twitter.com/jonlindsaymusic

Here’s the deal. If you post the following message to your Twitter account we will send you a secret link to download a free unreleased Jon Lindsay song. When we hit certain milestones we’ll be giving away prizes to random JL followers, new and old. First the Tweet:

“@jonlindsaymusic Follow Jon Lindsay to be eligible for prizes incl. a customized iPod. Visit http://tinyurl.com/28r7x9t for details.”

Just tweet that message and we’ll send you a free JL MP3.

Here are the milestones and prizes:

500 followers: Ten (10) Escape From Plaza-Midwood album downloads.

1000 followers: Ten (10) Escape From Plaza-Midwood album downloads, five (5) Escape From Plaza-Midwood CDs & One (1) autographed test pressing of the Coping Strategies 7″. There are only test pressings in existence!

2500 followers: Ten (10) Escape From Plaza-Midwood album downloads, five (5) Escape From Plaza-Midwood CDs & five (5) Coping Strategies 7″ records. BONUS: If we hit this goal by August 17 we will give away a custom engraved iPod Nano 8 gig preloaded with Escape From Plaza-Midwood and a 20 song playlist hand picked by Jon Lindsay.

We’ll announce future contests and giveaways via @jonlindsaymusic and here, so subscribe to our RSS feed and follow Jon’s twitter and blog.

www.myspace.com/jonlindsaymusic
www.jonlindsaymusic.com

This was Evan’s Facebook picture.

If your band would like to submit tracks for possible inclusion, please email info@chocolatelabrecords.com with links to Myspace and or MP3s (no email attachments please). There is no fee of any kind for bands to be involved. In fact, bands will split the proceeds for the album sales.

We’re also excited to announce Lindsay’s new touring band The Tomahawks from Chapel Hill, NC featuring members of Roman Candle, Max Indian and Bright Young Things. The Tomahawks will be accompanying Lindsay on the road throughout 2010 and the foreseeable future.

Free Download:
“My Blue Angels” MP3 from the upcoming Escape From Plaza-Midwood.

www.myspace.com/jonlindsaymusic

Press quotes for Jon Lindsay:

“One of the most exciting artists we’ve seen come out of the burgeoning southeastern lo-fi revival scene.” – Paste Magazine

“Lindsay treads somewhere between the Beatles’ sweeter pop side, the dramatic cabaret of Rufus Wainwright, and the full-band folk-rock of Ben Kweller, while dropping winking pop culture references.” – Charlotte Observer

“Topanga Canyon summer pop re-imagined by The Shins…”- Shuffle Magazine

“Wainwright-style (don’t really matter which one) balladry shot through with a really dry sense of humor and an admirable flair for the dramatic.” – Timothy C. Davis

“Coming off like a synthed-out version of the DBs, this is weird, wonderful stuff. A keep! And a treasure.” – Ken Stringfellow (REM, The Posies, Big Star, Minus 5, The Disciplines)

“Jon Lindsay’s angelic voice and catchy melodies cover a dark pop sensibility; his tunes work their way in to your brain like hookworms and are just as painful to get out.” – Django Haskins (The Old Ceremony, International Orange)

“Each listen to Escape From Plaza-Midwood yields more in return.  And you can quote me on that.” – Caitlin Cary (Whiskeytown, Small Ponds)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJQo2cAauU0

www.livefromsugarhill.tv

Go to: Motion Turns It On

[soundcloud url="http://soundcloud.com/chocolate-lab-records/give-up-the-ghosts"]
Motion Turns It On – “Give Up The Ghosts”

We’re putting new songs like this one up regularly so head on over and be our SoundCloud fans.

soundcloud.com/chocolate-lab-records

So, we know that you can easily find our artists’ music at any number of torrent or download sites. We know that it’s free for you to do so. It’s easy, it’s tempting… it’s what people do. Why pay for something you can get for free?

Well, instead of preaching about how it hurts us and our artists, we’ve decided to lower prices on downloads. Individual tracks are now priced at $0.70 and full-lengths are going for $8 a pop. Maybe that’ll help you avoid the temptation to get it for free. Maybe not. Also, physical CD prices include shipping and come with a digital download for your immediate rocking needs.

Image courtesy of Flickr user, Sister72

This is not an April Fool’s joke.

Go to: Store

“The intricacies of jazz, the noodling of 70s-era progressive rock, and the walls-of-noise crescendos of modern instrumental indie rock.” – Houston Calling
“Motion Turns It On’s schizophrenic, frenetic energy leaves you teetering precariously on the wall of sanity.” – Redefine Magazine
“Nothing short of a controlled frenzy.” – Rock Midgets
“The band has taken several steps forward in the development of its sound, bringing to it a new edge of urgency and violence barely hinted at previously.” – The Silent Ballet
“It’s jazz-rock, it’s dance, it’s post-rock… It’s simply a joyous juggernaut that you’ll never want to run out of steam.” – [sic] Magazine
“A furiously kinetic, punk-infused record replete with all sorts of jazz and math influences.” – Dryvetyme Onlyne
“More than a great post-rock record.” – 29-95
“An adventurous listen that aggressive prog rock fans will surely dig.” – Blogcritics
“Some of the finest tape echo-heavy ADHD garage prog I’ve heard since Hella.” – The Decibel Tolls
“Filled to the brim with mathy post-rock with sways of jazz and flecks of guttural punk rock fervor.” – Forest Gospel

Go to: Store
Go to: Motion Turns It On

Motion Turns it On – Kaleidoscopic Equinox

Score: 8/10

thesilentballet.com

Houston-based Motion Turns it On showed us in 2008 with Live at the Southpaw just how creative and technically proficient its modus operandi is, and as if that wasn’t enough, now, with Kaleidoscopic Equinox, the band has taken several steps forward in the development of its sound, bringing to it a new edge of urgency and violence barely hinted at previously.

Gone is the incredibly crispy production of Live, muddling the sound and making it heavy. Instead of strolling through jazzy and calm landscapes, we’re now blazing through them in a bullet train powered by psychedelic electricity. The sun is right over the equator, and as we look at it our eyes transform into a dozen mirrors that decompose its light into perfectly symmetrical shapes that radiate noise and colors. Colors of every hue, for a new instrument has joined the fray of Mars Volta-styled frenzy: two muffled voices sing and shout along the music as valuable additions to the band’s repertoire, enriching the already strong compositions with dashes of mystery and unexpected polychrome combinations. In this fantastic vision of rainbow patterns we’re drawn into finding tones we’re familiar with; several pieces from the EPs, like “Moayedi” and “Lo Pido Con Piedad,” make a return with longer forms and even deeper attention to detail, while parts of others, like Live’s “Timber!!!”, one of TSB’s top tracks of 2008, make it into new songs, pleasantly recognizable and yet completely different and improved upon.

As everything speeds by, painting a blurred and shifting stained glass of keyboard solos and guitar wails, our train changes velocities in loud thumping rhythms of prog-tastic elegance and precision, leading our ears into tense freak-outs as easily as it crosses noise-powered electronic bridges into sweet melodies and meditative space-rock freedom. There is nary a single moment of rest; the train accelerates thunderously into math-rock explosions of virtuosity as the earth around us cracks and sinks into million-color nightmares and fantasies tainted by digital processes and its recognizably particular noises (like those high frequencies emitted by old televisions when turned on). There are, of course, quieter moments in the trip, those instances where the colors start easily defined but gradually decompose into a different tonality; the kaleidoscope shifts and a new pattern emerges, leaving us with the very same sense of urgency and break-neck speed of the whole as it keeps changing and leaving us behind. In this sense, the slower moments are but lapses of ‘quiet intensity’, like a madman’s visions projected inwards.

While The Mars Volta are the most directly comparable group that comes to mind, Motion Turns it On manages to move outside the realm of seventies-worship, sounding more contemporary and aware of what makes current prog derivations such as math-rock tick. After all, who needs saxophones if we can experiment with a guitar’s distortion in ways that make it sound like a brass army of pure lightning? Possessed by the multicolored demons of sound-over-time, these musicians are setting the bar for instrumental acts higher than ever, driving our train for fifty minutes of complex arrangements and aural bursts of psychedelia with a prowess and imagination uncommonly encountered in the prog family of genres of our times.

“And just where is this train headed to?” one might ask. Well, it’s headed rapidly into pure bliss, and even if at the end we are exhausted by all the excitement and agitation, we should realize that is a part of what makes this record great; even if it seemingly starts as a ‘bad trip’, everything ends with spacey, electronic, if still inertially fast and furious, tranquility.

-David Murrieta

www.blurt-online.com/features/view/535/

The music magazine that once was known as Harp, recently posted a very extensive profile of The Houston Brothers, chronicling their early-2000s start as a two-piece, their early albums, their full band lineup in the late 2000s and their recent return to the duo format with their new album, The Archer. It’s an engaging read, having been written by John Schacht, editor of Shuffle Magazine and former editor of Creative Loafing Charlotte.

If you’d like to know the complete history of Justin and Matt Faircloth, AKA The Houston Brothers, then you should head over and give it a read.