In life, the best things are usually the ones you don’t know about, stumble upon and end up enjoying thoroughly. It’s hard to plan. The best things just fall into place. As is the case with music festivals (and CMJ is no exception to this rule) it may be the reason for the phrase. Like SXSW, CMJ is full of unofficial parties, secret shows, and all sorts of RSVP lists that open the doors to epic parties, or parties that could be epic but no one knew about them, and hence, no one showed up. Luckily, we’re going to clear the air for you, and let you in on a few secrets, some choice bands to see, and a few reasons why obtaining an official CMJ badge doesn’t really matter.

Day 1- 10/20

The Pop Tarts Suck Toasted kick off party at Cake Shop tomorrow is a great way to begin the fest. Not only is the blog bringing in Little Girls and Holiday Shores, but also Holiday Shores’ Floridian neighbors Surfer Blood, who’ve been making serious waves, no pun intended, since their trip to NYC almost two months ago. Small Black, Grooms, Sisters, Motel Motel, Dinosaur Feathers, Will Stratton and Seth Kallen round out the Free seven hour show.

Tuesday night there are a lot of options. Between the Underwater Peoples/Olde English Spelling Bee freak fest at Monkeytown and the Best Coast show at Cake Shop, it’s a real tough choice to make, especially since its the first night of the Festival. But if your looking for a way to get into exclusive shows for free, well, there’s an app for that too. It’s called the iPhone app for Going.com and it will get you into the Titus Andronicus, Beach Fossils, Woods, Here We Go Magic show at Webster Hall for free. Sorry BlackBerry users.

Day 2- 10/21

One of the biggest buzz bands in town this week is Best Coast, who’ve been tearing up the Interweb and tape hiss circles since “Sun Was High (So Was I)” hit the Web early this Summer. Throw in hypnagogic allstar Ducktails, NJ riff raff Fluffy Lumbers and the Africa high life riddims of, uh, HIGHLIFE (bka Sleepy Doug Shaw’s groove project, which may or may not feature members of Gang Gang Dance, Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti and White Magic) and this is a show not to be missed. Oh yeah, didnt even mention that Alex Bleeker and the Freaks and Coasting would also be making appearances, at the Group Tightener/Todd P event at Monster Island Basement. Not gonna lie, Wednesdays at the Basement have been the jump off recently.

Day 3- 10/22

Thursday is tough. You’re starting to fade from 48 hours of excess but you must keep trudging through the trenches in order to receive either inevitable enlightenment or utter disillusionment. At this point, they are one in the same. You could rage the free DFA party at Brooklyn Bowl, with Murphy & Mahoney spinning as Special Disco Version, always choice. But I’d skip the party, especially if coming from out of town, to see The Beets, Beach Fossils, the Smith Westerns and more at Don Pedro’s. Cover is only $5 and this is a damn good lineup, and taste of the North Brooklyn scene. Beach Fossils haven’t really played outside the City much, and they are a must see, so do yourself a favor and head to Don Pedro’s. Friends at home will be envious in months when you recount the night.

Another go-to Thursday show in Brooklyn is at the infamous Market Hotel. By now, its become a staple for bands rolling through town to hit the spot above Mr. Kiwi’s and below the JMZ, and this doesn’t change during CMJ as WNYU is throwing a serious rager with Gary War, Eric Copeland of Black Dice, Amen Dunes, Expo ‘77, and Fluffy Lumbers, who are on so many good bills this week it’d be hard to miss them.

Day 4- 10/23

Back to the LES, Friday afternoon at Cake Shop might just be the place to be. The Chouette Promotions party Friday afternoon is stacked with up-and-comers who should already be household names, depending on who you talk to you. Forrest Fire, whose Survival was named #1 album of 2008 by La Blogotheque, headline the afternoon party, which also features soundstress Julianna Barwick, the Sian Alice Group, HIGHLIFE and Theo Angel. A good way to kill Thursday nights hangover while pre-gaming for Friday nights festivities.

As is usually the case with CMJ, Friday night means running around. Everyone is pulling out the stops and the lineups are stacked to the brim with blogworthy, PR pumped bands from all over. However, if your looking to chill in one spot, and devour a cohesive lineup from one of the best labels going, your best bet is to pop over to Cameo Gallery in Williamsburg for the Paw Tracks showcase. It looks a lot like last years lineup, sans Beach House, but a lot has changed since then, with Dent May touring the world and Tickley Feather on the brink of a new release. Throw in Mrs. Avey Tare, aka Kria Brekkan, the freak show that is Exceptor and Drawlings and you’ve got one of the best label showcases of the festival.

Day 5- 10/24

Got really drunk at the Paw Tracks show and fell asleep in the bathroom? All good, as the fellas from Underwater Peoples will be taking over Cameo Gallery starting at 12 noon on Saturday. It’s a brunch show for all the hungover masses still trying to figure out exactly what happened. Fortunately for us, the collective will have bands playing in the front of Lovin’ Cup and in the back room. It’s a gathering of chillers, complete with the seven man Pill Wonder arkestra, Family Portrait, Frat Dad, Alex Bleeker and the Freaks, and yes, Fluffy Lumbers, who, like I said earlier, are on a lot of choice bills this week.

By Saturday night your bones probably ache. That’s cool. You should feel like shit. And the only thing that will cure your ailing limbs is a long ride on the L train to the deepest depths of Brooklyn, to what is easily one of the coolest places in New York. If you think I’m talking about the Silent Barn, well, you’re right. Tuck a few tall boys into your coat and check out the dope lineup Pop Jew has curated for the closing nights festivities. By the end of the night, which features the likes of A Classic Education, a band from Italy which His Clancyness plays in, you’ll be searching the floor for a valium and a few bucks for a cab ride home. And that’s fine. That’s how it should end: aching, ears bleeding.

A friend of The Tripwire who goes under the production credit of Music Is Magic recently sent us a mix of songs he mashed-up. Included in the mix were a bevy of indie staples we prescribe to, including Gang Gang Dance, M83, Black Dice, Burial and MGMT among others. But the track “Gupdegup” mixes arguably three of our favorite summer jams together to make what we are deeming the perfect track to escape the city to.

By combining Dan Friel’s already catchy as hell “Ghost Town (Part 1)” with a live take of Animal Collective’s “Taste” and using Steel An’ Skin’s “Reggae Is Here Once Again” and “Afro Punk Reggae Dub” for the rhythm, we dare you to listen to this song without feeling happy and bobbin’ your head. Just wait until about 50 seconds in when the melody from the Friel track kicks in and try not to smile. It’s impossible.

Music Is Magic – “Gupdegup” (Dan Friel, Animal Collective, Steel An’ Skin Mix)

The last time we caught up with artist Karen Aragon, she was painting her visions from a Black Dice show. This time around, she hand-illustrated Throbbing Gristle’s return to America, and we felt it worthy to share with you.

As was the case last time, she completed these works for Impose, but by documenting Cosey Fanni Tutti, Peter Christopherson, Chris Carter and Genesis P-Orridge’s show at the Brooklyn Masonic Temple last week, her coverage this time around seems a bit more special given the circumstances. Chances are, live illustrations of Throbbing Gristle are rarer than a Throbbing Gristle show in the U.S., so there. To see all of Karen’s illustrations from that night go here.

In February we gave you the inside scoop on Brooklyn’s Black Dice and their new album REPO. We also gave you a preview of the lead single “Glazin”, and now that the album has been released and we’re giving you a look-see at the noise rock band’s video for the single.

If there is one thing more to say about the video for “Glazin” it’s that it matches the ambient structure of the song perfectly. The random clips of video collage work in a parallel manner to the mish-mosh of clipping sounds integrated into the four minute track, making the two come together as a unified piece of work. On the new album, Black Dice was going for a conceptual setting that would reclaim the landscape of popular culture, and make it something new. We believe they accomplished their goals, as the Brooklyn boys have got a boatload of chaos filtering between the video and the track, but we like it, and it works, as bizarre as it may seem.

Black Dice – “Glazin”

This was a different kind of show from the beginning, and it was more difficult than most shows to get press into. However, I decided to trek out to Brooklyn’s isolated Glasslands, as Eric Copeland is one of my favorite noisemakers and I wanted to see what Thurston Moore and Carlos Giffoni (No Fun’s organizer/curator) would treat us to (plus Glasslands is a choice place to see a show).

I arrived just in time to catch Copeland setting up. My feelings on his set went back and forth. Pitchfork’s Mark Richardson called Copeland a “sonic dumpster diver” which is a pretty much perfect description of his solo work. DJ-style, Copeland deftly blended one song into the next, hunching over his pile of gear and sometimes picking up a mic to ..do what he does over it. I myself happen to be a musician and after seeing his band Black Dice several times, I still have no idea how he or the Dice make their sounds — from the audience perspective it’s all focused knob twiddling. It wasn’t too thrilling to watch.. made me think of this breed of noise shows in general and the name “No Fun.”

During the set I began asking myself why I can’t appreciate this stuff live as much as on record. I began to wonder if this kind of music is inferior to more straightforward music styles, especially in the live setting, but tracks like “Hermaphrodite,” “Alien in a Garbage Dump,” and the delicious “Green Burrito” (which I wish he played) as well as countless Black Dice tracks, have soundtracked many glorious subway rides and hazed-out walks down 8th Ave. Yet here I am standing before one of the best noisemakers around feeling shades of ennui setting in. Copeland and Dice’s music is quite visual and the performance would have been helped by something other than the house visuals. Still, it was cool to hear his aural colleges in this environment, and cranked up.

[Eric Copeland]

What can I say? Thurston is a bona-fide king, a god, and I’d pay ten bucks to watch him assault the fuck out of a guitar for a half hour any day of the week.

[Thurston Moore and Carlos Giffoni]

Up next was Emeralds. I’m trying to get into the practice of hearing at least something by each band I am going out to see, but I didn’t have much luck looking for their music online and didn’t find out much more than that they’re apparently an improv band from Ohio. Turns out it’s three dudes with a bunch of analog gear and an effects-treated guitar. After five to ten minute calm drone, I quickly wrote them off.. it’s not that they couldn’t have pushed it further, as they did manage to squeeze some pretty cool sounds out of their equipment (synthetic waves and flying saucer sounds conjuring some sort of warm electronic lagoon) but I wished they did something a bit more interesting. Then, out of nowhere with a single arpeggio it began to peak… warm psychedelic textures emerged and spun around, and the chatter in the room died down. Very pretty stuff, true to their name.

[Emeralds]

[Glasslands]

[No Fun DJs]

We’ve seen a lot of show reviews in our day, and normally it comes down to one thing — the photos. We stopped reading the “reviews” long ago and tend to just focus on what the vibe looks like and how we imagine it would’ve looked had we been there in person. Then we saw these beautiful paintings of the Black Dice show last week at Le Poisson Rouge, and now we’re kind of hoping there are more Bob Ross wannabe’s out there who can present shows to us this way.

In all fairness, we assume Karen Aragon’s hair is better than Mr. Ross, but we think her renditions of Aaron Warren and Eric and Bjorn Copeland deserve their own public access show. This painting of Mr. Warren [above], along with two more of the brothers Copeland ran last week on Impose. You can see the rest of Karen’s paintings and full show review here.

As we told you last week, the Brooklyn-based noise rock trio Black Dice will be following up 2007’s Load Blown with their fifth official full-length release, REPO, on April 7 via Paw Tracks. And today they’ve blessed us with the album artwork along with the first single.

REPO is described as the sound of a disciplined group of cosmic jokers setting out to reclaim the landscape popular culture would have us believe we cannot afford. Irreverently mulching the sounds and images of radio, TV and internet into a fertile compost pile squirming with new, raw life.

What that means exactly we’re not sure, but we’re told that the brothers Copeland and Aaron Warren have never worked harder at crafting a set of concise, sonically battering, or flat-out bizarre tunes than on this collection of fringe-surfing tone bombs. We’ll just sit back and dare you to check out the album art while listening to “Glazin” without dropping at least one pot-smoking reference. We’re pretty sure this kid is glazin’.

Black Dice – “Glazin”

Brooklyn-based noise rock trio Black Dice will be following up 2007’s Load Blown with their fifth official full-length release, REPO, in April.

Together since 1997, Black Dice (brothers Eric and Bjorn Copeland and Aaron Warren) have kept fans happy with albums, EPs and singles released consistently since their debut, the EP Untitled, in 1998, and 2009 will be no different. REPO drops on April 7 on Paw Tracks.

The album should be bizarre, irreverent and amalgous — but if you know them well, you probably expected no less.

REPO tracklisting
01 Night Cream
02 Glazin
03 Earnings Plus Interest
04 Whirligig
05 La Cucaracha
06 Idiots Pasture
07 Lazy
08 Buddy
09 Inches
10 Vegetable
11 Urban Super Mist
12 Ultra Vomit
13 Gag Shack

After announcing the initial line-up and dates for next year’s All Tommorow’s Parties New York fest just a few weeks ago, the ATP organizers must be overcome with the spirit of giving — they announced today that The Flaming Lips will curate the final day of ATP NY 2009.

As curators, the band will perform and select around 15 bands and artists to play on their hand-crafted day, Sunday, Sept. 13. ATP is sticking to the 2008 format, with Don’t Look Back sets on Friday as well as comedy, an ATP-curated day of bands on Saturday and of course, The Lips’ bands of choice on Sunday. The ATP curators also announced today that Autolux and Black Dice have been added to Saturday’s line-up.

Tickets and rooms at Kutshers (and another nearby hotel) are now on sale. Weekend passes will run you $235 each in addition to a booking fee. Rooms cost $150 per person.

The full details currently available for the weekend are as follows:
Friday (09.11.09) Don’t Look Back and Comedy:
Dirty Three performing Ocean Songs
Suicide performing their first LP
Comedy curated by David Cross