Wampus Multimedia introduces Exalted Headband, the new album from songwriter-composer Kowtow Popof.

Mixing rock and electronica with classical and folk in a mélange of moody pop, Exalted Headband unfolds against a cosmic backdrop, a constellation of sounds that seems to originate in a parallel universe. Informed by a fondness for soundtrack composers like John Barry and Bernard Hermann, and fandom for artists like Ryuichi Sakamoto and Bill Nelson, Kowtow revisits sonic threads from his last two CDs — End of Greatness (2006) and Kowtow Drops the Pop Off (2003) — to concoct fresh soundscapes. Rather than assembling theme songs and incidental music, Kowtow delivers stand-alone compositions laced with shared musical themes.

Wondering what it sounds like? Imagine the instrumental pieces from David Bowie’s Low, or the soundtracks of You Only Live Twice or The Prisoner. Think of Moby or The Moody Blues or Gary Numan.

Exalted Headband joins a Wampus Multimedia roster that includes new and imminent releases from The Crowd Scene, tvfordogs, the matthew show, Venus Flytrap, and Arms of Kismet, as well as After Hours: a Tribute to the Music of Lou Reed (to which Kowtow contributed “Satellite of Love”) and If I Were a Richman: a Tribute to the Music of Jonathan Richman (on which he performed “Lonely Financial Zone”).

Free CD stream http://exaltedheadband.com

Wampus Multimedia http://wampus.com

It’s been coming to this — real-time Facebook-and-Twitter livin’ – for as long as anyone can remember.  We’ve dreamed of a world where we can touch base with anyone we know instantly, effortlessly.  And now we have it.

Isolation as a concept is now about as relevant as an REO Speedwagon album.

Feeling happy?  Let everyone know.  Feeling down?  Same.  Weave your existential minutiae into a tapestry of approachability.  It’s fundamentally human.  And humans dig it.

Clinical causes aside, is there really any excuse anymore for loneliness?

The “elitist” cultural order — the one that presumed differences in, say, the quality of novels or pieces of art — is history.  In its place is a let-your-hair-down hoedown, the most egalitarian forum ever devised.  It is inclusive and uncritical.  And it is having an unapologetically hilarious time.

Tweet.

www.twitter.com/wampusmm

“If there’s ever a problem, I film it and it’s no longer a problem. It’s a film.”  -Andy Warhol

A song is no different.  Process and package a problem, and it becomes a bear in a trap.  We can’t beat chaos, but we can control our reaction to it. Bob Dylan couldn’t prevent war, but he showed it was as natural as rain.  Warren Zevon couldn’t stop love, but he explained why it was unmanageable.  Songwriters frame ideas as painters do.  And the canvas can’t overflow the frame.

We make galleries of our homes.  And our homes are our lives.

Our lives are opportunities to make sense of the world — for ourselves and for others.

As Pete Townshend put it:  “A-G-D.”  Sometimes it’s that simple.

We can’t look away.  Like a hillside full of picnickers at a Civil War bloodbath, or a beer-swilling teen watching a train hit a semi, we can’t believe the skill with which Nashville is appropriating rock ‘n’ roll.  Brad Paisley?  Toby Keith?  Tim McGraw?  These titans of candy-apple trash have recycled every thought, every sentiment, every classic lick while plowing through rock history like Sherman on the road to Atlanta.  And Kid Rock?  After the killers do their work, the vultures pick the bones clean.

Montgomery Gentry, a rootsy, harmony-driven duo with some tasty guitar playing, currently has a smash single called  “Roll with Me.”  This murderous pastiche somehow evokes the Allman Brothers, The Guess Who, Molly Hatchet, and — via “Knocking on Heaven’s Door” — Bob Dylan.  At first it sounds winning.  But ultimately it nauseates — anthemic rock by numbers, spiritual truth for lovers of easy answers.

As Gertrude Stein put it, there is no “there” there.

It isn’t country music.  It’s the appropriation of rock by songwriters and producers who are cleverer by half than modern-rock artists.  And they’re taking the lunch money.  Pull up a seat, try the Texas pulled pork.

Sometimes a record comes along that is just plain beautiful.  And that record is for your immersion.

Fronted by the husband-and-wife tandem of Grahame Davies and Anne Rogers, and supported by percussionist Evan Pollack, The Crowd Scene mint a timeless pop evoking the bittersweet sensibility of mid-period Beatles, Brian Wilson, Ray Davies, and — more recently — Elvis Costello, the dBs, and Aimee Mann. What emerges is a melancholic optimism that acknowledges life’s oblique obstacles and simple wonders.

Mastered by Jon Astley (The Who, George Harrison, Tori Amos) at Close To The Edge in London, With Complete Glossary for Squares features context-aware cameos from Chris Stamey, formerly of the dBs, and Neil Luckett of tvfordogs.

The record joins a Wampus Multimedia roster that includes new and imminent releases from tvfordogs, the matthew show, Venus Flytrap, Kowtow Popof, and Arms of Kismet, as well as After Hours: a Tribute to the Music of Lou Reed (to which The Crowd Scene contributed “Candy Says”) and If I Were a Richman: a Tribute to the Music of Jonathan Richman (on which they performed “When Harpo Played His Harp”).

Free CD stream
http://forsquares.com

Have you tuned in yet to the Texas-based art-pop collective the matthew show?  Their amazing new record, february, is out this morning.

Sardonic yet compassionate, this tuneful, idiosyncratic disc lands at the intersection of documentary and classic pop.  And that works for us.  Songwriter and producer Matthew Broyles, moved by the uncertain state of his and his friends’ lives, examines hope, regret, and fickle truth, leading lively interviews in pursuit of George Orwell’s “power of facing unpleasant facts.”

And that’s just cool.

What emerges is a deft portrait of five adults on the cusp of middle age, each asking, “Is this all there is?”  In reply, Broyles explores and exposes their lives in a patchwork of word and song. Calling on the support of a stellar cast, he cajoles and enlightens, crafting a vivid and jarringly universal portrayal of contemporary life.

Mastered by Arthur Winer at Canaveral Skies, february joins a Wampus Multimedia roster that includes new and imminent releases from tvfordogs, The Crowd Scene, Venus Flytrap, Kowtow Popof, and Arms of Kismet, as well as Hurry Home Early: the Songs of Warren Zevon, to which the matthew show contributed a version of Zevon’s “Mohammed’s Radio.”

Spin the free CD stream.

Last year Wampus artist Kowtow Popof introduced us to a record called Ashtray Rock by Canadian songwriter Joel Plaskett and his band the Joel Plaskett Emergency.  This under-the-radar disc wasn’t just good.  It wasn’t even merely great, as such a tag would imply it was no better than many other albums.  No — this was one of the best rock records we had heard in 20 years, a stunning, flawless amalgam of passion, craftsmanship, and pure, contrarian brilliance.  So yeah, you might say we kinda liked it.

And the odd part?  We haven’t stopped listening to it since, haven’t gotten to the point where it no longer engages us.  We’re still cranking it loud in the car, still pushing it on everyone we know.

Over the years, bands have made rancid concept albums, giving a perfectly fine genre — album as novel, what’s not to like? — a bad name.  With Ashtray Rock, Plaskett reminds us it was lousy art, not music as narrative, that killed the concept album.  The songs on Ashtray Rock are wise but not clever, impassioned but not treacly.  They are personal and universal.  And absolutely real.

You’ve got a picture of her that you carry around, Plaskett croons in his best falsetto, but China’s not the same as Chinatown.

Makes us long for Halifax.

Artists sometimes lament their inability to isolate the creative impulse.  If only they could captivate the Muse, they reason, they could accomplish so much more.  Maybe if they had a deeper understanding of how they do what they do, they could repeat it more efficiently, more easily.

Brain researcher Jill Bolte Taylor gained special insight into this when she suffered a massive brain hemorrhage.  Enduring the loss of cognition in her left brain, where practical work is performed, she found herself existing mostly in her right brain, where creativity resides.  There she had a ringside seat to her own stroke.  Banished from her left brain, she found creativity unimpeded by thoughts of physical reality.

Imagine.

Watch Jill.

More details are emerging on MySpace Music.  They aren’t pretty.

Despite MySpace’s indie bona fides – dude, can we sleep on your floor? – the new MySpace Music is not independent.  It is, rather, a play to limit access to distribution.  Unlike the egalitarian iTunes, MySpace Music excludes independents from the table while granting the major labels an equity stake.

That’s right, ownership.  Although Amit Kapur, COO of MySpace, wouldn’t confirm it yesterday, independent distributor The Orchard let it slip in a blast email this morning.

Sound familiar?  Shut out challengers, marginalize competition, control the flow of music to the consumer. 

A strength of the Internet is, of course, its unfettered access to things large and small.  Apple knows it, Amazon knows it.  Yet the major labels still see independents as barbarians at their gate.  What they don’t seem to understand is that the gate has been open for ten years now, and it’s not in their power to close it.

Whether or not the major labels MySpace Music will operate (and compensate) transparently remains to be seen.  However, by excluding independents from active participation – and controlling their access to the channel — we can only ask:

Haven’t we seen this movie before?

Yep.  And it was crummy the first time.

MySpace Music launched this morning.  It offers some intriguing features, such as allowing artists and labels to upload their entire catalogs for streaming.  And to get paid for it.  Great, right?  Maybe.

As is sometimes the case when the major labels get involved, the MySpace Music model for remuneration lacks detail.  In a nutshell, it is a subscription model paid for by site advertising rather than user fees.  In this arrangement, artists and labels make their tracks available for free streaming.  MySpace Music in turn sells ads on every blank spot they can cover.  Then MySpace Music identifies a percentage of their ad revenue, divvies it up among the participating artists and labels, and pays each of them per an as-yet unspecified metric.

In other words, the retailer — or, in this case, the monolith giving the music away — pays not what they agree to pay, but what they choose to pay.  And what compensation, specifically, will an artist or independent label receive per streaming play?  That part is missing from the media campaign.

In fairness to MySpace Music, this once-relevant grassroots juggernaut now servicing the major labels, maybe they will pay the artists and independent labels, who have no leverage in this arrangement, fairly and generously. 

Then again, nothing is forcing them to.

Note to MySpace Music: artists expect transparency from you.  Announce a range of what you plan to pay per streaming play.  Otherwise, rumor has it that iTunes is readying its own streaming service.  And we already trust them.