Ellen Allien would like to set the record straight about her genre of “minimalist electronica.” You might think the term means bone-dry repetitiveness or barely-there soundscapes, but Allien’s music is nothing of the sort. It’s playful, restless, almost-danceable techno that would be hypnotic if it ever stood still, and avant-garde if not for Allien’s love of melody and songcraft.

She’s touring (and stopping by Avalon Hollywood on Saturday) to support her newest mix album “Boogy Bytes Vol. 4″ and her forthcoming album “Sool,” which deconstructs her ideas of sound and song structure even further. We talked to her about the real meanings of minimalism and gender politics in electronica and whether Berliners appreciate those arty Americans snapping up the good apartments there.

“Sool” seems much more obscure and less song-oriented that “Orchestra of Bubbles” or your earlier solo work. What prompted that?

First, I really wanted to work with AGF [Antye Greie-Fuchs], she is one of my favorite producers and I appreciate her work so much. Besides that, she is a friend and I wanted to experience our shared working process. And I thought that AGF would be ideal for supporting me in my wish to do something quite conceptual and minimal, without poppy ambiance. Just something abstract but smart and elegant. And it worked. I used voice only cut up. And it made me happy to create something totally different to my previous albums.

How did working so closely with Apparat on your collaborative last album “Orchestra of Bubbles” affect what you wanted to do with “Sool”?

It affected me to think about the structure of songs, tracks and the single elements. We experienced something very strong by playing live together. And that gave me a different feeling for the arrangement within each track and also the way I used — or avoided to use — my voice unmediated. I used it just for one track, Frieda; which is dedicated to my dead grandmother. But Apparat was and still is a quite inspiring person for me.

Read Full Story

Zooey Deschanel and her She & Him collaborator, M. Ward, looked so stylish together, it was befitting that they played surrounded by the latest fashion at Barneys New York. As the guest performers for last night’s party thrown by eco-friendly clothing line Loomstate and the Sundance Channel, the duo, who recently released their debut album, “Volume One,” played a five-song set. It was short but sweet enough to make me want to find some way into their two sold-out shows later this month at the Vista.

Sandwiched between their bluesy takes on Smokey Robinson’s “You Really Got a Hold on Me” and Sam Cooke’s “Bring It on Home to Me” were original tracks “Take It Back” and “Change Is Hard.” Skepticism is naturally warranted when actresses take on music, but Deschanel is actually good. Dressed in vintage, she was every bit the doe-eyed ingénue she conveys on-screen, but her voice echoed the soulful smoky tone of Dusty Springfield or Linda Ronstadt. Ward quietly held his own, strumming his cherry red guitar and occasionally providing backup vocals.

Afterward, I briefly chatted with the two in what looked like a fitting room on Barneys’ fifth floor.

– post and photo by Enid Portuguez

Is there a different energy you put into music than you do in film?

Deschanel: It’s fun to get to see a project from beginning to end. Writing the music, coming up with ideas, sending them to Matt and then making the music — it’s all encompassing. As an actor, you do the job and a lot happens after that you don’t take part in. Music is more of who I am creatively.

How’s your experience so far performing in front of an audience?

Deschanel: I love singing onstage! It feels like the energy moves through you and into the audience. It’s this amazing exchange.

What’s the songwriting process like for you two?

Ward: Zooey writes the lyrics and the melody. She sends it to me and I listen to them. She’s the skeleton of the song, and I guess you can say I’m the flesh. It’s hard to go back and dissect teamwork. There are so many things we work on together.

What’s the origin behind the name She & Him?

Ward: Zooey came up with it. It came from the idea that we wanted people to hear the songs first before making a fuss about who was making it. We were inspired by the Band and the anonymity of it. It puts what you do in front of your name.

A battle turntablist for the last decade or so, DJ Neil Armstrong found his niche making mixtapes featuring ’80s synth pop, rock, underground hip-hop and other treasures from the crate. He dubbed it his (All Out King) Series, a reference to a line from the pivotal graffiti movie “Style Wars“: “You gotta do everything: If you specialize in just one thing, you can’t call yourself an all-out-king!”

Armstrong is the official DJ for the Mary J. Blige and Jay-Z Heart of the City Tour, a major coup, to be sure. So how did he get there? Story goes that one of Armstrong’s tapes fell into the hands of a Roc-A-Fella Records employee and it went up the chain to Jigga man himself, who used it as inspiration to formulate the highs and lows of his classic “Black Album.”

The 34-year-old Queens, N.Y., native has been making his mixtapes as a labor of love. “I’ve never done this for money,” he said. He’ll make one giant leap for mixtapes tonight at the Hollywood Bowl with Jay-Z and Blige. We caught up with the sonic astronaut last week before he grabbed dinner in Houston.

– Camilo Smith

You’re not even halfway through the 28-show Heart of the City Tour. What’s it been like so far? Any highlights?

[The highlight] hasn’t happened yet. It will be when we hit New York City and play Madison Square Garden [on May 2, 6-7]. Every time I’ve passed by it, I’ve always thought to myself: “I wish I could play in front of a crowd over there.” But I never figured out how it would be possible. And now I’m gonna get that chance.

There are lots of DJs who could have been chosen for this gig. What made you the top pick?

I was told by my bandmates that there were DJs who were called before me that were sent home because they didn’t have enough of a turntablist background to mesh with the band. But from what I understand, I also had the right people pushing for me. One person in particular is N.Y. it girl Vashtie Kola.

You made a mixtape for Roc-A-Fella records a while ago. Did you ever meet Jay-Z because of that?

I met Jay about 20 minutes after I got off the plane in Miami for rehearsals. They set up my turntables right next to him, and the road manager said, “Get your gear, it’s time.”

Read Full Story

On April 29, Testament releases its first studio album in nine years, “The Formation of Damnation,” and for fans missing the early energy and gruff melodicism of other ‘80s Bay Area thrash-metalers such as Metallica and Megadeth, it’s a must-purchase.

After a quarter-century of adversity, Testament is touring with its classic lineup; it has shot a segment on Alcatraz for MTV’s “52 Bands/52 Weeks” series; it has a new label (Nuclear Blast) and a new manager (Maria Ferrero).

“Everything’s happening at once for us right now,” says guitarist Eric Peterson, lounging in a tour vehicle behind San Juan Capistrano’s Coach House, where the band played last week.

We talked to the enthusiastic, straightforward Eric Peterson and natural storyteller Chuck Billy, the group’s vocalist, after they autographed a Testament skateboard. It was a bootleg, but what the hell, it was for the fans.

–Greg Burk

The new album’s fantastic.

EP: We knew that it had to be something special, and we accomplished it.

You spent a lot of time on it.

CB: We spent some time, but it’s more, I guess, spending thought.

Read Full Story

Until recently, being a Crystal Castles fan took a lot of hard work. Not just because of the Toronto duo’s penchant for slicing pretty hints of disco-punk into noisy tatters, or for their withering dismissals of voguish non-scenes like “8-bit” or “new rave.” It’s that their first records, fetish-object 7-inches, each sold out in a matter of hours.

“Fans got upset because they couldn’t get their hands on them, so we asked Merock Records to do another run and they’d say no,” said Ethan Fawn, the band’s producer and multi-instrumentalist. “We wanted to release something people could get.”

Read Full Story

The Omaha indie-punk band Cursive writes its albums as if they were little plays. Characters and images recur across records, often shouting knife-edge lyrics about the exquisite torment of falling out of love in a small town. So it’s no stretch to imagine that frontman and songwriter Tim Kasher had a screenplay stuffed in a shoebox while Cursive and his dark pop outfit the Good Life were on tour.

That screenplay just got a little closer to the bright lights of a projector, and not just because of Kasher’s recent move to Los Angeles. Kasher has sold his screenplay, “Help Wanted Nights,” to an indie production house, and the script will be familiar to Good Life fans, as it shares its title with an album and follows a similar narrative to that record’s moody, Midwestern Gothic meditations.

In the “Help Wanted Nights” screenplay, a stranger’s car breaks down in a rural town and he’s sucked into the locals’ personal noirish hells. We talked to Kasher about selling his script, publishing short fiction and bicycling drunk around the eastside of L.A.

–August Brown

Congratulations on living the L.A. dream and getting your “Help Wanted Nights” screenplay picked up. Who’s producing it?

We’re working with Lars Knudsen, who owns the indie production company Parts & Labor; Mira Shin, who’s an assistant to Scott Rudin, though this is an independent project for her; and Nicholas Shumaker of White Buffalo Entertainment. It’s coming along well enough. All the financing is arranged.

This is the first thing I’ve actually tried to get produced. It’s based off my interest in Tennessee Williams and Edward Albee. I fell in love with films based on plays; it’s all very dialogue-based. Everything’s a lot cheaper that way. I’ve always tried with albums to open them up and have them be something more than just rock ‘n’ roll, so it was a release to be able to finally write a whole story line. I’ve built up a lot of aggression trying to fit whole story ideas into three-minute songs and meters and stanzas. I’m not working on a screenplay right now because I’m working on the new Cursive album and I’m getting all frustrated again.

Read Full Story

When Yeasayer’s debut album of tongue-wagging tribal psychedelia, “All Hour Cymbals,” hit in 2007, it arrived with a bit of mystery. The cover art featured a bizarre figure resembling a werewolf Bedouin, its face obscured in a dark shroud. Photos of the band were hard to come by (and impossible for months leading up to the release), and the record company on the jacket was unfamiliar to even the most devoted scenegoers: the album came courtesy of We Are Free, as its first full-length release.

All the smoke and mirrors were part of the plan for Jason Foster, the owner of Baltimore-based We Are Free Records and the manager of Yeasayer, one of the hottest new properties in avant-garde rock. Soundboard asked Foster about starting a label in the midst of such dire times for selling records, how an indie label can hang onto its rising stars, and how to get a quartet of hippies wailing about the apocalypse to play on Conan.

You have a long history in independent music as the co-founder of Monitor Records. What was the ambition behind this new label?

I owned Monitor with a partner and it was a lot of fun. But I was getting tired of new music. I was burned out. Then somebody sent me a few of the Yeasayer demos, only three 30-second clips, and I was like “Wow, this is what I was looking for,” and it felt like the right time to start something new where it was my ship and I’m the captain.

Read Full Story

The promo junket may take bands into unlikely terrain to pitch their wares, but watching Stephen Malkmus jockey with Fox News’ resident blowhard Greg Gutfeld on his late-night stoner show “Red Eye” is, in effect, a Republican version of Narduwar. Malkmus parries with sheepish good humor about the whole ordeal, which amounts to Gutfeld reciting things he read on a Google search and waiting for Malkmus to respond (though I didn’t know he was Cate Blanchett’s singing voice in the Bob Dylan pic “I’m Not There”). Maybe Steve ran into Julia Allison in the lobby on the way out, which would make Gawker’s collective head explode into tiny fragments.

– August Brown

Remember when we wanted our MTV? For those too young to recall the heady days before the 24/7 dramarama of Lauren Conrad, the initials stood for Music Television. With the April 7 launch of the on-demand streaming video site Pitchfork.tv, indie tastemaker Pitchfork Media is hoping to do for the Internet what MTV once did for the airwaves. Inspired in part by the success of YouTube, the site has been in development since August and original footage has already been shot in New York and Chicago. In a recent IM conversation (edited for OMGs), Pitchfork founder and publisher Ryan Schreiber discussed the launch, jockeying for music’s Ebert & Roeper slot and the future of criticism in an ever-expanding blogosphere.

– David Greenwald

MTV rarely shows videos anymore – do you think you’ll be filling the niche they used to? Or is this something completely different?

Yeah, music videos will be a big part of it. We’re being selective about what we put up so there’s a level of quality control — the idea being that you can just press play and not have to skip around too much to find something that’s good. But the focus for us is the original content, documenting artists.

What kinds of programming are you planning on?

Artist interviews, sessions, documentaries and feature-length music docs and films. We have a couple of great concepts for documentary-style series we’re getting pretty close to putting together. We already have one called “Daytripping,” which is just going around with a band, seeing what they like to do, visiting them in the studio. The Man Man episode that we’re launching with was the first thing we ever shot. We drove to Philly, got a little tour of where they were staying, got burritos, then they rode their bikes to the studio, recorded for a while, and set off fireworks in the street. That actually ran in Forkcast not long after we shot it. We did one with Lee “Scratch” Perry too, which is just mind-blowing.

The press release promised Pitchfork writers in front of the camera – any chance of an Ebert & Roeper-type show with you and associate editor in chief Scott Plagenhoef?

I don’t know if that would ever happen. It’d be crazy, though – we both have pretty outspoken opinions about music and we’re comfortable enough with each other at this point that we can get into heated debates or arguments about bands or songs and both walk away happy.

Read Full Story