Baltimore Magazine: Drinks at Of Love and Regret

New gastropub Of Love and Regret, located in Brewer’s Hill, opened in March and is a collaboration between Stillwater Artinsal Ale’s Brian Strumke and Ted Stelzenmuller of Jack’s Bistro. We just had to try the winning combo of local beer and food powerhouses.

Located across the street from the Natty Boh Tower, the space once housed by Canton Station has an unassuming black door that leads into the pub’s long, narrow bar and dining room. Gleaming dark woods, brick walls, and tables lit by candles in mason jars contribute to the hip atmosphere—very Pacific Northwest. This place gets the vibe right without trying too hard.

A long chalkboard to one end of the room lists the 23 beers on tap, which include Stillwater Artisanal brews, imports, and other local beers like Sublimation by Brewer’s Art. Ranging from $7-9 for a 12-ounce poor, this place is on the higher end for Baltimore pubs, but the crowded bar proves patrons are happy to pay the price. Another note: We asked to sample one of the beers, but were told we could only purchase 6-ounce pours if we wanted to try them. Offering samples would be a great way for patrons to experiment before deciding on a particular brew.

But, Of Love and Regret’s knowledgeable bar and wait staff, all clad in black, did help us navigate the long tap list. The Baltimore-brewed Oliver’s Channel Crossing v5 was a refreshing U.K.- and Belgian-inspired golden mild ale served in a goblet. The stronger Emelisse Holland Oats, brewed in the Netherlands, was a smooth amber with hints of toasted oats and applestroop.

For $18, select picks off of the draft list are available to share in a 36-ounce pitcher. As our waitress delivered the carafe of locally brewed Cellar Door, a white sage infused wheat beer, she described it as “a step up from Blue Moon.” A complex and unique mix of spices, it was, as my friend put it, an “elevator ride” from the grocery store Belgian-style witbier, and the perfect summer drink.

We also tried a couple of the pub’s signature cocktails, our favorite being their rendition of a Boris Karloff cocktail (gin, elderflower liqueur, lime juice, simple syrup, and egg white) garnished with lime zest and black pepper. This gin fizz was executed perfectly, light and fruity with a foamy top.

Straying from drinks for a second, all of our food was delicious. Most unique, The Golden Burger, as the menu warns, actually is gold. Edible spray paint is used to achieve the effect, our waitress explained. (A full food review will appear in an upcoming issue).

We’ll be back soon to taste more of the constantly changing drafts, and maybe—if we dare—venture into the list of 30 bottles, which are separated into dry and crisp, sweet and sour, and strong and dark sections.

—Rebecca Kirkman, Baltimore magazine intern 

Read the piece at Baltimore Magazine.

Urbanite Baltimore: Sounding Off

Baltimore instrumental band The Water on their new album, Scandals and Animals

by Rebecca Kirkman

Sitting side by side on barstools at Federal Hill's Idle Hour, Dan Cohan and James Klink collect a stack of Natty Boh bottle caps, adding new ones to the pile as they solve the puzzles together. One, with an image of an axe and a mug, stumps them. "At some bars they throw out the caps before they give you the beer," says Cohan, "but I like solving them." Taking disjointed pieces and putting them together as a whole makes puzzles challenging. But it's also what makes them fun to solve—you have to see the bigger picture as it's formed by all the parts. Cohan and Klink face the same challenge when they write music together.

Baltimore natives Cohan and Klink, both 29, make up The Water, a cinematic band that uses loops and extensive layering to create a rich, full sound despite only having two members. The band's first album, Scandals and Animals, was recorded at Baltimore's Mobtown Studios and released in January by Scenic Route Records.

Friends since kindergarten, Cohan and Klink have always lived within a mile of each other. In a high school band they began experimenting with piecing different parts together and layering sound. "We started being gizmo-centric, with all sorts of pedals," says Klink. During the past five years playing together as The Water, they have worked out the kinks and become comfortable with who they are as a two-piece, says Cohan.

click to enlarge

It shows in Scandals and Animals. The album's deliberately crafted melodies move from quiet lows to driving crescendos, building a wave of sound that arcs with the buildup of drums and power chords and crashes to a lull of quiet reverb guitar. The album lacks vocals, but the duo's emotional songwriting expresses different moods through the complex and overlapping tangles of rhythm and melody.

"We basically play four people's worth of parts," says Klink, explaining how he creates the bass with the keyboard, loops it, and plays melody on guitar, while Cohan loops his drum beat and adds rhythm guitar. "We want to do things other people do but arrive at that destination in a cool way," says Cohan.

Figuring out how to achieve a full-band sound with only two people has taken some time. But the evolution has improved their songwriting, says Alex Champagne of Scenic Route Records, who helped record Scandals and Animals. "They've really tightened their sound over the years," he says, noting The Water stays true to its roots through its growth.

Mat Leffler-Schulman, who produced the album with Champagne at Mobtown Studios, agrees. "They've grown as a band. They are in this situation where they're doing instrumental music and telling a story, but telling a story with note intervals instead of words," he says. "They are so much more focused in their articulation in this record.

"There's something so emotive about what they do. It looks like two dudes standing on stage and then boom, there's this gigantic sound," Leffler-Schulman continues. "If you don't feel something, you're lifeless and dead."

For Cohan and Klink, recording Scandals and Animals in the studio was difficult. "It's really fucking hard. It's like the difference between acting on stage and acting in the movies," says Cohan. "You can't build momentum."

click to enlarge

Champagne and Leffler-Schulman worked with the duo to record the album in a way that worked for them. The two played in the same room together, but their amps were isolated in separate rooms for recording. "They were really concerned about getting things done right," says Champagne. "If a loop got messed up it meant we had to start over again."

Or, as Cohan puts it: "If I don't hit the pedal at the exact right moment, the song's fucked."

By the time they finish their beers, Klink has figured out the bottle cap rebus that stumped them earlier. It's Natty Boh cap 198: "Don't act so smug." But that's not something the band needs to worry about. The Water isn't trying to get big; the duo just want to continue doing what they're doing.

"I love playing music in front of people, whether it's at the Windup Space in front of fifteen or at the Ottobar in front of two hundred," says Cohan. "Maybe you get your drinks paid for, maybe you get a few bucks from door admission—it's not about that. For us, we enjoy playing shows around Baltimore and being a Baltimore band."

See The Water July 22 at the Windup Space for a Scenic Route Records showcase with Joseph Mulhollen, The Manly Deeds (Dan Cohan's other band), and A Cat Called Cricket.

Read at Urbanite.

Urbanite Baltimore: Pop for the People

Pop Guilt, the debut album of Baltimore’s Lands & Peoples, carves out its niche in experimental pop with its raw delivery of plucky guitar, clean reverb, and sprawling melodies. The album’s single, “Ghosts,” starts out subtly, pairing down-tempo drums with thick bass guitar. Harmonizing vocals layered over intricate, well-placed guitar licks brighten the song’s tone. An eccentric combination of tracks, Pop Guilt wanders from catchy riffs to moody lyric-less bursts, giving members Beauregard Cole and Caleb Moore a chance to execute their unconventional melodic ideas.

Read more at Urbanite.

Examiner.com: Baltimore's Beach House releases new single 'Myth' off upcoming album 'Bloom'

Album art for "Bloom,"
courtesy of Pitchfork.com

Two years after the release of the highly-praised album "Teen Dream," Baltimore’s dream-pop duo Beach House have revealed the release date, album art, and single for their next album "Bloom."

Following in the footsteps of "Teen Dream," the new single “Myth” showcases the familiarly haunting vocals of Victoria Legrand floating atop a pulsating organ beat and weaving with Alex Scally’s keyboard and rhythmic drums. 

“If you build yourself a myth,
and know just what to give
what comes after this, momentary bliss,” sings Legrand.
“...help me to make it.”

Beginning with the raw percussion of a clinking cow bell and building upon it with throbbing organs, keyboard, and drums, “Myth” is nothing new (it sounds like it could be the lost 11th track off of "Teen Dream"), but it maintains the haunting, heartfelt feeling that is the band’s trademark sound.

Continue reading on Examiner.com Baltimore's Beach House releases new single 'Myth' off upcoming album 'Bloom' - Baltimore Music | Examiner.com http://www.examiner.com/music-in-baltimore/baltimore-s-beach-house-releases-new-single-myth-off-upcoming-album-bloom#ixzz1rf3FuG5d

L.A. Weekly: Cassette Tapes Are Back. Ask Your Mom to Mail Your Old Jambox.

"I grew up collecting and listening to cassette tapes and records," said Phil Shaheen, drummer for Los Angeles indie band Tijuana Panthers. "I like the fact that cassettes are in again and that cool little labels are putting them out." The band released its album, Max Baker, as a limited-edition tape through Kill/Hurt, a Hollywood cassette-only label.

It's true, cassettes seem a little ridiculous at first. They're bulky, you have to flip them in the middle of an album, and cassette players aren't widely available. But cassettes provide benefits digital media can't, and they're back.

At 70 cents a tape, an artist can get small batches of music in the public's hands for less money than a CD or vinyl record. Michael McKinney, president of M2 Communications, a Pasadena duplication company, puts out between 6,000 and 10,000 tapes each month. Orders have picked up, mostly due to indie bands.

Read  more on L.A. Weekly

Q&A with Dublab's Mark "Frosty" McNeill

Mark McNeill by dublabrat on Flickr

Mark McNeill, co-founder of Los Angeles online radio station Dublab, chats about how he got his start in radio at the University of Southern California, his first experiences recording audio as a kid, his collection of unusual cassette tapes, and why he thinks cassettes are still around.

Read the full article on Neon Tommy.

Rewind to cassettes: the analog, low-fidelity, hands-on movement

Tijuana Panthers' Half Baked cassette by Kill/Hurt 

The sleeve artwork for the limited-edition cassette tape released by Los Angeles indie band Tijuana Panthers has black clip art of a panther's head, cowboy boots, and jumper cables over a picture of an orange tropical flower. The band name is scrolled in cursive along the top, and the album name, Max Baker, appears in block letters on the bottom corner. Opening the case, with a screech of the plastic hinge, reveals a gold cassette tape—the band's release on Kill/Hurt, a Hollywood cassette-only label.

"I grew up collecting and listening to cassette tapes and records, because that's the format that was around," said Phil Shaheen, drummer for Tijuana Panthers. "I like the fact that cassettes are in again and that there are cool little labels putting them out."

It’s true—cassettes seem a little ridiculous at first. They’re bulky, they require listeners to flip them in the middle of a track, and cassette players are no longer widely available. But in contrast with the easy accessibility of digital media, the intimate quality of the cassette outweighs its limitations. An increase of cassette record labels in Southern California and mixtape enthusiasm in the Bay Area and up the West Coast signal the medium's renewed relevance.

Cassettes attract small indie bands with their cheap price. For 70 cents a tape, an artist can get small batches of music in the public's hands for less than on CDs or vinyl. Michael McKinney, president of M2 Communications, a Pasadena-based duplication company, reports his cassette output to be between 6,000 and 10,000 tapes each month. "Tape orders have definitely picked up from almost nothing in the last couple years, and it's been almost entirely indie bands," McKinney told the Los Angeles Times.

Several record producers in Los Angeles provide cassette releases to interested bands. Chris Jahnle and his girlfriend Kat Bouza, founders of Hollywood's label Kill/Hurt, started the company dubbing small batches of noise-rock cassettes with giant grey duplicators purchased for $200 from eBay. Cassettes naturally have hiss, treble, and distortion—qualities that go along with the mood of garage, punk and other noisy genres, said Bouza.

Not Not Fun, an Eagle Rock-based label founded by Britt Brown and his wife, Amanda Brown, specializes in cassette releases for noisy rock bands. They both loved cassettes since high school, so when they started the label it was never a question whether or not they would produce cassettes, said Britt Brown. The label completes about 20 cassette releases a year, charging the band $1,500 for 500 copies. Because Not Not Fun gives 20 percent of profits back to the band and doesn't require a contract, the Browns haven't had trouble attracting clients since the company started in 2003.

Mark "Frosty" McNeill by dublabrat on Flickr

For Mark McNeill, a self-proclaimed music nerd who co-founded the Los Angeles Internet radio station Dublab, the attainability of cassettes attracts artists. "I think that some of it is just that it's being rediscovered…but it's also affordable," said McNeill. "A lot of tape labels are pressing them at home one by one and it's instantly accessible and you can make it. I think that kinda low-entry barrier and ease of creation are great and make it desirable to make tapes."

On the second Friday of each month, Dublab hosts Top Tape, a DJ night at Silverlake's Hyperion Tavern. The event features a tag-team rotation of tape-only DJs and the magnetic, low-fidelity sounds of cassette tapes. About 20 DJs show up each month, with enough time to spin three tapes each. "We had to go from five to three since a lot more DJs have been showing up," said McNeill of the event's growing popularity. DJs play anything from "brand new music straight out of the studio that they dub on a tape and bring down, to old cassettes they find in thrift stores," said McNeill. "A lot of the DJs that come down are buying cassettes for the purpose of bringing them down and playing them at Top Tape for an audience." The event, he said, "perpetuates a community that gets excited about it."

McNeill feels the medium brings a sense of community among those enthusiastic enough to dig through resale shops and garage sales to find unique tapes and sounds to remix. "For someone who's on the hunt for exciting music, it's really interesting because when you're out there at a thrift store going through a pile of cassettes, you're going to find some home recording tapes—you find mind blowing stuff on straight-to-tape demos. It's a one-off private glimpse into a moment . . . it could be anything," said McNeill. "The search and the exploration can pay off in a big way."

Walking past a Thai video store, McNeill spotted a stack of cassettes on the counter. Checking them out, he found they were talks on Buddhism in Thai. "I was hoping they would be music, but I'm going to record a Thai vinyl set straight onto the cassette," he said. McNeill has also played a set on Dublab with cassettes he scavenged from an Ethiopian market and created a DJ mix from tapes he bought on a trip to Cambodia. "It's not meant to be a gimmick, but it's a tool to exploring music that doesn't exist in other forms," said McNeill. "There's certain music that lends itself to cassette, whether because of economic reasons or because that's what was available."

The members of the San Francisco Mixtape Society understand the community and handcrafted feeling of exchanging mixtapes. Every month, members transform The Make-Out Room, a bar in the Mission District, into a venue for exchanging mixes. "Basically it's like a secret Santa party but with mixtapes," said Annie Lin, the society's co-founder. Each member brings his own mix to trade, leaving with a new set of tracks.

Although the club accepts submissions on CDs and USB drives as well, "you get a free beer if you bring cassette tapes," said Lin. The society will present a panel on the art of mixtapes at SXSW, a major music and technology festival in Austin, Texas in March 2012. "I think in the current digital age," said Lin, "people have a craving to get back to other people through music." With a mixtape, "it is one person who made it just for them, as opposed to throwing up a playlist on a music blog where millions of people can view it."

In late October, the indie band Wilco announced the release of its new album, The Whole Love, in a limited-edition cassette on its own label, dBpm Records. Cassettes make economic sense for bands releasing an album in a few hundred copies, but the release by Wilco, a band with two Grammy awards, points to the format attracting artists for reasons other than cost. "I think it's because of the fact that they want to see and experiment with the whole medium," said Lin of the release. "The value in CDs has really gone down over the years, and there is a huge resurgence of alternate media, like vinyl for example. I think going to cassette is just an experiment with that." A cassette tape can create a more personal attachment to the music because it can’t easily be dumped into an MP3 player and the listener can’t skip around to different tracks. The album becomes a cohesive unit.

"There's also something very interactive and fun about a tape," said Matt Carr, founder of the music blog Everybody Taste and Washington, D.C. record label Analog Edition. "You can literally see the magnetic tape travel around the spool, and when it gets stuck, you can fix it with a pencil," said Carr. "It's very analog, and now that the digital world has been conquered by the MP3…I think there's a lot of room in the world of music for physical, creative, and DIY forms of art." That return to do-it-yourself intimacy in spite of the digital era explains a famous band like Wilco’s choice to release a limited edition cassette.

The surge of cassette use by DJs, by bands and for individual mixtapes is an experiment reinventing an old medium for today's music scene. As technology continues to change the way we share music, making digital recording increasingly impersonal, musical counterculture will return to media of the past. Who knows, in the future CDs could provide the same comfort and nostalgia cassettes do today. It's a strange thought, but the return to cassettes also sounded a little ridiculous at first.