"It’s just two sides to the same coin so two different perspectives concerning the one same story. And when you see it that way... I dunno – there are so many ways to look at one thing, and it’s very sad that we like to put everything in little boxes and name them." Like it or in the case of Alex Zhang Hungtai loathe it, we're lumped with this monstrous modern-day predilection for compartmentalisation. Call it a reluctance to accept the unknown, or accredit it to a crippling fear of an unexplored other though that's the [...]
It's not for fear of getting all but absolutely swept away by Blue Hawaii that we're back extolling the virtues of the Montréal-based duo comprising Agor Cowan and Raphaelle Standell-Preston, for to paraphrase Mykki Blanco everything they touch turns to motherfuckin' gold. And live, whether that aptly be at Club Motherfucker's 10th anniversary celebrations or at last weekend's The Great Escape , is when they really come into their own: they cut loose and positively lacerate the itself sublime Untogether LP of earlier on in the year, only to recompose it [...]
To call Daft Punk's Random Access Memories a mixed bag is to gravely underestimate its volatility and capricious whimsy, for it's about as up and down as a SoundCloud stream visualisation. Which is a reality that appears all the more perplexing when Horizon, a flighty bonus tacked onto the Japanese edition of the album, can be taken to contextualise the inconsistency of the record: perhaps lightly proggy, there's a Pink Floydian feel to its expansive guile as it sprawls like a Mediterranean skyline, only to eventually erupt in a majestic kind of melancholy. It's [...]
As rabble-rousers universally revered by self-proclaimed musicologists the world wide web over, it's kind of a big deal whenever Liars deign to do anything aurally digestible. That they chose to unleash this one in such impromptu fashion whilst all those supposed connoisseurs were congregated down beside the seaside for last week's The Great Escape could be deemed a subversive swipe at the quick-fire journalism which so tediously dominates all strands of new media, and in that same manner here we are extolling its indubitable virtues some six days after news of its immediate release first broke. Neither eventuality can [...]
I'm about as sceptical of the remix as Anika's musical outpour is ceaselessly claustrophobic, though that said I can appreciate it has a couple core values: 1) it has an inevitable capacity to introduce acolytes of any one artist to whoever it may be that embarks upon any which reconstruction, and 2) were a bigger name to chip in a reconsideration, then it can serve as an indisputable platform for a potentially underestimated, or rather undervalued cultural understudy. I guess the idiosyncratic originality of Suuns is more widely renowned than the psychotic covers of the Invada industrialist aforesaid [...]
Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter have, needless to say, predominated over the music news for the duration of this past month or so, even making deathly black headlines in the wake of the untimely demise of sporadic collaborator Anthony Moore, aka Romanthony. The vocalist eminently immortalised on what remains arguably their most stellar hit to date in One More Time, it therefore feels somewhat fitting that the truly blinding instances of galactic brilliance here compiled should be those which feature the multifarious, if in some cases questionable vocal talents of contemporary players from Julian Casablancas, to Noah Lennox. [...]
"It's better when it's short! I mean, we can have a nice, long conversation but I like it when the pieces are relatively short. Unless it's supposed to be an in-depth piece centred around a certain idea – the way in which the writer looks at the world, or something. Then maybe it's interesting." So spake Alex "Agor" Cowan of Blue Hawaii now some weeks ago at the somewhat insalubrious end of Holloway Road and although this won't be the so-called "snapshot kinda: 'Blue Hawaii come from Montréal, and their favourite game is billiards, and they love drinking [...]
It's an odd predicament in which Ben Gibbard and Jimmy Tamborello now find themselves firmly rooted: ten years on from the release of the pseudo-seminal, platinum-selling Give Up – a record the title of which appeared to forecast the creative inertia to come, for it remains their only full-length endeavour to date even though it's rung on in the ears of sophomore slumpers worldwide since – they're able to sell out the salubrious O2 Academy Brixton twice over, airing no more than two new songs in the process. Identikit setlists guide them through each evening, and there's an [...]
It's an odd predicament in which Ben Gibbard and Jimmy Tamborello now find themselves firmly rooted: ten years on from the release of the pseudo-seminal, platinum-selling Give Up – a record the title of which appeared to forecast the creative inertia to come, for it remains their only full-length endeavour to date even though it's rung on in the ears of sophomore slumpers worldwide since – they're able to sell out the salubrious O2 Academy Brixton twice over, airing no more than two new songs in the process. Identikit setlists guide them through each evening, and there's an [...]
The littoral British retreat that is Brighton may be better renowned for saccharine tat and chish and fips still swimming in gristle and grime than it may be for musics and the manic frenzy their festivals so often entail, although the city becomes a bloody hive of hype for the one weekend of the year. That is this, and this is the 2013 edition of The Great Escape . So let the buzz begin! Review: Thursday, 16th May / Friday, 17th May / [...]
Saturday begins not so much where Friday left off, as in the excrement of the day's overindulgence as talk of hangovers, hangups, comedowns and all other manner of ill ensures the day can be acutely equated to a more conventional festival malarkey. And Blue Hawaii transpire to be a refreshing tonic to all that inanity, Raphaelle Standell-Preston and Alex "Agor" Cowan putting in an accelerant set on next to no sleep. It begins with perfect respite provided by a gloopy Follow drenched in dark, and the duo sound as though they've come to terms with their live performance [...]
It's Friday, it's day two of this year's The Great Escape, and I'm mercifully awoken by the patting of a vexed train conductor as we trundle back into Brighton. Up, if not yet at 'em I'm stirred further by strummed susurrations of jarring guitar and bracing billows of jangle. The seaside's alive with the sound of music, but when heard so early it's not all entirely pleasurable. Lawrence Arabia is just that though, and although he may be named James Milne and in fact hails from New Zealand as opposed to the dunes of southwestern [...]
The littoral British retreat that is Brighton may be better renowned for saccharine tat and chish and fips still swimming in gristle and grime than it may be for musics and the manic frenzy their festivals so often entail, although the city becomes a bloody hive of hype for the one weekend of the year. That is this, and this is the 2013 edition of The Great Escape . So let the buzz begin! Away from the unrelenting bustle of the capital – a restive kind of agitation capable of bludgeoning even the irrepressibly ebullient [...]
"Get inside, and light it, see cash/ Cross your legs, break your neck." So trills When Saints Go Machine's Nikolaj Manuel Vonsild during Love And Respect – the Killer Mike-featuring opener to their third full-length record, Infinity Pool . We're diving in at the deep end; joining the great Danish eccentrics on another voyage across the bedazzling spectrum of pop surreality. But as the album ignites, has it taken a turn for the darker, and indeed more oppressive as the lead single appears to suggest? With lyrics of snapped rachides [...]
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Now warming up for the release of their fifth full-length in seven years, San Francisco duo The Dodos haven't exactly held us forever rapt over the course of their discography. Sophomore recording Visiter was a personal fave, although elsewhere they've faltered for want of a more tender term as Meric Long and Logan Kroeber have often fallen for the predictable, or worse still the plainly soporific. Though if a perfunctory peek into the inner workings of the forthcoming Carrier should be any genuine yardstick, then they've set their sights far higher than they have of late, and [...]
No sooner have we looked to northwestern Spain and to next month's Primavera Sound than we're back in Barcelona – at least musically speaking – as we turn to next month's Sónar . The one and indeed only International Festival of Advanced Music and New Media Art this year commemorates its 20th anniversary, and to celebrate it boasts a line up of utmost refinement pooled from the spheres of electronica and organica alike. As with our every Fest Bests feature, we were unable to include everyone we're restively awaiting over in Cataluña and as such the [...]
As instructed in song format, Dan Snaith decelerates James Holden's Renata as he strips away at its unrelenting drive to allow for the Daphni rework below to thrive as an Afro-affected redux more than ready for the floor. Euphoria unceremoniously dumped in favour of enigma and mystique, ominous vocal drones shadow tempestuous rhythms which feel instantly exotic, though with that inviting as the skiffle shuffles to a standstill across seven, twenty-seven of prime revitalisation. We don't readily give in to the remix, though this one's radical, and rabid, and so readily accessible that it's almost [...]
Dots & Dashes
R.F.T.W.E. pt.2
Marlon Hoffstadt - Skin And Bone (feat. HRRSN)
Euro Chart 25 maggio 2013: primi i Daft Punk con Get Lucky
Louis La Roche – Say I’m Your No. 1
Stream: Meek Mill – “Levels” (Prod. Cardo)
