs are very much the epitome of rock and roll. If you like what you find here, the Bangs have two full albums available for free download at their website.

Audio:

Brian the Lion

The Umbrella Song

My Friend the Television

Fake That Chrysler

D. Rangers

2005-03-06T15:56:00.000-06:00

D. Rangers

For many, the genre of country music is synonymous with the irritating pop twang prevalent in Nashville, Tennessee, or else the ignorant machismo prattling of Toby Keith. That’s a shame. If you didn’t get anything else out of O Brother, Where Art Thou?, you should have at least learned that rootsy, old-timey country and Appalachian music carries far more diversity than whatever Travis Tritt is up to these days.

Winnipeg’s D. Rangers are living proof. Innovative, dangerous and purveyors of, from what I’ve heard, a truly impressive live show, the D. Rangers combine bluegrass, western swing, rockabilly, punk and good old fashioned rawk into a remarkable take on traditional music. Plus any band that plays something called a muckbucket bass is worth more than a passing glance.

Audio:

We Stay High and Lonesome

Coughin' Up Blood

Cherokee Surf

Singing Science Records

2005-03-06T14:46:00.000-06:00

Singing Science Records

There’s nothing quite so fun as learning set to music. But before PBS came along, kids were often subjected strange LP recordings imparting knowledge. Case in point? Jef Poskanzer’s archive of science-themed folk songs.

Poskanzer has a tremendous archive of these eerie, Atomic Age ditties from a six-LP set of science-themed songs from the late 1950s and early 1960s. The albums were produced by Hy Zaret and Lou Singer.

As Poskanzer notes, “Zaret's main claim to fame is writing the lyrics to the classic Unchained Melody for the 1955 movie Unchained, later recorded by the Righteous Brothers. Three of the albums were performed by Tom Glazer, the semi-famous 1940s folk musician who wrote On Top of Spaghetti.”

Someone should really sample these songs on a Hip-Hop album.

Audio:

Tom Glazer and Dottie Evans - Beep, Beep

Marais & Miranda - Song of the Rocks

Dorothy Collins - Who's Afraid of Thunder?

Senryu

2005-03-05T23:33:00.000-06:00

Senryu

Knoxville’s Senryu is a genre-melding six-car Interstate pileup of a band. Never content to play in one musical sandbox, this pop-wielding quartet meshes stripped-down acoustics, orchestral balladry, Vaudeville anthems and bitter sweet love songs into a gooey synthesis of burly rock wizardry. Senryu has been compared to Smashing Pumpkins, Interpol and a Jeff Buckley fronted Cure.

Audio:

Stretched Across

The Problem (Live)

The Advantage

2005-03-03T22:37:00.000-06:00

The Advantage

There are a lot of gimmick cover bands out there (many would argue that all cover bands are gimmick bands). Some pay tribute to a specific band. Others cover all the songs on a particular album. Some tackle a particular genre. Others lift the tune and parody the words.

The Advantage is a bit different. Oh, it’s a cover band all right. But unlike Me First and the Gimme Gimmes or dozens of Dave Matthews’ tribute bands, The Advantage covers music from 8-bit Nintendo games. Seriously.

There’s no defending this sort of behavior. It’s a publicity stunt. It’s a damn good one, too. The band is tight and plays random songs--everything from Castlevania and Contra to Double Dragon 2 and Metroid. Your old school NES has never sounded this great.

Audio:

Ninja Gaiden – Mine Shaft

Double Dragon 2. Story+boss

Video::

Castlevania