Jeffrey Lewis And The Peter Stampfel Folk Band

taken from the Jeffrey Lewis website....

Peter Stampfel is a US national treasure! The main dude of the 60s/70s psych/folk legends the Holy Modal Rounders! A renowned expert on folk music, comic books and bottle caps! The author of the liner notes for the Smithsonian Folk Anthology box set (and for the Karen Dalton reissue series)! The star of the documentary film "Bound To Lose"!

Musical collaborator with Gary Lucas, Yo La Tengo, and the Fugs! He recorded his first album the day before JFK's assassination! Don't miss this perhaps once in a lifetime event, Jeffrey and Peter together on stage trading songs and more... (with special guest Franic of the Wave Pictures on mandolin)

and Jeffrey Lewis...

Jeffrey Lewis was raised on New York's Lower East Side by loving beatnik parents. Having no television in the tenement apartment, he became a comic book fanatic before even learning how to read. A life-long love of writing and drawing comic books, both autobiographical and fantastical, found new vent when Lewis began making up songs in the winter of 97-98. Initially inspired by the gentle psychedelic folk of Donovan, the DIY magic of Daniel Johnston, and the fearless early recordings of local folk-punk legends the Fugs, Lewis began recording homemade cassettes in 1998 and selling them, packaged in small comic books, at his soon semi-monthly shows at Sidewalk, home of New York's Antifolk scene. Lewis's younger brother Jack began playing electric bass and contributing to the shows and tapes.

When other Sidewalk performers the Moldy Peaches signed to Rough Trade Records in late 2000, they recommended Jeffrey's cassette recordings to label head Geoff Travis, and Rough Trade has since released three full-length Jeffrey Lewis CDs in America, England and Europe, garnering glowing press and a devoted following for the idiosyncratic illustrator/songwriter. Like his Rough Trade releases, and an art/music/DVD box set project (released on England's Hallso label), Lewis's shows can range between "lo-fi folk and sci-fi punk" as well as occasionally incorporating "low budget videos" (large color illustrations displayed to accompany songs).

It is only since 2002 that Jeffrey and Jack have become an "official" band, with various friends trading time in the drum seat. The Jeffrey Lewis Band has toured the US, UK and Europe sharing bills along the way with Cornershop, the Fall, Beth Orton, Frank Black, Daniel Johnston, Scout Niblett, the Mountain Goats, Radio4, Adam Green, Kimya Dawson, British Sea Power, the Fiery Furnaces, Thurston Moore, the Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players, Devendra Banhart, and others.

plus guest support from

K-X-P

http://www.myspace.com/kxpofficial

This band are awesome, simply great!Just take a look below at the recent Pitchfork album review that gave it a big 7.2.

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/14500-k-x-p/

Some music resists characterization, such as the self-titled debut from the quixotically named K-X-P. The Finnish sorta-trio comes with good bona fides: two drummers, Anssi Nyknen and Tomi Leppanen plus Annie producer/cosongwriter Timo Kaukolampi, and all are good friends with the inimitable DJ duo Optimo, who invited them to perform at one of their last Sunday club nights at Glasgow's Sub Club earlier this year.

To an extent, you can understand K-X-P's appeal to dance floor-friendly artists; their music is incredibly rhythmic, their grooves-- paranoid dark disco and motorik-- deep. The pulsing beat that kicks off "Mehu Moments", for example, is so nerve-wracking that you can practically see a red-flashing siren while you're listening to it. And yet this record manages to sound loose and off-the-cuff, positively alive and experimental. New elements within these eight compositions seem to arise out of thin air, like the ripples of melody that erupt throughout "Mehu Moments" or the streaks of weeping keyboard sounds stretching out "Aibal Dub". Sometimes it all sounds delightfully improvisational.

Thing is, though, these songs are way too self-contained to be the result of compiled-together jam sessions. While K-X-P can get a little rote and samey-sounding at times, every song feels compact despite their running time (only the brightly-humming "Epilogue" makes it under the four-minute mark). That structural conciseness could ostensibly be attributed to Kaukolampi's pop pedigree; thing is, though, it's pretty much the only discernible trace that any member of K-X-P's worked with more conventional forms of music.

The two most conceivably "straightforward" cuts here, "18 Hours (of Love)" and "Pockets", are also the two most menacing. The former uses Gary Glitter drums and low-bellowed vocals to create what sounds like a Satanic romantic ballad, while the latter's spangled disco touches are offset by maniacal post-punk howls.

Take a listen to Kaukolampi's rework of "Pockets" featuring redone vocals from Annie herself, then, and you'll wonder whether or not there's a big beating pop heartbeat (not "Heartbeat") lying under each and every song on this album, which is a shape-shifting puzzle that is as fun to pick apart as it is to simply take in and enjoy. Larry Fitzmaurice, August 2, 2010