It must be showcase season, because New York imprint Tee Pee Records has announced a slew of label nights as they always do. And as per usual, they’ve put together a couple killer evenings of heavy psych and rock, which will take place as part of the Montreal Pop and CMJ fests. Fortunately, as you can see below, most of the bands playing the CMJ showcases in Brooklyn don’t have to travel too far to get there.

Here’s the news off the PR wire:

New York City-based independent rock label Tee Pee Records has announced plans to showcase at two of North America‘s most celebrated music festivals in the coming weeks. On Thursday, Sept. 22, Tee Pee will proudly showcase an array of its artists at the 10th annual Pop Montreal festival, an annual music festival occurring in Montreal, Quebec. Artists slated to appear include Canadian psychedelic rockers Quest for Fire, fast-rising Brooklyn stargazers Naam, Toronto hardcore punks Burning Love and Brooklyn “astral metal” band Elks.

The following evening (Sept. 23), Tee Pee will bring the family to Toronto, ON, with a supercharged show at The Silver Dollar Room. Quest for Fire and Elks will bring the rock and the whole shebang will conclude with a (super loud) performance from Naam.

Tee Pee will follow the Pop Montreal showcase and Toronto show with not one, but TWO showcases at the 32nd annual CMJ Music Marathon, set to take place Oct. 18-22 in NYC. Tee Pee will host the first of its CMJ showcases on Wednesday, Oct. 19 at Brooklyn‘s Saint Vitus Bar and follow with a second evening of diverse Rock ‘N’ Roll on Friday, Oct. 21 at Union Pool.

The lineups for Tee Pee Records‘ 2011 CMJ showcases are as follows (check it out!):

Tee Pee Records CMJ (Night 1)
Wednesday Oct. 19 at Saint Vitus Bar
(1120 Manhattan Ave (between Clay St & Box St), Brooklyn, NY 11222
Featuring:
Hopewell (Brooklyn, NY)
Weird Owl (Brooklyn, NY)
The Main Street Gospel (Columbus, OH)
Nordic Nomadic (Feat. Chad Ross of Quest for Fire, Toronto, ON)
Dead Stars (Brooklyn, NY)

Tee Pee Records CMJ (Night 2)
Friday, Oct. 21 at Union Pool
(484 Union Ave. # A, Brooklyn, NY 11211-3440)
Featuring:
Naam (Brooklyn, NY)
Very Special Guest TBA (Brooklyn, NY)
The Fucking Wrath (Montalvo, CA)
Elks (Brooklyn, NY)
Mirror Queen (Brooklyn, NY)
Unstoppable Death Machines (Brooklyn, NY)

Brooklyn psychedelicaticians Weird Owl get down with freaky heathen sun worship, organ-infused tonal bliss and a progressive spirit so serene it’ll have you at inner peace before you can even get through that mantra. To wit, the forebodingly-titled “Skin the Dawn” from their second album on Tee Pee Records, the ever-flowing Build Your Beast a Fire.

While the album itself is built as a complete idea — the songs not quite united as one large piece, but definitely copping to the same friendly ambience — “Skin the Dawn” is one of the few cuts that can be taken on its own and still give a general idea of Build Your Beast a Fire as a whole, with its synth swirl, oddity percussion, semi-chant vocals and gorgeous folk sensibility.

The full-length varies madly with acoustics, electrics, slide and some tracks that are just mood-setting noise, and if I’m honest, I had a hard time picking a single song to hopefully some it up — the wah sprawl of “Mirrors in the Mud” and the crunchier space of “Parallax Eyes” were also under consideration — but hopefully “Skin the Dawn” does it. Take a listen on the player below and let me know what you think:

[mp3player width=460 height=120 config=fmp_jw_widget_config.xml playlist=weird-owl.xml]

Weird Owl‘s Build Your Beast a Fire is out July 26, 2011. More info at Tee Pee Records‘ website. The band will also be playing a record release show Aug. 5 at Union Pool in Brooklyn, with Heliotropes and Blanko Noiry also on the bill. Here’s the flier for that:

They’re high in the running for Best Moniker Pun, Brooklyn-region (some stiff competition there), and it came down the chute the other day that Tee Pee psychedelic five-piece Weird Owl will have a new full-length out this July. There’s nothing quite like psych in the hot summer. It makes everything that much hotter, true, but also infinitely more bearable, and in the coming days of “let’s save money by shutting off the A/C” office politics, I’ll take what I can get for comfort.

The news reads thusly:

Weird Owl, the Brooklyn band that creates music by “searching out the convergence of imagination, poetry and sound,” will release its sophomore album Build Your Beast a Fire on July 26 via Tee Pee Records. The follow-up to the band’s 2009 debut Ever the Silver Chord be Loosed was recorded at Verdant Studio in Vermont with Justin Pizzoferrato (Dinosaur Jr., Witch, Sonic Youth) and The Drawing Room in Kingston, NY, with Bishop Allen‘s Justin Rice.

“Build Your Beast a Fire represents Weird Owl in its most structured and melodic incarnation yet,” commented vocalist/bassist Trevor Tyrrell. “The album is part magical, part scientific; part futuristic, part ancient; part muscular, part psychological; part heavenly and part terrestrial. It dwells perfectly in a universe of its own creation.”

The track listing for Weird Owl‘s Build Your Beast a Fire is as follows:
1. No Time Nor No Space
2. Up From the Root
3. Stral Proj
4. Tiny Sleeping Animals
5. Mirrors in the Mud
6. Parallax Eyes
7. Build Your Beast a Fire II
8. Saucer-Shaped Shadow
9. Skin the Dawn
10. Two-Headed Brother
11. Horn Antler Tusk
12. Mountains on Top of Buried Stars
13. Space Bolero
14. What We See What We Know
15. Build Your Beast a Fire I

Tee Pee Records head trip rockers The Assemble Head in Sunburst Sound have teamed up with labelmates Weird Owl for a quick run of West Coast dates. Unfortunately, they haven’t named the tour AssOwl ’09, but even good looking Californians can’t get everything in life. I mean, you already got hoverboards. What more do you people need?

Here is the info as it showed up in the press release:

Assemble Head in Sunburst Sound and Weird Owl have mapped out a short West Coast tour for early July. The band is also premiering the track “By the Rippling Green” off of their recently released album When Sweet Sleep Returned [reviewed here].

TOUR DATES:
6/19 – The Great American Music Hall – San Francisco, CA*
6/20 – Lounge Underground – Monterey, CA**
7/06 – Comet Tavern – Seattle, WA
7/07 – The East End – Portland, OR
7/08 – The Stillwater – Ashland, OR
7/09 – The Hemlock – San Francisco, CA
7/10 – The Crepe Place – Santa Cruz, CA
* w/ Sleepy Sun & Spindrift
** w/ Spindrift