Nope, that’s not a typo, spelling bee champs. The second single from Low Budget Crew rapper and producer Kaimbr‘s 2017 album Share The Shelter is indeed called “Gaurdian”. Humble Monarch label head DJ Roddy Rod shot this video of the rapper, born Alexander Green, performing the rhymes over his own beats at a picturesque old fort complete with vintage cannons. Check out Bandcamp’s recent interview with Kaimbr for more details on the music and the crew.
Hometown Sounds
Showing The World How DC Rocks
Monthly Archives: June 2017
Presenting Stranger in the Alps @ Millennium Stage
Hometown Sounds kindly invites you to the Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage for our July #DCmusic showcase featuring Stranger in the Alps.
Stranger in the Alps is a music project founded in 2013 by singer-songwriter Steve Kolowich and his friends in the Mt. Pleasant neighborhood of Washington. The band started as a lark, performing at open mic nights and in living rooms. The band’s name comes from the edited-for-TV version of an unspeakable line from the film The Big Lebowski. Its sound evolved through a combination of design and happenstance as a rotating cast of D.C. musicians elaborated on Kolowich’s demo recordings.
The band released its first album, Honey If You’re Lucky, in 2013, and its second album, Pattern Matching, in 2015, both of which were produced by D.C. pop wizard Louis Weeks. The Washington City Paper called Pattern Matching “a rich mix of alt-country, electronic, and chamber pop,” and later named Stranger in the Alps the “best folk troubadour” in the city.
In 2016 the band released a single, “The Most Photographed Barn in America,” a meditation on tourism — inspired by a scene in the novel White Noise by Don DeLillo — featuring a woodwind arrangement by the New York jazz player Ethan Helm. Collectively speaking, Stranger in the Alps is a sucker for harmony, Americana, and language games. They are grateful for your time and attention.
RSVP here and come to the free performance at 6 PM on Tuesday July 18th!
The Hunted Hare – Mild Horses
Some of DC’s best musical exports these days are thoughtful ambient and post-classical pieces, and homegrown label Verses Records leads the way. After last year’s excellent collaboration with viola da gambist Amy Domingues entitled Gut + Voltage, Dennis Kane delved into his own solo project of minimalist looped solo guitar. Mirroring his own bout of depression that perhaps many of us also felt over the last year, Kane produced the full length album Nothing Is Always. Verses Records releases the album Tuesday June 27th under the moniker The Hunted Hare, and last week premiered this music video for the melancholy track “Mild Horses”. As with much in this genre, meditative patience is rewarded.
The Deadmen – 55 Days
The Deadmen is a long-simmering rock supergroup comprised of Justin Jones, Josh Read formerly of Revival and the Gypsy Eyes record label, Justin Hoben and John Scoops. Their debut self-titled album is now out on their own 8 Gang Switch record label’s online store, and it’s every bit as hard-edged and serious as the faces of the musicians on the cover. The debut single is “55 Days”, a crime-ridden tale of escape and loss given this bleak and dark narrative video from director Patrick Mason. This release gives a healthy shot in the arm of national attention to DC’s roots-rock scene.
Podcast for June 22nd, 2017
Tony recounts his high-flying weekend at the Firely music festival, while Paul kicks back and eats a muffin.
Tracklisting:
Loi Loi – 1985 [single]
Bencoolen – Spotlight [single]
Uptown XO – Spirit That Never Dies [4pac “The Spook that sat by the booth”]
Bacchae – Cursed Life [Down the Drain]
Lisa Said – Some Dudes [Estranged]
The Hunted Hare – Malleus [Nothing Is Always]
Or listen in SoundCloud:
Subscribe to the Hometown Sounds podcast in Apple Podcasts, Overcast, TuneIn or your favorite podcast app! (and tell a friend too!)
Honest Haloway – Picture Fire
Thursday night DC synthrock band Honest Haloway hits the Velvet Lounge stage again after a significant time away, keeping us missing them. They showed off their new lineup and style in a pair of videos shot by photographer Sara Nabizadeh in Sperryville in April, the first of which we featured last week. Today we’ve got the second video, late night campfire vibes in “Picture Fire”.
DoubleMotorcycle – Pyramid
Uber-catchy indie rock band DoubleMotorcycle is showing the world how Fredrick MD rocks. Yesterday our spiritual sibling website Fredrick Playlist premiered their debut music video for “Pyramid” from their recent self-titled EP and it’s pretty bananas. Director Dillon Baird brings together confetti cannons, cardboard pyramids and the most precious little zombie girl ever to make this song even more fun for your eyes than it was for your ears. If you liked the band Seaknuckle as much as we did, this new incarnation is going to scratch the same itch hard.
Kaimbr – Cora
MD rapper Kaimbr came up as part of the Low Budget crew alongside Kenn Starr, Kev Brown, Roddy Rod, Oddisee and many others. His newest album Share the Shelter, featuring collabs with Awthentik, Sean Born and many familiar Low Budget names, recently dropped courtesy of DJ Roddy Rod’s MD label Humble Monarch Music, and it’s kicked off by “Cora”, a moving tribute to his mother.
Carolyn Malachi – We Like Money
Today soul singer Carolyn Malachi dropped long-awaited visuals for “We Like Money”, the single from last year’s album Rise: Story 1. DC’s signature go-go beat drives the song, so Malachi grabbed DC’s leading lady of go-go Michelle Blackburn for ad-libs thrown down on the first take. The video gives us just a taste of Malachi’s full band live performance, and we need more! Catch Malachi next hosting Women on the Mic at Brookland’s Busboys and Poets on Monday June 19th.
Podcast for June 13th, 2017
Tony’s car gets stolen! But he got it back! And Paul recounts how he fell in love with ska.
Tracklisting:
The Greatest Hoax – As The Light Dims [Expiration Compositions]
Kill Lincoln – Second Cities [Sheila]
Reesa Renee – Tunnel Vision [single]
Queue – Frontier [single]
Dawkins – Bad Faith [EP1]
The Cowards Choir – The Singing Tree [single]
Or listen in SoundCloud:
Subscribe to the Hometown Sounds podcast in Apple Podcasts, Overcast, TuneIn or your favorite podcast app! (and tell a friend too!)
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