Me and Jen had a ridiculously enjoyable night out at the movies last night, watching Step Up 2 The Streets accompanied by an 8-pack of Stella. Incredibly taut R'n'B choreography is historically one of my greatest passions, and this film slapped about 10 world-class sequences across my slightly tipsy chops. The plot ticks every three-act teen film box with comforting predictability. Perma-Wonderbra'd street dancer Andi must go to uptight arts college in order to stop her foster mum sending her back to the presumably choreography-free environs of her Texan aunt. But in doing so [...]
There's something about a fella with a throat full o' gravel that really gets me goin'. If your throat can produce the 50-fags a day effect, then I'm sold. If you're singing something, I'll like it. If you're talking to me, I'm interested. The new Man Man to me is something close to Tom Waits I can dance to; 'club waits' if you will. This track is taken from their forthcoming album Rabbit Habits . The dinky xylophones, gravy roll of scratchy vocals and roughshod production is Waits all over. But [...]
I've recently been on a Laurie Anderson binge, after finally purchsing the expanded edition of Big Science , something which I should have bought a long time ago. I've also acquired a copy of her 2001 album Life On A String . Both are released on Nonesuch and are entirely essential listening. There's too much interesting stuff to write about Anderson to condense into one post. O Superman got her a name outside the art world; a self-released 73 back in '82 that eventually reached # 2 in the UK. [...]
With some many tortured troubadours ruining a nice night in the pub it's easy to forget the awesome power of the acoustic guitar. James Blackshaw is here to remind us with his deeply spiritual 12-string meditations. This is the 12-minute opening track from his 2005 album O True Believers that I picked up last week after a record shop man did a High Fidelity "I will now sell 4 copies of 'The Three EP's' by the The Beta Band" number on me by playing it at reality-bending volume in his shop. I was powerless to resist the masterful [...]
Picked up yesterday for £3 in Vinyl Exchange (along with over £100-worth of other records, justified via a series of flimsy excuses to myself), X's Los Angeles is finally in my collection. Their formula reads thus: chugging three-chord punk meets the snot-nosed swing of rockabilly to create a tangibly Californian 80's surf-rat soundtrack. I first heard of them in Bret Easton Ellis's Less Than Zero , which is prefaced with a quote from their song "The Have Nots" that reads "This is a game that moves as you play", a quote that nicely sums up the [...]
Heraclitus thinks that all the elements, fire earth and water, are in constant exchange with one another, which ensures an equilibrium remains and no element retains a permanent advantage over another. Since I posted a big long droney track a week or so ago I have to make up for it with some cheesy cheese cheese pop. I've been waiting for a suitable time to post this. And the time is now. I have to you see, for otherwise the cosmos will collapse, like a bow when the string snaps. Seriously. And guess what. Unusually for PIAIL, these are all Swedish. (Tracks arranged in order [...]
A new band I've been enjoying enormously are Fleet Foxes. They hail from Seattle, and ply a rollicking downhome musical furrow, but with a modern feel. The sort of thing that reminds one of slightly out-of-breath hikes through clean rocky countryside. Reference points are My Morning Jacket (in the vocals, that slightly Southern inflection and honest tone), and Grand Drive (with the harmonies, and in it being country-tinged music played by people a long way from the "country"). The production is wonderfully clear and imaginative, placing slightly rougher guitar tones behind straightforward strumming and that singing. [...]
For the uninitiated, Malcmas is a national holiday that's heading for it's third year come the second weekend in March. As my dad (Malc) has got older, he's found birthdays become less fun and more disappointing. So a while back he gave up his birthday in exchange for an extra Christmas in the middle of March. I think he's done well out of the deal, as have the rest of us. Now, instead of scrabbling round to find a perfect gift for somebody who's been bought the same stuff for going on 20 years we all get a present from each other. Around [...]
Usually we try not to post things that are all over the blogs - lord knows we don't need another blog with the same ol' rollcall of Justice/National/Radiohead/MIA /et al, but in the case of MGMT I just can't help myself. And I'm posting these after Jools Holland has given them the love, so my cool points are in tatters. These two tracks have really blown me away though. "Time To Pretend" is a heavy fuzzing synthesis of Roxy Music/ Before And After Science Eno, the space breakbeats of The Flaming Lips [...]
Angel is a collaborative project between one half of Pan Sonic (Ilpo Vaisanan), Schneider TM (Dirk Dresselhaus) and Icelandic cellist Hildur Guonadotir (who has played on both the most recent Mum and Pan Sonic releases). "Bones In The Sand" is the opening track from Kalmukia , Angel's second full length as a trio. Kalmukia is a narrative; a Lynchian mystery, full of secrets, unexplained phenomena and flashing images. "Bones In The Sand" is a thick fog, the lazy sprawl of a thick guitar riff, drawn out through the dark valley of [...]
play it as it lays
Beck - 'I Just Started Hating Some People Today' [Listen]
[LISTEN] Gotye (Passion Pit Remix)
Princesse - Tell Me | MP3
