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Echoplex (below the Echo)
Los Angeles, CA 90026
Jul 16, 2009 at 9:00 PM PDT The Very Best featuring Rainbow Arabia / Bersa Discos at Echoplex (below the Echo) - Los Angeles, CA $13.00
The Very Best || Watch It's easy to be cynical about this process of easing Western listeners into Esau Mwamwaya's music-- RIYL Vampire Weekend, Ruby Suns, other English-language artists cribbing from African music-- until you hear the music itself, and in particular the whole of he and Radioclit's free mixtape, Are the Very Best. Once you get through the indie-guarded gates, Mwamwaya and Radioclit are open here to everything from South Africa's marabi and kwaito music to Hans Zimmer scores to French and American hip-hop to Michael Jackson-- and in most cases, it's the tracks that lean furthest away from the familiar that work best. The regal "Sister Betina", BLK JKS collaboration "Salota", and Radioclit productions "Funa Funa" and "Kada Manja" are as immediately likable as the rest of the mix. And, frankly, much of the best-known source material here-- "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa", the AiH backdrop on "Kamphopo", the True Romance via Badlands theme on "Chikandi", the loathsome Beatles song "Birthday"-- is either simply a blueprint or sketch for other ideas, or is vastly improved by Mwamwaya's treatments. -
Jul 17, 2009 at 8:00 PM PDT THREE MILE PILOT featuring Optiganally Yours at Echoplex (below the Echo) - Los Angeles, CA $14.00
Three Mile Pilot || Listen
TMP was one of the most engaging and influential left-field bands in SD rock-roll; their progeny looks like Slint?s family tree, with the top branches occupied by international indie darlings Pinback and Black Heart Procession. Not bad for a bass, drum, and piano band. Of high school kids! Pall, Zack, and Tobias have grown up, and grown, and will share a stage for the first time in ten years. - San Diego Reader
@ Echoplex enter at 1154 Glendale Blvd Los Angeles, CA 90291
8pm / $14 advance, $16 day of show / 18+
Jul 22, 2009 at 8:30 PM PDT THE MIGHTY DIAMONDS backed by Yellow Wall Dub Squad + horn section mixed by Scientist at Echoplex (below the Echo) - Los Angeles, CA $10.00
Jul 25, 2009 at 6:00 PM PDT STEPHEN MALKMUS & THE JICKS at Echoplex (below the Echo) - Los Angeles, CA $19.00
STEPHEN MALKMUS & THE JICKS @ ECHOPLEX 6pm $19adv $22dos All ages
Jul 31, 2009 at 8:00 PM PDT Deerhoof at Echoplex (below the Echo) - Los Angeles, CA $12.00
The Sonics The Sonics walked on stage to some seriously deafening applause. The atmosphere was so intense that you could have struck a match in the air and watched the vapor explode. That guitar sound hunched over everyone, scowled, started to feedback, raised a claw then knocked everyone over like dominoes with the riff of 'He's Waiting'. 100mph start... and yup, these old guys dressed all in black, were in London taking names. And guess what? The screaming was gooo-oooo-ood.
@ Echoplex enter at 1154 Glendale Blvd Los Angeles, CA 90026
8:30pm / $20 / 18+
Aug 6, 2009 at 8:00 PM PDT John Doe with The Sadies at Echoplex (below the Echo) - Los Angeles, CA $12.00
John Doe & The Sadies || Listen || Watch
Punk rock has produced few singers with the strength and chops of X's John Doe, and the force and presence of his vocals (and songwriting) on albums like Wild Gift and Under the Big Black Sun rank with the most satisfying rock & roll of the 1980s. But on Doe's recordings with X's acoustic incarnation, the Knitters, and on his debut solo album, Meet John Doe, he showed he was every bit as gifted with country-influenced material, and for years a handful of X fans has been patiently waiting and wishing for Doe to cut a straight-ahead country album.
@ Echoplex enter at 1154 Glendale Blvd Los Angeles, CA 90026
8pm / $12 / 18+
Aug 21, 2009 at 8:30 PM PDT The Sonics at Echoplex (below the Echo) - Los Angeles, CA $20.00
Aug 27, 2009 at 7:00 PM PDT Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band featuring Kurt Vile at Echoplex (below the Echo) - Los Angeles, CA $25.00
Conor Oberst & The Mystic Valley Band || Listen || Watch
Last year, Conor Oberst set aside his long-standing Bright Eyes moniker and made a run for the border, decamping to a Mexican mountainside to record his first album under his own name. Conor Oberst was laid-back folk rock in love with the road and far from Bright Eyes' rep for indoors-y shame sharing. Now, Oberst is covering more unknown territory by splitting songwriting duties for the first time in his 15-year career. Written on tour with the band he took to Mexico, these 16 songs are full of the freewheeling possibility and, at times, errant indulgence you can get when bros hang out in hotel rooms passing around guitars and massaging each other's muses. Even the drummer gets two cuts. Oberst's songwriting has always been first?thought?best?thought, so the loose communal vibe usually fits nicely. On "Slowly (Oh So Slowly)," an ode to taking it easy that the Eagles might appreciate, Oberst lounges in a swimming pool languidly watching life pass by. Fans of Bright Eyes' white-knuckled miserablism might find that image of suntanned bliss about as likely as Jay-Z rolling around in a used Pinto. But there's still introspective angst here, from the scared lover's acoustic plea "White Shoes" to the apocalyptic lefty rant "Roosevelt Room." - Rolling Stone
@ Echoplex enter at 1154 Glendale Blvd Los Angeles, CA 90026
7pm / $25 / All Ages
Aug 28, 2009 at 8:00 PM PDT Os Mutantes at Echoplex (below the Echo) - Los Angeles, CA $25.00
Os Mutantes || Watch
The music made by Brazilian psych-pop band Os Mutantes in the late 1960s and early 70s is panic at its most colorful. Put on a song from one of their early albums, listen for five seconds, skip ahead 30, and you're likely to hear vastly different moods. Their 1999 retrospective was called Everything Is Possible! because, I guess, they actually believed it was, and all within the confines of three minutes: garage-rock boogie squirming under wailed Portuguese, bossa nova torn apart by homemade effects pedals, musical theater, sound effects, and the most unencumbered goofiness this side of first grade. It doesn't hurt that they founded the group as teenagers and that two of the group's main members, Arnaldo Baptista and Rita Lee, were compulsive acid-eaters (a ritual that likely precipitated Arnaldo's appearances at mental hospitals throughout the 70s).- Pitchfork
@ Echoplex enter at 1154 Glendale Blvd Los Angeles, CA 90026
8pm / $25 advance, $30 day of show / 18+
Sep 17, 2009 at 8:30 PM PDT THE DRONES at Echoplex (below the Echo) - Los Angeles, CA $10.00