Carolina Waves Showcase & Open Mic

K97.5’s Mir.I.am hosts a special Carolina Waves Open Mic at Cat’s Cradle – Back Room! It’s our first live ticketed show at the Cradle since 2019! Come perform, network, build your buzz, participate in the live cypher and possibly get booked! All ages. Carolina Waves was named the Best Open Mic in the Triangle by Indy Week back to back years. Early arrival highly suggested. $10 entry all night. 1 song allowed. Must sign up at door. Free to perform. Free for all UNC students with Student ID. Singers/ rappers/ dancers, all talents welcome. Sounds: DJ Remedy Doors & Sign up at 7:30. Show 8! FLASH DRIVES ONLY! We are always scouting for upcoming Carolina Waves Shows and other opportunities. Bring your A game and your squad. Email [email protected] with questions

Stereolab

Remo Drive

A slice of tremolo-heavy classic rock filtered through the lens of the gunslinging American West, REMO DRIVE’s third LP, A PORTRAIT OF AN UGLY MAN, is in many ways a return to form for the Minnesota-based indie-rock duo. The album, with its acrobatic guitar work, deeply self-referential lyrics and off-the-walls energy, calls back to the dextrous, eccentric sound that helped the band – brothers Erik (vocals, guitar) and Stephen (bass) Paulson – explode into the underground with their debut album, 2017’s Greatest Hits. And, like the band’s earliest material, it took shape in an equally unassuming place: their parents’ basement.When the Paulsons stumbled across a Tascam recording desk on Facebook Marketplace in 2019, they thought it might make a nice starting point to demo songs for their then-forthcoming third LP. But $250 and a few weeks later, they found themselves fully entrenched in making the actual album itself. Not only that, but the safety and security of their parents’ home provided a welcome respite for the brothers, who have learned they’re most creative without a ticking clock and prying eyes peeking over their shoulders.“Our workflow is naturally different from what most producers and studios like to do,” Erik explains. “We take things in our own weird approach and order. There’s a sense of privacy working at home. It doesn’t feel like you’re working with the door open during the incubation process.”The resulting album, due out June 26 on Epitaph, finds the band truly in their element – both physically and sonically. Whereas the Paulsons filtered their buoyant songwriting through the concise lens of storytellers like Bruce Springsteen and The Killers on Natural, Everyday Degradation, A Portrait of an Ugly Man is more spontaneous, bolstered by the same charm and levity that made Greatest Hits such an underground favorite.“I wanted to get back to playing guitar the way I used to, and then throw songwriting on top of that,” Erik says. “On the last album, I approached playing guitar in a more songwriter-y way. I had really scaled it back so it wouldn’t be as hard for me to sing and play simultaneously, but the guitar is way more forward again now.” Self-produced and mixed by the duo, A Portrait of an Ugly Man feels all at once familiar and fresh: The basement breathed a looseness into songs like “If I’ve Ever Looked Too Deep In Thought” and “Ode to Joy,” while the freedom of the sessions left the band able to explore the next evolution of their sound.As such, the 10-song set tips its hat to both the classic rock the brothers grew up on as well as previously untapped influences: Erik namechecks desert-rock artists like Queens of the Stone Age while admitting The Good, The Bad and The Ugly soundtrack and his binge-watching of old Westerns contributed to the album’s tumbleweed pastiche. But this time around, the guiding hands of their musical influences is less overt, a conscious decision the band address on album standout “Star Worship,” which preaches the need to eschew reverence for others and instead trust in yourself.Links: Website | Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | YouTube

Steve Von Till

Steve Von Till has made a life’s work out of seeking the elemental. With a solo discography that stretches back more than two decades, he has toiled in a shadow realm, peeling back layers of reality in a never-ending search for true meaning and raw emotion. A Deep Voiceless Wilderness strips back the veil even further. An achingly beautiful ambient work with neo-classical leanings, the album is a hallucinatory and elegant rumination on our disconnect from the natural world, each other, and ultimately ourselves.For some listeners, the album may recall the work of modern composers like Jóhann Jóhannsson, Brian Eno or Gavin Bryars. For Von Till, it’s about surrendering to the spirit of place—and to the original intent behind his 2020 solo album, No Wilderness Deep Enough. That album marked a significant first for Von Till: It was his first solo record without a guitar in hand. Instead, Von Till intoned powerful and thought-provoking lyrics over piano, cello, mellotron and analog synthesizers. A Deep Voiceless Wilderness is that same album without Von Till’s words.“This is how I originally heard this piece of music,” he says. “Without the voice as an anchor or earthbound narrative, these pieces have a broader wingspan. They become something else entirely and unfold in a more expansive way. The depth of the synths, juxtaposed with the strings and French horn, have space to develop and allow the listener to imagine their own story.”Also a first for Von Till was Harvestman: 23 Untitled Poems and Collected Lyrics, his first book of poetry. Published by the University of South Dakota’s Astrophil Press, the book established Von Till as a formidable and thoughtful author of verse—a fact that Neurosis fans knew all along, but the wider world was only just becoming aware of. “There is a depth of hope, acceptance and loss that permeates these poems,” Joseph Haeger said in his review for The Inlander. “Like any great piece of art, Harvestman contains multitudes, and that’s exactly what I was hoping for when I cracked it open. Von Till has already established himself as a great musician, and he’s about to put his stake into the ground proving himself to be a damn good writer.”Links: Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | SpotifyAlison Chesley, who performs under the name Helen Money, is a Chicago based cellist who has become known for her adventurous sound, bold compositions, and compelling stage performance. On her newest and fifth album, Atomic (Thrill Jockey Records), she continues to push the sonic boundaries of the instrument while also delving deeper into its more intimate, acoustic side. Chesley has released five solo records, as well as appearing on hundreds of albums with artists such as MONO, Anthrax, Russian Circles. Bob Mould, Chris Connelly and Jarboe and has toured with Shellac, Neurosis, Sleep, Earth and Bob Mould among others.“Helen Money has created a direct and emotionally stunning album which can flip between tenderness and fear, rage and serenity. A perfect example of a universal story being told by a master of their craft” – Louder Than War on AtomicLinks: Website | Facebook | Instagram

Hank, Pattie & the Current Album Release Show

Two of North Carolina’s veteran bluegrass musicians– Hank Smith on Banjo and Pattie Hopkins Kinlaw on fiddle– join forces with some of the most versatile musicians in the Carolinas to create modern, American, acoustic music featuring the full range of their talents as composers and arrangers. The band is on tour regionally and nationally in support of their new album, RISE ABOVE on Robust Records. The band makes use of traditional bluegrass instrumentation in a nontraditional way to present original music to the listener that goes beyond the limits of the idiom. The arrangements take on a new level of maturation that follows in the footsteps of Bela Fleck, Mark O’Connor, Chris Thile, Sam Bush, Edgar Meyer, and Tony Rice. Hank, Pattie & The Current want to pick up where seminal crossover groups like The Punch Brothers, Strength In Numbers and the ever-changing Bluegrass Allstars call home. The music is vocal and instrumental, allowing the band to experiment with arrangements and tailor the compositions to become vehicles for exploration. Hank Smith plays banjo, Pattie Hopkins Kinlaw plays fiddle and is lead vocalist. The Current includes Billie Feather on guitar and Stevie Martinez on bass.Links: Website | Twitter | Instagram | Spotify | Apple Music

Diane Coffee

The ever-evolving spectacle that is Diane Coffee — the gender and genre-bending alter ego of Shaun Fleming — returns with Internet Arms, a swan dive into a lush, digital glam wonderland.Fleming’s path to stardom can be traced all the way back to his childhood days as a Disney voice actor, but for the past six years he’s explored the depths of his identity and channeled it outward in the form of the enigmatic and exuberant Diane Coffee.In 2018, after performing as King Herod in the Lyric Opera’s critically-acclaimed run of Jesus Christ Superstar, Fleming emerged from the recording studio with Internet Arms. Born from the fear and uncertainty of a future in which humankind is both dependent on and poisoned by technology, the album finds Diane Coffee trapped in a digital world, enslaved by AI.“Did you know the technology exists to take a photo of anyone you know and use it to create… well, let’s call it, ‘adult entertainment’?” Fleming asks. “And did you know that an estimated 70% of all online activity isn’t human? Where does that leave us? We don’t interact with each other anymore because we’re always online. Not to mention we can manifest any version of ourselves at the push of a button when we’re logged in, so when we encounter humans they’re not even real.”Facing this existential crisis, Fleming’s anxieties became his muse as his writing explored the scenarios of this dystopian future: “It’s a personal study on how I feel about living with constant blurred lines of the self and the projected self.” This notion shaped the sound of Internet Arms as well, compelling Fleming to gravitate toward synths, electronic drums, and other futuristic sounds from the past and present to create his version of a digital landscape, as well as a digital version of himself.“The songs are what have always dictated the sound. Working in the realm of clean, modern pop production has been an exhilarating change of pace. Diane Coffee now sounds like a digitization of its former self because I also feel trapped in this digital world,” Fleming explains.This newly cybernated Diane Coffee is masterfully unveiled on album standouts “Not Ready to Go” and “Like a Child Does,” with both songs serving as vulnerable reflections on power and abuse. But whereas the former positions its chorus to soar high above a cityscape constructed of conduits and transistors, the driving pulse of the latter propels forward like a high-speed race through the surface streets of said city. Elsewhere, Diane Coffee’s sonic boundaries are pushed the furthest on “Lights Off,” a massive contemporary pop song that impressively showcases Fleming’s extraordinary vocal range.As a whole, Internet Arms marks a significant new phase for Fleming, a testimony to the idea that Diane Coffee will endure as a fluid form of expression that continues to defy expectations of sound and genre.Links: Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook

The Dead Tongues

After five months of not picking up an instrument, The Dead Tongues’ Ryan Gustafson wanted to get rid of everything that was tied to his identity as a musician. He even thought about changing his name. He was getting ready to throw out old notebooks packed with years of material but, for some reason, he decided to stop and go through them, just to see if there was anything worth saving. And sure enough, he found some images and lyrics, threads from former selves he didn’t want to lose. Thus was the catalyst for Dust, his fifth and best album as The Dead Tongues.Gustafson recorded Dust in nine days, the fastest he’d ever recorded anything. It was the fastest he’d ever written anything, too – in the past, writing a song would take months, but this time he somehow felt freer, and wanted to have fun. The record was recorded at Sylvan Esso’s studio, Betty’s, in the woods of Chapel Hill, North Carolina. He built it out with help from a number of his musician friends – Joe Westerlund (Watchhouse, Megafaun, Califone) on drums, Andrew Marlin (Watchhouse) on mandolin, backing vocals from Alexandra Sauser-Monnig and Molly Sarlé of Mountain Man, among others.Dust is meant to be listened to while taking a night drive, farflung and roving and existential. Somewhere between the expansiveness of American jamband and the banjo-centric folk songwriting of Gustafson’s Appalachia home. Gustafson explains the thematic throughline succinctly: “It’s this idea of uprooting and rebirth and cycles, and the past informing the future, and the future informing the past. There is no single story. Everything is connected.”Links: Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook

ericdoa

ericdoa is from what he describes as a “small ass farm town” in Connecticut, certainly not known for its artistic output or community. Without many like-minded kids at school, he spent most of his time on the internet growing up and met nearly all of his closest friends and collaborators online via platforms like Discord and Twitter. Eric grew up around a music-oriented family and was exposed to “raw pop artists” like Rick James, Earth Wind & Fire, and Teena Marie at a young age. When he started making music around 14 years old, these influences meshed with the music he heard online, and Eric taught himself to record and produce his own material.As time went on, this bedroom-based operation developed a humble but engaged following on SoundCloud, where Eric released his debut project, Public Target, in 2020. On the heels of the project, and with several of Eric’s friends and collaborators beginning to grow followings of their own, the online community began to circulate. The music they had been making via Discord calls since their younger teenage years was beginning to buzz, and was soon coined “hyperpop,” even receiving its own Spotify editorial playlist to underline the attention.As with any SoundCloud-born trend, there was skepticism about what “hyperpop” was, whether or not the kids making it would last more than a year or two, and why exactly the music sounded like it did when this first happened. But as Eric and his friends continued to release music, the attention grew, finding an exclamation point in Eric’s late 2020 project, COA. Framed as a “coming of age” project released just after Eric’s 18th birthday, COA helped make the buzz tangible, translating this weird new sound into a well-developed project that made an instant impact on DSPs, received a positive review from the notorious music outlet Pitchfork, and most importantly, pushed this Discord-born online community to new heights — all from Eric’s bedroom, and all thanks to a bunch of teenagers he met on the internet.In 2021 Eric continued his upward trajectory of experimental releases and shared a slew of buoyant tracks — his Interscope Records debut, titled “back n forth” which received major support from Rolling Stone and Paper Magazine, followed by “fantasize” which currently has 17 million steams globally and “strangers” which led to Alternative Press naming him one of “The Artists Set To Rule Your Year [2022].” In addition to his solo releases Eric also released his collaborative effort with fellow artist, glaive. The project, which was followed by a sold out US tour, received impressive praise from The New York Times, The FADER, Pitchfork, DORK and more. Today Eric has caught the attention from the likes of Trippie Redd, Yungblud, Addison Rae and many more.As Eric continues to work on forging his own path, up next is his track “sad4whattt” — which was made on a whim with his frequent collaborators Whethan, Glasear, and fortuneswan. “None of us really revisited the track after we made it. I laid a hook idea that I had for 4 days and ended up forgetting about it entirely until we threw it together in this pack of demos to send over to HBO. Not knowing what they would pick, they ended up choosing something that all shocked us, in a good way of course.” Eventually the ecstatic song was featured on the Emmy®-winning HBO drama series Euphoria Season 2.Links: Instagram | Twitter | TikTok | Spotify | YouTube | Soundcloud

The Afghan Whigs

“Divination/Cleromancy/Comes the card that I refused to see”– The Afghan Whigs, “Oriole”“Cleromancy” isn’t a word one normally finds in rock lyrics. Then again, In Spades – the forthcoming album by The Afghan Whigs, from which the new song “Oriole” hails – is defined only by its own mystical inner logic. The term means to divine, in a supernatural manner, a prediction of destiny from the random casting of lots: the throwing of dice, picking a card from a deck. From its evocative cover art to the troubled spirits haunting the words, In Spades casts a spell that challenges the listener to unpack its dark metaphors and spectral imagery. “It’s a spooky record,” notes Greg Dulli, Afghan Whigs’ songwriter and frontman. “I like that it’s veiled. It’s not a concept album per se, but as I began to assemble it, I saw an arc and followed it. To me it’s about memory – in particular, how quickly life and memory can blur together.”On the one hand, In Spades is as quintessentially Afghan Whigs as anything the group has ever done – fulfilling its original mandate to explore the missing link between howling Midwestern punk like Die Kreuzen and Hüsker Dü, The Temptations’ psychedelic soul symphonies, and the expansive hard rock tapestries of Led Zeppelin and Lynyrd Skynyrd. At the same time, this new record continues to push beyond anything in the Whigs’ previous repertoire – another trademark, along with the explosive group dynamic captured on the recording.Indeed, the chemistry of the lineup – Dulli, guitarists Dave Rosser and Jon Skibic, drummer Patrick Keeler, multi-instrumentalist Rick Nelson, and Whigs co-founder/bassist John Curley – set the tone for In Spades’ creation. When it came to follow up the band’s triumphant return to recording – Do To the Beast (Sub Pop 2014), which was the band’s first ever Top 40 album, – the die was cast. “This is the first time since Black Love [the Whigs’ 1996 noir masterpiece] that we’ve done a full-blown band album,” Dulli says. “As the last tour wound down, Greg and I realized we wanted to keep the momentum going and roll that energy into making a record,” Curley explains. “I’m old school in that way. Having a band seasoned in playing together was how we made [classic Whigs albums like] Gentlemen and Congregation and it just felt right.”In fact, In Spades’ crushing closing track “Into The Floor” had actually evolved out of an onstage jam that concluded Whigs fan favorite “Miles Iz Dead” every night. “People would ask all the time why don’t you record that?,” Dulli says. “One day we were like, ‘Well, why don’t we?’ And we nailed it in one take.”Links: Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Spotify | YouTube

Cola

Cola is a new project from former Ought members Tim Darcy and Ben Stidworthy formed with US Girls drummer Evan Cartwright. “Blank Curtain” provides an exciting hint of the way the new project picks up some of the threads of the pair’s earlier work and weaves them into engaging new shapes, constructing a driving tangle of guitars around an arresting performance from Darcy.”What started as stripped-down open D songwriting with a CR-78 soon became a full album and new band. We wanted to see how far we could stretch our compositions with just drums, one guitar, one bass, and one voice.Blank Curtain is a quarter note kick drum pushing 240 bpm, a drone-like chord progression, and declarative vocals cutting through the haze. If you could invert the color of the Blank Curtain, you might have something like a Chicago house track that sounds like a band in a room.”Links: Bandcamp | Instagram | Spotify

Genre: Miscellaneous