Belated Review of Micachu and The Shapes @ Pop Montreal 2009

The Brooklyn Vegan issued a belated review of Micachu and The Shapes' performance at Pop Montreal. Click here to view the full article.

Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson - The Sound

From his debut album, Summer of Fear, Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson releases a music video for the title track, "The Sound."

Summer of Fear Voted #1 Album by Omaha World-Herald

Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson's, Summer of Fear, was voted the #1 album of 2009 by the Omaha World-Herald. Summer of Fear took the spot over Green Day, M. Ward, and Phoenix! Click here to full list!

Micachu and The Shapes are #35 on Pitchfork’s top 100 songs of 2009!

Micachu and The Shapes are #35 on Pitchfork's top 100 songs of 2009. Click here to view the list!

Francis and The Lights First Show in San Francisco - 12/29

Francis and The Lights have announced their first show in San Francisco on December 29.

Where: The Red Devil Lounge, San Francisco

Click here for tickets!

SPIN Magazine's 40 Best Albums of 2009

Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson's Summer of Fear is #11! Congrats to Miles, whose album was able to outshine Kiss, Anthony and The Johnson's, and U2! Click here to view the full list.

Exclusive New Pyramiddd Download on RCRDLBL

Click here to download a copy.

Paul Morley's Showing Off... Matthew Herbert

Impressive video interview and article by Paul Morley with Matthew Herbert over Matthew's views on music and his approach.

Micachu and The Shapes Poised to Follow Animal Collective in 2010

Underground to Overground

Micachu and The Shapes was chosen as one of ten for 2010 to follow Animal Collective into mainstream. Other artists who made the ten include Beach House, Fuck Buttons, Yesayer, among others. Click on the image below to view a larger version of the article.

Pyramiddd: From Starfuckerss to Future Stars?

An interview between rocksellout.com and Pyramiddd. Click here to read the full article.

Miles Performs "100th Of March" in Minneapolis

Thanks to British Rock is Always Top for an excellent review and footage.

Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson - The 100th of March (Minneapolis) from Brody McCoy on Vimeo.

Matthew Herbert to Slaughter Pig and Play Its Bones

A recent article on Herbert's new album in The Guardian. Click here to view the full article.

NYMag's 40 Songs That Define The Brooklyn Sound

# 32 - Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson - "The Debtor"!

Click here to view the full article on Stereogum!

Miles in The New York Post!

Click here to view the article.

Awesome Review of Miles' Show in Austin

Click here to view the article.

Pre-sale link for Limited Edition Pyramiddd Vinyl!

Click here to purchase Rough Trade Shop's exclusive white vinyl limited edition single for "Medicine"!

Pyramiddd UK Tour Dates

Upcoming UK/Euro Pyramiddd dates below:

11/19 - Start The Bus - Bristol

11/20 - The Garage (Dirty Boots) - London

11/21 - Paradiso (London Calling) - Amsterdam

11/23 - Point Ephemere w/ Golden Silvers - Paris

11/24 - Flowerpot - London

11/25 - Dingwalls w/ Filthy Dukes - London

11/26 - Notting Hill Arts Club - London

Francis And The Lights - NEW SHOW!

Francis And The Lights announced a new show today!

November 6, 2009 @ Bowery Electric

Set time: 1am

Ticket Link

FRANCIS AND THE LIGHTS AT THE BOWERY ELECTRIC THIS FRIDAY from Francis and the Lights on Vimeo.

Pyramiddd is Born

A posting about Starfucker's first show publicly as Pyramiddd!

Click here to view the article on Above The Fold.

Summer of Fear OUT TODAY!

New Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson! Tourdates, including dates with Warpaint and These United States, are listed in the below post.

Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson Fall US Tour Dates

Miles on tour!

10/8 The Fillmore at Irving Plaza, NYC
10/10 9:30 Club, Washington D.C.
10/15 Terrace F. Club, Princeton
10/22 Knitting Factory CMJ Showcase, Brooklyn
10/23 Le Poisson Rouge CMJ Showcase, NYC
10/24 The Black Lodge, Philadelphia with Warpaint
10/25 Twisted Branch Tea Bazaar, Charlottesville, VA with Warpaint
10/26 Player's Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill with Warpaint
10/27 New Earth Music Hall, Athens GA with Warpaint
10/28 Spanish Moon, Baton Rouge LA with Warpaint
10/29 Emo's Music Lounge, Austin TX with Warpaint
11/1 Solar Culture, Tuscon AZ with Warpaint
11/2 Modified Arts, Phoenix AZ with Warpaint
11/4 Spaceland, Los Angeles CA with These United States
11/6 Hotel Utah Saloon, San Franciso CA with These United States
11/9 High Dive, Seattle Washington with These United States
11/10 Media Club, Vancouver BC with These United States
11/13 Turf Club, Minneapolis MN
11/14 University of Wisonsin, Madison
11/15 Reggie's, Chicago IL
11/16 The Cafe, Detroit MI with These United States
11/17 The Drake, Toronto ON with These United States
11/18 Il Motore, Montreal QC with These United States
11/19 The Bell House, Brooklyn NY with These United States
11/20 Mercury Lounge, NYC with These United States

The xx 'Basic Space' Micachu Remix

Why don't you just sit in the dark, ponder the meaning of life, and listen to this.

Brooklyn's Mr. Lonelyhearts, Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson

Excellent review of Summer of Fear on Spin.com

Check it out here

Micachu, soundtrack of healthy girls

Micachu sings along for the HPV vaccine in the U.K. She sounds so lovely, I think I may just go get vaccinated this moment.

Starfucker Videos on SPIN Earth TV

SPIN Earth, SPIN's new global music site, has posted a couple of videos from Starfucker's recent show at Pygmalion Fest in Urbana, Ill.
Check them out here!

two avant garde musicians walk into a bar...

Micachu & The Shapes' video for 'Turn Me Well' premiered on bjork.com.
That's Bjork.com, as in the official website of Björk.
Check it out here.

Starfucker Name Change Contest!

New tour poster for Starfucker's tour, which starts tomorrow in Boise. HOT!
Here is a little message from the band:

name change contest...

We know our name sucks...so here is your chance to give us a new one.

There are two ways to vote for Starfucker's new name.

*Email your idea to:
newnameideas@gmail.com

OR

*Vote in person at the merch table at a show

This will be our last tour as Starfucker!
If your name is selected, you will get tons of cool shit
Deadline for ideas is October 1st-ish

This is weird, i know...

Starfucker on Weeds!

Starfucker's song Rawnald Gregory Erickson The Second was featured on the season finale of Weeds, which aired on Sunday, August 30th. As Andy proposed to his girlfriend in a new mini-van, the song played on the radio.

Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson- Sneak Peek on Dazed Digital

Ready for Summer of Fear? Check out this video--a simple and stunning cut of "Ciao Manhattan" from the unreleased album, out October 20th on Saddle Creek. From dazeddigital.com, July 19 09.

Sonar 2009 Guide Features Micachu & The Shapes

Micachu & The Shapes played this year's Sonar Festival in Barcelona, Spain June 18-20th. The band was featured in the festival's official guide. For all of our hispanohablante readers, check out the article and sweet photo!

Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson Signs to Saddle Creek, US Tour Dates TBA

Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson Signs to Saddle Creek Records
New Album Summer of Fear Out October 20th
Four Week US Tour To Be Announced Soon

NPR: "Robinson has a style and flair all his own. His emotive, at time tormented rock rides on the clamor of discordant guitar jabs, tinny drums, and pained singing."

Pitchforkmedia: "...lives up to those impressive connections, pouring a woodsy, deceptively simple folk song through the damp, woozy atmospherics of Horn of Plenty. The proper setting could be a rowdy bar as easily as that record's quiet bedroom."

Time Out New York: "Local singer-songwriter Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson, whose sidemen have included members of Grizzly Bear and TV on the Radio, plays garagey pop with winning psych-era melodies."

WOXY.com: "...with the extra layers of instrumentation and emotion, MBAR is a musician in nobody's shadow, and and deserves your attention."

Dazed and Confused: "...veering from anthems of defiance to ballads of vulnerability."

Kip Malone, TV on the Radio: "He is in my opinion without a contemporary rival when it comes to storytelling. Creating nuances, breathing character portraits inside of pop structures. Like a lot of good music his songs feel like they are filling a predetermined space, like the ether was just waiting for him to connect the dots and give voice to them."

What did you do last summer? It's a simple question, really; enough to provide the plot of a Jennifer Love Hewitt film, written by the dude from Dawson's Creek.

Simple unless you're Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson. Here's his story from a couple summers ago, its pages turned in no particular order: Bitterness. Regret. Betrayal. Bouts of self-loathing. Burning buildings and falling bodies. Breakups and new beginnings. Numerology. And endless nights at the same Brooklyn bar—lots of last calls that drop you in the arms of another, in the death grip of decisions that are wrong in retrospect yet oh-so-right...right?

"The summer of 2007 was like that episode of Seinfeld, where everyone decides to do the opposite of what they're supposed to do," explains Robinson. "So instead of going home to your girlfriend or whatever at night, you'd just stay at the bar and let someone inappropriate take you home. It was a bad joke at first, like a terrible '90s movie unfolding before our eyes. It became an awful unravelling. 2002 had it's revenge."

A movie you'll want the DVD of later; a movie by the name Summer of Fear. It's got a hell of a soundtrack, too, the culmination of years spent in eight-track studios, cypher-fueled jam sessions, and dicey club dates that often ended in fist fights and broken glass. Not to mention a revolving door of collaborators that helped Robinson work out the kinks in his skewed pop hooks and melancholic melodies, including the Grizzly Bear members (drummer Christopher Bear, multi-instrumentalist/producer Chris Taylor) who worked on Robinson's self-titled solo disc several winters ago—the winter before the fear set in. As acclaimed as Robinson's debut was when it finally received a proper pressing in 2008 (a CD-R version first infiltrated Brooklyn in late 2006), the effort was meant to be a glorified demo, a proper introduction to Robinson's solo direction after the dissolution of his longest-running band, Jackson Plastic. Summer of Fear is what happened six months later, as life alternated between darkness and light, and spare bedroom songs blossomed into speaker-popping arrangements of sweeping strings, honking horns, and chords that cut so deeply they're bound to leave a mark. A biting cross-section of Petty and Dylan, Pavement and Fleetwood Mac, delivering a eulogy to yesterday and the curtain-drawing promise of another day. Not just any day, either; a day Robinson's determined to seize on an international stage, with a battered guitar by his side and a four-alarm fire in his chest.

"Listening to it now," says Robinson, "It's like someone banging on a door really hard, until they start throwing their shoulder into it....then someone on the other side simply opens it and on the next lunge the solicitor goes hurtling across the threshold. It's well-produced, but there's a lot of frustration and rage on the record. Every song has a point of catharsis."

TV on the Radio's Kyp Malone—a close friend since the pair met en route to a Grizzly Bear show in 2005—helped bottle Robinson's bruised hymns last winter, ramping up the tension in such standout tracks as "Death by Dust," "Summer of Fear pt. 2," "The Sound," and the 11-and-a-half draining minutes of "More Than a Mess," a haunting epic that deserves its own short film. (Or more than half of Side D; Summer of Fear is spread across two LPs like one of Robinson's favorite records, Tusk.) Since they both "have a tendency toward a generally and hilariously doom stricken worldview," Malone also understood what Robinson was going for with his redemption songs. After all, he was there that summer. He saw it all go down, and now that he's heard the whole thing told through Summer of Fear's relentless and raw tone poems, he can't wait to see what Robinson comes up with next. (Robinson is desperate to record his third record—yes, already. Written last year in the midst of touring to support his unexpected self-titled debut, he describes the disc as containing,"actual songs...as opposed to vaguely melodic litanies of grievance.")

Starfucker on Tour!

Starfucker Announce Fall Tour in Support of Jupiter



“While most retro aesthetes are funny once bores, Starfucker’s party trick is a thriller.” Spin 8/10

"The kids love Josh Hodges' low-fi dance-pop steez, and they show up in droves whether he plays house parties or clubs." Willamette Week

If you haven’t already heard the phenomenal Portland, Oregon four-piece Starfucker, then you’re in for a real treat. While Josh Hodges (vocals, guitar, keyboards, percussion), Ryan Biornstad (vocals, guitar, keyboards, mixing), Shawn Glassford (bass, keyboards, percussion), and Keil Corcoran (drums) have been collaborating for just two years, they have managed to sell-out shows across North America on three successful tours and win over fans for both their energetic live sets and their two critically acclaimed releases, debut Starfucker (self-released) and follow-up EP Jupiter (Badman Records). Armed with driving beats, unstoppable energy, and colorful headbands galore, the guys are sure to bring the party to venues across the country and up to Canada on a slew of highly anticipated dates this fall.

What began with Josh Hodges solo at an underground Portland show and an overflow of ideas, has quickly become one of the most vibrant young acts to come out of the Pacific Northwest’s musical hotbed. Josh began the project in 2007 with just a stripped-down drum kit, a loop pedal and a microphone and soon began collaborating with friends and fellow musicians Ryan, Shawn and Keil. Each of the guys, with their many unique talents and impressive stage presence, have helped to make Starfucker the tour de force that it is today – a tight-knit group who brilliantly meld electronics and incredible musicianship into each other-worldly and mesmerizing track.

Be sure to check out the video of the track “Medicine” for a taste of what’s heading your way: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfJWkfqN97E

Upcoming dates in full:

09/04/09 Portland, OR @ Doug Fir (early & late show)
09/09/09 Boise, ID @ Neurolux
09/10/09 Salt Lake City, UT @ Kilby Court (early show)
09/10/09 Salt Lake City, UT @ Urban Lounge (late show)
09/12/09 Morrison, CO @ Monolith Festival
09/14/09 Sious Falls, SD @ Nuttys
09/16/09 Chicago, IL @ Empty Bottle
09/17/09 Urbana, IL @ Courtyard Café (Pygmalion Festival)
09/18/09 Pittsburg, PA @ Brillobox
09/19/09 Buffalo, NY @ Mohawk
09/21/09 Boston, MA @ Middle East Upstairs
09/22/09 Brooklyn, NY @ Bruar Falls
09/23/09 New York, NY @ Santo’s Party House
09/25/09 Haverford, PA @ Bryn Mawr College - Lunt Basement
09/26/09 Durham, NC @ Duke Coffee House
09/28/09 Nashville, TN @ The End
09/30/09 Denton, TX @ Hailey’s
10/01/09 Austin, TX @ Mohawk
10/04/09 Phoenix, AZ @ Modified Arts
10/05/09 San Diego, CA @ US San Diego - The Loft
10/06/09 Los Angeles, CA @ Echo
10/07/09 San Francisco, CA @ Bottom of the Hill
10/09/09 Seattle, WA @ Vera Project
10/10/09 Vancouver, BC @ Biltmore Cabaret

For more information on Starfucker, contact Gina Schulman or Laura Sadai at Press Here Publicity: gina@pressherepublicity.com/laura@pressherepublicity.com

Miss Management takes Seattle by Storm

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/matsononmusic/2009538037_capitol_hill_block_party_frida.html

miles benjamin anthony robinson Summer of Fear

coming soon!

Micachu DJ Set Delights Glastonbury Fans

NME highlighted Mica's set at Stonebridge Bar as one of the fest's hidden gems.

Starfucker 8/10 in SPIN

More love for Starfucker from the writers of SPIN, this time in the shape of a fantastic review of the band's recent EP release, "Jupiter" 

Starfucker interview on Soma FM

click here to listen

Speech Debelle ft. Micachu--Better Days (ninja tune/big dada)

Lovely.

Vote for Miles on Radio 2!

This is very exciting...Miles' song 'Woodfriend' is featured this week as one of The Radcliffe & Maconie Show's Pick 'n' Mix tracks on BBC Radio 2.

Each week, hosts Mark and Stuart pick four new tracks and it's up the audience to vote for their favortite. The winning track is played every day the following week!

Pick 'n' Mix voting closes 12 noon on Monday June 22! So email now to cast a vote for your fav Brooklyn troubador.

vote by email! radcliffe.maconie@bbc.co.uk

or vote online at The Radcliffe & Maconie Show here

SPIN Shout-outs to Miss Management Artists x2

Micachu & The Shapes and Starfucker are featured this month in SPIN's "Songs Your Must Hear Now" Sweetness all around. Check it out here.

Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson in Big Issue in the North

Record of the week!

Eat Your Breakfast!

Have we properly introduced Starfucker? They hail from Portland, OR and they bring ze danze. They are on heavy rotation around the Miss Management HQ and we are so pleased to have them as family. Go check out the myspace, duh. And here is a show poster--omg, heart!

KWESACHU MIXTAPE!

Micachu + Kwes = awesome mixtape for YOU.

Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson SXSW Video!

Go here to see Miles' performance at SXSW 2009, Dig for Fire and Other Music's Lawn Party.

Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson - Mojo Review, July 09

Micachu at Sonar Festival

Miss Management wishes we could be at the hawtness that will be this year's Sonar. Grace Jones! Animal Collective! Barcelona! Well we will have to live vicariously through Micachu and The Shapes who will are featured as one of the festival's top picks here in London Lite.

Micachu and The Shapes in Nylon

Micachu Fader Feature

Love the pensiveness.

NME Miles Lovin'

Spin Mag Micachu Review

Listen to Great Tunes, Support a Great Cause

Two of Miss Management's favortite folks, Devendra Banhart and Jeff Antebi, have a great new album we want you to know about...It's called Causes 2 and it features rare and exclusive songs from some of the most compelling artists in the indie and alternative worlds: Black Mother Super Rainbow, The Decemberists, Devendra Banhart, Diplo, Federico Aubele, LCD Soundsystem, Matthew Dear, Mum, My Morning Jacket, Neon Neon, Richard Swift, RJD2, and Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings, as well as a contribution from Adult Swim's Tim & Eric.

AND the best part is that 100% of the profits from this album are going to Human Rights Watch, Doctors Without Borders, and Oxfam to help those still suffering in Darfur. It's like making a donation to a good cause and gettin an awesome CD for free!

You can get Causes 2 on itunes here
Rad!

Micachu as Recessionista!

Check out Mica's thrifty style in Clash Music!

Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson - The Skinny Review 4/5

Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson - Mercury Lounge Show

Miles will be playing an intimate one-off show this Sunday (May 3rd) to warm up for his upcoming UK tour in support of Transgressive's release of his debut album across Europe on May 18th.  He'll be backed by a brand new line up of Brooklyn's finest including David Jack Daniels (drums), Marques Toliver (violin) and Will Cameron (bass).  

Micachu Collaborates!

Mica is going to collaborate with other young, talented, and fabulous lady musicians for ActionAid. Check out project details here

Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson - Q Review 4/5

Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson 4/5 Review in Uncut

From 4/5/09

Micachu Pitchfork Track Reviews

No one writes verbose synchophantic serenades to music fans like Pitchfork! God bless 'em.
Here are track reviews for Golden Phone and Calculator.

Brian Howe writes, "Other bands, are you even trying? We choose you Micachu!" Wowza.

Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson UK Press

Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson's self-titled debut will drop May 18th in the UK.
He was featured in Drowned in Sound's DIScover column, here
and gave a list of influential songs for This Is Fake DIY's Soundtrack, here

Miles and band will be touring the UK in May. Check out his myspace for dates!

Fun Micachu Press

NPR featured "Calculator" as Song of the Day! Check it out here

A nice review of Jewellery on Blender.com here

And Venuszine.com featured Micachu in their Loud Fast Lady column, here
It's good to be a loud, fast lady, don't you think?

Micachu + Jewellery = 7.9

Pitchfork.com weigh in on Micachu's debut album, Jewellery, calling it " the freshest thing to come along so far in 2009".  We couldn't agree more.  

The first sound on Micachu and the Shapes' debut album is an acoustic guitar, so what else is new. But what Mica Levi is playing isn't a chord anyone's heard before-- it's a dry, gnashingly dissonant cluster, and she's hammering away at it very intentionally. A few seconds into "Vulture", she's joined by the other two members of the band, drummer Marc Pell and keyboardist Raisa Khan, who act as if Levi's actually just playing some kind of giddy surf riff. By the time the song skids to a halt, less than three minutes later, it's made a few hairpin turns into and back out of grime/carousel-music fusion while Levi's been chanting and whooping lyrics about her inedibility in a proud, largely indecipherable LDN accent. On a first listening, it's maddening noise; by the fourth or so, it's as catchy as a jingle.

Jewellery is a chaotic record, and an enormous mess. It's also, pretty much, the freshest thing to come along so far in 2009. Levi belongs to the generation that's grown up with the total availability of every kind of music ever, and she wants to play it all at the same time as she's text-messaging, so it's a good thing that pop plus anything equals pop. She's got highbrow compositional bonafides ("influences" listed on the band's MySpace page: "harry partch, and all those other guys"); she's got some U.K. hip-hop cred (her mixtape Filthy Friends is even more of a pileup); she's a little bit rock'n'roll (the fuse that ignites the album's best song, "Calculator", is the guitar riff from "Tequila"). "Sweetheart" is a high-tech, neon-butterfly take on the hardcore punk two-step. At least one song prominently features a vacuum cleaner. Nothing stays in place for more than a few seconds, but very often her avant-gardist and party-time impulses snap together, as when the scrape-and-tweak that opens "Lips" abruptly congeals into a wiry bhangra groove. It's not clear, though, how much the insanely clever arrangements are the band's and how much they're producer Matthew Herbert's.

At the center of this cyclone of jujubes and sandpaper is Levi's tart, snaggy voice, which occasionally recalls Lora Logic's dizzy trill but more often ducks down into the mix and clings to no more than a couple of notes. (It's probably perverse to wonder how awesome it would be if the group collaborated with a really good R&B singer.) Levi is one of the most androgynous-sounding woman vocalists I've heard in years-- pitch her down a percent or two and she could pass for Mike Skinner-- but her persona isn't quite post-sex: while most of her rare intelligible lyrics concern the romantic conundrum, they're generally brushing it off metaphorically ("I could eat your heart", she yodels) or literally ("I won't have sex 'cause of S.T.D.s").

Mostly, though, Jewellery is a vehicle to show off the band's hoard of shiny new sounds-- although they haven't yet figured out how to sort out the gemstones they've got in abundance from their ice chips and broken glass. It's not a record built for staying power, despite the thrilling moments in almost every song. But its failures mostly have to do with idea-overload and short attention span, which are very promising problems to have on one's first album. Levi and her band sound more like the future than the past, at a moment when we desperately need some more future, and as much as I've come to dig this album's awkward, brash cacophony, I want to hear what they do next even more.

— Douglas Wolk, April 15, 2009

7.9

Micachu & the Shapes - Lips

New video for "Lips" from debut album Jewellery out now on Rough Trade

Buriedfed Video

New video for "Buriedfed", first single from the self titled debut album, set for release on Transgressive Records 18th May