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CITAY!


Posted by Hartley On Nov 5, 2007

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The awesomeness over at Dead Oceans records seems like it cannot be stopped. First they hit me with the Dirty Projector's Black Flag covers record, Rise Above. Now, anybody who knows me, gets that the last thing my ass is ever checking for is a Black Flag covers record. Truth be told, I never really got into Black Flag that much in the first place, and my urges for rebellion mostly got channeled into a sharply-honed sense of irony learned from Stephen Malkmus and Woody Allen respectively, repeated viewings of Die Hard, and way too much early 90's hip-hop like Lordz of Da Underground and Kool G. Rap and Dj Polo (Ill Street Blues = the JAM). Anyways, The Dirty Projectors' album has me floored - it sounds nothing like Black Flag (sorry dudemanbros), and way more like Vampire Weekend (who once shared some members with the DP's) covering Miles Davis' orchestrated classico, Sketches of Spain. As fresh as that may sound to all of you in blog-o-supervisor-land, it don't sound so hot to us at the Bank Robber cause you know dudes in Black Flag won't let us license a scrap of it - LOVE publishing - which is why this post is actually about Citay, which I will get to in a minute, but I thought I would mention first that the DP record is like my album of the year or very close to it, and for a label like Dead Oceans, a label that essentially just started in the '07, for a label such as this to put out my favorite album of the year along with other '07 highlights from Bishop Allen and Phosphorescent (to name but two). Well, it's worth calling some attention to...or at least a blog post at the very least.

BUT I DIGRESS....

And now we come to Citay...

Oh wait no, FIRST, here's a track from that Dirty Projector's record:

Ok yes now Citay. So Citay is on some enigmatic shit. If you want to preserve the mystery of these dudes, don't read on. SPOILERZ ahead - ok, so really Citay is the collaboration between Ezra Feinberg and Tim Green. If these names mean nothing to you, it's only because these guys have previously made very nice sounds within groups whose names you most definitely know like Piano Magic, and The Fucking Champs respectively. Citay's astonishingly pretty debut, Little Kingdom, sounds like neither of those other bands. Instead, Kingdoms, is on some crazy post-modern pastiche shit - some Fripp-Eno minimalist ebo-laced guitar melodies here, a dash of bucolic finger-plucked Martin guitar factory Devendra sex music there, all wrapped up in a surprisingly sleek and modern but earthy vibe that both David Bowie and Jerry Garcia could get off on. They are from San Francisco afterall.

Here's a track off of Little Kingdom:

Another spellbinder from Dead Oceans - and '08 already looks like it'll be no different. Two words suckers: Explorers Club.

 

 

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