Bowery Electric S & D / C & D / etc. etc. etc.

"Deep Sky Objects" came up on random play as I was making coffee this morning. Hadn't listened to the full album (the first self-titled one) in years, but it sure sounded terrific.

The Kramer-produced 2x7" is still my favorite release of theirs - diminishing returns as you move forward. I don't believe they really toured much, but that Spaceland show in 1996 was one of the amazingly loudest shows I've been to.

Would have enjoyed seeing them -- the remix EP in retrospect was the best they ever got for me.

I haven't heard the s/t album in ages either ... I think they hit their peak with "Empty Words" from "Beat". That album was solid but could have stood to lose 20-25 minutes, easy. Too many fluttering, ambient passages that went nowhere, and not enough rock.

"Lushlife" is a bit underappreciated. Although it has MANY flaws (stale, derivative "hip-hop" beats, over-fixation on loops and completely neglecting anything resembling proper song structure) there were some good ideas there. And it *sounds* fantastic, it's a fun one to play loud!

I think it was in Melody Maker, but there was a review of "Beat" that talked about the album in the form of a list with a title like "20 Reasons Why We Don't Need to Bother Waiting for a New MBV Album". I'm not having any luck finding it though ...

How did it take me so long to hear these guys??? Fuck if the Bowery Electric first s/t album isn't the best thing I've heard in some time -- been playing it nonstop. Clearly it's about 75% Slowdive worship and a bit of MBV and so forth, but when it's turned up loud I couldn't fucking care less. Awesome awesome awesome, ad infinitum...

I might have to dig out Lushlife again, but I hated it at the time.

Beat was freaking fabulous, though.

Beat = absolutely bloody WONDERFUL

I live about a hundred, a hundred and fifty yards from the cover of Beat. No, really.

beat is tops.

Haha, I first read Ned's post as "hundred and fifty feet" and was thinking, oh er um, I thought storing that massive music collection must be a pain under there.

They're not back...but one of them is:

http://thequietus.com/articles/12402-happy-families-new-forgetting

Thanks for the hat tip!

And Charlie04 so otm up here: Beat = absolutely bloody WONDERFUL

So apparently this was posted or at least originally released in 2012, but I'd missed news of it -- to quote Kranky on FB earlier, "Lawrence Chandler of Bowery Electric has posted an immense 24 hour drone piece to his band camp as a 'pay what you want' release."

https://lawrencechandler.bandcamp.com/

I never checked out Lushlife but saw it was reissued. Is it good or what?

i liked it a fair bit at the time but it's been many years since i heard it

Chandler's Bandcamp appears to be gone, so I'm glad I got what was there...though there is A Laurence Chandler on there with something newer and rather different in sound?

https://lawrencemchandler.bandcamp.com/

But that said, all of Bowery Electric's work itself is on BC:

https://boweryelectric.bandcamp.com/music

https://beggarsarkive.bandcamp.com/album/lushlife

they've been mentioned on ilx before but this band seem to be have a fair bit of bowery electric in their sound:

https://acopia.bandcamp.com/track/be-enough