Blog: sunday is for sounds

Pretty fresh psych oriented dance EP from duo Neon Indian who are split between Austin and Brooklyn. Nothing too new here, super hipster poseur stuff, everything is a bit exaggerated, sloppy and disaffected, but altogether charming. "Deadbeat Summer" plays on a disfigured Motown bounce, with some nice childrens TV synth with the portamento set super high. An evasive, lazy vocal intones the title. Apparently no one has enough energy, or it's just too hot out, to sing with their mouths more than 10% open. Although it is nice to see some downtempo numbers out of [...]

This weeks Friday Finds is better than a turkey sandwich. 1 Miquel Atwood-Ferguson & Carlos Nino - Nag Champa J Dilla gone orchestral 2 Gregory D & DJ Mannie Fresh - Buck Jump Time the one and only mannie fresh, is this a swing beat? 3 Kid Congo & the Pink Monkey Birds - Kris Kringle Ju Ju dirty garage funk from Eagle Rock 4 Dishwasher - Happy Valentine's Day "dreamy milkshake" 5 Exile [...]

Amazing article by George E. Lewis (trombonist and composer, heavily involved with AACM - Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, now a member of the Columbia composition dept). He proposes, or predicts, a new model, or credo, of sociomusical organization; one that at root has to do with a kind of collective social improvisation setup by new media and technological interactivity and democratization. It seems he's got a bone to pick with other future of music models that, shall we say, have been less attuned to the efforts and contributions of Africans and African Americans to modern [...]

I did an edit of Black Moth Super Rainbow's "Twin of Myself" (featured here a couple weeks back). Hope you enjoy. Twin of Myself (P Bayne Edit)

Just what the hell are the Danish up to these days you ask? Well there's Lamburg Tony. Sound collage hip hop (sort of) made with pots, pans, toys and field recordings (casinos?), drums and bottles, and vintage synths. Then everything gets recorded onto old tape machines (why?) and sent of to get mastered by electronic agitator Goodiepal (?!). Just what the hell are the Danish up to these days? They're outta their minds, that's what. Who said it was ok to make music this free? Why is it that this music has zero [...]

This new Basement Jaxx single makes me want to be 15 in a European club for the first time, drinking shitty weak cocktails and watching sweaty Spaniards sweat on unassuming but generally enthusiastic American girls wearing miniskirts too short for the suburbs. When the beat drops at 1:00 everybody is gonna jump up and down like idiots and it'll all start making sense. There's about 6 too many gimmicks in this song, but you got to hand it to them for the stacked density of elements and the buzzy engine driving the whole thing. I could of [...]

Beautiful cut n paste video from shoegaze band Ducktails of their summery, expansive track "Landrunner".

Brand new Dirty Projectors from their forthcoming record Bitte Orca. This is one of the most adventurous bands, at least vocally, that I know of. Two albums back, on Gettysburg Address, Dave Longstreth's (composer/singer/guitarist) first LP, the same could be said of their arrangements which were all sorts of weird. Cutups of orchestral arrangements of very idiosyncratic pop hooks, very odd beats, irregular time signatures and loss of tempo altogether, modern and chant like choral passages mixed with Longstreth's oddly shaped, melismatic melodic lines, sung in an unnerving falsetto/chest voice hybrid. It was basically a completely [...]

Gooey globs of sun crusted bong haze packaged in a sticky orange wrapper. What is Black Moth Super Rainbow's new single "Twin of Myself" like? Plinky toy pianers, vintage drum machine oomphs, some nice imitative counterpoint between the rubbery bass line and the purest, truest of synth melodies they've come up with to date, everything else gets enveloped in a fuzzy blanket. Midway through an engorged synth line stretches over the whole proceedings threateningly. Oh if everything could be this perfect. I don't plan on stopping listening to this any time soon. [...]

Amazing video from Philly band Man Man of "Rabbit Habits" of their album of the same name. Fred Armisen and the actress Charlyne Yi (the stoner chick from Knocked Up who puts in an amazingly hilarious performance here) are on a blind date which turns terribly wrong. It helps that the whole video seems to have been shot in my hood. There's the Short Stop, the Vista, and Echo Lake...

Here's your Friday Finds back from hiatus somehow this wasn't posted on friday but here 'tis afterall. 141 - In Out Baby Charles - Invisible Royal Flush - I Never Made 20 Shogun Kunitoki - Riddarholmen Bobby Blue Bland - Ain't No Love In the Heart of the City Rhythm Based Lovers - Boogie Vision Them Use Them - Able The Lines - Have a Heart CFCF - You Hear Colours Steinski - Everything's Disappeared Bonnie Prince Billy - I Won't Ask Again Ilija Rudman - In Motion George Clinton - Too Tight [...]

I imagine Higamos Hogamos travel in big stupid hats and fur coats. I think they might be the most self assured sounding rock band I've heard in a long time. Before grunge and indie rock, rock bravado was a given. Now to hear a band that really knows what the fuck they're doing is such rarity. It think that's partly why I lean so closely these days to dance music and hip-hop. Because in those genres it's all about the outward assurance of musical prowess. It's about showmanship and talent, it's about carnal entertainment. [...]

Chilled by Nature, a Balaeric house outfit, gets a few reworkings first by SF's Windsurf, then by a duo called Black Mustang (I hvae no idea where from) of one of it's chimey cuts called Otherworld. The windsurf version is sweet in its way, bleepy, and sun drenched, but the Black Mustang version is cold as fuck. Disembodied voices, a moroder bass just plodding away, some sleigh bells, a bleak, harsh vision. It doesn't really go anywhere, but then again, I'm not sure there's really anywhere to go. For some of us spring is already in [...]

Back from hiatus here everybody, my apologies for the sudden disappearance. Here's something yummy. New Villager are an indie dance band out of Brooklyn. Their track "Genghis On" strikes me as extremely extremely dangerously repeatable till it becomes annoying. Try it out. It's all about how the melody lags behind chord progression which simultaneously sounds like it's jumping the gun, about the guy playing the spoons on the right channel, and especially the faux gruff voice overs sounding like Lonely Island doing Color Me Badd which complements so roundly with the flightiness of that falsetto chorus. [...]

So in the days of the 90's, my teenage years, I was a huge tape collecting, show going, hippie dancing, band mythology loving, Phish fan. I had cassette tapes with jackets that I designed, tapes totaling in the hundreds, some of tremendously shitty quality, some off the mixing board and sounding amazingly clear. I spent ages and ages hunting online for this stuff, and it was really my first foray into the internet, and into band obsession. Time passed and I became, as many have, pretty disillusioned with the whole hippie ethos in music, jam bands, Phish's [...]

My weekly installment of Friday Finds is here. Some nice stuff this week, playing all over the map like genghis khan. Futurecop! - Transformers (Ghosthustler remix) Cooley-Munson - Slightly Sue Archie Shepp - What Would It Be Without You Micachu and the Shapes - Lips (We Have Band remix) Gucci Mane - Gucci Girl Dan Deacon - Get Older Harlem - Come Back Jonee Hidden Strength - All We Need Is Time Knight Rider - We Love You St. Vincent - Strangers Soft Circle - Avalanche Gas - Vier Download the zip [...]

Bibio is Stephen Wilkinson, a young composer, producer, and folk auteur from Black Country central England. He has a new record on Mush, called Vignetting the Compost. In it he seems to be splitting time between field recording bugs, winds, lake shores, and all manner of small flapping things, and pillaging Incredible String Band recordings. It's a lovely lofi wistful piece of artifice the affect of which is not unlike that of The Books, where existential innuendo and aimless nostalgia are housed in the body of a wizened old twanger. That said, [...]

The new grizzly bear album just leaked this morning. Too bad it's 128 kbps, we'll have to wait till the release date (may 26) to hear the album in hi-fi but still, it's pretty unbelievably beautiful at this quality - early highlight tracks: two weeks, about face, i live with you and pretty everything else on the album. Biggest record of the year? ....(decade?) In all honesty, I'm completely biased, i grew up with ed droste the lead singer. I'm not posting the link to the leak for obvious reasons, but suffice it to say [...]

Today marks the first in a weekly series called Friday Finds where I make a mix of those items that have, amidst my musical travels and explorations, peaked my interest in celebration of that day of all days, the day that gets God the most props, the day they call Friday. Here's your playlist for this week. Mongo Santamaria - The Windjammer Bonzo Goes to Washington - 5 Minutes (C-C-C-Club Mix) Goodie Mob - Hat Low Silver Apples - Ruby Sun Ra - Island in the Sun The Eloise Trio - Chi [...]

Here We Go Magic is a band I've been listening to for the past few weeks but for some reason have been avoiding posting about. Partly, I think that's because I wasn't sure whether they were just another DIY indie pop group bound for the south by southwest paper shredder, or whether their early hyped track "Tunnelvision" was the only good thing going for them. Admittedly, when I heard that they were opening for Department of Eagles, I thought a bit differently about them - Dept. of Eagles and Grizzly Bear being certainly one of the most [...]