XPN welcomes Johnny Marr to The Trocadero tonight.  The former Smiths guitarist is currently promoting his first solo effort The Messenger.  Following the break up of The Smiths in the late 80s, Marr has worked on recordings with The Talking Heads and J. Mascis and contributed in large part to the score of Inception.  Tickets and information for tonight’s show with ALAMAR can be found here.  Check out an interview The Key did with Marr here and watch him perform “Sun and Moon” at Coachella below.

U.K. singer-songwriter Tom Odell plays Johnny Brenda’s tonight.  Now touring in support of his 2012 debut Songs from Another Love EP and an upcoming full-length called Long Way Down, Odell got his start shlepping his keyboard to open mics night after night in Brighton before being discovered by Lily Allen.  He’ll be support by Jeremy Messersmith, who recently signed to Glassnote Records in anticipation of his new album.  Tickets and information for the 21+ can be found here.  Watch Tom Odell perform “Another Love” on Later… With Jools Holland below.

PhilaMOCA‘s Tuesday Tune-Out and the Cinedelphia Film Festival have teamed up with local experimental rock project Pattern is Movement to present the duo’s “album screening party.”  Set to scenes of Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood, the audience will get a full preview of Chris Ward and Andrew Thiboldeaux’s new album, as well as an inside look at the past four years of recording with a Q&A session after the screening.  Learn more about the listening party in an interview with Ward here.  The event is free – more information is available on the Facebook page here.  Watch a trailer for the event below.

Legendary folk musician Richie Havens is remembered for his soulful voice and historic set at Woodstock [link]

Mike Kinsella of Owen previewed new material in this week’s Folkadelphia session [link]

In celebration of Earth Day, The Key took a look back at Philadelphia’s Earth Week in 1970 [link]

Suzie Brown, Cheers Elephant and more to play the 65th Annual Pastorius Park Free Summer Concert Series in Chestnut Hill [link]

Ryan Tennis brings his nine-piece band to XPN for a Key Studio Session [link]

Make Music Philly brings DIY concerts to the streets on June 21st [link]

Johnny Marr gives advice and talks about his new solo album in an interview with Nikki Volpicelli [link]

Get a look inside Pattern is Movement‘s recording process with an “album screening” at PhilaMOCA [link]

Bad Braids‘ upcoming Supreme Parallel is featured in this week’s Unlocked series [link]

Download “I Had Love” from Chicago’s Fort Frances [link]

Kennett Square’s Friday Nights Under the Stars announces their line-up with New Sweden, Ryan Tennis and more [link]

Pattern Is Movement | Photo by John Vettese

When Philly experimental rock duo Pattern is Movement went into the studio to record its first album in five years, the pressure was on. Keyboardist-singer Andrew Thiboldeaux and drummer Chris Ward wanted to make sure whatever they did held up to their revered past work. And Ward, who worked on the record as a performer and in post-production, came up with an innovative method to test the music out. On Tuesday the 30th, PiM is throwing what they’re calling an album screening at PhilaMOCA for Cinedelphia’s Tuesday Tune-Out. Basically, the free event will be an album listening party – the guys aren’t actually performing live – where the public can hear PiM’s as-yet untitled new album for the first time, with visuals care of P.T. Anderson’s dark western There Will Be Blood. After the album plays, Thiboldeaux, Ward and producer Dave Downham will take part in a Q&A moderated by Weathervane Music‘s Peter English – to get details. Last week I caught up with Ward over Google Chat – he was on the tail end of his tour drumming for Strand of Oaks and opening for Phosphorescent. Find out more in our interview below, and see what’s in store / hear some brand new Pattern music in this event trailer.

The Key: How did you come to match the album with the film?

Chris Ward: I was part of the mixing team for the record and I wanted to experience the record outside of being a creator of it (as well as an engineer). I had the idea – when we finish a mix, let’s sync scenes of the movie that I choose to songs and see if they emotionally resonate. I wanted some distance, and it fucking worked. I look at it as a tool in the mixing process, and it helped us re-envision the record actually.

TK: So was the idea with that experiment to see if the music carried strong enough emotion or mood that it could change the way you look at There Will Be Blood, which already has a very defined mood?

CW: Not exactly. The idea of the experiment – or exercise as I call it – was to see if the songs could carry their weight against a film of that magnitude. A lot of that film is not speech, but rather landscape and body language / non verbals. That is why, IMO, Jonny Greenwood’s soundtrack is so powerful. Because it’s as landscapey as the film. So – to summarize – it was more a test for our songs. And it passed. But it also helped us realize the songs were there, but the production / energy was not. So we scrapped a lot of that first mix.

TK: What did you feel was missing, sound-wise? I feel like the new music has more low end than the previous three Pattern records.

CW: You are right on the money – the new record has low end that we never had before, and that is partly due to this exercise with the film. Bass to me is a non-verbal – something most people don’t think about because of its frequency resonance – but I can bet that when you hear a song and you are crying, the bass is a huge factor in it!

TK: So taking it beyond the mixing exercise and into the full-scale production at PhilaMOCA on the 30th, you’re going to play the studio version of the album through the PA, synced up to scenes from There Will Be Blood?

CW: Yup! It’s a quasi listening party, plus a film screening. We’re calling it an album screening.

TK: How long have you and Andrew been working on this record?

CW: We began working on it in 2009. We did a tour-only EP at Jeff Zeigler’s, and that was the beginning of the album.

TK: With this set of songs, since it’s so electronics-oriented – and the orchestrations in that dept are so complex – how did the songs come together? Did Andrew bring you ideas that you added beats to?

CW: Andrew wrote the songs / lyrics, tracked them from the ground up and then did vocals. I played drums last.
After the drums, he re-did some vocals and then we mixed it once. Then we changed some drums, some arrangements, added that bass, and then we mixed it a second time.

TK: When can we expect it to be released?

CW: It will be released on Hometapes in mid October – home of Matthew E White, Bear in Heaven, Megafaun, etc. It’s un-named at this point.

Pattern is Movement’s album screening party takes place Tuesday, April 30th at PhilaMOCA. The free, all-ages event begins at 7:30, and is sponsored by Pizza Brain – which doubtless means delicious refreshments.

This month, the MOCA hosts its inaugural Cinedelphia film festival – we’ll tell you more about that in an indepth interview with Bresler tomorrow – and it lined up a hefty five weeks of Tune-Out programming. After nearly a year of featuring events at his venue, we’re thrilled to welcome Bresler to this space to talk about the music and movies in store. All events are at PhilaMOCA (531 N. 12th Street), start at 7:30pm and are $5.

From Eric:

I always enjoy finding out about the personal interests of musicians that I like – the movies they watch, the places they hang out – so I thought it would be fun to invite a single musician or band every week who would perform and then screen a film of their choosing that somehow influenced their sound or approach towards making music.  Despite the crowds that PhilaMOCA events get, the city at large is still unaware of the space so I came up with the idea of rotating monthly curators as a means of introducing new segments of Philly’s populace to PhilaMOCA.  So the audience for, say, 8static is very different than the audience for BITBY or Folkadelphia, thus by the end of the month there are several bands that have played the space for the first time that have brought out their own crowds who may be visiting the space for the first time.  We’re really proud of the TTO series and seriously appreciate every guest curator and performer that has come out to support it.

Tuesday 4/2
Sweatheart with an 80s teen classic

I’m a big fan of Sweatheart and Brian Langan of Langor and numerous other Philly bands – he’s been a big help to the space, so I try to get him and his people involved whenever I can. They chose the film and its quite indicative of their sound. They do have this weird 80s-like party frat rock vibe, but they all dress like RPG characters! It’s a strange gimmick that’s all over the place, but its all cohesive. We’re not going to reveal the name of the film, but here’s a hint.

Tuesday 4/9
Divine Hand Ensemble with21st Century Classical Music

Divine Hand Ensemble is one of my favorite local bands. They’re led by Mano Divina, a Moog sponsored theremin player. They’re basically a chamber orchestra band that replaces lead singer with theremin, and I love that concept. And they don’t take themselves too seriously They’ll do the Highlander theme, stuff like that, but also classical pieces and original pieces too. This is the premiere screening of a documentary on them that’s several years in the making.

Tuesday 4/16
Farquar Muckenfuss playing a Monkees cover set with a screening of Head

Farquar Muckenfuss features members of Dead Milkmen and Mercury Radio Theater. The singer-guitarist F Woods and I, we go way back, and The Monkees were a frequent talking between us for many years. When I approached them about doing a Tune-Out, he suggested the Monkees, and I was thrilled. I’m doing the visuals that night, and I’ll be syncing up clips from tv series to their set, and then we’ll be watching the Monkees movie Head.

Tuesday 4/23
A screening of Loud! Fast! Philly! with appearances by many participating bands

I worked on this one with Joseph Gervasi of Exhumed Films, and he put on shows as the Cabbage Collective in the late 90s. It’s basically a visual history of Philly punk, from 1984 up to current house shows. It features at least 20 bands, many of whom will be in attendance, and we’ll show live clips and band members will come up and talk about it. The 7:00 screening is sold out, but we just announced a second screening at 10:30 the same night.

Tuesday 4/30
Pattern is Movement performing their new album synced to There Will be Blood

The band is getting ready to release its new album and There Will Be Blood inspired it, so they’re going to perform to scenes from the movie. This one is a free event, and sponsored by Pizza Brain.

DRGN KNG Photo by Nicky Devine

Who’d we forget? Probably dozens more. Our apologies if we left you out. We hope you get the point though; these days, Philly is miles deep and miles wide with talent and creativity. If 2012 was a “ten,” here’s 15 reasons why Philly’s music scene is about to go to 11 in 2013.

1. The highly anticipated Kanine Records debut from power punk rockers Bleeding Rainbow, Yeah Right, out on January 29th.

2. Not wanting to be out powered by their noise brothers and sister – Bleeding Rainbow – Purling Hiss tear the blisters off their fingers when they release Water On Mars on Drag City on March 19th. Hiss guitarist Mike Polizze redefines the concept of “shredding.”

3. Not from the old school or from the new, rapper GrandeMarshall is from his own trippy, ethereal school of hip-hop. Recently signed to Fool’s Gold, his 800 mixtape was one of the best of ’12, and there’s more to come in the one-three.

4. The recent return of Reef The Lost Cauze with Reef The Lost Cauze Is Dead.

5. Don’t call it a comeback he’s been here for years: William Hart, lead singer of The Delfonics is back with the sounds of symphonic soul with Adrian Younge.

6. Roots collaborators Greg Porn and Truck North are in serious music making mode.

7. Dr. Dog drummer Eric Slick and singer-songwriter Brendan Mulvihill, aka Norwegian Arms, release their new Wolf Like A Stray Dog album on January 15th. It’s a collection of wonderful wierdworld indie-folk.

8. Pattern Is Movement will release its new album, There Will Be, next year. PIM performed new material at this show recently and by all indications the new jawns are mind blowingly funky and right on time. Rumour on the street is that new record was inspired by drummer Chris Ward and keyboardist Andrew Thiboldeaux listening to thousands of hours of Frank Ocean’s Channel Orange. When they hear the new PIM album, the Dirty Projectors will attempt to make a record like Drake’s Take Care and fail.

9. We’re pretty certain that Work Drugs will continue to release at least one new song a month. If not, we’ll be disappointed.

10. Not familiar with the mind blowing pianotechnics of jazz pianist Elew? Well you should be. This past summer he released Elew Rockjazz, Volume 2, and we’re just saying that his takes on rock classics will take you to another planet, which is a good thing. Originally from Camden, NJ and a graduate of Overbrook High, Elew is Eric Lewis. He’s toured with Wynton Marsalis, Josh Groban, Cassandra Wilson and many others. His musical world Is a planet where Thelonius Monk, Keith Jarrett, Michael Jackson and The Killers all make sweet music together. Don’t lose sight of this guy.

11. The Fleeting Ends is a trio who release their second album, Our Eyes Are Peeled on January 29th. Their attention to pop detail, songwriting and arrangements is frighteningly good, bordering on obsessive. Oh yeah: string arrangements by the legendary Larry Gold.

12. Dominic Angelella and Ritz Reynolds are DRGN KNG. The geniuses at Bar None Records were smart enough to sign them and are releasing Paragraph Nights on January 22nd. Oh yeah, did you catch that nice little writeup in Rolling Stone?

13. Ron Gallo and his band of merry ramshackle roots rockers Toy Soldiers release their new album next year. Produced by Bill Moriarty, Maybe Boys promises to deliver on their fun live performances and Gallo’s knack for writing songs that bring to mind a Sun Records meeting of The Band.

14. Our pals Free Energy unleash their new collection of bubblegum indie-rock, Love Sign, on January 15th. More infectious than The Cars and the Ohio Express.

15. When he’s not bassing it up for The War On Drugs, Dave Hartley, has his own groovy musical project called Nightlands. Hartley releases Oak Island on Secretly Canadian on January 22nd. While we are certainly amazing by his musical talents, Hartley is also a pretty sharp basketball fan and shares his insights with us in his basketball column for us, Top Of The Key.

Drummer Chris Ward (who doubles as talent buyer at JBs for his day job) says that he and singer / keyboardist Andrew Thiboldeaux will be performing only new material during their set, and it will be the first time any of the songs have been played live. “Whole new album, new setup, same beards!” he writes.

The new record, There Will Be, was mixed at Sigma Sound Studios (famous for producing David Bowie’s Young Americans in 1974) by engineer David Downham, who has also worked with mewithoutyou, Daniel Smith and Plow United (and who also plays guitar in the band Ages in his spare time). Tony Dawsey at Masterdisk mastered the record, and Ward says “We specificially went to Tony because he’s mastered mostly hip/hop and R&B and we wanted an engineer who was not afraid to push the mixes, and specifically the bass, hard.”

The record is expected out in the first half of 2013; more information on the show can be found here. Below, get a taste of the new jams by watching Dawsey bopping his head to a new Pattern song, “Little By Little.”

Illustration by Johnnie Cluney

Philadelphia’s own Pattern Is Movement recently recorded a new Daytrotter session, which is now available. From the Daytrotter site:

“The two new jams that they performed for this session – ‘Light of the World’ and ‘Make It Right’ – could be mantras that school children could recite to themselves each morning. They are simple lessons, or thoughts, that could make one a better person, or just glow a little bit more. Here we could be enriching ourselves and getting a little nasty at the club at the same time. All of this, in a perfect world.”

In late 2011, Daytrotter switched from a free service to a paid subscription service. It’s definitely worth the measly two dollars a month—but, if you’re strapped for cash, you can sign up for a free week-long trial.

The Key: Pattern Is Movement has been in a pretty serious hibernation since September 2010—just over a year. What led to that decision?

Chris Ward: Well, we had never taken time off. The band had been full-time since 2005. We were either on the road playing shows or conceiving something—conceiving a tour, conceiving a record—since 2005. It was like that for five years. We realized that we had never stayed at home and made a record. We’ve always gone somewhere. We’ve either gone to San Francisco, or we tracked our last record in Charlotte, North Carolina. But it was like, “We’re going to stay home, we’re going to take our time, and we’re going to track this record by ourselves. We’re not going to rush it.” It’s just, let’s make a record without tons of shows and stuff like that.

TK: So the band didn’t actually take any time off? You’ve just been working the whole time?

CW: Oh yeah. I never actually looked at it that way. It definitely wasn’t a hiatus. During that time, we were making a record. On tumblr I posted videos of being in the studio and tracking the record. And on our Facebook I mentioned it and stuff.

TK: According to the band’s tumblr, you finished recording the album in mid-March, then starting mixing in late May, and finished mixing in mid-June—which was the last update on the website.

CW: Yup. We mixed it in like the middle of the summer. I’m actually one of the engineers on the record, the other engineer is David Downham. We were mixing it together and there were some elements that weren’t working for me. The thing that came up the most was the bass. I thought the bass could use some work. So we took some time to talk about bass sounds and then we found this software program called Trilian that actually samples bass guitars and synthesizers. We started writing the bass lines with that and it’s transformed the record.

TK: It sounds like you’ve been giving yourselves plenty of time to work things out.

CW: That’s essentially what we wanted this process to be. Let’s figure out what we want this record to be, rather than rushing it to the label, or rushing it to the people. Let’s just take some time, because every record we’ve ever done has been like, “We’ve got to finish it by this date because we want to go back out on the road. We’ve got to do this, we’ve got to do that.” Which is great, but we’ve never taken any time to make a record and let it, for lack of a better word, marinate. Just sit for a while. And that’s what happened. We took our time over the summer. Andrew and I are saying we’re about 90% there. Now we just need to finish the bass tracking and then kind of tweak the songs and we’re done. That’s it. I mean, the songs are done. It’s really just the bass guitar.

TK: How long had the new songs been in the works before you first started recording?

CW: Andrew would know that better, because he’s generally the main songwriter. But I think like 2010.

TK: So you were already working on them before you went into full-on songwriting/hibernation mode?

CW: The songs were already skeletons. This is what happened, if we can kind of go back a little bit. We put out All Together, our last record, in the spring of 2008. We went on tour in the spring of 2008, and we went on another tour in the fall of 2008, and then we went on tour again in the beginning of 2009. Then we did a six-week tour with St. Vincent in the spring of 2009. And then we were like, “We’re gonna take a little time off because we’ve toured so much. And we’re going to start working on a record.” That was the summer of 2009, and then we started talking to The Roots’ management company—that’s how we got hooked up with The Roots—and they were like, “We want you to play some shows with us.” So we were like “OK,” and we played a couple shows with The Roots, which obviously got a lot of other interest flowing, and it was like nothing could slow it down. It was awesome, but it was also like, “We’ve got to slow down and make a record here.”

TK: Where did you find the time to do that?

CW: We went into the studio in the fall of 2009 and we tracked two new songs. We put those out on a tour-only EP, Light Of The World. That got released and we went on tour in the beginning of 2010. And we went down to SXSW. We wanted to put out new material and we did. That was the idea: we were going to put out that EP and then follow it up with right away with a new record. Then all the touring caught up with us. Just saying it all out loud makes me kind of tired. [Laughs.]

TK: The day-to-day grind of touring can definitely take a lot out of you.

CW: It’s a lot, you know? Touring is just…a lot. It takes a lot of time. And it takes you away from everything else. So it’s hard to write and tour at the same time—especially with our band, because we’re not four or five dudes who can collectively make music. It’s just the two of us. Andrew is the primary songwriter, I write percussion. Then Andrew and I edit the songs. Historically I’ve been on the side of tracking and mixing. So it’s just a slow process with two dudes who also like to incorporate lots of instruments into their songs.

TK: Seeing as how the band has been abstaining from live performances during the majority of the songwriting process, are you worried about missing out on the opportunity to hone the new songs on stage?

CW: It’s hard for us. We’ve had that conversation. But our live show, a lot of times, actually grows out of a record, in a sense. When we made All Together, we didn’t know if we could pull it off live. We didn’t know because we hadn’t done it yet. So we kind of learned that record on the road and it turned into a lot of different things because we were learning it as a two-piece. When we made this record, we sort of decided we didn’t really care if we could play it live or not. We just don’t care. Let’s just make the record—and, if it’s the right record, if it’s the record that we want to make and it resonates with people, then we’ll pull it off live. We did it with All Together, and we can do it with this.

TK: So, from a songwriting perspective, a lot of the fine tuning came from inside the studio, as opposed to the stage?

CW: Andrew and I came up with what I think is a really ingenious idea, which was to track the entire record—Andrew’s vocals included—without drums. Then have me track the drums last. The idea of that was, with us being a two-piece, Andrew’s vocals and my drums are just as much the lead instruments. Vocals generally are never tracked to bare-bones demos; they’re always tracked to the final product. I thought it would make the most sense to track my drums to the whole emotional weight of the song. I think my drums on this record are much more expressive than any other recording we’ve done, because everything else is already there and I got to respond to that. And then Andrew went ahead and re-recorded some vocals in response to my drums. Now we’re just putting bass to those vocals and the drums. There a lot of responding going on, which I think is what’s giving it the feel that we have live. There is a lot of interplay between Andrew and I live.

TK: So you’re actually responding and reacting more to what’s already in front of you. Normally, you’d think of the drummer as the musician providing the foundation for everyone else to build on.

CW: I’ve done that, too. Not only have I done that on my records, I’ve done it on Oh! Pears records. I’ve done it on Arc In Round records. I’ve been that guy who’s, like, the one laying it down. I’m cool with that, too. I’m cool with tracking drums first. But in my experience, tracking drums to a demo is pretty boring as a drummer… But we as a band can’t do that. Because Andrew plays piano and keyboards but those parts are not necessarily written in a very rock and roll fashion, you know? [Laughs.] So it’s like, we can’t sit in a room and record a whole orchestra at the same time. The only way to resolve that was to track it all. It was either play it all live together, or track it all and let me play drums at the end. The engineer was a little skeptical. He was like “I don’t know.” But I think when I started playing the drums, he was like “Oh, OK, this isn’t going to be too hard.” And I felt the same way. I felt pretty confident.

TK: After taking such an extended amount of time off from performing live, what’s the rationale behind the surprise opening appearance at KFN this weekend?

CW: We got asked by Hermit Thrushes to play a show. We pretty much we get asked a lot to play shows and we usually say no. But Tera Melos is on the show as well, and we’re actually booked by the same booking agent. So we know that they’re nice guys. I had the idea, I was like, “We don’t really want to play a show. We don’t want to headline it, and we don’t want to have our name out in public. But what we could do if we wanted is to play and just get the word out, tell our friends.” That was the rational. We don’t have our record out. We’re not ready to headline, we’re not ready to put out all this new material. But we are ready to get out there and start testing the waters again.

Pattern Is Movement performs with Tera Melos, Hermit Thrushes, and Banned Books at 8 p.m. Sunday, October 30th, at Kung Fu Necktie; tickets to the 21+ show are $10. —Matthew Borlik