Matt Baldwin is doing a short tour with stops in Jerusalem and various cities in Europe over the next few weeks.

Here are the dates and venues (sorry, you're on your own for other details!):

March 4th Club Uganda, Jerusalem
March 5th Noon Lecture on New Music at Musrara Art School, Jerusalem
March 6th Levontin, Tel Aviv
March 7th Cave 12, Geneva
March 9th La Chaise, Paris,
March 10th Kunstencentrum Belgium, Hasselt
March 12th Birthday, London
March 16th, The Joinery, Dublin
March 18th, Plugg'd Records, Dublin

Matt's latest record, Night in the Triangle, is available now..

This video is awesome. Our very own Garotas Suecas - hot on the heels of their performance at the Primavera Sound Festival - with blood sausage. The song sounds great, and we're hungry.

Garotas Suecas' debut album, Escaldante Banda, is available now.

Night In The Triangle is the new double album by acclaimed guitarist Matt Baldwin, and his second release for American Dust. The project was conceived as a soundtrack for a science fiction film and is Matt’s first extended study for electric guitar and other non-acoustic instruments. Driven by a darker, rawer form of energy than that used in his acoustic work, Night In The Triangle aspires to trance and atmospherics.

Listen to two tracks from the album:

"Sketch for Winter"

"After The Gene Wars"

You can purchase the album over on the Store page or from iTunes.

Upon release in 2008, Matt Baldwin's debut album, Paths of Ignition, was anointed by Julian Cope as Album of the Month on his Head Heritage website. In his review, Cope predicted the evolution that is heard now on Night In The Triangle: "From the very first moment I dragged the vinyl out of its too-tight shrink-wrap cut-and-paste sub-sub-MIND GAMES cover, I knew Matt Baldwin’s take on his role as new Guitar God was gonna be way different to the approach of his acoustic-driven contemporaries. Hell, even the accompanying 24” x 12” poster that fell out with the record was a statement in itself, Matt standing there – all 6’ 4” of him – long-haired, open-mouthed, hands-on-hips, glowering and gormless as Ozzy’s ‘What The?’ pose on the inner gatefold of PARANOID. Sure, the iTunes on my iBook stated ‘Folk’ but the 12” vinyl – in every way – screamed out ‘ROCK!’"

In Matt's work, his role as interpreter is just as crucial as his role as originator. His bold 10-minute cover of Neu’s ‘Weissensee’ and his epic dobro-driven and feedback-overloaded version of Judas Priest’s ‘Winter’ from Paths of Ignition were game changers for a man that felt stifled by association with the solo-guitar purists. On Night in the Triangle, Matt once again expands on the visions of his forebears with daring treatments of songs by The Durutti Column and Conrad Schnitzler.

The visionary wildcard of today's solo guitar music scene, Matt continues to make music that is at once verdant and threatening, comforting yet unsettling. To quote Cope once again, "this so-called folkie Matt Baldwin druid is nothing less than a one-man Heavy Metal Band!...Brothers’n’sisters, it’s fucking heroic. These Great Fists of Matt make Ben Chasny sound like Marge Proops in comparison."

You can find out more about Matt via his website: www.imaginarypsychology.blogspot.com/

After three years, the Northern California based four-piece, Shalants, have just released their ornate and heartbreaking new self-titled album.

Here's a stream of the track "The Mercury Twins":

You can purchase the album over on the Store page or from iTunes.

Emerging from the same Bay Area psychedelic, garage pop scene that has produced The Fresh & Onlys, Sonny & The Sunsets and Girls, Shalants (pronounced like "nonchalant") produce a distinctly Californian sound. It's a mash-up of Mexican, Native American, Chinese, settler culture and pioneer spirits. The band split their time between San Francisco and the alpine wilderness of Shasta County, and their music is informed by everything between the Delta and the Bay. They recall a bygone era, but their music is not retro.
                                             
Miller Carr, Shalants’ chief singer and songwriter, comes descended from the original pioneers that founded San Francisco and the Jefferson State area. His family were gold rush chancers, his great-grandfather a county judge, his grandfather a District Attorney, and his father a liberal free-spirited lawyer turned brandy drinking river rat. The songs on Shalants trace Carr’s own lineage and his bloodline’s collected experience: from sailors and explorers to prospectors and religious asylum seekers; immigrants and ballroom piano players to whores and gunslingers; opium smokers and bohemians to anarchists and the beats; John Muir, Gary Snyder, Kerouac and Emperor Norton.
 
The band receives inspiration from California’s terrain and topography. Their darkness emerges from the fog and the forests. Their playfulness and curiosity comes from the giants in the Shasta Cascades, their friends in the Sierras, and the rivers and meadows that wind around the canyons. The sea informs their longing and wanderlust. The music they make blows up their journeys and experiences, movie size: the dreamy foggy soundtrack to a lost Terrence Malick film.
 
But ultimately what makes the band so intriguing, whether it be by their live show or recorded work, is their subtle dynamics, voodoo telepathy, and warlike approach to performing.  They will cut you down, but they’ll also bury you afterwards, and make a little cross. The sound they make, like all honest things, is beautiful, meaningful, and harmonious, yet vulgar and dark.  And they can play circles around anyone. You’ll have trouble finding another group of guys so young that can play a Cole Porter-like ballad and then swing right into a minimalist Cramps-esque burner at the drop of the dime.
 
The new album's highlights include the dub-influenced, lyrically dense “Riverbanking,” the urgent propulsive plea of “When It Comes,” the swinging, shimmering voodoo of “The Mercury Twins,” the forlorn waltz of “Black Jewels,” and the gentle melancholy of “The Deserter.” It's an album-length dose of mania and wonder via a cocktail of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Tom Waits, The Walkmen, The Kinks and Neil Young.

The band will be performing up and down the West Coast throughout 2011.

We really hope you got to see Garotas Suecas live during there US tour last month. All reports point to the whole enterprise being a great success and we look forward to them coming back very soon. As a good friend of ours said about the band's live show, "They are the best Brazilian Brit-pop/60's soul hybrid band around!"

Now, just because the band has returned to their beloved Brazil, it doesn't mean that we can't share in some continued celebration ourselves.

If you order the band's recently released debut album, Escaldante Banda, right here through the American Dust website, you'll receive a free copy of their single "Codinome Dinamite" and a limited edition poster featuring the amazing album cover. This offer applies to either a purchase of a CD or LP (the LP version also includes a copy of the album on CD). The 7" and poster are both limited, so be sure to order soon.

The band also received a ton of great press during their tour. Here are some of the highlights:

- NPR First Listen

- KEXP blog Bumbershoot live review

- insightful review from the Chicago Reader

- NJ.com interview

- Time Out Chicago

- Spin magazine