Extra Life / Charlie Looker thread of amazement

He was in Dirty Projectors, the most experimental indie band ever! Oh yes, Dirty Projectors, how they go!

Fuck that though, his own band Extra Life are at last count fifteen million times better, and their Made Flesh album last year was the kickass avant-math-pop record an American band had to make eventually.

Watching him and Toby Driver one-up each other over the next few years is going to be crazily exciting, even if Looker is more about the clean edges and Driver more about the swirly abstract neoclassical.

Spotify link to an adventure that you should all investigate here :)

And for those sans Spotify, here are a few trax (not all from the new one!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfjsGJj53RU

^^^the simplest song on the album. beautiful though, and a nice entry-point

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuyxRDK0B98

^^^from the previous album, an absolute blockbuster

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRYNTH-plhk

^^^live version of the best track on Made Flesh

but I urge you to seek the album - it's best listened to in one go :)

Yes, this is an amazing band.

btw here is their R Kelly cover. yes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_60-On7cGI

Would it also be cheeky to say that as a highly-accomplished art-pop auteur, with a knack for intricate melody and classical orchestration, and who released a killer record in 2010, Mr Looker is a 'close contemporary' of yours, Mr P? :)

plus he was in Zs, and they sound completely different since he left fwiw

he's probably better known as having been in Zs

lol xp w/dominique

Davek told me to listen to Zs earlier tonight - where's a good place to progress with them if I like New Slaves? Was Looker's stuff with them on a level with Extra Life?

i'd say it was better, personally.

Just listening to the New Slaves title-track now - sounds like the missing link between Zu and Orthrelm :D

need to sleep tho so more of this tomorrow...

eventually you will get around to listening to the Flying Luttenbachers

I did! They were pretty good. I'll return to them at some point when I don't have about 70 different things to check out at once :P

(In practice I'll probably give Destroy All Music a listen before long)

bump so I can ask DJ Mencap if he was this album's #1 voter in that poll

The new album is incredible. Streaming here: http://puregrainaudio.com/audio/extra-life-dream-seeds-soundcloud-album-stream

It's both less mathy and more mellow than the previous output, but the songwriting is possibly better than ever, and the guitars are still crunching like fuck. A truly itinerant, coherent and emotionally arresting experience. The vocal melodies and keyboards are at their most beautiful and all manner of games are played with the music's momentum; usually the songs build to climaxes, but never via the route you might expect.

And Blinded Beast is up there with Blackmail Blues and The Body Is True in their 'best song' stakes - the build! The harpsichord break! My god!

Gets extra marks because I'm a tutor, and the album is basically a concept piece about a teacher's nightmares

what's with this dude's voice. you expect a mumbling growlbox and you get a damn choirboy.

why do you expect that?

Good thing, too

the first song I heard was "Blackmail Blues". don't know if that's their heaviest (it certainly is on the album I have) but given the way it starts you expect some yelling. don't get me wrong. the vocals are the reason why I'm still listening to this over and over again

i was interviewing Nick Podgurski yesterday about his other projects and he brought up Extra Life, which i'd never even heard of! i guess it was off my radar because they're based in NY and his other bands are all based in Baltimore. pretty cool stuff, apparently they're playing their last show next month though.

alright I'm done with this band. dude sounds like Weird Al!!!

looool

at first I thought it was amusing and even kinda cool but the final track on their last album changed my mind

haaa that's great and otm.
some dude you should go to see them. they are.. very divisive.

yeah unfortunately the one last show left is in NYC so i prob won't. Nick is def one of my favorite drummers, though, saw his old band Yukon live a few times.

I had no idea Charlie Looker had released an album this year! So far it's sounding as apocalyptic as you'd hope it would.

whoa you're not wrong! this is his moment

ritual fire/golden flesh/fascist moments is a hell of a run

https://nothinghuman.bandcamp.com/track/know-my-place

shit this is great!!

THE CLUE WAS ALWAYS IN THE NAME

https://extralife.bandcamp.com/album/secular-works-vol-2

Don't think I'm going to hear a better new song than Diagonal Power this year. As a bonus: it's the one you can listen to free

If you want to know my music taste in a nutshell, that song pretty much covers it

this vampire weekend, why not listen to a different sort of 'extra life'

https://extralife.bandcamp.com/album/the-sacred-vowel

IT'S GONNA BE A WORMY WEEKEND

love the whole segment near the end of the last song which is like a fairground-mirror-world major-key version of I Don't See It That Way... phew, just flooring