Hang Roxy
Illegal Art (IA701 7")
Front cover:
Photos by Derek Shields:
Photo by Chris LeFevre:
Deeply rooted in samples from a pocket recorder, Junk Culture is an infectious pop
project from Oxford Mississippi's Deepak Mantena. Transforming the captured audio with
studio instrumentation and bold vocals, Deepak mashes together street recordings with
a fertile imagination.
Outside of the studio, Junk Culture's gritty live show harmonizes triggered samples with live
instruments, Deepak's explosive singing, and synchronized visuals constructed from vivid imagery
and vintage skate/surf videos. The sweaty show has landed him tours with Girl Talk, Phantogram,
Tobacco, and El Ten Eleven.
After sharing the stage and the road, Deepak took the collaborative spirit into the studio for his
new single, Hang Roxy.
Side A finds Jana Hunter (Lower Dens) and Deepak crying out to each other on "Hang Roxy", a tune
that swells between its bass-heavy rhythms and blurred emotions as two people find themselves
simultaneously out of love and full of love.
Side B features the breathy, echoing voice of Sarah Barthel (Phantogram) on "Chippewa Kids", a tune
that hits with a punchy back beat and floats forward and backwards through space, layered with
looped beats and celestial accents.
With a full-length album in the works, Hang Roxy is the latest sample-built, pop-inspired release
from Junk Culture. The two tracks were mixed by Chester Gwazda, producer behind previous releases
from Dan Deacon and Future Islands.
Hang Roxy is the third Junk Culture release with Illegal Art and is available for digital release
August 23 and on limited edition 7" vinyl on November 22. Previous releases include the CD-EPs
Summer Friends (Feb. 2011) and West Coast (Oct. 2009).
MEDIA
Hang Roxy (IA701 7")MP3 forthcoming
Summer Friends (IA122 CDEP)
MP3: "Summer Friends"
Video: "Summer Friends"
- Directed by Junk Culture & Celery Studios
West Coast (IA119 CDEP)
MP3: "West Coast"
Video: "West Coast"
- Directed by Junk Culture
Video: "That's Not Me"
- Directed by Pat Vamos
LINKS
twitter.com/ilikepantsmyspace.com/nojunkculture
facebook.com/junkculture
junkculture.biz
Tour Dates
Label
PRESS QUOTES
DROWNED IN SOUND, 8/10"... [an] effortless flow between elements as distinct as Bengali folk music and game console bleeps to fuse into joyful, none too serious slices of leftfield pop bliss." - Guy Baillie-Grohman
URB
"A blast to the headphones that brings to mind the off-kilger breaks of Flying Lotus and the unkempt energy of Prefuse 73's early achievements. Mantena's chop-cut arrangements meld spliced voices, out of place keys and plenty of close-cropped drums to form polyrhythmic bursts of sound and action." - Noah Levine
XLR8R
"A lovely, trippy blend of stuttering vocals, live drums and classic cut-up hip-hop break. It leaves you hanging in wonderment for a good while, then drops you into bliss. Perfect for sunset watching." -Kid Kameleon
NEW YORK TIMES
"Fragmented samples going off in your face. Almost dance-y, once in a while... Tone all phasey, woozy, wicky wacky. Short tracks, brutal edits, then looping. Sort of want to think of them as composition." -Ben Ratliff
PITCHFORK
"The record's title track is an appealingly textured amalgam of looped beats, grainy synth stabs, and cut up vocals, and would seem to be pretty heavily indebted to the Field, Of course, in this line of work, having such clear influences isn't a bad thing." -Forkcast
BLURT, 8/10
"Mines the detritus of decades of pop culture, stitching together a laundry list of song samples and random bits of noise... a head-spinning batch of tracks that make for a brilliant sountrack to the quick clicking, constantly updating always plugged in species that we are devolving into." -Robert Ham
THE STRANGER
"The nine tracks here are spasmodically rhythmic ad awash in digitally altered tones, vaguely alluding to Jason Forrest's hectic, prog-disco bombast, Caribou's sublime psychedelic funk, and Prefuse 73's clipped glitch hop." -Dave Segal
THE 405
"Attention sample fiends: Junk Culture may have outdone you." - Matthew Olmos