audio

Audio Saturdays: a beat waiting for a hook

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Happy Saturday! There are only a few days left in Donald Trump’s siege of America, so it’s time to celebrate! We’ve been busy over here with biz and overhead stuff, so we’re going to continue to post tracks from the latest La Sudar record until we get out from the weeds. Keep an eye out for next Saturday’s audio feature – we’ve got new music from a new featured artist on deck, as well as a new contest!

But for now please enjoy “What Did You Get Your Computer for Christmas?” off the new La Sudar mixtape, “Extreme Christmas” – download on bandcamp or datpiff today! This is an instrumental jam that would be ripe for a nice hook or a sick verse so let’s say in honor of the world’s oldest terrorist leaving the White House this week, Sunshine and Wind will donate $50 to Stacy Abrams’ FAIR FIGHT in the name of the person who sends us the wildest verse or hook for this track.

WHAT DID YOU GET YOUR COMPUTER FOR CHRISTMAS? by la sudar
scene from the Women’s March, Midtown Manhattan – Jan 2017

Audio Saturdays! T0SKA

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Today on Audio Saturdays we feature the new double A side single from Brooklyn-based “trauma pop” band T0SKA. Fronted and produced by Ian Starling, T0SKA was wowing indie music fans all over the city with their lush beats and spirited live shows before the pandemic hit. This is the first new music we’ve heard from them since everything shut down in March 2020, and it’s worth the wait. A trippy dreamwave cover of Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here takes the lead here, with a soaring electro-inversion of the Doug Linse-penned showstopper “Unaffected” on the flip side.

Check it out and let us know what you think! Got any other artists we should be checking out? What’s hot in the new year in your area? Let us know!

T0SKA at Bowery Electric 2019

Audio Saturdays!

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Happy New Year from Sunshine and Wind! This is the 2nd featured track, “I Can See the Tree From the Window” off the new La Sudar mixtape, “Extreme Christmas” – download on bandcamp or datpiff today! It may be 2021 but this tape is forcing us to fuck with Christmas a little longer than planned.

I Can See The Tree From the Window

Lockdown Christmas: a short film

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A few weeks ago we were asked to submit a pre-recorded piece for our friend Dalton Deschain’s Third Annual Honda Days Christmas Spectacular show. There were many ways to approach this – read something from the new book, play an old Joe Yoga song, gather up the usual suspects for some collaboration, etc. But we decided we wanted to do something entirely new.

We walked around the neighborhood shooting footage of the various Christmas goings-on in Astoria, and later sat down by the old window to collect our thoughts in writing. What eventually emerged was a story of Lockdown Christmas, and we put together this short film to document it. It went over great at the Honda Days show, and we’re happy to share it with you here.

unvanquished!

It’s been an insane year, obviously, and all we can hope for our readers is to remain healthy and safe. We hope you are managing, we hope you are able to reach out to friends and loved ones and we hope you are finding reasons to be optimistic when you look for them.

Audio Saturdays! New la sudar!

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i’ve
decided i am powered
and it’s impossible to tell
who’s at what point

watching for visitors
is my new full time job
dreaming of chaos in the air
and fighting the urge to run towards it

“PUTTING THE STAR ON THE TREE“

FROM THE NEW MIXTAPE “Extreme Christmas” by LA SUDAR available everywhere Dec 24 2020

Video Week: Live Music! pt 5

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One of the things we’ve missed most during the pandemic is live music, and we suspect we’re not alone. Whether it was going to see a friend’s band, going to an open mic to listen and share, or just dropping by a bar that had reliably good acts and checking out what was going on, the lack of live music has left one of the bigger holes in our life. This week at S&W we’re dipping into our archives to celebrate some of the great live performances we’ve witnessed over the years.

Around the corner from the late great Spike Hill in Williamsburg lies a relatively new venue, Gran Torino. They picked up the Sidewalk Monday night open mic after Sidewalk Closed in 2019. The pandemic hit before it could get any kind of sustained momentum, but we were still lucky enough to be in the audience for this great performance by Prewar Yardsale.

Prewar Yardsale always makes us think of that Mark E Smith quote: “If it’s just me and your granny on bongos, it’s the Fall” Well – Prewar has a bucket, not bongos, but it’s no less punk, and proof that it’s not more instruments that make songs sound good. With just a guitar and a bucket, Prewar Yardsale creates songs and shows as alive and fully realized as any traditional “full” band setups. Here we feature a new song of theirs, at least it was new at the time.

Video Week: Live Music! pt 4

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One of the things we’ve missed most during the pandemic is live music, and we suspect we’re not alone. Whether it was going to see a friend’s band, going to an open mic to listen and share, or just dropping by a bar that had reliably good acts and checking out what was going on, the lack of live music has left one of the bigger holes in our life. This week at S&W we’re dipping into our archives to celebrate some of the great live performances we’ve witnessed over the years.

Pete’s Candy Store is another great venue, a thimble sized room as off the beaten path as you can get in Williamsburg, which has been home to many many great shows over the years. We’ve done the open mic, we’ve done a record release there, and we were also fortunate enough to share a bill with the songwriter James Bannon, whose contemplative virtuosity never fails to leave us breathless. Here’s a great cut from that show, the stinging “All Teeth”.