Celebrity Squares

Is this the gadget that will finally make me give up my vinyl? I'm not sure, but it certainly looks a lot of fun. And a lot of sexy.



It's a 120Gb MP3 player, that also lets you mix tracks together. A pocket DJ system if you will.

I would question whether it's really a good idea to make it even easier for people to become DJs, as sometimes it seems these days that a fast internet connection and a CD wallet full of the latest downloads has replaced a deep and long-standing love of music as qualifications.... but maybe like punk, DJ democracy will turn out to be a good thing.

Time alone will tell.

Then again:



And i'm not sure there'll be much panic at the disco with today's selections. Much as i'd love to go 'here's the SebastiAn remix of Rage Against the Machine, it's AMAZING'.... I won't. Because it's absolutely fucking dreadful.

Have some indie goodness instead.

First we have The Answering Machine, a band that seems to follow in the joyful jangliness of Los Campesinos!. Of course the lyrics aren't very happy happy joy joy, but that won't bother the sweaty teenagers who will bounce around shouting 'and i'll drink till i'm sick'. Before sicking on each other. Probably. Teenagers eh!



THE ANSWERING MACHINE - SILENT HOTELS

Polytechnic are blessed with a fantastic name, which is half the trick in this pop stardom lark. Unfortunately i've heard quite a few of their songs, and they're all good but I just can't quite get orgasmic about any. This forthcoming single is a good example. It's a re-release of a previous single on Transgressive, and it's undoubtedly really good. Just not quite brilliant. It's a classic kind of indie pop that will always and forever soundtrack the broken hearts and shattered dreams of generations of shy boys & girls wearing second-hand shirts and mascara. That was a long sentence. Thank god i'm not using Word or it would have all gone green & started FRAGMENTING at me.



POLYTECHNIC - WON'T YOU COME AROUND

A band that I thought through listening alone would probably do the previous lot of fey indie prancers in a fight are These New Puritans... however having seen this photo i'm not too sure.



Probably realising that no-one has done a 13-minute indie epic since The Family Cat's 'Steamroller', these Southend droogs have funnelled their ambition to be a futuristic marching band into this Homeric saga. Well I say that, although I haven't the slightest idea what this is about. The singer sounds like a slightly more tuneful Mark E Smith, and verses and choruses come & go without drama or announcement. I guess about 8:30 in is where the the 3-minute single suddenly reveals itself, however it wouldn't sound right unless preceded & followed by all that yelping, sloganeering and guitar riffing.

THESE NEW PURITANS - NAVIGATE, NAVIGATE

Again this isn't going to be playing at many discos this weekend, however it popped onto itunes while I was having a bit of a lie down, and as I lay & listened I went from 'what the fuck is this' to 'what the fuck is this, it's brilliant' over the course of its 9 minutes.

Quiet Village of course have made a couple of timeless records on the Whatever We Want label... which has just released the brilliant Map of Africa album (the one i've not quite got round to writing about yet). Well this isn't quite as chillpop as their singles. At all. But it really rewards careful listening. Preferably with some fragrant buds.

JAMES YORKSTON - WOOZY WITH CIDER (QUIET VILLAGE REMIX)

But look, here's me forgetting myself. It's a bank holiday. Woo! Well I can't deny you some dancefloor diesel so here's a mix i've been enjoying by The Black Ghosts. I get sent quite a lot of mixes, but unfortunately I never have time to listen to them. This one has the dual advantages of a: being only 30 minutes long and b: being packed full of great records.





THE BLACK GHOSTS - 30 MINUTE MIX

Tracklisting:
Harco Pront "Night"
Emperor Machine "Rimramramrim"
Clinic "The Second Line"
Soul Savers "Rumble Fish" (Simian Mix)
Supercollider "Darn Cold Way Of Loving"
Electrelane "The Valleys"
The Jonzun Crew" "Space Is The Place"
Good Books "Leni (Crystal Castles Mix)
Heaven And Earth "Feel The Spirit"
The Firebirds "Soul Sonata"
Blowfly "Sesame Street"
Silver Apples "Lovefingers"
Gianfranco Reverberi "Nel Cimitero Di Tucson"
Metronomy "Trick Or Treatz"
Milton Hamilton "My Love Supreme"
101 Strings "Karma Sitar"
Can "Vitamin C" (Ghost 1 And Ghost 4 Edit)"
Zongamin "Spiral"
Brian Eno "Sky Saw"
Frankie Valli "Beggin" (Pilooski Edit)
The Whip "Muzzle #1" (The Black Ghosts Mix)
Beck "Sexx Laws" (The Wiseguys Mix)
The Black Ghosts "Amyway You Choose To Give It" (Fake Blood Mix)
The Dykeenies "New Ideas" (The Black Ghosts Mix)


So yes, it's a bank holiday. And it's going to be pissing it down. So personally i'm going to be leaving the caravan at home & raving it up here:



Here's hoping you have fun & good times. Or failing that, cheap beer & a leg over.

Foxy

So the all conquering Kitsune label is to release Vol. 4 of its 'Maison' compilation series on 11th June. Like the classic previous compilations, it's a mixture of pop bombs old and new.... and is of course an essential purchase.



Stand out tracks for me are the Boys Noize mix of Feist, and the Hadouken! track... which I meant to post up some time ago (but didn't). I'm sure these can be easily found on t'interweb if you so desire, so I'll just post up the promo mix for the album, which will hopefully act as a tantalising aperitif for the main banquet.

KITSUNE MAISON VOL. 4 - PROMO MIX

Tracklisting:
Thieves Like Us - Drugs In My Body
Dragonette - I Get Around (Midnight Juggernauts remix)
Phones - Worryin'
Crystal Castles – Knights (Demo Version)
The Whip - Divebomb (short edit)
Riot In Belgium - La Musique (Adam Sky mix)
Hadouken ! - Tuning In (H! re- rub)
Feist - My Moon My Man (Boys Noize Classic mix)
Guns N' Bombs - Crossover Appeal (radio edit)
Passions - Emergency (radio edit)
Numéro# - Hit Pop
Hummer - Foals
Punks Jump Up - Dance To Our Disco
Darkel - Be My Friend


It seems that as is customary, almost all of these tracks either have been or will be released as singles... and forthcoming sometime soon is the excellent 'Divebomb' by The Whip.

The single comes backed with a cracking remix by Crystal Castles, who filter the track through their Vic 20 blender to create a gloriously bouncy combination of squelching bass and an 8-bit vocal loop.

THE WHIP - DIVEBOMB (CRYSTAL CASTLES REMIX)


11th June also sees the release of Digitalism's debut album 'Idealistic'. I also have a kind of promo mix for this, but it's not quite so smoothly mixed... being just a quick blast of each track loosely joined together. It'll give a quick taster though....



DIGITALISM - IDEALISTIC PROMO MIX

Tracklisting:
Magnets
Zdarlight
I Want I Want
Idealistic
Digitalism In Cairo
Departure From Cairo
Pogo
Moonlight
Anything New
The Pulse
Homezone
Apollo-Gize
Jupiter Approach
Jupiter Room
Echoes

If you've not seen the rather impressive video for 'Pogo'... here it is.



And you want more Digitalism? Well here's another mix I received of all(?) Digitalism's remixes.

DIGITALISM - REMIXES MIX

Tracklisting:
TIGA - Far From Home (Digitalism Remix) / PIAS
TOM VEK - Nothing But Green Lights (Digitalism Remix) / KitsunÈ
THE PRESETS - Down Down Down (Digitalism Remix) / Modular
MUNK - Disco Clown (Digitalism Remix) / Gomma
THE FUTUREHEADS - Skip To The End (Digitalism Remix) / 679 Rec
DEPECHE MODE - Never Let Me Down Again (Digitalism Remix) / Mute
KLAXONS - Atlantis To Interzone (Digitalism R-r-remix) / KitsunÈ

In lieu of an mp3 from the Digitalism album, i'll post up a track from another single on Kitsune by Jence. Who is in fact one half of Digitalism. It's out now and it's noisy.



JENCE - WIRED

Still with Kitsune, here's an unreleased mix of Klaxons' 'Gravity's Rainbow'. Is there anyone left who's not remixed this? Well once again this is a pretty damn excellent weapon for yer dancefloor. Although to be honest i'm still of the opinion that the Nightmoves version from the original Kitsune 12" is the best.

KLAXONS - GRAVITY'S RAINBOW (GUNS 'N' BOMBS FREAKOUT MIX)

This is turning into a bit of a marathon post, however i'll just leave you with some more ripe Gallic Camembert. I wrote about Naive New Beaters quite a while back, but they're now back with a jacking new single, 'Bang Bang'.

It comes backed with remixes from Yuksek and Ajax (from Bang Gang), however here's the original version.... some filthy sounding beats with a French dude rapping on top. It's undeniably funk filled, although in a boy scrum way rather than a bump and grind seduction fashion!

Single of the, er, day! Once again, France wins.

NAIVE NEW BEATERS - BANG BANG

Here's the video:

Naive New Beaters - "BANG BANG"
Uploaded by djtoncar

It's better with Lasers

I wasn't sure I liked this at first... but now i'm not too sure what I didn't see in it.

I guess this is probably the signature tune of Copenhagen's Oh No Ono, repeating as it does the phrase "we are oh no ono". Although the CD sleeve displays some kind of classic rock pose... all big hair and Kings of Leon style (not the picture below btw), the music inside is altogether more eccentrically scandinavian. This single sounds to me like the Banana Splits playing the Star Wars cantina. Which can only be a good thing.



OH NO ONO - VICTIM OF THE MODERN AGE


A friend of mine from Leeds sent me his new band's CD, and despite the fact that i'm usually particularly hard to please when it comes to stuff my friends do, I think this is a rather fantastic song. For some reason the thought comes into my head that this should have been the UK's Eurovision entry this year. I'm sure it would have got more points than Scooch!



With the mention of Eurovision, don't start thinking that this is some kind of gay europop hellbeat. For The Resplendents bill themselves as a kind of lounge soul band. They also compare themselves to Dexy's, which sounds reasonable. Anyway check it out....

THE RESPLENDENTS - ANOTHER SPIN OF THE WHEEL

Upcoming gigs:

19 May 2007
Rio's Leeds Doors £4 TBC on FIRST
(Supporting Napoleon IIIrd)
24 June 2007
Uppingham Market Square on at 4pm
(Free all day festival)


Finally here's a little something for the weekend. What else can I say but...... TUUUNE!!! I virtually combusted last time I heard this in a club. Which was far too long ago come to think of it.



HARDFLOOR - HARDTRANCE ACPERIENCE

Fuck yeah. As a comment on discogs put it, "this is the sort of record that changes people's lives".

Arriving Late to the Party

I'm not quite sure how the incredible Battles single 'Atlas' passed me by. But since getting the album this week i've been listening to little else.



Atlas itself has got to be a contender for one of the singles of the year. A primal drumbeat is eventually joined in the groove with a multitude of other clattering instruments and a bizarrely high-pitched vocal. It shouldn't work, but it does. Brilliantly.

Watch the video here, but bear in mind that the full album / single version is twice as long & thus twice as good.



Although most of the album is instrumental, another vocal track stands out for me. Ddiamondd has a frantic police-chase bass line, which eventually turns into a full-on insect invasion with singer Tyondai shouting scary nonsense over the top.

BATTLES - DDIAMONDD

Buy the album from Warpmart It's ace, and Warp deserve your money.

Also out on Warp this week is the new single from !!!, 'Must be the Moon'. It's the Emperor Machine remix that elevates it to 'must buy' status... like their mix of The Knife it's a deep disco groove with added special cosmic powers.

!!! - MUST BE THE MOON (EMPEROR MACHINE REMIX)

The !!! single also contains an obligatory Hot Chip remix, but i'm preferring their new original track from the DJ Kicks album. I mentioned the album a few weeks back, but it's finally out to buy on 21st May. As is traditional with the DJ Kicks series, the compilers include a new & exclusive cut, and in Hot Chip's case it's 'My Piano'.



With a familiar 5-pronged electro pop attack, it shouts out 'Hot Chip Hit' as you tune into the different parts of the groove. I think the piano noise adds a great new dimension... and i'm once again really keen to properly hear those new tracks they played at Lowlands last year.

HOT CHIP - MY PIANO

Bringing the pain with some more electro pop is Australian 'Muscles'. Although most of last year's (impossible to find as there are only 70 copies) debut album 'Four Months' consists of a lot of frequently disturbing bedroom sonic experimentalism, it suddenly leaps at ya in the middle with a couple of tracks of pop gold.

Coming on like a one-limbed Presets, this track's a lot of fun. Who hasn't been let down by an art student armed with a formidable badge collection?



MUSCLES - ONE INCH BADGE PIN

The following track is also a cracker. An arpeggiated bassline and squelchy synths accompany muscles' urgent implorations of 'can i get some ice, it's burning up from inside'.

MUSCLES - ICE

Read more about Muscles here

For more MP3s, check out Ice Cream and Chocolate Raspberry and Lime


Finally, one to clear the bowels. Released on Planet Mu - the home of sonic terrorism (and much more besides), this new single by the excellently named 'Duran Duran Duran' is like some kinda ghetto-tech gone wrong. Step aside DJ Funk.... this is maximum brutality gabba kick massacre!

DURAN DURAN DURAN - FACE BLAST

Where are your friends tonight?

What a package the new LCD Soundsystem single is. Cover versions by Franz Ferdinand & John Cale; a 'Whatever We Want' Voodoo Funk style remix by DJ Harvey; a cover of a Joy Division song & a new track excitingly called 'Freak Out', which is a marvellous beardo disco epic (mind you if it wasn't epic (or 10 minutes long) it wouldn't be beardo disco!) .

So I'm loving 'Freak Out', but also this cover of 'All of my Friends' by John Cale. The backing sounds quite loose compared to most modern production, and there's certainly elements of Velvet Underground in there. It's also interesting to compare singing styles with James Murphy. They could both be described as 'anti-singers' but are of course both incredibly good. We all know that Simon Cowell + vocal coaches do not emotional music make. Actually Cale sounds rather like Ian Curtis here.



LCD SOUNDSYSTEM vs JOHN CALE - ALL MY FRIENDS

Here's the video of the single to remind you of how good the original is...




The Mash-up scene seems to have died a death a bit, perhaps because people began to see the challenge as splicing together two disparate records no matter how crap... rather than to produce good music.

Back from Japan has decided that the way to go is to splice together two excellent records. And as such I like it lots. I imagine that the Spank Rock vocal sounds awesome over most things (and indeed even i've managed to rock my bedroom to the rafters with it, my decks and a.n.other record)... but i'm thinking it sounds particularly good married with this 'Thunderous Olympian' remix of Justice. Tension, riffs and rapping. It's what the kids go for.



JUSTICE vs SPANK ROCK - THUNDEROUS BUMP (BACK TO JAPAN EDIT)

EDIT: Kevin (aka Back to Japan) has just finished an updated version of this...

"I extended the middle of Amanda Blank's rhyme so that it doesn't clash so much with the synths on the track and so that it lines up better on the end. If you like this version better, switch it up, if not, fuck it."

I haven't had the chance to compare the two & work out which I prefer, however if Kevin says this is better then it probably is!

JUSTICE vs SPANK ROCK - THUNDEROUS BUMP (BACK TO JAPAN EDIT #2)

Take a boat to Bornholm

So, rumours of my demise have proved unfounded. A week seems like an awful long time in blogworld though... sorry to abandon you for so long again. In my defence I am still in the, er, grip of what's now been diagnosed as 'Devil's Grip'. Sounds nice, eh!

Just to get me back in the swing of things again, here's a few new remixes i've been sent.

First up, and apparently 'biochemically engineered with aural pheremones', is an unreleased South Central remix of Van She. Although many of the sounds will be familiar to South Central fans, it's overall a bit less punishing than some of their other recent remixes. Perhaps any ladies reading could let me know if the aural pheremones are correctly tuned in?

VAN SHE - SEX CITY (SOUTH CENTRAL 'DARK CITY' REMIX)


A reader known only as 'Ryan' sent me this re-edit wot he done. I don't know the original, but this is pleasingly tuneful... a nice piano house number with darker disco beats tempering what could otherwise be some overbearing joyousness.

ALICE SMITH - LOVE ENDEAVOUR (RYAN'S RE-EDIT)


Here's a couple of new mixes from Will of Adventures Close to Home. The Biffy Clyro starts of with a dark italo groove, before getting all messed up and acidic. Meanwhile The Tiger Picks starts off with a repetitive 'Disco. Electro.' vocal, but just when you start to think it's losing its focus bounces back with some nice old skool rave stabs.

BIFFY CLYRO - LIVING IS A PROBLEM (ACTH REMIX)

THE TIGER PICKS - DISCOFUNKELECTROPUNK (ACTH REMIX)