Hello all. Due to intense work pressures on both the Ben side and the Jen side of things we've decided to go on holiday from Play It As It Lays until the end of May, when we'll be back, we promise. And we'll be better. If you're in London you can also come hear us playing records at the King's Cross Social Club in the near future. Dates will be on the right as soon as we confirm. In the meantime, we'd recommend: Mississippi Records Scout [...]
Listening back to These New Puritans' Beat Pyramid ahead of getting their much-praised new one, I've been mainlining this song for days. Snotty but oblique, full of anger struggling to find a name and target. With the words "And if there is a God", and the yelping reach towards that top note, clarity seems to be coming together, only to vanish, leaving just a recitation of a telephone number without end as the song closes. Violent, empty and brilliant. This is the earlier (?) rougher version which just amps up the nastiness. These New [...]
Three discs, £15. Not bad. The case to Detroit techno legend Anthony 'Shake' Shakir's Frictionalism 1994-2009 is a sleek, paperback-sized jewel case . But inside it's a record geek's nightmare. The 3 discs are stacked directly on top of one another. Vulnerable - waiting for that one bit of grit to sneak in between them and ruin the party for everyone. The best description I've seen is in The Wire, who said: "he finds a space for the foward momentum of Techno to coexist with the rotational torque of disco", and [...]
Since the 20JFG Darkstar 2009 mix I've had this on heavy rotation. Lazily, evidently, as now we're three weeks into 2010, and then guardian music beats me and names Mux Mool new band/artist of the day. Serves me right for languishing in food, booze, and snow up north for so long. The remix of Rhythm is a Dancer is woozy and chewy. I want him to rework some other dancefloor cheese too, to turn it into some hazy basement groove, all sloppy with dripping edges; sounds to roll your hips to with heavy lids closed. [...]
Ever since hearing his fantastic remix of "Trilogy" by Kelis (who incidentally has spent the week working with La Roux and slagging off PETA ), I've been following DJ U-Tern and his One Day Later... blog. It's a consistently ass-compelling selection of nu-disco, electro, house and vintage boogie, with high quality vinyl rips, and as a special new year's treat, zipped up collections of extremely sick disco classics. A track off it here from 80s Dutch three-piece Mai Tai: heavily artificial synth-funk conjured from hairspray, rayon and the sassily righteous fury of the [...]
Found this awesome cassette collaboration between Etienne Pierre Duguay of Real Estate and Mark McGuire of Emeralds lurking in a ectoplasm-splattered corner of the internet, entitled From The Swamp Rot Rises My Babies Dreams. Shimmering guitar tones and new age synth pads seep out through muslin-wrapped fuzz, for 10 shamelessly blissed-out droning minutes at a time. Here's Transmutations, cut out and amplified from the much longer tape side. You could maybe ask this man or this man for a copy, but let's face it, they're probably all gone, so go here for the whole [...]
Keith Jarrett - The Koln Concert, Part I One of my Christmas presents was The Koln Concert by Keith Jarrett, the biggest-selling solo jazz recording of all time with 3.5m copies, and something I'd managed to have never heard. With my diet of improv restricted to tentative forays into the spastic, plastic brilliance of the East London jazz scene, Jarrett's performance was not what I considered improv to be: psychologically probing, occasionally hostile. Instead it was florid, evangelistic, and deeply sentimental. And I mean that as the highest praise. If you're as unfamiliar [...]
Last year I had an epic and still somewhat ongoing obsession with Kurt Vile's "Beach On The Moon" , which saw me listen to absolutely nothing else on my iPod for days at a time, addicted to its Balearic saltiness and free-associative musings. And now I'm now hooked on the live recordings Chocolate Bobka recently posted of Vile playing an acoustic set in Washington DC. Vile is the master of the heavy downstroke, big mind-filling chords that punctuate his songs and tie their fabric tight; he also lets them breathe out again with impulsive but steady chord shifts, [...]
It was a tough call between this and the Strokes' first album, which I danced to at my school leavers' ball, throughout university, in house parties beyond and even at a friend's wedding this month, and I know I'll be dancing round my residential care home to. They reminded us that traditional cool signifiers are still the coolest - cigarettes, hair, leather, denim, staring, New York. And they made them human with a faint undertow of desperately wanting all the uncool human things - acceptance, friendship, love. And all with sensational, sneer-resistant songs. I deeply, deeply love it, and it will certainly provoke the most vivid [...]
Like all massive nerds and men, I like a good list. So I've spent literally hours compiling my favourite 200 tracks of the decade, while my body cries out unheeded for post-Christmas exercise. It's after the jump if you're interested, but first here's a few downloads of tunes from it that haven't been featured on any list I've seen, but should have been. First this, from Tortoise. The inquisitive child of a riff, the porno-soundtrack rhythm guitar, the splattering drums, the hip hop breakdown - it's all perfect. Tortoise - Monica Next is this [...]
Tribal, danceable, minimal. These three words mean good sounds. Matias Aguayo, on Kompakt , is all three, obviously, or that would have been a terrible way to open a blog post. I discovered, in finding new tracks, that various tracks I'd enjoyed and moved on from, were all by him. There's a track on Kompakt 6, then Menta Latte, and now these two. I'd loved them all, and never registered the name properly. He lives between Buenos Aires and Paris, and has a project called Broke! with Marcus Rossknecht. The South American influence shows, not least [...]
I cannot question Tom Waits . I find it impossible to be critical about that gravelly voice, even when he's doing that whole weirdo schtick, because I can't stop thinking about him talking dirty to me. I even went to see the fluff that was The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus , just to see him. It was a shit film. So I obviously downloaded the (temporarily) free Glitter and Doom tour stuff, but am actually really enjoying the spiky live versions, complete with crowd sounds and extra grit from live recording. I am slightly taken aback [...]
Washed Out , aka Ernest Greene, came to my attention a couple of months back. So I got the album recently, and found myself fascinated. Where do his alliances lie? Okay, it doesnt have to be cut and dry, but is this woozy Campfire Headphase stuff? A balearic twilight of slow shimmering disco? Vintage pop from sun-damaged cassettes? My conclusion? All of the above. Here's three to help you decide: the lesser-blogged but excellent Olivia, plus Clap Intro and Phone Call. Washed Out - Olivia Washed Out - Clap [...]
Looking back on 2009, I found it to be the year of lo-fi, feedback scuzzed out pop. Sleigh Bells are the final straw of confirmation, with a different, skewed angle on the lo-fi aesthetic. What I immediately wanted to know about "Crown on the Ground" was: is is it meant to be this distorted? It seems from the myspace that yes, it is, unless this is a terrible, terrible recording. However, they're recording an LP due later this year, and these are self-recorded demos, so the question remains. It seems they might be pushing the [...]
Ever since I heard Donny Hathaway's version of "Jealous Guy", which makes John Lennon's sound like a quivering excuse of a song, I knew that the rest of his live album would be amazing once I got round to buying it. Now I have, and it is. Donny Hathaway - Jealous Guy Donny Hathaway - Little Ghetto Boy
Dirty Projectors' new song "When The World Comes To An End" is great, and deploys a brilliant technique where the female singers each take a syllable of a wordless melody and sing them in such a tight sequence that it sounds like one person singing: Dirty Projectors - When The World Comes To An End (live on Jimmy Fallon) It's perfectly and affectingly executed, but I'm thinking that chief Projector Dave Longstreth, being a former music student and all, has copied the technique from this little bit of [...]
The new Metronomy is awesome. Yeah, it's been everywhere, for ages, and it sounds like Hot Chip a bloody lot, but I love it. It's those liquid synth lines, like chocolate melted for sex. The twiddly little melody in the minor key tears at my matted heartstrings and the Fisher-Price sax refrain lifts me from my seat. The Joakim remix also is unmissable. Mostly built on making things fast and slow - but so exciting when things get faster! Show me where it is. [...]
Cotten's voice is taught and strong. She dances a gorgeous tightrope between complex finger picking and beautiful, coarse melody, singing nursery rhyme ditties and dirt-floor blues. Discovered by the Seeger family in the 60s, she died at 92 in the 80s. She played her guitar left handed and upside down, meaning her thumb took the melody. I like her face. Give it to me in a format I can touch Elizabeth Cotten - I'm Going Away [...]
Play It As It Lays will be blogging shorter from now on. This is so we might keep afloat in busy times. More music, fewer sentences. More digestible for the eyes to make room for the ears. Thanks for staying in touch. Brap.
Here's the second part of what I've found in forgotten corners of my iTunes while compiling a week's worth of music for the Three Crowns pub, Stoke Newington. First up is Babybird's "Goodnight", one of the two or three truly great Britpop songs - he whacks his "slightly pissed but unexpectedly talented brother-in law hijacking the wedding band's microphone" vibe up to eleven. Babybird - Goodnight Next is The Beta Band's "To You Alone", from their psychedelic-UKG phase. For rarity points here's the B-side too, "Sequinsizer", whose acapella breakdown is sickness itself. [...]
play it as it lays
James Blake – Live Album
Childish Gambino - "Heartbeat" (Official Music Video)
Gang Colours – Fancy Restaurant
Circo Voador anuncia shows de The Kooks, Foster The People, Friendly Fires, Gogol Bordello e mais
