Skipping Stones Records

Magnus of DYRDIN is the prolific contributor of many sites online!

Here's one he just told me about, archiving all things DYRDIN:
DYRDIN BLOG

This blog gets fed to this blog (this is reading like an Icelandic saga...):
An Big Icelandic Blog

Although some of us may not be familiar with Icelandic (including me), it is fun to peruse around!

Recently Amplifier Magazine went to an web-only format. Although I will miss the glossy mags, the website is still great to "thumb through." I remember once when someone told me that they read The New York Times online. I thought, "Huh? How can you read a newspaper on a computer?"

A few years later, I peruse the Times and many other sites for news content, thanks to our famous laptop on the dining room table (now that deserves its own post, dudn't it?). Amplifier is no exception - bookmark this!

Amplifier Magazine - Celestial Review

Combining the distortion-drenched elegance of Chapterhouse with the fuzzy charm of The Legends, Celestial’s Dream On is a future shoegazing classic. Led by brain trust Andreas Hagman, this Swedish collective knows how to swoon and swerve its way through a pop song. “Brighton Girls” suggests a sun-kissed version of Ride, “Horoscope” jangles merrily over Hagman’s doleful vocals and “The Boy Who Never Says Goodbye” comes with a guitar that wistfully chimes as singer Malin Dahlberg joins Hagman for more downbeat beauty. Dream On may be a contemplative and self-probing album, but it’s not depressing at all. Filtering longing through blurry beauty (“Nothing Happens; Twice” and “Springtide Day”) and gently played acoustica (“Bluebell Meadow”) Hagman and his cohorts not only know their way around a pop song, they know how to roll it out in majestic bursts of crumbling loveliness. Elsewhere, Dahlberg’s “Pale Blue Eyes” is an exercise in spare and honest songwriting, while the closer “The Sunshine Of Your Smile”) suggests The Stone Roses, yet offers a new level of devastating beauty.

~ Alex Green

Look for an interview coming soon!

THE BESTIES

Photo:Glynis Arban

Stay tuned to the The Besties Myspace for more info, including some exciting summer shows!
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
The Besties
Cake Shop 152 Ludlow St.
New York, NY
Description: Yay! The Besties return ... w/ The Icicles, Normandy and The Pains of Being Pure at Heart

Saturday, April 28, 2007
The Besties
1222 Commonwealth Ave.
Boston, MA
Cost: $7
Description: Joe Finkel and the Wild Kindness and Lil Hospital. This is Part of a Boston Popfest thing.

Saturday, May 26, 2007
The Besties in NYC - Popfest
74 Leonard St.
New York, New York 10013
Description: Part of the NYC Popfest. Show is in the main space w/ Casiotone for the painfully Alone, The Ballet, Ballboy,Harvey Williams, My Teenage Stride, The Besties, Brown Recluse sings. Check out nyc popfest myspace for more info

Friday, June 22, 2007
The Besties
TSI
333 E. Bay Street
Jacksonville, Florida

Tuesday, June 26, 2007
The Besties
The Beta Bar
809 Railroad Ave.
Tallahassee, FL
with Voxtrot!

Tuesday, July 3, 2007
The Besties
CBGB
St. Louis, Missouri
with Walkie Talkie USA

Thursday, July 5, 2007
The Besties
South Union Arts, Chicago, Illinois
with The Fake Fictions

Friday, July 13, 2007
The Besties
Club Metronome
Burlington, Vermont
with pals The Smittens, Colin Clary & the Magogs - Moped Rally!

Sunday, July 15
The Besties
Sound Post, Portland, Maine


THE YEAR ZERO


Stay tuned to The Year Zero Myspace page for more info!

Friday, April 27, 2007
The Year Zero in Long Beach, CA
2300 East. 4th St. (at Junipero)
Long Beach, CA
Description: with Rain Dog & Co.

Friday, May 11, 2007
The Year Zero - Mission Creek Festival
406 Clement St
San Francisco, CA
Description: Mission Creek Festival with Astral LSD and Search for God, 3 Leafs, and Audio Out Send!

Saturday, May 12, 2007
The Year Zero in Long Beach
530 E. Broadway
Long Beach, CA
Cost: $5
Description: @ koo's art center in long beach 11hz robot, potar, and ghostship time: 8-11, 45 sets each bryan shnelle is showing new paintings that discuss the absurdity of celebrity. his opening reception will be this night from 5-8. second saturday artwalk, from 5-11

The Celestial album "Dream On" is officially released April 24! Buy direct from Skipping Stones Records HERE

Celestial Reviews
Hear what Don Yates from KEXP in Seattle has to say about “Dream On:” Swedish singer-songwriter Andreas Hagman (aka Celestial) follows up some self-released EPs with this excellent debut album of hazy guitar pop, combining soft vocals and a fair amount of reverb with melodic guitar lines that shimmer and jangle on a variety of sparkling pop songs.Don Yates, KEXP (US)

Re-recordings of Nothing Happens; Twice and Dream On shimmer in the afterglow … This is a great album and whilst it's too early to say if it will become a jangle pop classic it's pretty close to being so. indie-mp3 (UK)

Sparkling guitar pop Lost Music (UK)

The crème de la crème might be the amazing title track - all chiming guitars and purring vocals. Dagger (US)

Great swaths of dreamy pop melodies and reverbed, jangly electric guitars. Palebear (US)

Hagman combines shoegaze, twee pop, and jangle pop to create something that is at once new and fondly remembered at the same time. Soaring melodies rule here, and most songs echo a meeker Jesus and Mary Chain. Drenched in reverb, these songs certainly ascertain their namesake, melding together hazy songs that are easy to get lost in. Retrolofi (US)

Spring is here!


Mother Nature threw us a curve ball at the end of Spring, with weeks and weeks of cold, raw and miserable rain. Us New Englanders know that Spring can be unpredictable and we weathered in through. Unfortunately, one member of our feline family did not make it. I think the cold just got to her bones and Dakini passed away last week. I will miss her.

Dakini, 1993 - 2007