Trabajo

Perhaps you recall TJ Richards’ last band Calves/Boy with the Ice Cream Face? Well, Richards has teamed up with multi-instrumentalist Yuchen Lin for a new project called Trabajo. The duo have been posting tracks to their bandcamp and are presently working on an EP for KimDawn. Here is a noisy little track that features pedals, vocal, drums, sampler, key synth, and chinese flute. Listen.

Downloadable:
Two Horns (mp3)

Hopefully, Trabajo will play show show in or around the NYC area in the not-too-distant future. - GIMME TINNITUS

With the ghost of post-punk lurking underneath the floors, NY duo TJ Richards and Yuchen Lin make focused tumult of shifting styles and segments with drums, blown-out electronics, and plenty of samplers on their debut EP, Slow Pageant. Part The Ex, part Deerhoof, a dash of The Dead C attitude, and the equivalent energy of an entire marching band (you can actually hear it), Trabajo make all their work seem like a lot of fun. That was a Spanish language translation joke there. Forgive me. This thing is available as a 3-inch CD-R on Murfreesboro, TN label Kimberly Dawn. - Tiny Mix Tapes

Trabajo has a tendency for producing completely erratic tracks. Somewhere between punk and math lies their secret formular for producing brutally dissonant membranes for their despair addled vocals to sit within. Not for those fond of John Mayor or the Dave Matthews Band, ‘No Mind’ will confuse you, it will make you mind-dizzy and maybe, just maybe you’ll have the balls to listen to it again. - Dingus

Can’t say that I get too many 3-inch CD’s in the mail. In fact, I don’t think I ever have until this little four song EP from the Brooklyn duo Trabajo showed up. I wasn’t really too interested in ripping it to my computer as I remember the only other time I had to deal with one of these was a lengthy and troublesome time spent getting it out of my computers CD tray. Thankfully they had this one up elsewhere for free download and saved me the worry of having to possibly deal with that sort of thing again. That aside, Trabajo present an interesting take on post-punk with the tracks featured here that often lean more so to the noisier/experimental side of things. They rely heavily on big distorted drum & bass beats and a number of samples that often have a tribal/ethnic side to them, which makes for a nice listen whenever it pops up. The vocals are a bit unnecessary in the grand scheme of things here, as they are indecipherable and mixed a bit too low to even have them be noticeable anyway. Overall though, the music has some good ideas going for it that seem to be put to use in different ways from track to track. Consider me intrigued.

Trabajo – Two Horns [MP3]

From what I understand this thing was super limited and has probably long since sold out. However there is nothing stopping anyone from grabbing it for free on their Bandcamp page, albeit track by track.

Tags: post-punk noise experimental electronic
- Built On A Weak Spot

Well, after two weeks of blathering about Bestival, outdoor life with Ketamine-fuelled teens and TOTALLY AWESOME LASERS, it’s frankly a relief to be reviewing new bands again without the threat of pop’s non-sequitur de jour – the generic WUB WUB WUB bassline – appearing at any moment.

If there is one band who are entirely unlikely to copy and paste a loop from the Garageband Dubstep Pack into their bewilderingly convoluted musical nuggets, it’s Trabajo.

Not everyone likes songs that appear to have harnessed the sounds garnered from a couple of spinning chainsaws being lobbed into a busy circus ring, but you have to admit that the prospect is interesting at the very least.

Two Horns is, indeed, music at its most obtuse and testing, but if you dig just a little deeper below the spasmodic metallic convulsions, you’ll hear miniscule glimpses of bright pop – destroyed, shattered, hidden and never to be heard in its entirety.

This is not pop music, of course (this is Pop Music). But there is a strange pleasure in watching someone take something of conventional beauty and break it into pieces. Trabajo are that temptation made flesh. - A New Band A Day (UK)

It is time for the first volume of the Best Downloadables of 2012.

You can stream (and scrobble) all the songs in this mix using the ex.fm player at the bottom of the page OR you can download any or all of the tracks at your leisure (with the usual right-click or control-click) and play them using a digital media player of your choice.

Listen.

Downloadables:

Old Nirvana (mp3) by Stickers

[d/l the Brother Keith EP @ broughttoyoubythestickers.bandcamp.com]
Pariahs (mp3) by Haunted Horses
Pretender (mp3) by Black Marble
Reflection (mp3) by NT
The Space (mp3) by Magnetic Island
Know Me (mp3) by Frankie Rose And The Outs
Spies (mp3) by Warrior Line
Wrenning Day (mp3) by Ava Luna
Ace (mp3) by The Big Sleep
Cold Sweat (mp3) by YVETTE
Black Practice (mp3) by Trabajo
What A Mess (mp3) by Mr. Dream
Good Gun Time (mp3) by Moonmen On The Moon, Man
Smother (mp3) by The Coathangers
PRAISE INFINITE LIGHT (mp3) by Eleanor
Replicate (mp3) by Disappears
Consistency (mp3) by Stagnant Pools
Big Love (mp3) by Throwing Up
X (mp3) by Xray Eyeballs
Wind in the Furnace (mp3) by Life Size Maps

[d/l the Weird Luck EP @ lifesizemaps.bandcamp.com]
SWATE (mp3) by Himanshu

[d/l the Nehru Jackets Mixtape @ mediafire.com]

Oh, and be sure to check out the rest of our of best of posts.

If you like what you hear you should probably purchase music from the above artists at any of these fine online retailers (or your local independent record store):

Insound | Amazon MP3 | eMusic | Other Music

Additionally, if you want to download all (or most of) the tracks in this post, you should probably think about installing the DownThemAll! or FlashGot Firefox extensions as we are way too lazy to zip and upload every single best of mix. - GIMME TINNITUS

Trabajo formed in March 2011 is from Brooklyn in the USA and comprises TJ Richards and Yuchen Lin.

Electronic pulses of experimental sounds slosh out of the speakers and cavort in the open air bouncing against each other in a lazy loop. This is a great way to start the week. It is Monday as I write – the inventive flashes of inspiration sharpen the mind to accept new concepts. It is good to hear zany experimental steam-punk remains a developing creative strand of music.

This is not music in which to draw particular references as Trabajo seek to challenge the listener in a similar vein to visual artists. The only minor gripe I have is that the material would be even more resourceful were the tracks allowed to develop for longer, as they are typically on about the three to four minute mark. That may come as a surprise to regular readers, as I normally applaud brevity, but this is a sonic space in which around the five to six minute mark enables the head to get in to the material being delivered.

I look forward to hearing Trabajo developing the confidence to push the edges a little further and a little longer. - The Indie Bands Blog (UK)

If you've ever seen a Bollywood film, you may be familiar with some of the cacophony in Brooklyn's Trabajo. Lending an otherworldly dimension to their brand of psychedlia, in in "Black Practice" swirling vocals are projected through a Bombay percussion and horn arrangement, while the washing machine of the world's folk instruments are blended even further in their latest single 'Monk.' For how strange this band's palette is, you'll find yourself unexpectedly sucked into their peculiar collages. A lot of freaks talk a big game, but Trabajo works it in a way that might have made Olivia Tremor Control proud. See them when they play Brooklyn Fireproof on May 5th. - Mike Levine - The Deli Magazine