Death Of The Sun

BAIM, MATTEAH
Death Of The Sun
CD STEP09
Release Date: 6/4/07

Death of the Sun is the solo debut album from former Metallic Falcons singer/songwriter Matteah Baim. Produced by Baim herself, the album features musical contributions from Jana Hunter, Devendra Banhart, Butchy Fuego, Robert Lowe, Rob Doran, Jon Beasley, and Birdie Lawson.
Baim recorded Death of the Sun June through August 2006 in part at home in Los Angeles as well as at Chicago’s CarterCo studio where James Carter engineered, all in analog. The album presents a world spaciously phrased and roughly edged, to bring you a type of New Age Grunge. Although its central theme is loss, a deeper sense of triumph lingers. The songs chronicle and depict the moon’s cycle of life and death, giving birth to romantic times.

Baim purchased her first guitar from a basement pawn shop in Milwaukee and bought her first album, a Doors bootleg called Whysky Mystics and Men around the same time. She then attempted an occult study of music, piecing together the odd bits she came across, learning music notation from simple classical scores, playing along with the records she found and whoever could give a passing lesson or had time to play.

Trading her beloved pawnshop guitar for an electric, she formed the band Metallic Falcons with Sierra Casday of CocoRosie. The Falcons created heavy, rich, ambigious songscapes for Desert Doughnuts, their only album.

As the Falcons “fly into the night,” Baim’s Death of the Sun emerges.

No Depression for Memory Band

Memory Band in Pitchfork

The Memory Band
Apron Strings
[Di Cristina Stair; 2006]
Rating: 7.5

Pull out your old copy of Norton's Anthology. Here on their second album, the Memory Band-- once the brainchild of Stephen Cracknell of English folk-electronica outfit Gorodischj, now a fully collaborative unit-- draw from traditional British folk dating back more than a century. One song, here titled "I Wish I Wish", derives from a ballad collected by John Clare in the early 1800s (you might know it from Uncle Tupelo's "I Wish My Baby Was Born").

The album is not, however, the backwards-looking, academic exercise that such a description might imply; wisely, the band modernizes these influences, often in unexpected ways. There are covers of songs by Ronnie Lane ("The Poacher"), Rotary Connection ("Want You to Know"), and Carly Simon ("Why") among these old tunes, as well as a sly nod to Led Zeppelin on the opener "Blackwaterside". Plus, Rhys Morgan introduces programmed beats that are so well integrated into the music that you barely even notice the synthetic encroaching on the organic. Cracknell envisions the Memory Band in the tradition of folk supergroups of the 1960s and 70s, and he has certainly corralled an impressive line-up for Apron Strings, including Adem and members of Hot Chip and Simian. more

Memory Band - Spin's Artist of the Day

Pure pastoral pop, Apron Strings teems with traditional folk rock that conquers its somber bent... - Spin.com

Download an MP3 of "Come Write Me Down" and don't forget to rate them (on the right) at the link above!