The sun and the moon, and even Mars
The Milky Way and fucking shooting stars
UFOs, a river flows
Plant a little seed and nature grows
Niagara Falls and the pyramids
Everything you believed in as kids
Fucking rainbows after it rains
there’s enough miracles here to blow your brains
I fed a fish to a pelican at Frisco bay
It tried to eat my cell phone, he ran away
And music is magic, pure and clean
You can feel it and hear it but it can’t be seen
Taken from their latest two-track EP, Tastes Like Magic, Three Red Birds showcases mr. Gnome’s most appealing characteritsic; their gorgeous handling of the masculine vs the feminine. While this would make sense, seeing as this is a male/female duo, the actual execution of the theme is impressive. Sludgy, aggressive guitars sparring with the haunting, delicate vocals of Nicole Barille make for an immediately engaging listen that should have you rifling through the rest of their discography. Kinda like a heavy Land of Talk, sans the boring.
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At a recent production (recent being circa 1995), permatanned paddywhacker Michael Flatley and his Riverdance crew performed an impromptu tap routine to the tune of Adebisi Shank’s 2008 smash ‘Snakehips.’
When asked to comment on the performance, Flatley was unresponsive, lending credence to rumours that his face may, in fact, be constructed entirely of wax.
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So the sun finally came (and stayed) out today, meaning it is officially time for sick summer mix tapes. What’s that, it’s only April? This is England. Got sun? Got shorts? Got temperatures above 20 degrees celsius? Got summer. Besides, Buddy Peace deserves to be heard by everyone, at all times of the year – anyone who can make MF Doom seem right at home in Jose Gonzalez’ IKEA kitchen is clearly doing something right. So dig out that SPF factor 50, whack on them sunnies, and enjoy the scorchingly mild heat to the tune of one of the best mix tapes of the last decade in Wolf Diesel Mountain. The track below is a minimix of that album, with a few extra bits thrown in for good measure.
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Starkey is a Philadelphia producer who is releasing his second full-length LP, Ear Drums and Black Holes, on April 19 with Planet Mu Records. Starkey’s bouncy, major-key sound is a bit out of place on the usually abstract Planet Mu, but the convoluted details in his production and the active, heavy beats fit in nicely. The two tracks below represent the two distant poles of Starkey’s sound. “OK Luv” is ever-changing and throbbing like any good club banger, whereas “Stars” is introspective and sidereal, which works well with Anneka’s guest vocals. Make sure you also check out the Lala sidebar because I’ve uploaded an alternate version of “OK Luv.”
Starkey – “OK Luv”
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I’ll be honest: I wasn’t attracted in the least bit to Best Coast because of their music. This isn’t because their music is bad, of course (well, it mostly isn’t) – “The Road”, found on the band’s Something in the Way EP, is one of the best songs of this young year. But what intrigued me was that Bethany Cosentino, the muscle behind the project, was also affiliated with a Cali band called Pocahaunted, which is a totally psychotic psych-folk band that doesn’t sound like it should have any associations with something as phosphorescent as a band like Best Coast. Questions brewed in my mind: why would someone like Cosentino want to take part in a lo-fi, unapologetically trendy project like this? For fleeting recognition from bloggers? (She succeeded in that regard.) Or, perhaps, and this is what I believe to be the case, Cosentino got hung-up in the confines of Pocahaunted, a band so experimental that doing something more traditional would seem like a cop-out. Thus, a new moniker, and a new beginning from those who don’t discover your music through means that involve your former band, was born.
It won’t surprise me, however, if Cosentino totally defies her past allegiances; “The Road” is a step towards doing so. While “Something in the Way” and “Wish He Was You” were sunshiney to the point of being vexatious, “The Road” is immediately a different beast: its opening riff is hard and instant, and propels the rest of the song…
For those of you who haven’t checked out one of Japan’s most endearing songwriters (and why haven’t you??), now is certainly as good a time as any to seek out Shugo Tokumaru who, for this lowly critic’s money, released one of last decade’s strongest pop collections. Shugo is gearing up to release his fourth album, Port Entropy, in Japan on April 21, three years after Exit‘s sugar rush. Based on the new video below, we are in for some more indelible, colorful, very foreign folk music. No news yet on release dates around the world, but that shouldn’t stop you from eating up the rest of this man’s discography. It is weird and humble in a very, very good way.
Last month, Pantha Du Prince released “Stick to My Side”, a collaboration with Noah Lennox (Panda Bear) of Animal Collective, as a single. The song comes from his superb February release Black Noise. With the single came five remixes, two of which are posted here. The former is a Four Tet remix, which brings the song closer to a dancefloor jam a la “Love Cry” with enhanced bass and synths. The second takes a completely different spin on the song and makes it more of an Explosions in the Sky cum Toro y Moi affair, emphasizing the hidden guitar riff in the song and altering Panda Bear’s vocals with heavy delay and modulation. Both are excellent interpretations of an already great song.
Blame it on my peers (who have been a bit slow to this new genre reveal), but dubstep has been infecting the air lately. Spreading to this disease is former Seattle-based producer Deceptikon (Zack Wright), whose latest release Mythology of the Metropolis has dropped the womp-womp kick right into his chill electronic work. The result is nod-worthy tracks like Mythology’s propulsive opener, “Tokyo Burning,” which shows just how far dubstep has come at creating a legitimate and uniform sound, and how artists like Deceptikon are splaying it across their own influences. “Tokyo Burning” even bangs a bit like old school hip-hop, flopping seamlessly between a woodpecker beat and a two-step jig worthy of the illest Biggie verse never recorded. Makes one wonder what might happen if Flying Lotus decided dubstep was his thing.
Mythology of the Metropolis was released March 16 on Daly City Records
As if a song from a guy named Gonjasufi could sound like anything else. Today’s song of the day is a hazy, stoner friendly trip hop track off Gonjasufi’s latest release, “A Sufi and a Killer.” The track, “Ancestors,” is one of the tops off the album, a hypnotic, mysteriously ominous prayer catering to Gonjasufi’s weirdly desperate voice. Produced by Flying Lotus, this shit’s pretty fuckin good. Toke UP.
Gonjasufi- “Ancestors”
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A music video that makes you enjoy a song you’d otherwise hate is a rarity. It only occurs once in a great, great while (usually, once a month, but hey sometimes it can even be two months!), and it’s usually accompanied by either a pop-culture reference typhoon, or Lady Gaga. The new video for Hot Chip’s “I Feel Better” off of their newest One Life Stand breaks this convention by being an entirely serious, stylish affair replete with incredible production values and hypnotizing camera work and dance moves. Before you blow this off as hipster garbage, I implore you to take a look at the world Hot Chip create in “I Feel Better”.
The last time we checked in with German-born, English-based Irish songwriter (get yer head around that one) Yngve Wieland, he was a solo artist, having just released his debut album on his own Posttone Records in late 2008. Tell Men This was good enough to earn a glowing review and the #6 spot on my best of 2008 list, but that was small change compared to the groundwork Wieland was doing on the live circuit in the UK and Ireland.
There has been much change since the album’s release. Yngve made the transition from solo project to full-time band, taking up the moniker Yngve & the Innocent, in 2009, and Nothing Was Delivered is the first formal product of this union (although that year’s Have You No Love was recorded by the band, it was released under Yngve’s name).
‘You’ve Been Released’ continues in much the same vein as his previous recordings, making liberal use of modern Americana and classic influences, from Bright Eyes to Neil Young, with a hefty dose of blues guitar and barrel-house piano adding weight to the already up-tempo arrangement. Check the single out below, and stayed tuned to Yngve’s MySpace for new songs over the coming weeks.
Nothing Was Delivered is scheduled for release on April 23.
Yngve & the Innocent – ‘You’ve Been Released’
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In a world where nothing is taken seriously, everything is fair game, multi-media marketing is of paramount importance, and postmodernism runs rife enough to allow us to see intelligence and subtlety in just about anything, the man who samples Lil’ Wayne and slaps it over a Disney sample, forcing ‘Stuntin’ Like My Daddy’ to be a part of one of the most famous father/son stories of all time, making macho thuggery child-friendly, and making nostalgia current, is King.
Face it; DJ Doyou is what 2010 really sounds like.
Broken Social Scene may own the world’s biggest welcome mat (along with revolving door) for their band members, but Broken Social Scene are consistently one of the class acts within the indie rock landscape. Their way of toying around with ideas as they move through an album, or even a set list, are one of the main attractions to Broken Social Scene’s art-rock style, as they make it work so effortlessly and elegantly. On May 4th, Broken Social Scene will release their newest album Forgiveness Rock Record, one that surely rival the band’s impressive discography, judging from their single, “World Sick,” provided below.
Two years ago, I accepted a promotional album called ‘Ascendant’ from a guy named Mark Northfield. At the time, I didn’t think too much of it. I receive promos all the time, and while this one was certainly more enjoyable than most, I am ashamed to admit I basically dismissed it. I shirked giving it a (deserved) full scale review, instead giving it a cheeky soundoff based off a misguided first impression and not thinking much of it.
But in doing this, I short changed the album’s depth. ‘Ascendant’ has been an album I’ve come back to quite regularly over the past two years, and in doing so, I’ve discovered a deep, intricate album. Northfield’s sound is familiar, but not quite like anything I’ve encountered before. ‘Ascendant’ is jazzy, classy, intimate; like its set in a smokey bar where you’re the only one reeeeally listening. Northfield’s cast of friends brings a vaudevillian charm to each track, realizing a world that romanticizes theatricality, the 19th century brilliantly recaptured.
Northfield, I assume, frequents this site, as he has in the past cited on his Myspace my soundoff and the fact I placed his album (probably too low) on my top 100 albums of the decade. I hope he comes across this blog post and accepts this apology. I feel as though I’ve shortchanged him for far too long. I hope to get in a full review of ‘Ascendant’ this month. Maybe too little too late, but better late than never.
Taken from their latest two-track EP, Tastes Like Magic, Three Red Birds showcases mr. Gnome’s most appealing characteritsic; their gorgeous handling of the masculine vs the feminine. While this would make sense, seeing as this is a male/female duo, the actual execution of the theme is impressive. Sludgy, aggressive guitars sparring with the haunting, delicate vocals of Nicole Barille make for an immediately engaging listen that should have you rifling through the rest of their discography. Kinda like a heavy Land of Talk, sans the boring.
So the sun finally came (and stayed) out today, meaning it is officially time for sick summer mix tapes. What’s that, it’s only April? This is England. Got sun? Got shorts? Got temperatures above 20 degrees celsius? Got summer. Besides, Buddy Peace deserves to be heard by everyone, at all times of the year – anyone who can make MF Doom seem right at home in Jose Gonzalez’ IKEA kitchen is clearly doing something right. So dig out that SPF factor 50, whack on them sunnies, and enjoy the scorchingly mild heat to the tune of one of the best mix tapes of the last decade in Wolf Diesel Mountain. The track below is a minimix of that album, with a few extra bits thrown in for good measure.
Last month, Pantha Du Prince released “Stick to My Side”, a collaboration with Noah Lennox (Panda Bear) of Animal Collective, as a single. The song comes from his superb February release Black Noise. With the single came five remixes, two of which are posted here. The former is a Four Tet remix, which brings the song closer to a dancefloor jam a la “Love Cry” with enhanced bass and synths. The second takes a completely different spin on the song and makes it more of an Explosions in the Sky cum Toro y Moi affair, emphasizing the hidden guitar riff in the song and altering Panda Bear’s vocals with heavy delay and modulation. Both are excellent interpretations of an already great song.
