So... after the nomination stage, we have finally arrived to the last phase of our Best of NYC 2008 poll, whose winners will be rewarded with a slew of prizes, including the cover of the 18th issue of the Deli, out this spring!

WHERE WE ARE AT:

At this point we have a (rather long) list of bands that were nominated for this poll - see column on the right under the logos. Most of these artists (59) were chosen by our NYC jurors, while 4 were picked by our readers.

The NYC jurors (full list below) nominated 3 bands each, and assigned 3 points to their first choice, 2 to the 2nd and 1 to the third one. The bands nominated by the readers didn't get any points yet.

WHAT'S NEXT:

As the jury's vote is extremely fragmented (only 7 bands were chosen by more than one juror!), the chart we have right now is currently full of artists that share the same positions. The Deli's writers' vote (happening as we speak) will help make things a little more fluid, but the readers' poll on the right column in this same page will be very influential in assigning the final positions.

For example: after adding up the Jury's votes, there are 16 artists sharing the 6th position, a few points away from the top 3 bands, which will be rewarded with the cover + full features on the spring issue of The Deli. These bands have the opportunity to get in the top 3 through this readers' poll - and also the 17 artists that follow them with 2 points each actually.

More information about the poll rules can be found here.

So please help your favorite NYC band to get some exposure and cast your vote here now!!!

The Deli Staff

List of NYC Jurors: Doug DeFalco (JellyNYC), Jen Kellas (themusicslut.com / After the Jump Fest), Andy French (insound.com), Darren McNeill (BAM), Jay Belin (Bowery Presents), Shirley Braha (New York Noise), Claire McNamara (OhMyRockness.com), Rich McLaughlin (wfuv.org), DJ Mojo (Trash Bar), Marc Hutner (Ascap), Samantha Cox (BMI), Jamie Dominguez (SESAC), Tim Putnam (Knitting Factory), Frank Garcia (Union Pool), Andy Bodor (Cake Shop), Gabriel Levitt (Jezebel Music), David Gwiazdowski (Club Midway), Daniel Selzer (NY Happenings), Xiaoting L. (The Annex), Pat Duffy (Pop Tarts Suck Toasted), Jack McFadden (Union Hall), Max Brennan (Lit Lounge), Andy McDowell (Pete's Candy Store), Abbey Braden.

Dear Deli Readers,

THIS POLL IS NOW CLOSED! Thanks for voting and Happy New Year from The Deli!

Bern and the Brights are the winners, Plastiq Passion, Automatic Children and Electric Tickle Machine are also nominated for the final phase. Congrats!!!

We would like to thank and give some extra exposure also to these artists who received a lot of votes in this poll, even though they didn't win:

Bugs in the Dark were 5th, a few points behind the two bands tied on 3rd place, followed by The Barrens, Glint, Waking Lights and The Vanguard.

Thanks to all the bands for participating, we wish we could give more exposure to each one of you, but we can only do what's humanly possible right now... but we'll definitely check out your music soon and keep you in mind for upcoming coverage!!!

As you can read in the post below, our yearly Best of NYC Poll is on. The winner of the poll will grace the cover of our Spring '09 issue of The Deli, while the first 3 bands will win a slew of prizes and all nominated artists will be featured in that same issue of our mag (see entry below for more info about prizes).

Most artists competing will be nominated by our selected jury, but 3 of them will be chosen by our readers, i.e. you my dears!

Soooo... these 3 NYC artists will be chosen through this open poll!

Thanks and may great local music triumph!

The Deli Staff

We are a little late with our CDs of the month, so this is actually the December 08 one...

It took me decades to appreciate that it is often if not always true that less is more. This is a development in taste many music lovers seem to follow: an early love for the chaotic fullness of rock, metal, industrial music, combined with despise for the mellow and sparse atmospheres our oldest friends seem to appreciate. Then, when the fast pace and chaotic fullness of work (or study) takes over our lives, there comes the need for sparser, emptier music, that can remind us how "slower emotions" are a potent antidote to that poison that is the (self imposed) workaholic lifestyle. Callers are a Brooklyn based trio that isn't afraid of silence in between notes. To describe their music we could say that "way less is much more", as songs can't really get any sparser than this - the void becomes a band member, more present than any other instrument. The band's music is full of blues and country references, although the songwriting has a progressive approach to these genres: some tracks like "More Than Right" make Nick Cave's slower ballads spring to mind, while others recall The Cowboy Junkies of course, and - once again - Joni Mitchell. Sara Lucas' expressive, somehow relinquishing alto infuses even more intensity to "Fortune", in particular in our favorite track, called "Rone". - PDG

Our Best of NYC Year End poll is approaching it's final stage (we are counting the open poll's votes, more news on Monday). But in the meantime, don't forget that our Best of NYC page here already stores all our Magazine Covers and our CDs and Artists of the Month from 2008. Cover artists and CDs of the month are selected directly by The Deli's staff, while the Artists of the Month are the winner of our biweekly poll: every 2 weeks we choose 8 bands and the one (or two) who get the most votes in our poll get prizes in studio time and a picture on the top of our NYC pages - which is the most clicked link in our entire website.

The musical musings of Sticklips have been likened to "a bunny with cyborg implants.” The fuzzier, more herbivorous half of the equation is 19-year-old Johanna Warren, whose disarmingly innocent melodies are adorned with unexpected touches of electric guitars, synthesizers, and electronic noise. Sticklips cultivates a cornucopious garden of musical influences, resulting in a ferociously original blend of electro/acoustic rocking/rolling that is sure to tickle the fancies of bunny and cyborg enthusiasts alike. - (as posted in The Deli's Open Blog - post your band's entries and Mp3s here).

In the last year a scary percentage of people I know had their first born child - my family is still at the "first born dog" stage (and by the way, dogs are so much better than kids in many ways) but we digress... Kidrockers produces all ages indie rock shows designed to bring NYC families together to enjoy new music. Artists perform original (not specifically made for children) songs in a manner that is both authentic and kid-friendly. Past artists include Mathew and Ira from Nada Surf, Los Campesinos!, Ra Ra Riot, Langhorne Slim and The War Eagles, Tad Kubler (of the Hold Steady), Pela, The Subjects, The Jealous Girlfriends and many more. The next kid friendly show will be featuring NYC noise princesses Vivian Girls, on January 11 at the Living Room together with Bones Royal. Will our heroines disconnect the distortion pedals for this opportunity? - PDG

Formed in New York City in 2008, The Voxys' sound has been described as '60s-inspired garage pop. This four piece consists of Julian Colin Sylvester and Trevor Murphy on guitars and vocals and with an air-tight rhythm section provided by William McCormack on bass and Chad Flewwelling on drums. With influences from British invasion to Madchester. These lads make no nonsense music that they want to listen to. Check them out at Club NME on February 12 - (as posted in The Deli's Open Blog - post your band's entries and Mp3s here).

Black Swan Green is a new Brooklyn based band with a sound that can be described as sonically driven emotive rock with shoe gaze textures. Their debut record, the ruin gaze..., was recorded the summer of 2008 and self released.
Going to immediately score points with fans of music that blends the textural adventures of Deer Hunter and My Bloody Valentine with soaring vocals a la Cure and the wandering guitar melodies you'll find in bands like Interpol and Ride.
Black Swan Green plays Mercury Lounge on January 6. - (as posted in The Deli's Open Blog - post your band's entries and Mp3s here).

While outrunning convenient genre labels, Lola Johnson journeyed from singer-songwriter open mics in Boston, got Anti-folk at the Sidewalk Cafe, sang the blues in Baltimore, and jazz on the Bayou. A troubadour’s life is one of meaningful transience, and Lola has had her share. Darting between city and country life, she has adeptly dodged the trappings of each in the nick of time. Lola has worked with many other inspiring musicians to create her ne album that will be release by Radian Records in January.- (as posted in The Deli's Open Blog - post your band's entries and Mp3s here).

At The Zipper Factory on January 9th and 10th, Brooklyn-based foursome The Lisps will be debuting FUTURITY, an original Civil War sci-fi musical based on a theatrically staged song cycle. FUTURITY tells the story of a Union soldier in the Civil War who is an aspiring science fiction writer. The work fuses traditional Americana, found text, experimental music, and The Lisps' own brand of quirky co-ed pop. FUTURITY is directed by Melissa Firlit with musical direction by C�sar Alvarez. The performance stars the members of The Lisps (C�sar Alvarez, Eric Farber, Jeremy Hoevenaar and Sammy Tunis) in addition to a 9 member chorus of singers, actors and musicians. This sure sounds like something that shouldn't be missed.

We discovered Luke Temple's last year's release "Snowbeast" a little late here at the Deli (out in 2007, it became our CD of the month in August 2008). Developed over a two-month period of stream-of-consciousness recording in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, Luke's self-titled debut under his new moniker Here We Go Magic is a remarkable departure from his signature singer-songwriter material. Luke recorded the album at home using analog synths, a cassette 4-track, and his trusty SM-57 mic, coloring the sound with warmth and creating textures you want to wrap yourself in. Many of the songs pulse with infectious afro-beat and kraut-rock influenced grooves, calling to mind classic albums like Remain in Light and Graceland. In contrast, the instrumental tracks conjure mystical introspective landscapes reminiscent of Popol Vuh's unforgettable ambience.

Blasting out of the streets of Chinatown, The Notorious MSG are three renegade restaurant workers on a mission to rip your asses in half with their high-sodium beats. After years of struggling in the kitchens, Hong Kong Fever, Down-Lo Mein and the Hunan Bomb found salvation in music. Hell-bent on revenge, they formed a band and the deep-fried force of nature called The Notorious MSG were born.

Together with Billy D. Wang on lead guitar and Noodles on drums, the group’s sound is an rectum-tearing explosion of old school hip-hop and 70’s rock and metal. Their stage show, a whirlwind of sound and fury, has reduced women to tears and made grown men incontinent. Check out theses crazy dudes at Santos Party House on January 25.

Mellow NJ based folksters Waking Lights are playing at The Annex�on December 28. This will be the six-piece Indie/Folk band from New Jersey's last show in Manhattan for a while so you shouldn't miss it. - (as posted in The Deli's Open Blog - post your band's entries and Mp3s here).

Musical peoples from NYC and beyond.

Two weeks are left before the end of 2008, and the time has come for our end of year musical "summary". Yes, you got that right: The Deli's "Best of (emerging) NYC 2008 Poll" is upon us - and this year for the first time we'll have a similar contest happening in all the cities we cover - that is 7 (SEVEN!) of them.

Despite somebody's allergy to polls and charts, we see our Year End Best of Polls as a fantastic opportunity to keep in touch with the pulse of the scene we cover: this is because this is not our poll - it belongs to NYC, as its final result is forged by the people who make the scene (our jurors) and the ones who experience it (the fans and our readers).

More info on how the poll works below.

DA PRIZEZ!

This year, the artists who will win this pretigiousissimo survey are going to be rewarded with a slew of prizes:

1. As usual, the winner of the poll will grace the cover of our Spring 2009 printed issue, while 2nd and 3rd classified will get a smaller picture on the same cover.

2. The first 3 artists will also be rewarded with hours of free studio time, gigabites of software and miles vouchers from our generous sponsors - we have a pool of prizes exceeding $15k in value!

Also, all nominated artists will get a write up in our spring issue and website too of course!

DA RULZ!

You may ask yourself: "how does this poll work?". Here's a quick explanation:

1. ELIGIBILITYZ!

- Only NYC/NJ/LI based artists/bands who performed live in 2008 can compete. "NYC based" means that a band needs to have at least one of their members living in one of the mentioned areas.

- Only artists that can be considered "emerging" can compete. Artists signed to major labels can be voted for as long as they don't have a record released under that label yet. Artists that already had some sort of "big record sales break" before 2008 (like Clap your Hands Say Yeah, TV on The Radio or Animal Collective for example) are not considered as "emerging artists". Artists who had a break in 2008 can be voted, as they are still considered "emerging".

STAGE 1: DA NOMINATIONZ!

Three of the NYC artists competing for this year's "Best of" will be nominated by our readers, i.e. you. The poll for the readers' nominations will be open from December 15 until December 31 (see separate blog entry - coming soon). In the meantime the Jury will be asked to vote for their Nominees.

STAGE 2: DA FINAL VOTZ!

In early January all the nominees will undergo a popular vote, which will last for about 2 weeks. After this, the number of votes from the readers will be added up to the votes from the Jury and a chart will be compiled.

Each Judge will be asked to vote for 3 artists, (3 points for first, 2 for second, and 1 for third).

The artist/band which will get the most votes from the readers' poll will get 3 points - 2 for second, and 1 for third. Single readers' votes will also be counted as 0.001 points (which means that 1,000 readers votes equals 1 point, and, for example, 87 readers' votes equals 0.087 points).

DA QUESTIONZ!

We are aware that this sounds extremely confusing. It's actually easier than it sounds, but as we still believe in Glasnost, we invite you to ask any questions you may have in this blog's entry's comments section.

This year we managed to involve many companies in our Best of NYC Poll.

Here is the pool of Prizes, which will be distributed among the first 3 bands:

- A copy of Amplitube 2.0 plug in or T-Racks 3.0 mastering software from IK Multimedia
- A copy of BFD 2.0 acoustic drums plug in emulation from FXpansion
- 9 Hours of Studio time at Grand Street Studios
- Free Mastering time at Vault Mastering + 50% rate for their next album
- Rainmaker Public Relations National Half Campaign
- 18 hours of studio time at Media Recording Studios
- $750 in vouchers for $1k+ CD printing package at Perfect CDs
- Free Mastering time at West West Side Music
- Free Mastering time at The Lodge
- $500 in vouchers to spend at Main Drag Music

The Deli Staff

Congrats to NYC Psych Rock duo turned quartet Glint for winning this year last edition of our biweekly Artist of the Month Poll. Wonder why it's called artist of the Month if it's biweekly? C'mon, who on earth would ever go around saying: "We are the band of the biweek! We are the band of the biweek!". You can read the review of Glint's latest record here.

If there is something that modern New York City music lacks these days it is that imperceptible, indescribable, elusive feature: Soul. That’s not to say there is a dearth of Soul but it has become cool to replace Soul with quirk, i.e. to replace heart with too much brains. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but brains have a very hard time faking what our hearts can do. Sometimes, we want a songwriter who will reach into our guts and yank out the butterflies like Britney Boras. The best track on her myspace “Hey There” begins with a fiery stomping and clapping theme that arrive at Britney’s simple but incredibly catchy guitar twang and her light soulful voice. The rest of the song takes us on a ride through trumpet distortion and vocoder tricks but the bedrock of the song is always Boras’ songwriting. The arrangements and production on her songs are quite dense, but there is a soulful joy about them that obviously came from fun ideas zipping around the studio in the same way that Fleetwood Mac’s “Tusk” illustrates. If her upcoming EP comes out the way the songs on her Myspace sound we’ll have a musician on her way to a St. Vincent or even Jenny Lewis caliber. Hope she makes it. - Andrew Spaulding

Psych-rock guitar sorceress VivaLaBanda (Viva DeConcini) will perform on a double bill this Tuesday night (the 16th) at Southpaw with Scott Kettner's Nation Beat for a show she and Kettner have dubbed "America is Part of the World." Both Nation Beat and VIVA weave eclectic sonic landscapes; Nation Beat combines the music of northeastern Brazil and North America, and VIVA merges psych-rock, Americana and world beat. In the show's press relase, VIVA explains, "it used to make me sad to think of the dominance of American pop music. I mean how can you not be disheartened when you get into a taxi in Havana and the radio is playing The Spice Girls' salsa flavored hit...I've always been into music from other parts of the world because it was good, but also because it made me feel less like an ignorant hegemonic American, so "world music" provided me with a wonderful escape. Strangely enough, it was a Brazilian, Cyro Baptista who brought me around full circle to my roots in good old rock and roll and I realized that maybe 'America Is Part Of The World'." VIVA's recently released double-album, Electric Cabaret Volume One & Volume Two, features arrangments by Peter Apfelbaum & The NY Hieroglyphics as well as VIVA-only recordings, and her band with Apfelbaum—VIVA la Sextet featuring Peter Apfelbaum—will perform its wide-ranging songs at the show. The Monika H. Band, known for its own brand of psychedelic art-rock, will open.