The Bostonia EP is the reinvention of Baltimore pop-rock group Blind Man Leading. From late summer through October of last year, the four piece recorded their first electric studio project at Mobtown Studios, tracking together for the first time. Engineer/producer/drummer, Paul Mercer recorded and mixed the 5 tracks in-house, with mastering by Mat Leffler-Schulman.

Cellar Door

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The sound emphasizes emotive images and stories while contrasting those themes energetic drum patterns, bright-edged guitars, a humming cello, and melodic bass lines. Within the rhythmic and harmonic structures, a subtle jazz influence surfaces throughout. BML recently partnered with “International Justice Mission”, a non-profit that fights human trafficking throughout the world, and part of the proceeds from album sales will go to this great cause. The group plays regionally in the MD/ VA/ PA area, and the tracks are available now on iTunes and CD Baby. Keep on the look-out for a bangin’ EP release party!

Boston Ferry

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Raindeer began as a solo project for singer and multi-instrumentalist Charlie Hughes. But as he’s brought on additional members to fill out the band’s live quartet, the off-kilter lo-fi pop sensibility of Hughes’s early Raindeer recordings has been preserved remarkably well. That may be due to the fact that the other three members, Devin Byrnes, Liz Vayda and Nicky Smith, contribute primarily synths, guitars and bass, with no live percussionist replacing the loops and drum machines.

So when Raindeer came in for their Microshow, it was exciting to hear the songs from the self-titled 2012 release fleshed out, but not rocked up or drastically rearranged. “Moon Child” in particular simply just sounded right in this context. The result sounds like early rock’n’roll balladry filtered through the cutting edge technology of the 1980s – a similar process to, say, Bruce Springsteen’s Born In The U.S.A. with a very different result. One cover in the set, of the Talking Heads’ classic “Don’t Worry About The Government,” which is perhaps more relevant than ever now, was filtered heavily through Raindeer’s aesthetic, putting their own stamp on it instead of just being another band that tries to sound like the Heads.

Charlie Hughes: vocals, acoustic guitar, keys, samples
Devin Byrnes: keys, bass, percussion
Liz Vayda: keys, vocals
Nicky Smith: guitar

Engineered by Sean Mercer
Mixed by Mat Leffler-Schulman

Download MP3s - 103.35 MB

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Over nearly a decade of recording and five full length albums Arbouretum have established themselves as stalwarts of the Baltimore music scene, so it may come as a surprise that Coming Out of the Fog is Arbourteum’s first record made with the same lineup as their last.

Started in 2002 by Dave Heumann, Arbouretum have been making enchanting stoner folk-rock with plenty of guitar solos; think Neil Young meets Lungfish. Aside from their first record, Long Live the Well-Doer which sounds more like proto-Arbouretum, Heumann and company have shifted subtly from release to release, making small changes to their druidic rock.

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Transantics, true to its name, is a project formed by a pair of musicians from opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean, who met in college and decided to make music together: Andy Shankman of Baltimore, and Cecilia de Lisle of London. That conceit, of course, imposed limits on the band’s future — with them now both situated in their home countries, there are no future plans for Transantics, only the recordings they’d made circa 2009-10. Shankman, who now leads his own band Jumpcuts and also plays in my band Western Blot, decided to finally unleash the Transantics’ songs as a self-titled album on Bandcamp at the beginning of 2013, rather than let them collect figurative dust on his hard drive. And it was a good idea, because it’s a pretty solid record.

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I knew Austin Tally from when he played in another band that I recorded a few years ago. They were pretty folksy. When I heard he was in a new band I instantly wanted to get in touch and see what they were about. He send over a cassette. It was pretty jangly and weird. I dug it. But it wasn’t until they came in for the microshow last month I truly understood what was going on. There are serious pop hooks going on underneath all the thick yet detailed sludge of guitars. I keep hearing early 90s Dinosaur Jr. & Smashing Pumpkins with out all the drama, bombast and crazy tempos. There’s room to take a breath. And there is an articulation to the songwriting one can totally sink their teeth in to.

Wing Dam is Austin (Soft Cat, Omoo Omoo, Silent Whys) on vocals and guitars, Sara Autrey (Dan Deacon, Bitch Cave, Which Magic), who plays bass and sings and other various sundries in an amalgum of other bands is amazing talented and a super swell person and Abram Sanders (Lower Dens, The Snails) is their drummer and does just that. He’s an incredible drummer with a great sense of time and focus and at the end of the day can still be heard over Austin and Sara’s bombast of destruction.

Please enjoy this microshow like I have been for the past month.

Abram Sanders – drums
Sara Autrey – bass guitar / vocals
Austin Tally – guitar / vocals

Engineered by Sean Mercer
Mixed by Mat Leffler-Schulman

Download MP3s - 76 MB

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Labtekwon is a singular figure, both in Baltimore music and in a larger sense. Easily the city’s only rapper whose career spans the whole of the 1990s and the 21st century so far, with dozens of full length albums, the numbers alone set him apart. And then there’s his music itself, a dense lattice of social commentary, humorous shit-talking, high concepts and relatable human experience. With so many albums, often working from the same production palette of unpredictably chopped jazz and funk samples, they can run the risk of all blending together as if all minor variations of the same basic aesthetic. His latest album, HARDCORE: Labtekwon and the Righteous Indignation/Rootzilla vs Masta Akbar, however, is a standout in his catalog, perhaps one of his crowning achievements, while still firmly within his established mode.

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