Stop Sleeping: Supercar, Dogtanion, greencarpetedstairs, Paper Mice, Jmelen, Serious Business on BTR and Make Music Pasadena 2012

I have to be honest, I am mailing this intro in. I am swamped with work, in the midst of a 12 day bender and my favorite car has a flat and a stolen license plate.  I fucking feel like Del on the 3rd Tuesday of every month.

Despite all of these setbacks and responsibilities we still find time to share with you the simple joys of STOP SLEEPING.

This week we have a slew of great new bands, shows and even festivals for you to sink your teeth into. Speaking of sinking teeth into something, TRUE BLOOD IS BACK!! AND IT IS JUST AS shitty AS EVERY OTHER SHOW ON HBO only a little less self serious.

Back to the program at hand.

Seriously, check these fuckers out, have we ever lead you astray before? Well with the exception of the microbrews that Joel and Tom keep recommending, but musicwise you know we are fucking gold.  So enjoy you adorable bag of pricks!

Tom says STOP SLEEPING on SUPERCAR

So a couple of years ago my cousin was telling me about this great band he came across while in Japan. I was a little skeptical because....really, how many great Japanese bands have you heard of? BUT given his great taste in music, I allowed him to dump 5 albums on to my hard drive. I didn't listen to any of these tracks at first, but because of the 60+ songs now on my man pod, they'd frequently some up on my shuffle. Every single time one of these tracks started to play I'd say to myself: 'Fuck, this song is good. Who is it? The Pains of Being Pure at Heart?' Sure enough, I'd check and the title would read 'Supercar.' Check out this band if you aren't one of those annoyingly anal people bothered by not understanding every single lyric. I'd say that they sound like The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart, but because they have been around since 1995, I must say that The Pains of Being Pure At Heart sound like Supercar. WARNING: This video is awesomely Japanese. The 3.20 mark is EPIC! BLASTING BEWBIES!

Joel says STOP SLEEPING on Dogtanion

I don't remember how I got this dude's music in my ears, but I've been listening to nothing but Dogtanion all weekend and I want nothing more than to repeat his shit over and fucking over. I devoured the EP this track is on called S W I T Z E R L A N D and I just got my hands on an advance of his upcoming EP titled J A P A N and it's fucking glorious. This shit makes me want to fashion a bunch of artificial flowers into a Trouble Bubble (TM) and pour a bunch of plastolite (TM) inside of it and start telling people I'm giving up the day job to make custom broaches. I don't want this fascination for this shit to end. So I'll start doing drugs again.

Employee says STOP SLEEPING on greencarpetedstairs

Today, June 12th, greencarpetedstairs' self-titled debut is hittin' on Fake Four. "Cool, but who the Fuck is greencarpetedstairs"? He's murk, melody, and malaise...that's who. Luckily I stumbled across his collected works a couple of years back now and am familiar with his brand of gleeful macabre. For newcomers to the staircase, I recommend giving his Soundcloud page a thorough once-or-twice over. One minute you'll be smiling; the next you'll be crying or, at the very least, thinking of crying. And when basking in the blips and shadows cast by greencarpetedstairs: that's okay.

Buy his debut album on Fake Four.

Peace,
Employee 

Dick says STOP SLEEPING on Paper Mice

Paper Mice are some deceiving muthafuckers when it comes to their songwriting. Songs of theirs will start off with a simple, stripped down appearance at first, but then shit goes haywire and you get pelted with some crazy-azz'd change-up or wonky, experimental section. It is like meeting some Plain Jane who starts off your coffee date blabbing at you about her hilariously uninteresting pastime of primetime television viewing and musical distaste for anything non-Nickelback. Just when you're about to roll your eyes she just screams "HAW, PSYCH!", whips out a crate filled with amyl nitrates and Charleston Chews, and then proceeds to throw on your favorite Frank Zappa record. Until I can meet this dream woman, I am going to keep listening to Paper Mice. 

Brandon says STOP SLEEPING on Jmelen

A while back we featured, as Bandcamp.com artists of the week, tandem sexpots Jmelen and Jonathan Tramp as 0886. The two have teamed up again to release Jmelen's solo ep, Red Wine. This time the album is another Bladerunner-esque electronic landscape, population: one. Jmel has upped his bars a little bit since the last episode with a Cash-esque freight train of a flow that just hammers away. The production is unique and unusual (in a good, if not great, way) as Tramp and Melen have some kind of unholy sonic marriage, the result a sound forged in the unearthly fires of Rick Deckhard's colon. F'real though, this is a solid effort and a creative release from some young cats, emo-as-Fuck, but not trying on that "cray" or "trill" or whatever the Fuck. Red Wine has its own voice and I'm still excited for more music from Jmel, Tramp, and 0886!  

Tim says STOP SLEEPING on Serious Business on Break Thru Radio

As you know I am a huge fan of all things Serious Business Records and their adorably plushy founder Travis Harrison. So you can imagine just how smitten...and hard I was when I found out he had his very own web show on Break Thru Radio. It is part interview, part live show, and lots of dick jokes. How can you lose. They drop a new episode every monday and this week they feature my favsies HIGGINS. 

Del says STOP SLEEPING on Make Music Pasadena 2012

I give the SYFFAL staff shit all the time for not following the rules for our SYFFAL LIST so it is with great irony that I present to you my Stop Sleeping submission: Make Music Pasadena. That's right my selection is a fucking day long free festival. Call me a hypocrite if you want but Make Music is going to be the tits so I want as many people to aware of it as humanly possible. I mentioned it was free right? How badass is that? It's the GOOD free too, not that janky sad old free that the Santa Monica Pier or Summer Solstice rolls out on the regular. No the free acts booked for this satuday's festivities are such SYFFAL favorites as: Well Hung Heart,The Robotanists, The Chain Gang of 1974, Grimes, Grouplove, Electric Guest, and Cults! Those names alone could book a festival with a sizable ticket fee so recognize that the MMP curators really stepped it up this year. Support these artists and this event and come hang out on Saturday. I'll be there graciously accepting free RBVS from any of the numerous bars that line the streets in between the stages. For the record that's using buying me RBVS...not the bars giving them away. Old Town Pasadena knows how to get down, but it doesn't get down that hard.