digisounds

Jean Michel Jarre - Téo & Téa

2007-08-17T09:46:00.000-07:00

Téo & Téa could be described as mood music – within minutes of putting it on for the first time, I was in a bad mood. I had been looking forward to a new album from Jean Michel Jarre for some time – I don't know what my expectations were exactly, but it certainly wasn't this. The first track, "Fresh News" became painfully irritating very quickly, but fortunately it was over just as I was about to head for the skip button. Skipping the first track on a new album? Surely not a good sign.

The overall style of Téo & Téa could easily be compared to Zoolook or Metamorphoses, with a heavy use of samples, cut up sounds, drum loops and vocal treatments. Unfortunately it is not as successful or as enjoyable as on the aforementioned albums, and although Téo & Téa is energetic and dynamic, the passion is sadly lacking.

I had heard the title track prior to the album's release and although it didn't particularly appeal to me with its heavy dance influence, it does stand up as one of the album's strongest tracks and certainly most danceable. However the style of "Téo & Téa doesn't represent the style of the album, and anybody hoping for an album of dancefloor fillers, will be disappointed.

Having previously photographed his ex partner Isabelle Adjani's girly bits for the cover of 2003's Geometry of Love, this album sees Jean Michel's new wife Anne Parillaud guesting on faked orgasm duties during "Beautiful Agony". Although musically it makes for one of the album's better tracks, one does question if the series of intimate moans is absolutely necessary.

There are several moments of brilliance throughout the album, but these are just parts of songs rather than full pieces. For me the tracks that really work well are "Téo & Téa 4:00am", "Beautiful Agony", "OK, Do It Fast", "Partners In Crime 2", "Melacholic Rodeo" and the album's best song and main saving grace, "Vintage" – perhaps the only track truly comparable to classic Jarre.

Although original studio albums have been few and far between over the last 17 years, albums such as Chronologie, Oxygene 7-13, Metamorphoses and Geometry of Love rank among his greatest works, and are all albums with which I fell instantly in love. With this in mind, Téo & Téa's inaccessibility comes as something of a surprise, with only a few tracks coming anywhere close to the classic sound and style one would normally associate with Jean Michel Jarre. In all fairness, the rest of the tracks could have been produced by anybody.

Don't bother with the bonus DVD either, unless you have a surround sound system to play it on. There's also the 3-minute CGI heavy promo video for the title track, which is nice but somewhat short lived. It is a shame that the long form video hasn't been exploited more on DVD issues such as this, given the ease of production by today's technology. Instead all you get to accompany the 5.1 mix is a slightly animated version of the album sleeve (the neon signage flickers).

Not that I was ever expecting another Oxygene but Téo & Téa lacks the flowing atmosphere and creativity found on most of Jarre's albums. And while it's good to diversity, it doesn't feel like I have been taken anywhere new with this album. Labelled as his first 'proper' studio album since 2000's Metamorphoses, one can't help but question if the creative spark has gone out during the time elapsed.

It's not that the music is bad though – on the contrary. It's fun, upbeat, funky, certainly lively... but it just doesn't take me on an exciting musical journey like his other albums do. I don't feel at all inspired by it, and that, is perhaps what I find most frustrating.

Overall, Téo & Téa proved to be quite disappointing, which after such a long wait, is particularly saddening. Although something does keep drawing me back to it, so maybe time will have to tell with this one...

Honeyroot : Heavy Drops : Manhatten Clique Remix

2007-08-17T09:45:00.000-07:00

Taken from electronica pioneers Honeyroot's debut album "The Sun Will Come" out 16th July 2007.
From the very first to the very last note, The Sun Will Come is a classic summer album, to sit alongside Air's Moon Safari, Moby's Play and Royskopp's Melody AM but with a sound that is uniquely Honeyroot. A must for beach parties, dance floors and back gardens across the globe..

Honeyroot - The Sun Will Come

2007-08-17T09:44:00.000-07:00

Cast any preconceptions aside right now. Although Honeyroot may compromise of Heaven 17 lead singer, Glen Gregory and ex- ABC member Keith Lowndes, this is no rehash of eighties synth pop and certainly doesn’t herald a return of the New Romantics. Instead, what is to be found on this little gem of an album is an eclectic mix of ambient, electronica dusted bliss.

These Sheffield sons have created a seamless album, mixing together dreamy soul tinged ditties along with uplifting, dance infused tracks, flecked with electronic gold. With touches of Royksopp, Zero 7 and fragments of Air’s Moon Safari, this is a veritable audio treat for any ears.

“Goodbye” begins the sweet seduction of the listener, with its ethereal tones rising up slowly and swelling to a terrific climax of strings and synths. Intensely cinematic, it explains why the band are so in demand for penning scores for film, television and advertising.

The vein of seductive dreaminess continues throughout The Sun Will Come; everything drips with a mesmeric quality. The honeyed, soulful voice of Briony Greenhill on the slow burning “Nobody Loves You (The Way I Do)” is intoxicating as she almost playfully promises 'I’ll take you places you have never been'. This is moody, lo-fi heaven of the highest order.

But when the album does veer into more into more electronica inspired areas, it does so with gusto. No sparse beats, nor an excessive amount of beeps and pips, just the most pin sharp, exacting noises, timed to perfection. Every single iota of noise seems to have been put in place with the most tender and precise of hands and infused with an intense joy.

The Sun Will Come is reminiscent of sitting under trees on warm days; dappled sunlight breaking through the leaves, allowing you to reach an almost Zen-like state: a higher state of musical consciousness, if you will. The only bugbear is that it does not contain their haunting cover of “Love Will Tear Us Apart”, but nonetheless, this is still a remarkable and impressive album.

Pop Levi - The Return To Form Black Magick Party

2007-08-17T09:43:00.000-07:00

Pop Levi's Debut Album ©LM

Pop Levi - ReviewReviewReview The Return To Form Black Magick Party (Counter)

2007-08-17T09:42:00.001-07:00

When your real name is Pop Levi, what else to do but rise to it? This London-born, sometime Liverpool-residing tenant of LA-la-land formed Super Numeri and played bass for Ladytron on his way to The Return To Form Black Magick Party. It's unclear which part of his previous work was below par.

Originally signed to Ladytron lynchpin Danny Hunt's Invicta HiFi label, Pop released a couple of singles before being snapped up by Ninja Tune, who loved him so much they set up his own imprint, Counter Records, with which to show him off. From the album cover of that label's first release, Pop's big eyes stare out from under a silky mop of blond locks, the face suggesting a pinch of John Lennon and a smidgen of Monty Python's Graham Chapman. He looks talented and interesting. So far so stylistic, but what about the music?

When a press release compares an artist to Marc Bolan, John Lennon, Jimi Hendrix and just about everyone else in music whose cool has stood the test of time from the '70s to the noughties, the correct response is to suck teeth and fetch a truckload of salt. But Pop's helium-tinged vocals, the record's warm and full-sounding production (the work of Pop himself, with Devendra Banhart's knob-twiddler Thom Monahan), songs with enough hooks to run a fishing fleet and an otherworldly, all-consuming addictive quality that's completely beyond the current vogue for dull guitar bands all point to a press release that has a point.

Sugar Assault Me Now opens the album as it means to go on, getting the Bolan comparisons in early (see also (A Style Called) Crying Chic). If ginger beer could be a song, this effervescent slice of psychedelic glam would be it. Hand claps, excitable drums and layers of delay pedals lashing about in the vocal tracks all envelop a song at once familiar yet once removed from overly so. And like much of what follows, it sounds like Pop had a damned fun time making it, evoking the spirits of the greats as he went along.

After the mildly frantic opening, the pace varies. There are slower tracks too, each one distinctive enough to be memorable as unique from the rest. Blue Honey is the obvious Hendrix comparison, but only in passing - there's much more on display here. Any doubts about his originality are laid to rest by future single Pick-Me-Up-Uppercut, an insistent and ostensibly straightforward pop song that is, by its production, transformed into The Pipettes floating in a bubblegum balloon through the galaxy. Skip Ghetto is a change of pace and mood again with acoustic guitar and a vaguely hippyish feel, and in a record chock-full of highlights is one of the woozier of them. Flirting is another of the record's quieter numbers, reminding of Lennon. Marvellously, he's as effective at these numbers as he is at the uptempo stuff.

Just when you think Pop must be running low on whatever it is he takes to make this stuff, along comes Dollar Bill Rock, a three-chord wonder that runs across the dance floor, tells you T-Rex never died, grabs you by the hand and takes you hopscotching. Who needs illicit substances when this really rather tremendous stuff exists?

Mournin' Light is a little more adventurous with rhythm, but in an exceptionally strong album it's probably the weakest number. But no matter, for there are three more divine little ditties to follow, beginning with the spaced out, echo laden See My Lord. This could be the soundtrack to Lennon meeting yogis and floating about in a meditative ether of wonder and enlightenment. Happily he comes back to the place inhabited by us mortals sporting Hades' Lady, the yogis shambling a drum beat somewhere off to his left. He stays in Lennon mode for the closing ballad, From The Day That You Were Born and wraps up a quite extraordinary debut with the panache with which he began it.

Pop Levi is an oddball, an eccentric in the finest English tradition and a man who evokes the effortless, timeless cool of many and varied heroes of modern music's life and times. That he does all this on a debut without missing a beat must surely be enough to secure him wild fans, industry gongs and oodles of silver for his sassy charms. Planet Earth is better for this album's existence.

Goose - Bring it On

2007-08-17T09:41:00.001-07:00

Video clip from the Belgium group "Goose" titled "Bring it on" Racing in soapbox cars downhill thru a Belgium city

Goose - Bring It On

2007-08-17T09:40:00.001-07:00

Belgium isn’t well known for producing anything much of musical worth, so it’s understandable to hold some reservations about a band who aim to reinvent the dance floor, busting some moves with their rhythms and beats.

Goose have managed to mix rock, pop and dance beats together with what seems to be natural ease. This glam-style of music has an infectious quality to make you move. You’ve got to be either deaf or paralysed if you don’t tap your feet to Goose’s music.

It makes a welcome change to come across a dance style of music that isn’t pieced together with samplers, instead using good old musicianship. Combining Beatles-style harmonies, T-Rex beats and dirty synthesizer sounds similar to Kraftwerk, Goose align them all to form an array of tunes. It’s easy to say that there is a resemblance to LCD Soundsytem, but there’s much more to them than that.

People have been saying for a long time that this form of music is the future, and with Goose there’s every reason to think that perhaps it is.

Tracey Thorn

2007-08-17T09:39:00.001-07:00

Video to 'It's all true' hit by Tracey Thorn

Tracy Thorn - Out of the Woods

2007-08-17T09:37:00.002-07:00

Before Björk, before Goldfrapp, before Imogen Heap, Tracy Thorn was utilizing her soft yet no-nonsense angel croons to add life to electronica ballads and dance floor anthems. Now, after a self-imposed five-year absence in order to concentrate on family life, the voice that brought you “Missing” (Everything But The Girl) and “Protection” (Massive Attack) is back with a solo record that will surely please fans of her every era. There are minimal torch songs (opener “Here it Comes Again”), synth pop (single “It’s All True”), funky catwalk struts (“Get Around to It”), and of course the kind of bittersweet-pop-with-glitchy-electronica that she helped pioneer (“Easy,” “Falling Off a Log”), all piloted by a melodiousness that’s sometimes hard to fathom. Seriously, imagine a Bristol-bred Sarah McLachlan with all her affecting powers intact but also strengthened by an earthy toughness, and you’ve got Out of the Woods. It is painfully exquisite, touching, romantic, gorgeous, and of course melodic, but it never feels wimpy. It simply feels pretty and strong.

Bishop Allen - Butterfly Nets

2007-08-17T09:37:00.001-07:00

Music Video for "Butterfly Nets" off of their new album - Broken String. Visit them at www.bishopallen.com.

Bishop Allen - The Broken String

2007-08-17T09:33:00.000-07:00

One of the worst phrases to bring up in a discussion about music is "all their songs sound the same." Most likely, anyone who has seriously spoken about their favorite bands with a group of friends has heard this criticism leveled with impunity. Every band has their particular style, with its own tweaks, nuances, and subtleties that may not be readily apparent to a hostile ear. That's why it pains me so to put forward this accusation in regards to Bishop Allen's latest release, The Broken String. While listening through this album, I often found it difficult to segregate individual tracks, rather than digest each simmering progression as one long, enduring song. In fairness, perhaps this is the vibe that the band's core members, Justin Rice and Christian Rudder, were going for. However, when playing this disc, each track faded into the next and it felt like one extended jam session that started off capturing the crowd's attention until it slowly dwindled off and eventually fell flat.

Rice and Rudder do try to resuscitate the ailing sound with a kicking jumpstart of an anthem towards the end of the album entitled, "Middle Management," which was an enjoyable track, but by that point, it's a bit too little too late. Each guitar hit trumped up behind a standard but well-executed drum beat may get your toes tapping if you have not already been put to sleep by the first nine tracks. The music is not bad, but simply uninspiring. You will never hear these songs and think, "that was terrible." Yet, at best, most of these tracks are background noise at a small get together, catchy and sweet enough to liven up the room so long as no one pays too close attention.

The musical style might easily give you a tooth ache from the saccharine sweetened twist the listener imbibes with each sugary note. At times, the group seems to be channeling a stripped down Beck or Ben Folds filtered through a lollipop The lyrics are simple, generally inoffensive, but far from compelling. They seem to offer "slice of life" style prose with little insight or meaningful exposition to be found. When they do stray from this path, as they do with songs like "Butterfly Nets" where a velvet tongued woman takes over lead singing duties and a saxophone drives the accompaniment, the results are above average, if not outright grand. However, such gems are few and far between.

The songs do have a pleasant "singing 'round the campfire" sensibility to them. The vocals, however, tend to wear on you, not quite living up to the standard of a professional release. Each line is warbled with a rough, breathy, high-pitched tone that seems harmless enough at track one, but which begins to grate halfway through the disc. Nine of these tracks are culled from a previous project by Bishop Allen where they recorded and released a new EP every month for a year. Perhaps in this rigor and churn of music, what made their songs special in the first place became diluted. Regardless, overall, The Broken String is an album with the occasional highlight spread out among a sea of dim bulbs.

to my boy - The Grid (Vid)

2007-07-10T07:35:00.001-07:00

From The Grid Album

To My Boy - Messages

2007-07-10T07:33:00.000-07:00

Two boys make up this promising outfit and describe themselves on their Myspace site as "2 piece futurist pop made with guitar and computer. From Liverpool and Chesterfield we write letters to you". Their names sound almost familiar - Sam White and Jack Snape. A kind of modest White Stripes with more plugs, then?

Well not really, though the Chesterfield element bears investigating, as singer White has a touch of the Phil Oakeys about him, occasionally giving a robotic campness, but stopping short of outright glam.

By all accounts it sounds like the duo had an enormous amount of fun recording Messages. It's an album that holds many gems in its half hour, and left me reaching for the repeat button immediately. Initial impressions are of a beefed-up paean to industry and technology, clear for all to see in the song titles (Tell Me Computer, Oh Metal, Grid), and even more obvious to hear in the lyrics - "I have a model for you, I made on my computer", proclaims Model proudly.

The admission of a love affair with technology does not, however, remove this record of charm and personality. Sure, White can automate rather well, but shows pleasing signs of cracking on Talk and Fear Of Fragility, where far more vulnerable human emotions are explored. It's a side that removes any accusations of one dimensionality that were beginning to build after the perky bluster of the album’s first half.

Tunes and rhythms are something these chaps do well too. Eureka's blustering drums could fill a warehouse with their OMD pretensions - and the tune would ensure all those present were singing along. Outerregions sounds like a souped-up version of Just Can't Get Enough, an enjoyable stomp in the chorus giving way to more intimate asides in the verse. Meanwhile Talk's synthesized counterpoint reveals more intricate orchestration, a fine example of the attention to detail the boys secure in their programming.

While the temptation is to lump To My Boy in with the Klaxons, Shitdisco and other purveyors of that sound everyone's attaching the word 'rave' to, the truth is that while there's a strongly danceable element to their music, these two have made an album that delights equally in lyrical vignettes and personal feelings. To come through an electronic album holding those principles aloft is an achievement worthy of respect.

Digitalism - Pogo (Vid)

2007-07-10T07:32:00.000-07:00

From the album "Idealism" (2007)

New Young Pony Club - The Bomb (Vid)

2007-07-10T07:29:00.000-07:00

London's New Young Pony Club with their new video for The Bomb.

New Young Pony Club - Fantastic Playroom

2007-07-10T07:26:00.000-07:00

Forget New Rave. New Young Pony Club have just started New Disco. Fantastic Playroom makes no bones about exactly what the band want to achieve. These songs are all solid pop nuggets, dripping in innuendo, squelchy bass and danceable rhythms.

Having already made something of an impression with earlier singles Ice Cream (you're probably familiar with this via the Intel adverts) and The Bomb, surely the only way is up for a band already being heralded in trendy circles as the next big thing.

There's every chance that NYPC will be one of the bands that are on everyone's lips this year. After the considerable success of CSS and the sudden (and frankly surprising considering their back catalogue) rise of The Gossip the stage is set for another band with an ear for a dance tune to make a name for themselves.

Opening up the album with Get Lucky with its choppy guitar riff and eminently danceable beats things get off to a good start. Tahita Bulmer's vocals are detached but strangely engaging. She hardly sounds interested in a word she's singing as she drawls like a pervy female version of Dylan; - if Dylan had been more interested in Glo-Sticks and cutting a rug. Yet when she sings "I'm gonna give you all my love" you have to sit up and take notice.

The samba like rhythms of Hiding On The Staircase are instantly infectious while constantly niggling at the back of your mind that you're sure you've heard this before on Luscious Jacksons' Natural Ingredients. Not that this is a bad thing in the slightest, in fact it is a very good thing indeed.

Next up Ice Cream hits all the right buttons with its unbearably funky bass, minimal arrangement and filthy lyrics. When was the last time you heard a band imploring you to "Dip your dipper"? I'll tell you when. Did Frankie Howerd ever release a single? If he did, it was probably then.

The Bomb and The Jerk both sound like they could have been found in an archaeological dig that only goes down as far as the first floor of an '80s Our Price. Not that they're entirely derivative, there's definite hints of Indie moxie in alongside the Gary Numan keyboards and that is just enough to save them from having feet of clay.

If there's a criticism to be levelled at Fantastic Playroom it's that at times it can seem a little bit uninspired and similar across the whole album. As singles, most of these songs would fly off of the shelves, but taken as a whole album it can get a bit tiring. Bulmer's vocal style does nothing to alleviate the problem, and although she occasionally sounds like B52's Kate Pierson (on Grey in particular), more commonly she can be found lurking around the beat sounding a little bit bored.

In addition I can't get the fact that many of these tracks sound exactly like Le Tigre but stripped of much of the joy and polemic that made Le Tigre's Disco Punk so exciting.

These tiny niggles aside New Young Pony Club will undoubtedly make the jump to mass popularity. This summer, Disco doesn't suck, it is most certainly in, so don't forget to dip your dippers.

Junior Boys - So This Is Goodbye

2007-07-06T04:03:00.000-07:00

There are special songs, and there are special memories, but if you're one of those nostalgia-bitten people for whom neither seem quite vivid enough on their own, nothing matches what happens when the two dovetail. The beauty of these moments is they refuse to be architected-- we can't force them any more than we can explain them. And while the Junior Boys aren't magicians, they speak the language of that magic as well as anyone making music today. (In the band's official bio, K-Punk blog's Mark Fisher writes that So This Is Goodbye is a "travel sick" record-- I'd go him one further and say that specific sensation of travel sickness is at stake every time they set out to make music.)

Just their second full-length overall, So This Is Goodbye isn't just an improbable notch above 2004's Last Exit-- it's also among the best records you'll hear all year. The first complete album made by vocalist Jeremy Greenspan without the aid of founding member and presumed rhythmic engine Johnny Dark, it finds the Boys (now rounded out by onetime engineer Matthew Didemus) working within comparatively streamlined song structures, the rhythmic capriciousness that so strongly informed their debut all but erased from the whiteboard. And yet, despite this radical formal departure, Goodbye draws out so many of the same sensations and colors that it feels like a natural next step. If anything, the absence of those slippery rhythm tracks puts the focus even more squarely on Greenspan, who delivers with a record full of elegant melodies.

Beyond the glowing synthlines, frigid percussions, and Greenspan's marvellously tensile voice (imagine Ben Gibbard with much higher cheekbones), the Junior Boys' greatest weapon is space. With an economical 10 tracks spread out over nearly 49 minutes, the pop in So This Is Goodbye is hardly immediate; instead, its songs are allowed to percolate and unfurl. On paper, especially to the average thrillseeker, that might sound a bit offputting, but it's not like these are all ballads, either. Opener "Double Shadow" begins with a gentle pattering sequence of synth beads but blooms into a smartly melodic slice of electrohouse that Booka Shade would be proud to call their own. Elsewhere, with its serrated analog lead, gushy pads, skipping rhythms, and pressurized vocals, "The Equalizer" accounts for one of the album's finest arrangements, while the uptempo first single "In The Morning" finds Greenspan merging icy r&b with 4AD's warm guitar sounds to beautiful effect.

In the end, though, the biggest goosebumps come courtesy of the slowburners. The penultimate track "When No One Cares" recasts the Sinatra standard as a wobbly space ballad, closer "FM" crosses the finish line in an unhurried cloud of staccato arpeggios and warm harmonies, and standout "Count Souvenirs" marries liquefied synths and keening minor-key melodies with the album's starkest imagery ("Empty stalls and shopping malls that we'll never see again/ Hotel lobbies like painful hobbies that linger on"). Finally, the album’s title track finds Greenspan singing: "So this is goodbye, no need to lie/ This creature of pain, has found me again/ So this is goodbye," possibly in reference to Dark, or to his departed former label head Nick Kilroy, or to someone else entirely. It's the album's heartbeat, as well as one of its weightiest moments-- an acknowledgment that in times of despair the best course of action is often just to keep moving. Wanderlust never sounded so good.

PlayRadioPlay! - The Frequency EP

2007-07-06T03:35:00.000-07:00

PlayRadioPlay! is the creation of Seventeen year-old Dan Hunter, a Texas kid who has become the latest MySpace phenom. His songs have already hit over one million plays on his MySpace site without his album even being released. He's opened for FallOut Boy and secured a slot on the 2007 Vans Warped Tour. One listen to The Frequency EP, his debut on Stolen Transmission, reveals why.
Texas Straightedge Softcore

Billing himself as "Texas Straightedge Softcore", PlayRadioPlay! is like Atom and His Package without the goofiness or Apoptygma Berzerk with a bit more linear structure. It also hearkens a bit to a million club bands of the late '80s and early '90s (think of shades of EMF, Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine, and Jesus Jones had they relied heavier on Barry D's keyboard bits). All in all, this kid seems way to young to carry his musical depth.

And emo kids take note – Hunter's lyrics are heartfelt without being melodramatic. Even on tracks like "At This Particular Moment In Time", when he bemoans his inability to impress a girl because he's not yet 18, the song is painfully sincere and wistful, without ever hitting that painful wall known as emo patheticism.

The Frequency EP opens with "Bad Cops Bad Charities", PlayRadioPlay! launches immediately into his A-Pop beats and lyrics that sound like a younger version of Bright Eyes' Connor Oberst having a good day. All of it adds up to a great sweet sound that leaves you with a pleasant feeling in your tummy.

He doesn't constantly rely on manufactured beats, either. "Complement Each Other Like Colors" is a bit more organic, with synth lines accented by stripped down drums and guitars, sounding like it could have come out of garage rather than a Powerbook.

And even when he's relying on his manufactured beats, he's no one-beat pony. Unlike many synth-pop outfits, each song doesn't carry the same Casiotone demo beat. It's all carefully constructed for each song, proving that Hunter knows that simply owning the software doesn't make one a songwriter.

He closes the EP with a cover of the Killer's "Mr. Brightside", and captures all of the emotion in his stripped-down synthesized version that the big guys did in their full-blown version. PlayRadioPlay's version is easier to dance to, too!

At a time when a million kids are taking the easy emo route, it's refreshing to hear this young Texan kid put thought into his songwriting and make songs with depth and emotion, yet empty of cliché.

Au Revoir Simone - Fallen Snow (Vid)

2007-07-04T10:50:00.000-07:00

Music video for "Fallen Snow" from the album "The Bird Of Music".

Au Revoir Simone - The Bird of Music

2007-07-04T10:47:00.000-07:00

The cover for The Bird of Music has the three girls of Au Revoir Simone dressed in virginal white against an abyss of sunshine—and so it makes sense when they say that their music could have soundtracked The Virgin Suicides. And they're not too far off. If there was any kind of trope to stretch across this one, it would be from that film: the limerent, boy-voyeur coming upon a bunch of bedroom sirens trapped between gilded walls, getting caught up in the buckle and swoon of humid flesh and musty bedrooms.

The Bird of Music sounds like that sort of pop-vigil; with reconstituted instruments that sound like byzantine synths and Sunday morning organs, bleeding equal parts innocence and sturm und drang. The drum machine sounds like feet endlessly pacing bedroom floors and there's plaintive vocals with diary-fed lines about, you know, feelings—a boon to the big buckets of romantic despondence that coat most of the album's eleven tracks.

Opener "Lucky One" is a petite anthem with a windchimey send-up that stutters into an all-for-one sing-along, "Let the sunshine / Let it come / To show us that tomorrow is eventual." From then on things range from emotive dirge to buoyant dirge, with a few quiet stunners stuffed in between. "Fallen Snow" borrows a chapel organ for a tentative stomp through a tough breakup, one of the album's most recurring themes. A song set to heartbeats, "Violent Yet Flammable World" is caught up in a big wash of hum and brood. The girls trade harmonies between a cascading melody and soundtrack music so soul-sopping that it can overload the lyrics—which it too often does. Head-scratch simile "We fold like icicles on paper shelves" never begins to make sense. You've come upon the unlocked diary of a crush only to find an itemized list of digested foods and unicorn doodles.

The Bird of Music would seem to be the same unadorned synth-pop-as-confessional that came of age with the Young Marble Giants and recently burned up all over again with the Blow. And when it comes off right, it's effortless and overwhelming. But there's always the caveat of this sort of fantasy; The Girl in Glass Case thing only really works when the glass gets shattered: there's blemishes and idiosyncrasies and a funny walk but you're already won over. Closer waltz "The Way to There" latently admits that maybe Au Revoir Simone haven't busted their fingers yet: "If you feel compelled towards me / Then it's just gravity."

Chemical Brothers - Do it again - We are the night (Vid)

2007-07-03T21:23:00.000-07:00

Amazing & beautiful idea. Hundreds of illuminated balloons set free during the night in Berlin. The invention of flowies.

The Chemical Brothers - We Are the Night

2007-07-03T21:18:00.000-07:00

It's going to take another few years, a lot of nostalgia, and even more critical evangelism for the Chemical Brothers to be recognized as one of the most all-around consistent acts of the 1990s. More than a decade after the release of their debut album, 1995's Exit Planet Dust, they remain inextricably tied to Big Beat electronica, a genre that had already fallen out of fashion by the time the tech bubble burst. Since most of America's hopes for so-called "electronica" were pinned on a cynically marketed next-big-thingism, its chart failure has tended to overshadow everything else-- including a fair critical appraisal, as Salon's Michelle Goldberg demonstrated in a pan of the Chemical Brothers' 2002 album Come With Us: "Commercially, the mid-to-late-90s conceit that electronic music would wrest the airwaves from guitar rock dinosaurs has proved as fanciful as the idea that online video rental could be a billion-dollar business."

You don't need to have the Chemicals' Singles 93-03 video compilation in your Netflix queue to question the relevance of that statement: Electronica was a failure as a mass-culture lifestyle trend. But it was successful, too, in one important area: producing memorable pop records. Even in the post-crash doldrums of the early 2000s, the Chemical Brothers sustained their creative stride more effectively than most other artists clogging up the modern rock charts 30 notches above them. Albums like Come With Us and 2005's Push the Button were more pacekeepers than trendsetters, sure, but there was a cohesive freedom to them, a sort of universal dance music catchall vibe that cross-evolved through acid house, electro, hip-hop, and whatever else they could layer big, explosive bass over. Even as their returns began to diminish the further they got from the staggering peak of Dig Your Own Hole, the mild creative downturn wasn't significant enough to damage the overall feeling of optimistic, psychedelic egalitarianism embedded in their music.

This, though, this We Are the Night-- no, come on, not now. Not after Fatboy Slim's Palookaville and the Prodigy's Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned and Orbital's The Blue Album and Daft Punk's Human After All and the last two Moby records. Just because Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons are falling off the cliff a few years later than most of the other once-great hopes of 90s dance music doesn't make the plummet any less frustrating or embarrassing. Not even the low points on Push the Button suggested they were about to tank this hard.

On We Are the Night, the Chemical Brothers have switched from integrators to imitators: Where 1999's Surrender opened with "Music: Response", expertly streamlining the cutting-edge electro-funk of early Timbaland, "Do It Again" sounds like a public domain version of a FutureSex/LoveSounds beat, with perky synths and an aloof radio-dance churn gutlessly approximating the elements that make those tracks work. Guest singer Ali Love turns in a mediocre Timberlake impression-- although even JT himself couldn't pull off a dippy couplet like "got a brain like bubblegum/ Blowing up my cranium."

The album's title track attempts to weave the duo's euphoric buildups and breakdowns into warmed-over Krautrock, but with a beat that never crests, its dynamics are left to a weakly kitschy Perrey-Kingsley melody, damning the track to 6 1/2 minutes of a rickety retro-future parody of the 360-degree treadmill from 2001. "Das Speigel" is an ill-advised stab at minimal house-- have the Chems ever even attempted to pull off minimal anything? -- and after layering on enough electronic giggles, squeals, melodicas, guitars, and extraneous sound effects to a briefly-promising groove, it turns out sounding like something from side 6 of Booka Shade's Sandinista!.

Other autopsies of this album might pin its weaker moments on the guest spots, but those mostly just make an already-bad situation moderately worse. "All Rights Reversed" would still sound like groggy emo if they got somebody besides the Klaxons to mutter close-harmony vocals over its inflated theatricality. It's probably for the best that "Battle Scars" wasn't given to a better singer than Willy Mason: His head-trauma Gordon Lightfoot vocals and the sub-Rod McKuen lyrics ("There's a line in the sand/ Put there by man/ By man whose children built up castles made of stone") are perfectly suited to the track's tedious, xylophone-laden indie sleepwalk. And while there's been a well-earned avalanche of derision aimed at Fatlip's dopey nature-doc rap "The Salmon Dance", he had to work with the beat the Chemicals gave him; most MCs, faced with the prospect of rhyming over something Arthur Baker might have concocted after an afternoon of gorging on vanilla-frosted hash brownies and Spongebob reruns, would probably rap about dancing like a fish on crack, too.

The Chemical Brothers' descent into ineptitude is at least accompanied by a few brief highlights: "Saturate" plays like one of Surrender's acid house throwbacks, complete with Bill Ward-size drums, while "A Modern Midnight Conversation"-- based on a whipcrack cowbell beat and the bassline from Crystal Grass' 1974 psych-disco classic "Crystal World"-- is as euphoric as anything they've done this decade short of "Star Guitar." But those flashes of effortless dancefloor-filling greatness used to be the norm for the Chemical Brothers; as exceptions on an album of colossal blunders, they can only serve as fleeting reminders. I once found it hard to fathom that Dig Your Own Hole was released ten years ago; it's easier to believe now.

Various Artists - Ed Rec Vol.2 (Vid)

2007-07-03T08:58:00.000-07:00

Various Artists ED BANGER RECORDINGS
Ed Rec Vol 2
Out Now With JUSTICE, UFFIE, FEADZ, Mr OIZO, BUSY P, SEBASTIAN, DJ MEHDI ETC...

Various Artists - Ed Rec Vol.2

2007-07-03T08:52:00.000-07:00

Bob Sinclar's 2006 hit "Rock This Party"-- an amusing rendezvous between dancehall's Kopa riddim and samples of C+C Music Factory's "Gonna Make You Sweat", and by far last year's most perverse French house track-- revealed just how meaningless the separations between French house's underground and overground are. You won't hear anything like the Sinclair track on Ed Rec 2, Ed Banger's second label compilation, although it's not for lack of trying. The stumbling block is in their heads, perhaps: Whereas Ed Banger are stymied by the erroneous assumption that interesting ideas can only be realized at the expense of unambiguously seizing the pop jugular, Sinclar just went out and did both.

Ed Rec 2 reveals clearly enough the flaws in the label's aesthetic vision: resident rapper Uffie, already a dubious proposition, sounds positively execrable on her ode to haters, "Dismissed", but if this is by far the worst inclusion here, it's not (just) because Uffie can't rap. Blame the creative bankruptcy of the label's intermittent fascination with sneeringly amateurish, stuttery send-ups of old skool electro, which also ruins the Yoko Ono electro of DJ Mehdi's "Lucky Girl". These artists should, one and all, give up on trying to tell jokes. Luckily, most of Ed Rec 2 witnesses the label roster in consolidation mode, staging a strategic retreat to the messy, rock-influenced take on French house which Daft Punk codified on Human After All. While the move invites accusations of redundancy, I'm inclined to look upon Ed Banger's reduced expectations with some sympathy. One needs to accept from the outset that Ed Banger are unlikely to produce something as all-conquering as "Rock & Roll" or as marvelously confounding as "Aerodynamic" in order to fully enjoy the enthusiasm with which they go about colonizing the space between these two poles, from the ridiculous Genesis synth runs of Mr. Flash's "Disco Dynamite" to the rusted-on percussion presets of Feadz's lurching "Edwrecker".

And perhaps some of the elder statesmen's production nous has rubbed off as well. Justice's "Phantom" fuses hyper-plasticity with noise for noisiness' sake in characteristic fashion. While it's hardly surprising, it's perhaps the duo's best executed effort to date, the descent from disco sparkle into a mid-range black hole and back out again carried off with agility, even grace. Busy P's "Rainbow Man" may simply reiterate the same grinding, slow, mechanical house blueprint that Daft Punk established with "Steam Machine" and that SebastiAn has since made his own, but why should we expect more than good craftmanship? Why can't there be an entire genre of these menacingly sexy dominatrix backing tracks? By comparison, SebastiAn's own "Greel" is disappointingly lacking in character, its mechanic gewalt expressing brute force but nothing to give that power meaning.

Indeed, it's usually when Ed Banger's artists get dark-- rather than merely loud-- that they are most compelling. Far and away the best track on this compilation, Krazy Baldhead's "Strings of Death" performs the unlikely feat of summarizing the label's entire aesthetic while sounding like nothing else in its back catalogue, boasting the type of muscular rock groove that the label should have been cornering all along. Instead of settling for a straightahead churn or stomp, it slinks its way around overblown, bluesy guitar riffs while paranoid synths and snapping electro beats add a slight industrial inflection, somewhere between Ministry at their most lithe and Depeche Mode at their most heavy. It's actually thrilling, and I'd wager part of the thrill derives from the unexpectedness of the equation, as if industrial glam-rock is the unintended and explosive result of a naïve French House alchemy experiment. If Ed Banger can only stumble upon greatness by accident, let's hope the artists never work out exactly what it is they're doing on tracks like these.

Various Artists - Ed Rec Vol.1

2007-07-03T08:49:00.000-07:00

Apart from belonging to a proud tradition of dance music punning (Ed Rush, Ed Case-- and surely someone has snapped up "Ed Wound" or "Ed Trauma" by now?), French dance label Ed Banger's nom de plume says a lot about their sonic sensibilities: what better label home for Justice's crude but thrilling noisy house anthem "Waters of Nazareth"? But it also says a lot about their sense of self. Compared to the hyper-stylisation of Kitsuné or Modular, the label's compatriots in the new French house/nu rave movement, Ed Banger can seem a bit scruffy and, well, simple, enthusiastically embracing a mindless hysteria which their friends prefer to present in quotation marks.

Not that it's the dancefloor which Ed Banger's hysteria necessarily aims for: As well as the de rigeur rock signifiers, the material on its first retrospective is distingushed by its infatuation with (mostly old skool) hip-hop, from Uffie's end-of-the-line devolution of Fannypack and Princess Superstar, to Krazy Baldheads' glitch-laden rap, to Busy P's cut-up cubist booty. Filtered through the unabashed plasticity and stuttering zaniness of the label's sonic approach, hip-hop's primary role is to provide an ironic balancing, to be a byword for unmediated and organic rawness amidst so much carefully programmed insanity. It's a shame, though, that the results usually cleave closer to Kid 606 demolishing NWA than Daft Punk's "Oh Yeah": no-one seems to have told these guys about the value of just running with a good groove.

On the other hand, the pall of 1999 which hangs over so much of the self-conscious production trickery here is ultimately kind of endearing, suggesting a goofy lack of good taste or timing. Most ridiculously, Vicarious Bliss' "Theme From Vicarious Bliss" sounds like the Bomfunk MCs remixing Third Eye Blind-- this is not exactly a bad thing, but it's hardly a career move you can really get behind. So it's not surprising that for their remix Justice manage to conjure up a vision of jaded rock cool that wasn't there in the original-- a bit disappointing that it's exactly the sort of half-hearted rock-dance fusion the label otherwise scores points for avoiding.

Somewhere between the dance, the rock, the IDM, and the hip-hop, Ed Banger's artists occasionally and perhaps unwittingly stumble across pop, and it's these inspired accidents that make Ed Rec Vol. 1 halfway listenable. Para One's remix of DJ Mehdi's "I Am Somebody" is a dog's breakfast of Prince and hip-house, but it's indecisive messiness is also the key to its appeal, sounding like the leftovers from an aborted Basement Jaxx/Daft Punk collaboration that ended in tears. The pop in Ed Banger material exists on a sonic rather than conceptual level: as a song, Uffie's "Pop the Glock" is a totally unnecessary addition to the modern pantheon of sneering faux-MC triviality, but it's almost entirely redeemed by the extended Cher-like autotune harmonies that hover about Uffie's (intermittently torturous) vocals like a sickly aura.

Ed Banger's best performer is SebastiAn, who contributes bleepy, glitchy EBM disco filtered through a production sensibility that's three parts Depeche Mode circa Black Celebration and one part Autechre, which is the same as being all parts Nine Inch Nails remixes. This is a reason to like him, in case you're wondering: He may be as enamoured with mid-range blare as Justice, but you get the impression that SebastiAn's aggression is a bit fey and girlish too, like he's hoping you'll notice how prettily he grits his teeth. On the whole, his labelmates could afford to be more girlish: currently their wide-eyed ambition is held in check by a certain air of male jocularity, which reveals itself in the wild mood swings between stomping noise and overly fussy digital editing. No-one here is interested in sounding polished or professional, which is fine, but I could wish for a slightly more feminine touch at times (and no, Uffie doesn't count). Like, how much better would anthems like "Waters of Nazareth" be with a diva squealing over the top? Give me that over another monotone rockstar performance anyday.

Cassius - Toop Toop

2007-06-27T10:46:00.001-07:00

Clip officiel !!!

Cassius - 15 Again

2007-06-27T10:44:00.000-07:00

You may remember French band Cassius because of their imaginatively titled 1999 dancefloor hit, ‘Cassius 1999’. Since then the duo, Zdar (Phillipe) and Boom-Bass (Hubert) have been busily beavering away at various solo and group projects, but ’15 Again’ will hopefully return to them some of the limelight which they have been avoiding since their clubbing success seven years ago.

It is apparent from the opening track on ’15 Aagin’ that Cassius are not a band who can easily be ignored. ‘Toop Toop’ screams for attention, with its disco beats and funky bass-line (played by Sebastian Tellier) twanging in harmony to the vocals being shouted into a megaphone.

As the album progresses on, it is easy to spot which tracks will be the next singles and hot club tunes and which ones are merely filler. The fast paced electronic beats and jazz beats of the more commercial-sounding songs sit awkwardly next to the slower, more mellow offerings such as ‘See Me Now and ‘La Note’ which, more likely than not, won't be heard off the record. It’s a shame that there is this inconsistency, as taken individually each song is absolutely fantastic, with the distinctive sharp, edgy beats that make up the distinctive Cassius sound.

Apparat - Walls

2007-06-27T09:55:00.000-07:00

Shitkatapult co-owner and Berliner Sascha Ring insists that ‘Walls’, the title of his first solo studio album since 2003’s ‘Duplex’ does not imply dividing lines, but protective spaces. Too much so, perhaps. ‘Walls’ is pop “by any other means” with an overall current of well-being and good intentions that never seems to escape Sascha Ring’s carefully marked middle ground, sonically or thematically. There are no dangerous, passionate or precious emotions, despite all the best intentions. Musically as well, there is a frustrating absence of dynamism or depth to the sound design – everything sticks to the middle. Even with the added vocals, strings and the hands of Telefon Tel Aviv’s Josh Eustis, who did the final mixdown, ‘Walls’ seems wedged in the centre. It’s not quite a wall of sound as much as a picket fence at times. Take the opening track ‘Not a Number’. Its clever modernist percussive and marimba-like patterns fade away suggestively beneath the strings, but instead of dropping the intensity or opening up space to kick-start the album, they simply return and, well, nothing really happens. Similarly, Apparat’s previous collaborators Kathrin Pfänder and Lisa Verena Stepf’s maudlin strings fail to weave any real magic on the almost-exotic sounding ‘Useless Information’ and ‘You Don’t Know Me’. Instead, they end up sounding too simple, as if trying to imitate an authentic atmosphere of grand emotions rather than really feeling it. Crocodile tears, as it were.

Indeed, much of the album has trouble escaping this sentiment. The single ‘Hold On’, featuring R&B flavoured vocals from Raz Ohara, who worked with Apparat on his 2005 EP ‘Sizilium’, wants to be anthemic and uplifting, but seems almost too anodyne and clean to express a full-blooded emotion. Similarly, the album closes with ‘Over and Over’, also featuring Ohara’s smoky vocals, but the effect is too touching for its own good. Apparat’s Thom Yorke or Sigur Rós-inspired vocal debut on ‘Birds’, and particularly on ‘Arcadia’, reaches for but misses the heartstrings, despite the overall quality of his voice. It’s not all disappointment, though. Ohara brings to life ‘Hailin From the Edge’, the album’s best track, while ‘Fractales Pt. 1’ disintegrates into a messy, concrete noise called ‘Fractales Pt. 2’. The latter would offer more of an important contrast to the happy/hopeful emotions of the album if the sentimental piano melody would go away for long enough. Other passages shine briefly as lively pop hymns, while some splashes of live drumming add a bit of needed strength.

Overall, ‘Walls’ is a good album in the moral sense more than the musical sense. The listening experience is somewhat unexciting although aesthetically wholesome, making it a disappointing follow-up to ‘Orchestra of Bubbles’, last year’s more authentic collaboration with Ellen Allien.

Joy Electric - Monosynth

2007-06-26T09:47:00.000-07:00

Nice Video from Joy Electric woth Monosynth but The sound echos a bit, sorry for that.

Joy Electric - The Otherly Opus

2007-06-26T09:36:00.000-07:00

After a year and a half of intense hard work, Ronnie Martin has emerged once again with yet another Joy Electric classic "The Otherly Opus", the fifth and final installement of his long-running "Legacy" concept album series. In this case, "The Otherly Opus" is a double-concept album with the first five tracks carrying one theme and the latter five tracks displaying another.
Like previous Joy Electric releases, "The Otherly Opus" showcases Ronnie's relentless talents for fusing catchy melodies with a wealth of experimentation. Unlike previous albums, Ronnie has put a larger emphasis on vocal arrangements here than on any other Joy Electric album. In addition to his trademark lead vocals, Ronnie also provides some very unique layered backing vocals on many of the tracks including "Colours In Dutch", "The Memory of Alpha", "The Ushering In of The Magical Era" and "Red Will Dye These Snows Of Silver".
Musically, the album is quite experimental but not in the most avant-garde extreme. The songs are still very tuneful and have a semi-industrial feel to them (especially in the latter half of the album). There's even one track, "Write Your Last Paragraph", that echoes the sound of Joy Electric's earlier material (ie: Melody, We Are The Music Makers, Old Wives Tales).
Overall, "The Otherly Opus" is another fine collection from Joy Electric and is continued proof that Ronnie keeps getting better with each album he releases. With the "Legacy" series now officially finished, I cannot help but be curious as to which musical direction Ronnie Martin is going to take next. One thing is definitely for sure, it will be aw

Free Music Avatars:

2007-06-23T10:01:00.000-07:00

The following are 40 unedited shots of music gear and musicians. All are royalty free and cost nothing to download. At the bottom of the images is a .zip file containing all of the images. Just unzip this into your forum's avatar gallery and enjoy.

Download all 40 free avatars in .zip file

Chromeo - Fancy Footwork (Vid)

2007-06-21T04:21:00.000-07:00

Sounds Great

Chromeo - Fancy Footwork

2007-06-21T04:15:00.000-07:00

get the joke, but it's just not funny anymore. Chromeo was never meant to be considered a "serious" musical act, skating that fine line between witty kitsch and cheese-filled retro grooves. They succeeded somewhat admirably at the former on their debut album She's In Control; tracks like "You're So Gangsta" and "Needy Girl" seemed just fresh and smart enough as to not be confused with the mid-'80s breakdance tracks they were referencing. Their sophomore effort, Fancy Footwork, mines the same territory but suffers greatly from the law of diminishing returns. Make no mistake, "Tenderoni" and "Momma's Boy" are sung with tongue firmly in cheek, but the melodies and production are so tired and weak that the elements that would make them humorous or clever are simply lost in a muddy sea of synthesizers and dated beats. A brief moment of clarity, "Waiting For You" is propped up by a brisk and upbeat mélange of handclaps and chord progressions, but even this is unfortunately reheated later in the album for "Call Me Up" (is that a retro-recycling statement in itself?). The title track is the only true success story: a killer sawline, finger snaps, and a deliciously relaxed and confident chorus separates it from what ultimately sounds like a batch of Grand Theft Auto soundtrack throwaways. It poignantly proves what Chromeo is capable of: mining past '80s electronic glory and turning out fun, tasty dance-pop with a wink.

Action Action - The Game

2007-06-20T09:28:00.000-07:00

First video from Action Action's album "An Army Of Shapes Between Wars" for the song "The Game

Action Action : An Army of Shapes Between Wars

2007-06-20T09:22:00.001-07:00

Saddled with the tagline "Get ready for the next New Wave masterpiece" on its pre-release marketing materials, the latest album from Action Action pretty effortlessly pigeonholes itself. And that is unfortunate, because while there's moody, arty neo-New Wave music on at least half of this album, the other half is full of classic melodies, within which the baby steps of mid-period Beatles and early Elvis Costello can be heard.

The band's knack for catchy melodies in a classic vein, first displayed in the chorus to track two, "Chemical Frustration," pops up throughout the album, particularly on the Armed Forcessong structures with the quirky hook of a front-and-center retro keyboard.

As is so often the case in this genre, singer (and songwriter) Thomas Kluepfel's vocals are so affected that listeners unfamiliar with the band may think he has a British accent. It's a telling sign that Action Action is still a little too caught up on the dramatic trappings of new wave for its own good. -- Cory O'Malley sounds of "Don't Shoot the Messenger" and the bald "Strawberry Fields" reference at the start of "What Temperature Does Air Freeze At?" But the band's major shortcoming, on "Chemical Frustration" and elsewhere, is a heavy reliance upon undercooked keyboard lines. A nearly two-minute interlude at the end of "Sleep Paralysis" offers a basic electronic drumbeat with a noodling keyboard over it. It's a throwaway track, and it's kind of fun. But it unfortunately speaks to much of what's heard on this album -- uninspired

Stefy - Chelsea (Vid)

2007-06-19T10:09:00.000-07:00

Stefy's video "Chelsea" from The Orange Album

Stefy - The Orange Album

2007-06-19T10:01:00.000-07:00

Stefy made their splash with the song "Chelsea", both featured in the movie John Tucker Must Die and in clubs across America with a bevy of hot remixes. Their debut effort, "The Orange Album", continues in the trend of 80's synth-pop in the vein of The Eurythmics' "Sweet Dreams".
Singer Stefy Rae has a strong voice (a nice contrast to a lot of the breathy female vocalists who have been popping up everywhere) and she showcases it well across the 11-track album.
The tracks are typical pop fare, dealing with love, loss, and acceptance. "Orange County" is about a young couple that deal with pregnancy and the real world a little too early.
Luckily if you like grrl rock (like Le Tigre) or mainstream pop (like Pink) this album should do wonders for you. It may not be the best thing to be pressed onto metal and plastic, but it is definitely a cut above the rest.

Henrik Schwarz DJ-Kicks Interview

2007-06-18T12:59:00.000-07:00

Interview feature of Henrik Schwarz for his new DJ-Kicks on !K7 Records

Hot Chip - DJ Kicks

2007-06-18T12:53:00.000-07:00

Hot Chip has the requisite characteristics of a rock band -- fuzzy guitars, ennui-laden indie vocals -- but such swinging up-tempo grooves as "Over and Over" or the bubbly "Boy from School" show these guys listen to plenty of electronic music as well. And let's not forget the group's remixes of artist like Amy Winehouse, the Junior Boys, and minimal house outfit Booka Shade. So it's not surprising that the quintet would be recruited by !K7's to contribute to its increasingly adventurous DJ Kicks series.

As with many of the deejay scene's genre-hopping selectors, there is much potential for inconsistency and uneven flow. The group missteps at the mix's beginning when Positive K's early-'90s hip-hop classic "I Got a Man" comes out of nowhere and disappears just as quickly as a radio dial flipping back and forth. But Hot Chip redeems itself pretty quickly. The next track, Gramme's percussion-heavy vocal-led "Like You," gives way effortlessly to the emotive electronic synths of Subway's "Persuasion" and Soundhack's "B1," and it marks the first of some brilliant transitions that show up here.

As with all recent DJ Kicks mixes, the Hot Chip boys sneak in a brand new original track: "My Piano" is a sublime tune that sounds a bit like a more melancholy "Over and Over." It's broken up awkwardly by New Order's "Bizarre Love Triangle," but Young Leek's playfully blinged-out "Jiggle It" flows perfectly with Etta James and her knee-slapping journey "Into the Basement" with Sugar Pie DeSanto. The rest of the mix works pretty well, including such sounds as Wookie's dubstep-flavored breaks and Audion's peak-time techno. "Steppin' Out," an uplifting '80s anthem from Joe Jackson, precedes a Ray Charles tune to fill out the disc.

Those precious moments of musical mash-up show that these guys have the knack for it -- and, because two of the quintet's members are in fact working deejays, I would certainly hope so. Like recent DJ Kicks entries (particularly Four Tet's), the focus here is more on an eclectic selection than technical wizardry. But Hot Chip manages to inject a bit of both into this fun little mix.

Justice - D.A.N.C.E (Vid)

2007-06-16T09:54:00.000-07:00

Nice video from justice

Air - Pocket Symphony

2007-06-16T08:51:00.000-07:00

Sound familiar? If so then you probably know the Air that has lead up to this point. The previously mentioned "haiku" approach to songwriting combined with cool atmospheres have been a formula for success so far for the band. One trick ponies? Not quite, for every "Remember" there is always a perfectly balanced pop song in the form of a "Cherry Blossom Girl" to give the band depth, but this is all in the past, and we're here to focus on the present and the new. Following Air's golden rule of "one full length release every three years", 2007 would be the year the band expanded on their instrument usage all the way to the East (Japan to be exact) and put the title of last years mix tape album, Late Night Tales into practice. Most of these songs are melancholy and soft, waiting for a darkened sky to play to; but its not that simple as without the pop structures and radio-ready format that previous releases had spun into gold, this was without most of that. What is left are 12 tracks featuring guest vocalists, instruments from Japan, not enough pop songs but a peaceful atmospheric work that should please any casual or hardcore fan. The heart and soul of this work can be found in the usual musical approach taken by the band, but is enhanced with the lungs and spleen of the Koto (http://home.san.rr.com/koto/images/koto.gif) and the Shamisen (http://images.encarta.msn.com/xrefmedia/sharemed/targets/images/pho/t025/T025128C.jpg). The setup is different and the band can put this new found experience (it did take Goodin a year to learn how to play these instruments after all) to making something new and yet travel back to make a release more like Moon Safari. While it does recollect of their debut disc more than their previous Astralwerks release, the band is much more diverse and experienced than nine years ago.

It begins with covering familiar ground, an instrumental opener with the name of "Space Maker", a rather spacey, stream of consciousness but it still follows general rules of structure which benefits the track. Though it seems lengthy at four minutes it holds up well as a track on its own as opposed to just the introduction. What helps it stand up on its own is what follows it, that being the lead single "Once Upon a Time" which may be no all time classic but is our first chance to hear Jean Benoit Dunckel's voice since the previous year's solo project Darkel. The song is written in the haiku form that has vaulted and made their songs on the past, in this case with the line "I'm a little boy/you're a little girl/once upon a time". Here piano leads the charge in loop form with an actual drummer (in the video at least) and a Shamisen over the interlude section. The new Air has shown its colors but the massive shock changes don't come until the next song which features a guest vocalist and the beginning of what makes this work a grower, one that takes time to get into.

It plays at a slower rate, displays more Shamisen and more significantly the ex front man of Pulp, Jarvis Cocker, these reasons are what make "One Hell of a Party" the stop drop and reexamine moment of Pocket Symphony, isn't there only one conductor in this miniature music machine? Mainly yes, but this one was picked up while producing another work and the more the merrier. This turns out to be true as the slow paced low tone voice of Cocker goes along greatly with the somber sounding night after the party. Guest vocalists turn tricks for the group again later in the album with Divine Comedy's Neil Hannon with "Somewhere Between Waking and Sleeping" which plays out like it sounds. The major bulk of the album is a division of sprawling calm piano lead tunes and guitar drenched faster songs with Dunckel on the mic. The exception is "Mer du Japon" which features a suprising awakening of the synth, making the backdrop on this fast paced song. The album ends on "Night Sight" which is one of those things that is predictable but still enjoyable. It does play out like the title states, employing the synth to play notes in the key of Night Sight, if thats at all possible.

It may take some getting used to it, but proper exposure and realizing the continued growth of Air will still lead to the road of musical satisfaction. They may be in their 12th year of existence but this is still a young and growing musical project, one that has seen different days and shows it in the changes of their music. This is recommended if you are a fan of chill out electronica, late night drives or walks, or if you want to hear the newest thing from Air.

Recommended Tracks: Once Upon a Time, Somewhere Between Waking and Sleeping, Napalm Love, Left Bank

Gotan Project - Lunático

2007-06-15T09:51:00.000-07:00

Good for Gotan Project. This is the right time for tango music to be unleashed upon the world in all its forms, particularly a form in which electronic backbeats reign supreme. This is a time when Dancing With the Stars can command American audiences of 30 million, most of whom wouldn’t be able to tell the tango from the cha cha except that the former is usually “sexier”—a time when a band can test the curiosity of an inordinately large target audience without the constraint of necessary authenticity.

As its name would imply, Gotan Project takes tango music and flips it on its ear by introducing contemporary and electronic instrumentation into the mix, but they don’t do this in the near-disrespectful way that such a description might imply. A typical electronic DJ looking to dabble in tango music might just sample some already existing tango music and put a four-on-the-floor beat on top of it, or create an entirely electronic composition and add some of the instruments common to tango—guitars, violins, or even the bandoneón (a variation on the accordion) might sound nice on top of a techno beat, right? The three Parisian producers behind Gotan Project are far more respectful than this—they are out to create true tango, going so far as to record in Buenos Aires with actual tango musicians (as well as a few contemporary non-tango cohorts), ultimately creating the closest approximation to true tango through the filter of 21st century pop-electronic production that can be found on the market today.

Lunático is Gotan Project’s second proper album, and it manages this melding of styles even more gracefully than Gotan Project’s first album La Revancha del Tango. Part of the reason for this album’s closeness to the true tango sound might just be that Gotan Project is less bound to “electronics” than it ever has been. Opening track “Amor Porteño” features the ever-interesting Calexico, providing slide guitars and spooky ambiance to a slow-burn of a track that runs entirely counter to the perception that tango music is only for dancing. The drums are organic, the bandoneón is the predominant melodic instrument, and the singing is sultry and utterly exquisite. It’s a curveball of an opener, an exhortation from Gotan Project to leave our expectations at the door. Celos is a similarly-paced track, with more beautiful vocals to boot, and album closer “Paris, Texas” follows a fantastic bandoneón melody nearly from start to finish, until a solo piano quietly, sublimely ends the album. Each of the slower tracks on Lunático is a wonder to listen to and absorb.

Still, dancing is clearly the focus, as it probably should be. “Diferente” is a fantastic track that follows a one-note bassline through more atmosphere than most so-called “ambient” artists can muster for an entire album—all while following a brilliantly syncopated, highly danceable beat. “Notas” features the speaking of Tango master Juan Carlos Caceres over an arpeggiated bassline and a distinctively ordinary electronic beat, while “Criminal” actually manages to formulate a dance song with almost no percussion at all—the “beat” is created via an octave-jumping bassline and a jumpy melody from that ever-present bandoneón. The dance tracks are collectively less distinctive than the slower, more calculated pieces, but still well enough constructed to stay interesting throughout for the sake of dancing or listening.

Lunático‘s most inspired moment, however, comes in its most audacious move, the pairing of tango with hip-hop. “Mi Confesión” features the hip-hop stylings of Koxmoz, a collective straight outta Buenos Aires. It’s just as edgy, dance-worthy, and utterly enjoyable as its creators could have hoped, and it doesn’t even matter if you don’t know what they’re saying when their flow is this tight.

Gotan Project certainly isn’t the first group to attempt the update of a style steeped in tradition using electronic methodology. What sets them apart, however, is their obvious reverence for the style that they happen to be updating. They pull a trick of the ear in putting together a sound that could easily be mistaken for typical electronic dance music, even as they incorporate all of the elements of more traditional tango. The result is a surprisingly “authentic” tango album that Joe and Jane Dancing-With-the-Stars-Fan might actually be able to enjoy, rather than merely appreciate.

The Clientele - God Save the Clientele

2007-06-14T11:33:00.000-07:00

Did anyone ever have any money riding on if and when the Clientele would crack a joke?

After a singles collection (Suburban Light) and a follow-up album (Strange Geometry) stuffed to the gills with gossamer, wistful fuzz guitar and wax paper vocal verses, the Clientele had chiseled out a concise little niche. They psyche without pills, they mourn without booze, and you get the feeling they keep little more than Thomas Hardy and Ian McEwan on their collective bookshelf.

Or so we Americans thought.

On God Save the Clientele (could that be…a tongue-in-cheek album title!), the Clientele take their frown and flip it, if not totally upside down, to the blessedly optimistic side of things, tossing in pedal and steel guitar, recording in Tennessee and poking fun an their own, occasionally heavy-handed bookishness on “Bookshop Cassanova” and “Carnival on 7th Street.”

Where Strange Geometry stripped away the band’s earlier over-reliance on shimmering guitar pedals and the silk-screened vocal filters that turner lead singer Alisdair MacLean’s voice into a dangerously vocoder-like flutter, God Save the Clientele shocks the long-time listener with naked, brassy sonics. “I Hope I Know You” may have the same lyrical schoolboy doubt, but the guitar lines ripple like wires, and the drums actually have a crash and pulse.

Loyalists shouldn’t fear, however. The band’s lyrics still handle gardens (“The Garden at Night”), women who make “time whisper back again” (“The Queen of Seville”), tons of ghosts, and just how to endure heartbreak, loneliness, and all those other tropes that would make Philip Larkin proud (“These Days Nothing But Sunshine”—a throwback to earlier Clientele tissue-and-black-framed-glasses resolution). They just get to deliver their little pills with a cleaner, stronger punch.

In about half the album’s songs, a chorus of indiscernible whispers lurk beneath the main vocal track. You listen for a word, a phrase, an allusion, but it remains a pile of meaningless whispers. And that’s good. For a band who has struggled to make themselves heard and understood, God Save the Clientele may just be the Clientele casting some burdens to the wind, channeling all their adoration for Love and the Television Personalities with clear eyes, clear minds, and louder voices than they ever have before.

Think Wilco’s Summerteeth rerecorded with heavy doses of Hull and East London, afternoons turning into evening mist, and the corners of a mouth pulling into a ready smile. And when the first chorus on record (“Here Comes the Phantom”) dives into “My heart is playing like a violin!” you’re actually ready to believe it.

Calvin Harris - I Created Disco

2007-06-10T20:35:00.000-07:00

Here’s a man that needs no press release. From fruit stacker at Mark & Spencers to Kylie cohort in months, he’s got love for you if you were born in the ‘80s and he now claims to know all the girls – that’s an entire CV in one sentence, right there. Concocted in his Dumfries bedroom-cum-sound laboratory, Calvin Harris has ridden the Myspace wave to Mika levels of ubiquity. No branch of Topshop or T4 ident is left untouched. But does greater omnipresence than God make for a good album? It’s getting increasingly hard to tell.

As time accelerates faster than ever before, it feels like we have all lived with this record forever – some feat considering it isn’t even out yet (or is, depending on when you read this). For record company Sony BMG, Calvin represents the perfect investment – a media-conscious polymath who wrote, played recorded and produced this entire album, then handed it over as a finished product for them to slap their imprint on. This does at least lend the artist freedom, but since Harris himself admits there is very little meaning to most of his output, this opportunity is slightly wasted in this instance. What? What was acceptable in the ‘80s? In terms of vague and annoyingly open-ended pop statements, it sits right up there with I would do anything for love, but I won’t do that. What, for fuck’s sake? WHAT? Damnit.

Certainly, Harris has squandered hours, days and months on this venture, but he’s probably spent just as long personally accepting Myspace friends and sticking packing wrap to the front of his sunglasses. All good, but by now the world has realised that Myspace is a vacuum where no one can hear you scream and has moved on to Facebook. The problem with style over content is that style changes, and with increasing frequency. For example, you can now build two pairs of jeans from the material three months ago it took to make one.

Towards its tail end, there are squelches that could imply a human heart conceived this. Take the unlikely ‘Love Souvenir’, which as the title suggests sounds like a wet patch. ‘Vegas’ adds sparkle but runs suspiciously close to territory covered in ‘Acceptable In The 80s’. This leaves the interstellar wigging of the title track and following lick ‘Disco Heat’ to really make Harris’s case. But even here, you sense this is an album engineered as a gateway to LCD Soundsystem, and the most recent LCD Soundsystem album has already done a better job of that this year.

Great music is made of excitement and the sense of the unknown – with this, there is a faint whiff of disappointment, like ‘the industry’ really isn’t all it is cracked up to be. And by the time Calvin has cooked up his midmorning blog, you already know what he had for breakfast that day. There’s enough here to get feet tapping, but taken out of its natural habitat – Topshop and those T4 idents again – it feels slightly hollow.

Xiu Xiu - The Air Force

2007-06-10T20:31:00.000-07:00

Jamie Stewart has that rare ability to find tragedy in the most joyful of moments. The Xiu Xiu mastermind has one of those love-it-or-hate-it voices, a keen pop sensibility, and the guts to go against it at all times. His solo acoustic cover of Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car”, though a bit on the long-side, turned a tear-jerking pop-folk hit into something that sounded like a man’s final pleas while he’s unexpectedly bleeding to death. He’ll give ridiculous titles to songs like “Ian Curtis Wishlist” and “Muppet Face” while not containing a single smirk of irony. You might raise your eyebrows, but he just might break your heart as well.

Though long-running with his cultish following, Xiu Xiu really didn’t reach its pinnacle until his 2004 release Fabulous Muscles. Poppy and disturbing in equal measures, it was a great album, with the sheer emotional vulnerability and anger of “Support Our Troops Oh!” making for what stood as Xiu Xiu’s defining statement: electro keyboard and guitar weirdness with poignant haiku-like poetry sometimes spoken and sometimes sung over it. Though this has always been Stewart’s MO, it never was stronger than it was on Muscles. Yet when 2005 came around and Stewart released La Foret on the world, there couldn’t help but be the feeling of a letdown, even among the most hardcore of Xiu-followers. Every album that Stewart releases has some great songs and some less-than-stellar ones—each album is either just “well rounded” or having standout tracks that redefine the term “standout tracks.” It’s a tough back catalog to rank.

Until now.

The Air Force is, without a doubt, Xiu Xiu’s best album and grandest statement. Continuing to sabotage otherwise-perfect pop numbers, here the sabotages in question make the Xiu Xiu experience all the more compelling, instead of distracting. “The Fox & The Rabbit”—at the one-minute mark—suddenly throws in a swelling string section to compete against the electro pop-and-lock IDM beats and surprisingly simple lyrics about looking into space and simply not knowing one’s place in the universe. By the end, keyboard reverb is stretched out to fill up an entire canyon with sound, still maintaining the simple beats that started it. The dark electro-wash of “Bishop, CA” starts with the line “This blue dawn of sickly light / That is daytime in your embarrassed town / Burns a hole in the fading yellow ribbon / On your fading white color cavalier,” and reminds you of a great Xiu Xiu strength: to find emotional vulnerability in abusrdism. “When I see the hate in your eyes / It doesn’t make us better men” Stewart croons, inflecting as a disaffected man and an angry man with equal gusto. Yet by the time we get to the end (and after the Flaming Lips-style orchestra swell), Stewart has started the pop-chorus chant of “walla walla walla walla walla walla hey”, we’re coming closer and closer to nothing but sheer bliss. All the frustrations that fans have felt in the past with this part or that part are now what makes Stewart an undeniably compelling figure. He always has been, but never in as accessible a light as this.

Though no true theme emerges in the long-run, it doesn’t matter—it’s just a collection of great songs, with highlights by the bucketful. “Save Me Save Me” comes across as what would happen if Stewart inexplicably was fronting Interpol (to great results). Caralee McElroy scores her own great number with “Hello from Eau Claire”, a pop ditty about wanting to become a man, drenched with bell-laden verse and chorus lines. Though the dark ballad opener “Buzz Saw” and the fairly meandering instrumental “Saint Pedro Glue Stick” may be a bit off-putting to some, they still are minor dents in an otherwise spotless sheen. Even a melancholy song like “The Pineapple Vs. The Watermelon” is given a deliciously catchy guitar line—giving lines like “That’s why you decided to kill yourself / To prove it wasn’t true” all the more shock value.

When we get to the closing “The Wigmaster”, we are given a tone poem that’s both overtly sexual and intensely emotional at the same time. The string quartet seems to hit notes only when they feel like it, as if the entire genre of emo was suddenly given an internal monologue that is, surprisingly, intensely compelling. When Stewart speaks the line “Loneliness isn’t being alone / It’s when someone loves you / And you don’t have it in you to love them back,” it’s official: All bets are off—with The Air Force, Xiu Xiu has released their greatest album. Savor it.

Technorati

2007-06-07T13:46:00.001-07:00

Technorati Profile

The National - Boxer

2007-06-07T10:13:00.000-07:00

Sneaking up on critics and music fans alike, Alligator, the last album from Brooklyn band The National, was quietly released in early 2005 to positive reviews. Touring with the support of fellow New Yorkers Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Alligator slowly but steadily generated critical acclaim and ended the year by being placed on a substantial number of "best of 2005" lists, as well as gaining the support of celebrities such as Bruce Springsteen. That The National aren't on the same level of popularity as a band like Interpol or Bloc Party may be difficult to understand for those who fell in love with Alligator or the band's earlier work. In any case, if Boxer is not the record that propels them to stardom, it's unlikely that they'll ever make a record that will.

Few bands have emerged from the underground in recent years that are able to have all the right ingredients and to use them correctly, but this is exactly what makes The National, and indeed Boxer, such a valuable experience. Matt Berninger is a highly gifted lyricist, able to conjure up all sorts of images and feelings through his unorthodox writing style that abandons linear narrative in favour of collages of dialogue, monologue and imagery. Filtered through his distinctive baritone that interprets and enunciates them to perfection, Berninger's lyrics form the backbone for everything that defines The National's identity. Underneath is the instrumentation of the Dessners and the Devendorfs, the two sets of brothers that make up the rest of the band. In addition, The National employ the use of strings, brass and piano to fill out the sound. However, instead of dominating the mix in a grandiose manner along the lines of, say, or The Polyphonic Spree, the instruments are used in a subtle manner to complement the songs rather than to overpower the listener with a sense of enormity. Like all truly great albums, Boxer is a grower, offering little instant appeal, but rewarding the listener significantly when they become familiar enough with it to pick up all the subtleties.

As an album, Alligator succeeded in large part because of its ability to incorporate a number of songs that were highly varied into a flowing work where each song complemented the other. Boxer flows in a similar way, though the contrasts aren't as big. One of the best examples is the pairing of the extremely powerful first four tracks with "Green Gloves", which features a softly picked acoustic guitar supplemented by some beautiful octave riffing, all underneath Berninger's brilliant lyrics. What's perhaps the strongest aspect of Boxer is that every single thing seems to be placed into the music with the purpose of complementing something else. It's this reason that The National are able to layer so many different parts without the mix ever feeling too dense or overpowering. The 'whatever works' approach also allows for plenty of sparse moments, such as the aforementioned "Green Gloves", as well as album closer "Gospel" and the beginning of "Start A War". Each song works perfectly as an individual, and as part of a whole and this can only be attributed to the band's incredible commitment to making each song everything it can possibly be. This restraint is possibly best evident on album highlight "Start A War", in which the drums spend most of the song building up, only to end on a simple, soft beat rather than bursting into the dramatic walls of distortion that could have so easily ruined the song.

It's rare to find an album that is truly more than the sum of its parts, but it's even more rare to find an album like Boxer, where the work as a whole is more than the sum of its parts, but the parts themselves are consistently brilliant. The same is true of Berninger's lyrics; at times they seem to be composed from a series of perfect one-liners, but when they are put together they are even more special. That's not to say that Boxer is without its flaws; it does start to slightly sag towards the end before being left on a perfect note with "Gospel". Unlike Alligator's closer, the huge, emotionally charged "Mr. November", "Gospel" is a subtle, content finish to a true journey of an album. Elsewhere, "Mistaken For Strangers" is the perfect kind of anthemic sing-along that The National proved they were capable of with songs like "Lit Up". "Guest Room" carries with it a sort of nervous beauty and is perfectly placed after the strong but subtle build up of "Start A War". "Start A War" itself is surely one of the best songs that The National have ever produced, full of superb single lines ("I'll get money, I'll get funny again", "Do you really think you can put it in a safe behind a painting, lock it up and leave") and melodies to match. Opener "Fake Empire" is the perfect overture for the rest of the album, beginning with some truly gorgeous piano courtesy of guest player Sufjan Stevens and ending in an explosion of brass and the usual rock instruments.

If Alligator was The National's first masterpiece then Boxer is surely their second, a 12-song journey that thoroughly exemplifies everything that a modern rock band should be capable of. While they may not have created something that should receive instant status as a classic, Boxer has certified The National's status as one of the premier rock bands of this decade. Whether it will propel them stardom and in time become known as one of the finest albums of the 2000s, only time will tell.

Lady Sovereign - Public Warning

2007-06-04T23:27:00.000-07:00

The Stylus brass, in their infinite wisdom, have decided to bypass all of the various Brit and Anglophile writers on the staff and stunt cast someone who couldn't care less about "grime" or Lady Sovereign or any of that shit to write this review. If that strikes you as a bad call, well, same here. But if you've been excitedly downloading every single Sovereign has trickled out in the past two years, you're not alone. As far as I can tell, the internet's full of you people. So if you don't care for my perspective, there's roughly ten thousand rock critics and mp3 blogs that will cater to your love for Lady Sov, so have at it. The distaste you'll experience reading this can't be any worse than what I went through listening to the album, so let's just call it even.

Although its audience is now a worldwide melting pot, hip-hop is still primarily made by the same demographic that created it: black American males. Over the years, various rappers have diverted from that description in terms of gender, race, or nationality, but rarely all three at once (unless you count Cibo Matto). Some people get excited about this kind of diversity infiltrating hip-hop. I'm not one of them. It's nice that the U.K. have grime, but I'm personally not interested in hearing anyone besides Slick Rick rap with a British accent.

A few years ago, a white American female rapper named Sarai got slapped with the "Feminem" tag, but it didn’t fit: she made the kind of fun (not funny) party rap indistinguishable from most of the hip-hop that comes out of the South, and not really anything like Eminem. Lady Sovereign, on the other hand, inhabits that role almost to the point of deliberately courting it. The video for her first U.S. single, "Love Me or Hate Me," is full of so many sight gags, irreverent impressions of celebrities, and self-deprecating lyrics that if you squint you might think you're watching "My Name Is."

That Lady Sovereign is so willing to play the Slim Shady game—and has already ridden that approach to the top of the TRL countdown—is the reason she might break the cycle of blogger favorites who hold a "popist" appeal in theory, but in practice are merely the rare critical darling that's not a rock band. A year or two ago, there was similar fanfare over the major label debut by another London-based sorta-rapper, M.I.A., with hipster fans all excitedly handicapping her chances of mainstream stardom. Their rationalization, that the success of Missy Elliott somehow proved urban radio's limitless tolerance for feminine weirdness, was bolstered by M.I.A. recording a song with Missy herself. Lady Sovereign's story is almost identical, right down to the Missy collab on a remix of "Love Me Or Hate Me," but with the major label backing that M.I.A. lacked, Sov seems to have a legitimate shot at becoming the rare British crossover star in the U.S.

Klaxons - Myths of the Near Future

2007-06-04T21:43:00.000-07:00

Of all the music genres out there, I would never have picked myself as a fan of “indie rave”, a term coined by Angular Records founder Joe Daniel, who released the first single by the loud-hailered sounding Klaxons. Variously described as "acid-rave sci-fi punk-funk" to psychedelic pop, Klaxons look to update the rave sound of the 90’s in a modern setting, capturing a whole new audience along the way. What with all that acid house and keyboard-powered schlock hokum, it all seems too much for a man of my tender years. Then again, I hadn’t figured with the “Myths of the Near Future” album. Klaxons are a three-piece made up of Jamie Reynolds (vocals), James Righton (keyboards/vocals), and Simon Taylor (guitar/vocals) with Steffan Halperin (drums/backing vocals) featuring from time to time after appearing on the track "Atlantis To Interzone". Hailing from Stratford-Upon-Avon and Bournemouth, the band counts influences as diverse as KLF (remember them?) to Solaris (apt with “Sunshine” out at the movies just now). The band's debut album “Myths of the Near Future” was released in January this year, entering the charts at number 2, following the release of the single "Golden Skans" (which peaked at number 7 in the singles charts) in the same month. Klaxons headlined the NME indie rave tour starting in February 2007 selling out at the Hammersmith Palais in two days. With early success in Europe, Japan and Australia as well as a burgeoning UK following, the future looks stellar bright for the band.

“Myths of the Near Future” has some very high points. As you’d expect, the opening track is strong. “Two Receivers” is a brooding production, almost down-beat compared to what’s to come. With an echo-induced drum beat and tinkling piano to usher in what will become trademark haunting lyrics, “Two Receivers” takes the listener into a traditional chorus driven track with the poetic chant “And in space / two receivers turn away, Just in case / two receivers turn away, To displace / two receivers turn away, And in space…” It’s a melodic dance anthem that gives the album a great start. For me, the album doesn’t get any better than the DJ cry of the second track followed by the fabulous “Golden Skans”. “Atlantis to Interzone” is one mega-dance track. Replete with subliminal reference to American novelist and opiate addict - William Burroughs - “Atlantis to Interzone” is another alternate reality trip into a world of magic and borderline supernatural. It’s a screaming, imploring song that changes pace as quickly as it picks up a new guitar/bass riff to rip the crowd along with the sound of an anthem. “From Atlantis to Interzone/You start at the end and you end on your own/From Atlantis to Interzone/You start at the edge and you end on the throne.” For me, this is the best track on the album.

“Golden Skans” is probably the band’s best known song. With a easy-on-the-ear sound, “Golden Skans” has a characteristically catchy chorus surrounded by a wall of ooooo and ahhhhh as well as being atypically economical with its lyrical content. It also carries a very artistic video that comes with it. “Golden Skans” gives way to the relentless electro-punk of “Totem On The Timeline”. Filled with lateral tangents and oblique references, the songs don’t add up to anything too deep on the lyrical timeline and there’s no obvious social commentary going on other than a psychedelic journey into its own sound. With its fourth single (in no particular order and not accounting for the re-release of “Gravity’s Rainbow” this year) “Magick” is referential to the British occultist Alistair Crowley with the chorus “Magick without tears” being derived from the title of one of Crowley’s books. "Gravity’s Rainbow” is the other single release on the album. With a funky, bass guitar intro and a chirpy chorus line, “Gravity’s Rainbow" is a falsetto trek into infinity or at least according to the song meisters' lyrics together with your future love.

The album is by no means perfect. “Isle of Her” is reminiscent of an early Spandau Ballet before they’d struck a populist chord with “Chant No.1”, with a somewhat repetitive soft centre at its heart while “Forgotten Works” quickly disappears from the memory despite its self-effacing but convivial opening. Fortunately, the album pulls back with two belting tracks to finish with a crescendo. “It’s Not Over Yet” is a synthesized, electro anthem that fades into the album finale “Four Horsemen of 2012”. Finishing with a muffled, heavy rock sound, “Myths of the Near Future” closes with a relentless energy that takes the album to the other side of the dance floor in a discordant, dance tune guaranteed to confuse and delight all at the same time. The band won the Best New Band award at the 2007 NME Awards and looks set for major stardom. This is an impressive first album although many have also managed great debuts without being able to follow it through. I hope Klaxons do. Their sound is a welcome departure to everything else that dominates the popular music scene at the moment. “Myths of the Near Future” will appeal to fans of indie pop/rave/acid house kinda music and doesn’t venture too far from classical radio pop. It’s a sound that will appeal to the younger generation and maybe call to a few of us who want to remember what was good about the best of the 90's rave scene.

LCD Sound System - Sound Of Silver

2007-06-02T12:35:00.000-07:00

The second LCD full length is at once a more daring record, but also a more focused record. The most rewarding thing about the first album was the inclusion of all LCD's previous vinyl releases collected on the bonus disc. The self titled debut itself was strong in places, but unfocused, and not much linked the various styles together. Here, on the new record, LCD is able to create a record that wanders through various styles and yet somehow manages to still work as a larger whole. Murphy's vocals are alot stronger, and the sound is overall alot fuller without being overdone. The slower songs are better, and the digital madness more infectious than ever. Overall, it is much more focused and rewarding effort from LCD. Highly recommended for fans of the first album and newcomers alike.

Ima Robot - Monument to the Masses

2007-06-01T11:41:00.000-07:00

It seemed as though the robots had short-circuited after their debut release. They toured non-stop for a year or two and then disappeared. Many thought the junk yard was the fate for these robots, but it turns out they were just doing maintenance, upgrading and such. Best friends and the only remaining original members, vocalist, Alex Ebert, and guitarist, Timmy “the Terror” Anderson, rounded up some new robots and started recording.

These robots were programmed to play music, so they played and played. They couldn't stop. When it was time to mix the album, the robots had over 100 songs recorded. It was hard to decide what was worthy for their sophomore album. Finally, three years after their debut, the robots were back to touring. They couldn't stand not sharing all of this music with their beloved human fans, so they produced their own EP: Search and Destroy (a limited edition that could only be purchased during this special tour). That was in June. Virgin records released Monument to the Masses a few months later. This may be dangerous to Ima Robot fans. Being deprived for so long and then all of a sudden overloaded may cause shock.

Luckily, the shock is good. Ebert has traded in his signature fashion mullet with racing stripes for some MC Hammer/ genie style pants (check them out on Monument to the Masses' cover art) and Ima Robot has traded the spastic/electro-pop of their debut for catchy riffs and melodies.

They have mellowed out a bit, but for those who loved Ima Robot for its spasicity (I made that word up) and quirkiness, don't worry. Ebert's lyrics are just as quirky as ever, ranging from stalker girlfriends in “Creeps Me Out” (which is a true story, by the way), to drug use, to love, to giving America the middle finger in “Disconnect” and “Stick it to the Man.” Songs such as “Stick it to the Man” showcase the spazz-rock that encompassed their debut.

The most apparent difference between the albums falls on Ebert's vocals. He is not as overbearing as on Ima Robot, where his vocals carry the album with the faint sound of a band behind them. More noticeably, he explores vocal diversity on Monument to the Masses. Vocally, every song is different, ranging from ballads, to disco, to hip-hop (Ebert's dream was to be a hip-hop artist), to spazz-rock, to pop; however, the album flows. The robots have definitely upgraded.

This album is just as fun and bizarre as the first. It will still make you want to stop whatever you're doing and dance. The robots just seem more serious. They prove that they can create good music and still have people question their sanity.

MSTRKRFT- The Look

2007-06-01T11:39:00.000-07:00

MSTRKRFT (Master Craft, for those of you who – like me – didn't catch on right away) is the brainchild of Death from Above 1979 bassist Jesse F. Keeler and producer Al-P. An electronic two-piece in the same vein as veterans Daft Punk and relative newcomers Hot Chip, the pair first made their name by flexing their mixing muscles on the likes of Metric, Bloc Party, and Wolfmother to create a veritable feast of floor-fillers. The Looks is their first full-length release, compiled solely of their own material. Like all club-hits, it's simple, ridiculously so – and yet it works.

Track to track, there isn't a whole lot of variety, with each song following a basic formula. Keeler and Al-P loop layers of synth and beats together to create eight tracks that although forgettable in the long run, are sure to get you dancing like C3PO on LSD. “Easy Love” is particularly irresistible, with its 80's groove and sleaze-bot vocals. The dirty and bass-shaking “Paris”, with its Prodigy-esque stop-start riff (in the vein of “Girls” from Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned), is another winner.

As with any project formed in part from the ashes of another band, there's always the question of whether or not the new effort is better than the old, whether The Looks is a step backwards or forwards from You're a Woman, I'm a Machine. In truth, it's more of a step sideways. The guitars are gone, the raw edges have been smoothed and all the grit has been spit-shined into something entirely new. Fans of Death from Above 1979 might love or hate The Looks and vice versa. What I'm getting at here is that it's unfair to judge The Looks for You're a Woman, I'm a Machine when they are both from such different worlds.

If I had to have one criticism of the album, it would be that it feels, for lack of a better word, soulless – though I wouldn't have expected anything particularly revelatory or emotional from a club-targeted dance record, anyway. The Looks is a party album and as such is certainly nothing revolutionary, but as far as party albums go you can't really complain.

Jackson and His Computer Band - Smash

2007-06-01T11:34:00.001-07:00

Much like compatriots Mouse on Mars and Jason Forrest, twenty-six-year-old Jackson Fourgeaud rarely allows you time to recline. You can picture the three artists, each hot-footing to keep you moving in some eternal game of musical chairs, unwatched by time and allowed to evolve forever. They love to twitch and pulsate, and then they start again, two seconds gone, on some new maniacal movement and you up and lose your seat. This is music made for the fervent pump of the Ritalin era, for school-kids doped out by the PTA and teachers glad to have it so.

But unlike MoM (until their most recent work, Radical Connector and live04) and the erstwhile Ms. Donna Summer, Jackson manages to anchor many of his compositions with a hypnotic beat or a synth line that holds them down against all the froth, all the frantic machinery hot at work. Sure, there’s a lot of unsettling gurgling underneath his post-French-house grooves, but beside those gutter-breaks and splices of vocals and samples, Jackson allows you time to come down. It’s not all tension, but a slow shuffle from desperation point to desperation point. There are squalls and rushes that overwhelm, but always that swooning segue that brings you back around.

In fact, Jackson’s debut, Smash, is loaded with these compelling, if a touch grandiose, movements. Opener “Utopia” swells with glam break-beats and what might be Whitney Houston samples, spliced and stitched back again toe-up, and “Arpeggio” uses a quick synth-stomp to soundtrack Arnie-cum-Sly-cum-Vin, a widescreen symphony worth its weight in faux gold chains. “Tropical Metal” lives up to its name, building from alternating synth tones into a rusted android polonaise. But perhaps Smash’s greatest hit comes in the sensual choral gaze on “Hard Tits.” Against a gummy beat and fading piano tones, Jackson pushes the juice up past gag, all Goldfrapp-esque mewing and grotesque charm. Like his best moments, Jackson goes completely over the edge just to stabilize himself, and it’s a high-wire act well worth the listen.

Unfortunately, the record fails at times to live up to its largesse. Both “Teen Beat” and the aptly-titled “Headache” succumb to their garbage-disposal sequencing, and the tired soul-pop intro to “Fast Life” drains the life out if its eventual rise into bobbing synth-funk. Grace Jones without lips, it’s raw and angular, lacking a focal point.

Still, if you allow Jackson’s debut to linger, it’ll grab hold. Slobbered in chunky Francofunk and packed with cholesterol and plenty of egg yolk. Everything about Jackson and His Computer Band crackles underneath a little too much grease. This is saturation as Denny’s fries it up, and Christ don’t it make you feel like you’ll never eat again.

Hellogoodbye - ZOMBIES! ALIENS! VAMPIRES! DINOSAURS!

2007-06-01T11:26:00.000-07:00

It’s hard to think of a band more poised for commercial success (in recent years) than Hellogoodbye. If being signed to a hip, rather large indie label famous (infamous, possibly?) for creating mega stars in the Pop-Punk world isn’t enough, Hellogoodbye were one of two bands spotlighted in a recent season (Austin, Texas if memory serves) of MTV reality show, The Real World. Multiple episodes of said season of said show featured the band either goofing off or playing music (two things the quartet are pretty good at). This instantly sprung their career into hyper speed. Even today you see people commenting their myspace saying how they discovered the band through The Real World. Of course, winning MTV2’s and Mountain Dew’s Dew Circuit Breakout helps as well. Anyways, somewhere in between the release of their current album (and subject of this review), Zombies! Aliens! Vampires! Dinosaurs! and the band signed they released an EP (Mush Slowly and Gauc) which (surprise, surprise) garnered MTV attention while legions of new fans declared their love of frontman Forrest Kline. At “press” time it is unknown whether this album, the band’s official debut will receive the same love, but no matter the odds I would bet on it.

Obviously, if Hellogoodbye get play on MTV and are signed to Drive-Thru, they have a fairly mainstream sound. They use fairly standard instruments (Keyboard, Guitar, Bass, Drums) to create fairly common sounding synth injected Pop-Punk/Power Pop. The majority of the songs are driven by moog arpeggios, but some like ‘Stuck to You’ take the more standard guitar driven route. When Hellogoodbye break away from these formats, the “magic” really starts to happen. Oh, It is Love is an acoustic ballad played mostly on a banjo, though towards the end electric guitar comes in, and eventually the whole band kicks in. The topic of said song is nothing new, just a guy declaring his love for his girlfriend/wife/whatever through slightly cliché lyrics like “It's been hardly a moment/And you are already missed/There is still a bit of your skin/That I'm yet to have kissed . The song, despite hardly being original is probably the best on the album.

Giving Oh, It is Love a run for its money for best song is lead single Here in Your Arms . Here in Your Arms is the most electronic song on the album, and unlike the majority of the album, barely has any Pop-Punk influence. At times the lead single almost sounds like a disco song, especially in the chorus, where the band utilizes vocal effects, thumping bass, danceable drums and airy keyboards. Forrest as a vocalist is fairly average. His voice is pretty high (and can get higher, as proved in [ironically enough] All Time Lows) and becomes slightly whiny a times, whether that appeals to you or not I don’t know, but I don’t mind it. Like his vocals, Forrest’s lyrics (I assume he is the band’s lyricist as well as singer) can get whiny at times. They usually aren’t incredibly well written but at times the lyrics can be humorous and/or clever.

M.A.N.D.Y. / Booka Shade - Get Physical Vol. II / Movements

2007-06-01T09:10:00.000-07:00

Assembled and beat-matched by the duo M.A.N.D.Y. – who, alongside Booka Shade and DJ T. founded the label – Get Physical Vol. II speeds through a hefty selection of the company’s catalogue (23 tracks to be precise). Envisioned as a small continent, or highway-sliced expanse, it contains both sad patches scarred by deforestation and stretches of succulent efflorescence. Of the latter, the most striking may be newcomer Jona, whose “Yellowstone” mutates Isolée guitar-addled chop-skip with shiny pedal-steel zips. He reappears later on with the markedly different “Learning From Making Mistakes,” a simmer of clicks, twiddly goo, and cubed synth. Elsewhere, there’s startling moments like the three-song segue of DJ T.’s robotized Tom Moulton reduction “Funk On You/Dub” into M.A.N.D.Y.’s delirious, searchlight-riddled “Jah/Francisco Rmx” and DJ T. again, a little more stealth, on the slightly spacey “Time Out.” It plays like an anti-extended mix, all clipped instead of entrancingly vast. One wonders what lies beyond the frames of each of these cropped and slightly magnified details – how they fit into the whole, original canvas – but as they are here strung together, a rather alluring fourth, collaged picture is produced.

Extraction and concentration is endemic to most mixed CD compilations and (as in the example just mentioned) often yields positive results. What may be most striking is how M.A.N.D.Y. applies it to Get Physical’s best know material – what could arguably be called its hits. Ostensibly delivering the best bits of their Booka Shade collaboration “Body Language” and the latter’s “Mandarine Girl,” M.A.N.D.Y. seem to be economizing the limited space available on a single disc so that the handful of crowd-pleasers are delivered with maximum efficiency – concentrated flashes of the familiar to sustain the listener through a traversal across the lesser known.

In fact, if M.A.N.D.Y. are the tour guides for this Get Physical excursion, one can look to Booka Shade as its landscapers. The duo of Walter Merziger and Arno Kammermeier hold production credits for over half of the disc’s tracks. They are the binding that knits Get Physical Vol. II’s divergent threads together. Their signature is not their sound but their technique. Relying on a clutter-repellant gathering of recurring elements, they compose almost like a rock band with distinct “instruments” consistent throughout: looping bass melodies accented by lightly morphed timbres and imported exotic sounds backed by steady percussion. Its no wonder their sophomore full-length Movements boasts both the bikini-clad Get Physical logo girl and Native Instruments’ insignia.

Whilst Get Physical Vol. II is marked by snatches of wilderness amid its brickwork, Movements is manicured almost to a fault. That said, the album is partly rather great. The pantheon-passport moments are fewest – the theremin implorations of “Shimmer,” the gothy rush of “Darko,” the ether-laced “In White Rooms” and, of course, the dusty woodwind whatsit that “Mandarine Girl” hinges on. But they’re filled out by idling, fuel burn-offs – the twin, sinister vocoder forays “Take a Ride” and “Wasting Time,” the ecstatic simplicity of “Pong Pang,” disco-heeled opener “Night Falls” – or strained attempts at new forms by way of scavenging. Add to this some seriously misguided slips into misplaced, grave piano rhapsodizing (“At the Window”), reheated trip-hop (“Hallelujah USA”) and a self-consciously, seemingly tacked-on end-credits closer (“Lost High”) and Movements becomes a cliché: the excellent EP fattened into a flabby LP.

Without the brazen Get Physical roster to rub against, Booka Shade is almost entirely devoid of frisson. Drifting close to and often giving in entirely to techno complacency, they squander the genre’s inherent psychedelic potential in finding the intersection of carnal pleasure and altered perception – the sweaty body and the bent ear - in favor of toe-tapping interchangeability.

Groove Armada - Soundboy Rock

2007-06-01T08:58:00.001-07:00

'Soundboy Rock' is a focused collection of 15 songs each flowing into the next like the best kind of homemade mix-tape. Initially they worked separately on the tunes for their fifth studio album - Cato in Spain, in the studio he's dubbed The Sweatbox, Findlay in the space he calls The Tom Tom Club in the basement of his house in Hackney. Musical files were emailed back and forth, the ideas fairly flying out of the pair; 19 tracks, mostly instrumentals, were quickly racked up.
Last August Cato went to New York to record contributions from a dreamteam of rappers and vocalists. Soul queen Angie Stone sat at the piano with the Groove Armada man, chain-smoking and exhaling lyrics over the punchy rhythms of 'Feel The Same As You'. Later, once Cato was back in Europe, Rhymefest - signed to Mark Ronson's label - would add whipsmart hip hop block-party vibes to the pneumatic funk of 'The Girls Say'.
Back in London, Findlay was working with Mutya Buena and hit songwriter Karen Poole. Cato had come across the former Sugarbabe singer via a Chicago-based website from which he sources a lot of his vinyl; he had no idea who she was. Pool, meanwhile, had been put forward as a possible collaborator by Groove Armada's new A&R man. The result: 'Song 4 Mutya', a huge, jump-around pop tune, sure to dominate dancefloors and airwaves all summer.
Back in Spain, Cato invited MAD - the voice on Superstylin', their live MC, present and correct on every Groove Armada album to date - to jam over some records. He came up with the phrase 'Soundboy Rock'; Cato figured it sounded like "a classic reggae chorus". So out came Cato's bass (for 'a proper reggae rumbling bassline'), and in came Hard-Fi's Richard Archer on melodica. Cue the title track, packing a laidback reggae wallop in the middle of the album.
And onwards and upwards rolled the Soundboy buzz... Tony Allen, formerly of Fela Kuti's band and currently featuring in The Good, The Bad And The Queen with Damon Albarn, agreed to chip in, as did Candi Staton. Her gutsy vocal and Allen's bewitching drumming, as well as rolling piano chords and stabs of strings, combine to dazzling effect on the Philly-esque soul classicism of 'Paris'. Candi pops up again on the dancefloor dynamite of 'Love Sweet Sound'.
After many months and miles and emailed mega-files, Findlay joined Cato in Barcelona for six intense weeks of 20-hour days at the end of 2006. More collaborators kept joining the eclectic party: Simon Lord from Simian Mobile Disco added vocals to 'The Things That We Could Share', and Alan Donohoe from The Rakes did the same to the wonderful 'See What You Get' . Welsh-dwelling American Jeb Loy Nichols supplies croony folk-vibes to 'What's Your Version?', while Findlay's Sugardaddy collaborator Tim Hutton supplies the chorus. Buzzed-about newcomer Jack McManus - now with his own record deal - brings spacey vocal ambience to the bleepy textures of 'From The Rooftops' (imagine Erik Satie soundtracking 2001: A Space Odyssey).
But before all that comes 'Get Down'. The first single from 'Soundboy Rock' features the uniquely chewy vocals of Stush, a female MC from London, and a soaring disco-carnival vibe. Its energy and its enthusiasm and its sheer shake-your-tailfeather bounce typify Groove Armada's Year Zero approach to their new album.

Ellen Allien - The Other Side of Berlin

2007-06-01T08:57:00.001-07:00

The music of Berlin-based techno DJ Ellen Allien is inextricably linked to her German hometown, as reflected in such records as STADTKIND (CITY KID) and, more explicitly, BERLINETTE. Allien crafts a love letter to her beloved city in THE OTHER SIDE, which presents tourguide-style footage of her favorite Berlin nightclubs, bars, shops, and restaurants set to a sampler of German electronic music, drawing on everything from house to new-wave to glitchtronica to Morr Music-like melodicism via tracks from Plastikman, Miss Kitten, Booka Shade, Rhythm & Sound, and Wayne County & the Electric Chairs.

The Presets - Beams

2007-06-01T08:56:00.001-07:00

The Presets. Few have heard of them, yet they cease to amaze all new listeners. They cannot be confined to a single genre or style of music, but dabble in many aspects of rock and dance music. On this album, you will find techno/dance drum loops, filled with its signature hi-hat rise and fall. Electric snare beats are a prominent sound, and distorted, badass bass lines will fill your every orifice as you are pummelled by a cacophony of keyboard harmonies and an array of other electronic sounds. Vocals on this album are not of few, and are generally distorted. Drum recordings are done electronically, but live, the drums are played.

Now...on to the album itself.

We are kicked under way by the boardering on funky bassline of Steamworks, backed by an electronic harmony and a simple rock beat, with gasping and "Ooh"'s in the background, before another electronic riff comes to the fore. The song starts to build in tension around the 1:30 mark, with electronic strings in the background. The drums fade away after another minute or so, only to come pounding back in, to finish the opening track off with a fading keyboard note. No Vocals on this track.

The next track, Are You The One?, is the second single off the album, and it starts off with an incredibly catchy hard hitting bass line with a signature electronic drum beat. Quite fast singing in teh verse, with chanting of "Ooone, Are you the? Ooone, are you the?" This track is absolutely fanstastic, the best on the album, and the catchiest. No surprises with the single choice.

This is, I now say, not a track by track, but I thought I'd start off by reviewing the first two tracks in more detail to give the reader an idea of the album.

This does not mean however, that it is a downhill ride from here on. Oh no. Other potential rave and dance hits are evident in such tracks as 'Down Down Down', with its peltin tambourine and distorted bass line driving it forward. Or perhaps one would rather the more Drum and Bass sounds of 'Worms', with its distorted guitar sounding riff during the verse taking the place of vocals.

'Girl (You Chew My Mind Up)' is much faster paced with ultra fast keyboard sounds accompanied by a battering bass drum, and shoutig mildly distorted vocals. Or perhaps a vast change in styles, to the potential rave classic, aptly titled 'I Go Hard, I Go Home'. Fast paced, almost latin sounding drum beats get us under way, before being followed up by typical rave drumming, and high, broken up electronic vocals.

The last two songs on the album are for an even more drastic change of scenery. 'Bad Up Your Betterness' is much more indie sounding, with a half-assed techno sounding drum beat, and quietened vocals. Quite atmospheric sounding around the middle with the introduction of electronic strings.

And finally, the title track, 'Beams'. Very different once again, much quieter al the way through, a nice way to calm down at the end of a 51 minute, thrilling ride through the many lands of dance and techno. More electronic strings back up the simple guitar chord prgression and mellow drum beat. The album finishes with the drum beat, and then nothing.

Architecture In Helsinki - In Case We Die

2007-06-01T08:54:00.000-07:00

Australian indie pop act Architecture In Helsinki make clever music that sounds like the soundtrack to children playing in the sandpit. The band, as well as guitar bass drums have some interesting instruments such as tubas, flutes and trumpets. Comprised of multi instrumentalists, Architechure In Helsinki are a talented bunch.

Architecture In Helsinki
Kellie Sutherland - Vocals, Keyboard, Clarinet, Percussion
Sam Perry - Bass, Guitar, Keyboard, Percussion
Tara Shackell - Tuba, Trombone, Keyboard, Percussion, Backing Vocals
Cameron Bird - Vocals, Guitar, Keyboard, Bass, Percussion
James Cecil - Drums, Percussion, Guitar, Bass, Keyboard, Backing Vocals
Gus Franklin - Trombone, Drums, Guitar, Keyboard, Percussion, Backing Vocals
Isobel Knowles - Trumpet, Keyboard, Percussion, Backing Vocals
Jamie Mildren - Guitar, Bass, Keys, Percussion, Flute

Despite feeling like the band were just warming up, Fingers Crossed was an excellent debut which displayed Architecture In Helsinki's potential. Just a year later, Architecture In Helsinki have released an album which expands on the ideas presented in their first album and makes some darn good songs along the way. Signed to Bar/None Records (home groups such as Of Montreal), Architecture In Helsinki have come a long way in a very short time. Pop in most parts and progressive in others, it's hard to believe that In Case We Die comes less than a year after Fingers Crossed. With their mix of influences, male/female vocals and occasional shouting, Architecture In Helsinki's music has generated many comparisons to another band who debuted in 2004, The Arcade Fire. And for once, the comparisons are both justified and accurate. Both bands have a similar sound, as well as a similar quality of music. The difference being that Architecture In Helsinki put out albums so quickly. Will they be able to maintain this speed of output of quality material? It remains to be seen.

In Case We Die has many standouts. And while the album flows together extremely well, most tracks are unique and memorable as stand alone pieces. There is not a track on the album that lets it down, though there certainly are some tracks that are better than others. Some of the rhymes within the lyrics, "The Cemetary" for example are nothing short of brilliant in the context of the track's music. In Case We Die opens with a slightly eerie but epic track which includes brass instruments and choirs. Other parts of the album are complete indie pop, existing for no other reason than that they are enjoyable. Songs like "Frenchy, I'm Faking" mix the two sounds together, switching between epic choirs with brass fanfares and guitar driven indie pop. The aforementioned track also includes construction sound effects, things like saws and power drills. And though the first half of the album is undoubtedly stronger than the second half, In Case We Die is complete indie fun all the way through. What makes it even better is how soon it came after Fingers Crossed. They may not be able to keep up this speed of output for their career, but Architecture In Helsinki have a bright future ahead of them.

Sneaky Souns System - Sneaky Souns System

2007-06-01T08:53:00.001-07:00

Combination of sounds from electronic to soul to chillout to dance, very funky beats. Most songs have a various combination of sound attributes, which as far as I'm concerned, makes for very good listening. I've provided a track listing from thier album bluntly named "Sneaky Sound Machine", as one hasn't been provided as yet. Sneaky Sound Machine (Self Titled) 01 – I Love It 02 – Thin Disguise 03 – UFO 04 – Pictures 05 – I D E W 2 L U 06 – You Should Have Told Me 07 – Goodbye 08 – Hip Hip Hooray 09 – It’s Over 10 – You’re Hot 11 – Tease Me 12 – Maybe Tracks recently released as a single such as "I Love It", "Hip Hip Hooray" and recently aired on Foxtel's Channel [V] "Pictures" are also featured on this album. Hope I've been helpful, Enjoy.

Cornelius - CM: Cornelius Mix

2007-06-01T08:51:00.000-07:00

Really now, what the last remix album that was worth anyone's time? Bjork's Telegram, perhaps. Maybe (and this is a big maybe) Tortoise Remixed. But the majority of remix albums that immediately come to mind-- the Sea and Cake's Two Gentlemen, owL remix Low, the High Llamas' Lollo Rosso, Mogwai's Kicking a Dead Pig, the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion's Experimental Remixes-- have only one or two tracks worthy of even hardcore fans. I know it's dumb to complain, since the remix industry has always been less about interesting reinterpretations of songs and more about giving sonic handjobs to each other ("Sonic the Handjob"-- now there' a Playstation title I wouldn't mind playing), but that doesn't mean I still can't be harsh on CM for simply being representative of the genre.

Look. Cornelius is a fucking genius, I think we can all agree on that. But he succumbs to a bad case of Remixer's Syndrome on CM, wherein everything he remixes ends up sounding just like him. Thus, CM sounds like Fantasma with the original songs reduced to mere samples. Or, conversely, Cornelius reuses scads of samples and production techniques from Fantasma in the CM remixes, to the point where it might be redundant to own both albums. Either way, it's the same thing.

To be fair, there are indeed some interesting moments on CM. Cornelius takes Money Mark's rather lead- footed pop song "Maybe I'm Dead" and makes it feather- light, the vocals floating about in a dreamy lounge arrangement. And UNKLE's "Ape Shall Never Kill Ape" melds punk rock rhythms with cartoony orchestral swoops so seamlessly you wonder why no one thought of it before. But overall, Cornelius sounds like he isn't trying too hard. Maybe it's that his sounds are so recognizably him that it sounds rote, or that the choice of artists he chose to remix seems pretty obvious, with the exception of the Pastels, whose "Windy Hill" is ironically the most enjoyable track on CM. (On the other hand, this version is also available on the Pastels' infinitely more enjoyable Illuminati rexix LP.) In that respect, CM is a grand missed opportunity; just think of what it would have been like had Cornelius tried to remix, say, his Matador labelmates. Cornelius remixing Cat Power? Yo La Tengo? Chavez? Pavement, even? Now there's a remix album worth investigating.

The Blow - Paper Television

2007-06-01T08:49:00.000-07:00

Love: pop music’s richest and most deserving subject. Everyone wants it, everyone thinks they need it, and no one gets sick of hearing about it, especially when it’s neatly packaged as a three-minute pop ditty. In the pop arena, we speak amour’s name with casual reverence, promoting its supposed ubiquity through constant rotation on the radio, as if it were simply a given. And that’s part of the fantasy: in a hyper-capitalist culture, love’s still free and readily available for consumption. The universal enigma that both bewilders and enchants can be yours—all that is required is that you listen.

Sadly, the majority of current pop music offers us cheap wares: an imitation of the real thing. Why is it that the power of love is often watered down by the Top 40 set into puddles of saccharine drivel? Or when it leans towards the sexual spectrum, the pop provocateurs sensationalize the philosophy of the boudoir? Just as we search for that special someone(s), so we search for that happy medium in pop music: where love is presented as complex and elusive instead of only inciting manic desperation, precious swooning, or an insatiable desire to get jiggy with it.

The Blow’s Paper Television neither exalts the sacred nor worships the profane. Rather, the Portland electropop duo deals with the “L word” on their own offbeat terms while giving us new reasons to wiggle with delight.

The Blow is really just vocalist, Khaela Maricich. She mostly performed solo until Jona Bechtolt, a cyber savvy musician with his own solo project, Y.A.C.H.T., accompanied her on this album contributing the stammering snares and tinkling keyboard effects, among other random techno noise. The twosome incorporate myriad genres: post-punk, no-wave, new wave, and confessional balladry among others. Yet, The Blow’s sound is so spare, it’s almost naïve in its composition.

Maricich charms with a refreshingly ordinary voice that finds its strength in its own limits. Over Bechtolt’s tympanic beats, she sings like a proud amateur, sometimes straining a bit to keep up with the frantic pace he’s set. Bechtolt creates an infectious blend of hard-hitting rhythms that both slink about seductively and stutter with pyrotechnic violence, but are stripped bare of any musical ornamentation. Bechtolt’s minimalist production encourages a strong focus on what’s Maricich singing about. Listening to Paper Television is like reading a bright young woman’s journal filled with thoughts she knows are far too knowing and worldly to share with just anybody. Fortunately, Maricich makes us privy to her private reflections.

One would be tempted to call Maricich the quintessential everygirl but then she delivers a line like, “If there’s something in the deli aisle that makes you cry, of course I’ll put my arm around you and I’ll walk you outside” and you realize she’s not quite like anyone. And yet she is. She’s pensive and wistful, but also grounded and guarded. She’s interested in love but not overeager. Like the subject of which she’s so fond, she’s a perfect contradiction.

“A Pile of Gold” examines the commodification of the female body and how male desire operates in the sexualized marketplace. Maricich makes herself clear without being obnoxiously erudite. She links love to capitalism like a true Marxist, and yet when that unrelenting bass drops again and again insisting on getting down, we feel no shame in shaking our own moneymakers. She’s just tellin’ it like it is.

The album has its share of unexceptional moments. Often, the raw simplicity of the beats leaves something wanting. At times, one desires something more grandiose to match the emotive content. The Blow could easily be categorized as another electro-something band if not for Maricich’s informal and intimate delivery and engaging lyrics. If either is somewhat middling, the song gets lost in the primitive rhythm and fails to resonate.

The indelible treasure, though, is single “Parentheses,” a quirky tale of love in the supermarket. It’s moving, adorable, and an altogether realistic depiction of what love is truly about. It isn’t about senseless courting or mindless “porking,” it’s about, among other things, understanding each other’s fragility and embracing it when and wherever. Moreover, the eclectic fusion of reggae/synthpop/doowop instantly captivates, and most importantly: this is the song that contains that heartbreaking “deli aisle” lyric.

Transforming the prosaic into the profound, The Blow reinvents love for the masses without a hint of avant-garde condescension. Paper Television is an honest, imaginative, and beguiling pop record that pleasantly surprises with its unassuming spin on good, old-fashioned love songs.

!!! - Myth Takes

2007-06-01T08:40:00.000-07:00

!!! rides a dirt-disco punk desert fantasy of mescaline and granola bars from the northeast to the southwest, from electric skyscrapers to trust-fund shanty towns. If Burning Man sold out and Death Valley crawled with hipster youth till everybody was drinking absinthe out of Costco water bottles, it would sound like this.

Edgy, mysterious, cinematic, dance band !!! (sometimes pronounced chk chk chk) have recently released Myth Takes, and are set to ride the new dance punk/phunk wave into groove history. Fans of bands in the same area of music—for it can’t really be call a genre since dance music’s rival factions are so militant—will certainly know the Rapture, LCD Soundsystem, and perhaps Cut Copy, as groups who take partying-down with baselines and synthesizers into the 2010s.

How is this process of ‘grooving it up’ accomplished? In the case of most bands in the non-genre of dance punk, music in inspired by a not-very-deep reverence for early (70’s and 80’s) electronic music, especially German Krautrock. Anybody who has looked at the Wikipedia article for electronic music knows Kraftwerk as the founders of the man/machine aesthetic of electronica. What that band lacked, and what many dance bands in the 80s lacked was the rugged baselines and song-writing know-how to carry off critically acclaimed and nasty-long-lasting groves. In 2007, the infusion of fundamentalist punk rock musicianship, with dance instrumentation and structure, will uphold and further deconstruct the meaning of dance and rock.

!!! in particular have a sound that will be familiar to anybody who has enjoyed the “Alternative genre” in the past ten years. The new album, Myth Takes has a real grounding in diversely instrumented Western American rock bands. But importantly, !!! is faster, dirtier, and more fun than Cake or Beck. Myth Takes kicks with bass drums, pulses with guitars, and toots with the occasional brass.

The essential shape of a !!! album seems to have improved markedly from the last record, Louden Up Now. Dance groves are still critical, but beyond that !!! has delved deeper into the narratives of their Sacramento to Brooklyn night culture. The ‘myths’ they embody are coming true in the form of grungy dance parties and perpetual subcultural movements. Movies, heroes, and icons come up and stir the music into delicious neon evening theatre for the ears.

BTTLS - MIRRORED

2007-06-01T08:37:00.001-07:00

Battles first came to my attention a couple of years back. Rumours of a group featuring ex members of Don Caballero and Helmet were to these ears (on paper) the equivalent of musical nirvana (spiritual, not Seattle). I presumed they would sound like Don Caballero, only heavier (Helmeter?) On preparing to listen to their debut EP, I was braced for a flurry of slaps round the face - only to receive a well-mannered stroke of the chin. This wasn’t musical machine guns - it was clever musical noodlings in the territory of arch-noodlers Tortoise, and well; I had Tortoise for that sort of thing. So, Battles slipped off the mental radar, only to sporadically reappear in the form of some live shows last year, live shows I didn’t attend but from whose reviews I learned that the drummer had a massive cymbal stand.

When Mirrored arrived in the in-tray, my memory was jogged to that early hope. After a quick, half-hearted first listen, it appeared my preconceptions were right - here were a bunch of incredibly talented and tight musicians, overly pleased with themselves for making music more enjoyable to them than the listener. Like a series of ‘in’ jokes they were reluctant to share.

But how wrong I was. Spend some quality time with Mirrored and it soon becomes clear that it is a great record on many levels.Yes - they are having a good time, but this is by no means an exclusive party. Opening track Race:In sets the tone nicely and is a good snapshot of what Battles seem to be about. A driving hi-hat and snare rim percussion, and a subtle - repetitive lead guitar part - are joined at various stages in the songs 5 minutes, with whistling, chanting, chimes, what appears to be some sort of pipe percussion, a xylophone, sleigh bells, keyboards, great drum beats. And this invention, never at the cost of quality, continues over the other 10 songs, before closing with Race:Out (a speeded up/slowed down version of track one).

All of which comes together to rock hard, groove hard, be at once serious and intelligent whilst good fun and high-spirited. Mirrored has pulled off a great trick of sounding unlike anything else, and whilst a venture into unchartered territory could require a certain level of pretension, it remains completely open and accessible to all. Mirrored will most likely feature in end of year ‘best-of’ lists and is quite possibly the soundtrack to the best movie not yet made. A movie where Gary Busey gets kicked in the shins by a midget. That’s the vibe of the thing.

The One Am Radio - This Too Will Pass

2007-06-01T08:35:00.001-07:00

For some reason a band keeps coming back at you. You know, you read about a certain band, think you might be interested, and don't follow up. A couple weeks/months later you are subjected to them again. Still, it doesn't stick. Then when you finally do fit in a listen and some attention you can't figure out why you didn't notice the first time around. That's what happened with The One AM Radio for me. It took Hrishikesh to send me a copy of his CD in order for me to spend some time with his music. I'm glad I did. While the music on This Too Will Pass is very dark, it is still pleasing to the ear. It seems that Hrishikesh Hirway knows what he is doing when it comes to making doom-pop.

The album opens up with some nice acoustic guitar on "The Harvest", shortly before you are introduced to Hirway's ever-so-gentle voice. Tracks like "The Echoing Airports" had some Elliott Smith nods in it. I found the production of this song, sorry the album was one of the most formidable points.

There are portions where he sounds a little along the lines of Belle and Sebastian but One AM Radio is much, much darker in overall tone. There is a bit of a breakdown in the middle of "Fires" that sounds like this.

Overall, This Too Will Pass is a success. I found that I had a hard time taking all 50 minutes of this at once. There wasn't quite enough diversity to warrant repeat listens immediately, but I did find that all of the songs were able to stand nicely all by themselves, warranting necessary playlist inclusion.

Lo-Fi-Fnk - Boylife

2007-06-01T08:32:00.000-07:00

With the recent international success of artists such as Shout Out Louds, The Cardigans, The Hives and The Knife, Sweden is finally able to step out of the 70s shadows and prove to the world that they have more to offer musically than just ABBA. And if that list of artists wasn't impressive enough then try adding Lo-Fi-Fnk to it; the latest forward offensive in Sweden's mission to take over the music world. From Stockholm (where else?), Leo Drougge and August Hellsing, a.k.a. Lo-Fi-Fnk, have been doing their thing since meeting in high school five years ago. After the obligatory trial period of playing in shoe-box clubs to three people with a bunch of faulty equipment, Lo-Fi-Fnk have finally settled on a sound and delivered their first LP on London-based label Moshi Moshi. Boylife is a delectable mix of luscious electro-pop and retro-rave sounds straight of 1992. Produced by the guys themselves, tracks like City and Wake Up capture the enormous sound of warehouse rave while Adore and Heartache are sleek, electro-fused dancefloor gems. Boylife is one of the most impressive and likeable debut records of this year and more proof, if any was needed, that the Swedes are well on the way to becoming masters of the universe.

Näd Mika - Electronic Beat Bitch

2007-06-01T08:27:00.000-07:00

First track on this album, the first from Essen-based glam queen Näd Mika, is a knowing wink to the scourge of performing on-stage with only backing tracks to rely on. We've all seen some really cool people take to the stage, cue up their backing, breath deeply ready to launch into the first of their long list of classic tracks only to be reduced to a quivering, sweating, embarassed wreck as the laptop decides to suffer from a bout of Tourettes and skip and jump all over the place, giving some nice 2 second bursts of every song in the set. I'm sure Näd knows all about that from her begging pleas on Technical Problems, asking the audience to stay and not fuck off sniggering. The album then careers from one electro-punk track to the next. "Take me or leave me" she cries on Heart Despair, clearly not giving a fuck what people think of her. She lays it on the line and shoves her A-list credentials firmly up our noses on Celebrity while her legendary masterpiece, Too Intense, lays waste to the theory that wanking is an OK subsitute for sex as she informs the world, "I want to fuck, I want to fuck, enough of masturbation". Enough indeed. This album takes the panto glam of Ziggy Stardust with the aggressive punk of The Damned but mixes in a generous dose of Top of the Pops fun.

You Say Party! We Say Die! - Hit the Floor

2007-06-01T05:55:00.000-07:00

You Say Party! We Say Die! One of the hardest working bands around if You Say Party's recent touring schedule is anything to go by. Obviously firmly aware that the best way to promote something you want to sell is to hit the road and peddle your wares, the band have been playing shows in venues ranging from the coolest of cool music clubs to piss-drenched nowhere bars in backwater farming communities....well, sort of. The enjoyment factor is high; not only from the crowds who flock to see them but also from the band themselves who clearly love to play so much that they're prepared to drop any airs or graces a soon-to-be-huge band might have and set up shop in some gin-dive backroom. And thankfully the sense is fun is not confined to their live shows; it weaves its way through each and every track on debut LP, Hit the Floor. Crunchy guitars, insane drumming, bang-bang basslines and the primal yelping of frontwoman extraordinaire Becky Ninkovic are all present and correct on this delectable collection of spiky punk/disco...and with a generous smattering of exclamation marks thrown in for good measure. If these guys don't take over the world soon, there's no justice left.