Breaking News! Steven & Belvedere have surfaced onto the musical scene with the announcement of their debut album.
And that was the headline my awakened eyes scanned past this morning on one of the final pages of the most recent Baltimore City Paper. I cannot even begin to fathom the implications of this announcement upon the sleepy independent music scene of this quiet harbor town. This simple blurb in the depths of a free street-dispensed weekly will undoubtedly give the suits a little fodder at the water coolers, send bloggers to their iMac powerbooks to frantically develop fervor, and leave the five hipsters of this town in absolute awe. I mean, damn, this is unbelievable. I can remember just moments ago when I first read this declaration and my fingers went numb in a euphoric bliss causing the paper to slide out of the loosened grip of my hands and plummet onto the bare apartment floor. Compose yourself, I thought, there is not a great deal of substance within that simple line. So I bent over to pick up the newspaper, and once accomplished, looked over the room for a place to sit and finish thumbing through the periodical in hopes of elaboration. I just moved in and there is nowhere to sit, so I hop onto the mattress tucked over in the corner and carefully continue on with my morning read. After some leafing through of pages, I once again read the headline and begin to conjure possibilities to what their sound on this first album will be. It is to my understanding that a great deal has happened in their relationship since its inception on that fateful overcast morning nearly eighteen months past. It was then that Belvedere came to the doorstep of Steven’s soon-to-be-former home in Portland disheveled, disassembled and flung from the reaches of a carrier dressed in a brown collared shirt with corresponding shorts and raised dress socks. It is believed that Belvedere is a Dell Inspiron 6000 complete with a recalled battery pack and over eighty gigabytes of memory; a Cadillac of a laptop that is a pleasant medium between a one-trick pony and the fuss of spending four-plus figures on a glorified word processor. Yet, this is about the extent of the public’s knowledge pertaining to Belvedere, but we all, myself included, understand that when in the care of his travel companion is capable of composing some of the most inspiring basement pop the ears of this continent have ever experienced. Yes, yes, this is all very exciting news; the simplest of headlines has unmistakably sent musical shockwaves from the right to left coast about this reemergence of the musical prodigies originally spawned in Portland now prepping an album in Baltimore that hopes to capture the essence of a Steven & Belvedere house show. As I sit in my empty apartment with some apparent spare time, I decide to connect to a pirated online connection from someone in this apartment complex and see that the good word has already raced to Chicagoland, where a certain renowned music page has posted a review of the album and divulged the tracklist of the debut album. It appears the rest of this nation is now too awakening and gaining attention to this splendor, so it is the following information posted on the webpage, just minutes ago, that I will leave you with.
“On their debut album, Right Coast Fuss, Steven & Belvedere stretch the boundary of electronic, laptop music to develop a previously unheard of sound that faintly hearkens to the days of yore while pressing the envelope towards the future. With influences ranging from Dru Hill to Philip Glass, the album is a blistering blend of digitized error and sample created by Belvedere, setting a flawless foundation for the harmonious one-man rhythm section provided by Steven. The end result is that of perfection, a manifesto representing a Utopian blend of machine and man propagated through melody and music.”
Tracklist for Right Coast Fuss
1. Intro: this apartment emits an incredibly strong odor reminiscent of kitty pee
2. Baltimore General Electric’s three day policy - no exceptions!
3. Roy (a morning encounter)
4. Storage units in the ghetto, accelerate to destination and then close gate
5. The unavailability of a midnight hour meal anywhere in this city
6. Downtown parking, a nuisance
7. Andy attempts to open her sealed window with a hammer, to no avail
8. Lock your car doors, there’s a man walking down the middle of the street and he looks rather upset
9. Fells Point and its artificial feeling (genital wharfs)
And that was the headline my awakened eyes scanned past this morning on one of the final pages of the most recent Baltimore City Paper. I cannot even begin to fathom the implications of this announcement upon the sleepy independent music scene of this quiet harbor town. This simple blurb in the depths of a free street-dispensed weekly will undoubtedly give the suits a little fodder at the water coolers, send bloggers to their iMac powerbooks to frantically develop fervor, and leave the five hipsters of this town in absolute awe. I mean, damn, this is unbelievable. I can remember just moments ago when I first read this declaration and my fingers went numb in a euphoric bliss causing the paper to slide out of the loosened grip of my hands and plummet onto the bare apartment floor. Compose yourself, I thought, there is not a great deal of substance within that simple line. So I bent over to pick up the newspaper, and once accomplished, looked over the room for a place to sit and finish thumbing through the periodical in hopes of elaboration. I just moved in and there is nowhere to sit, so I hop onto the mattress tucked over in the corner and carefully continue on with my morning read. After some leafing through of pages, I once again read the headline and begin to conjure possibilities to what their sound on this first album will be. It is to my understanding that a great deal has happened in their relationship since its inception on that fateful overcast morning nearly eighteen months past. It was then that Belvedere came to the doorstep of Steven’s soon-to-be-former home in Portland disheveled, disassembled and flung from the reaches of a carrier dressed in a brown collared shirt with corresponding shorts and raised dress socks. It is believed that Belvedere is a Dell Inspiron 6000 complete with a recalled battery pack and over eighty gigabytes of memory; a Cadillac of a laptop that is a pleasant medium between a one-trick pony and the fuss of spending four-plus figures on a glorified word processor. Yet, this is about the extent of the public’s knowledge pertaining to Belvedere, but we all, myself included, understand that when in the care of his travel companion is capable of composing some of the most inspiring basement pop the ears of this continent have ever experienced. Yes, yes, this is all very exciting news; the simplest of headlines has unmistakably sent musical shockwaves from the right to left coast about this reemergence of the musical prodigies originally spawned in Portland now prepping an album in Baltimore that hopes to capture the essence of a Steven & Belvedere house show. As I sit in my empty apartment with some apparent spare time, I decide to connect to a pirated online connection from someone in this apartment complex and see that the good word has already raced to Chicagoland, where a certain renowned music page has posted a review of the album and divulged the tracklist of the debut album. It appears the rest of this nation is now too awakening and gaining attention to this splendor, so it is the following information posted on the webpage, just minutes ago, that I will leave you with.
“On their debut album, Right Coast Fuss, Steven & Belvedere stretch the boundary of electronic, laptop music to develop a previously unheard of sound that faintly hearkens to the days of yore while pressing the envelope towards the future. With influences ranging from Dru Hill to Philip Glass, the album is a blistering blend of digitized error and sample created by Belvedere, setting a flawless foundation for the harmonious one-man rhythm section provided by Steven. The end result is that of perfection, a manifesto representing a Utopian blend of machine and man propagated through melody and music.”
Tracklist for Right Coast Fuss
1. Intro: this apartment emits an incredibly strong odor reminiscent of kitty pee
2. Baltimore General Electric’s three day policy - no exceptions!
3. Roy (a morning encounter)
4. Storage units in the ghetto, accelerate to destination and then close gate
5. The unavailability of a midnight hour meal anywhere in this city
6. Downtown parking, a nuisance
7. Andy attempts to open her sealed window with a hammer, to no avail
8. Lock your car doors, there’s a man walking down the middle of the street and he looks rather upset
9. Fells Point and its artificial feeling (genital wharfs)
10. DMX and the Rough Riders congregate around the dinner table
11. Do you work here? No, but i will pump your gas for a little change.
12. FedEx print job: 60 day notice.doc
1 comment:
UPDATE: Pitchfork rates your new album 5.6 with the following tag: "Too much fuss too fast."
Post a Comment