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Download: Noughts & Exes
Hong Kong indie rockers, Noughts & Exes, bring the pain on their first full length due out later this year on Omerta Group Records. It's exciting to hear an epic, textured lushness that bands like My Bloody Valentine and Blonde Redhead have excited us with over the years, but from a completely different part of the world.
Noughts & Exes are a 5 piece outfit from the North Point neighborhood of Hong Kong, and is the brainchild of famed video director/graphic artist Joshua Wong. He describes their music as forever drawing inspiration from the beautiful streets and endless urban landscape that is found in Hong Kong, and we hear it in the music. Their songs have already caught the attention of music supervisors here in the States and have been licensed recently in MTV shows, but we feel they're ripe for a sweeping film or film trailer. Check out their video to "A Minor To Major" above, and check this free download of the song "The Ghost" off their forthcoming album called "Act One, Scene One".
DOWNLOAD: Kimono Kops - Eine Lesbische Liebe
Kimono Kops, a.k.a. Thomas Dören, is a German dance producer who has single-handedly restored our faith in electro-pop—kind of like the first time we heard Erasure or Bronski Beat. Kimono Kops first blasted onto our radar when we heard his mind-blowing remix of Sally Shapiro's "Hold Me So Tight", which somehow managed to make the song even more italo disco. Since he’s done remixes for Bloc Party, M.I.A., Goldfrapp, and others, and his music always crafts a bouncy, fun, dancey universe where synth lines are the main focus of life and everything is totally delectable and three minutes long. Today though, we are releasing one of his artist tracks, which is just as compelling as his remix work: the dreamy “Eine Lesbische Liebe”, which mixes samples of acoustic guitars and German spoken word to make an electronic patchwork that’s somewhere between Mirwais, Air and The Field. It’s kind of magical.
Download: Kimono Kops - Eine Lesbische Liebe
Make sure to check out Kimono Kops on MySpace for more awesome tunes:
FEATURED: The Depreciation Guild
NYC's the Depreciation Guild churn out super catchy indie pop with psychedelic electro nuances (so nothing that complicated then). At the end of the day their songs are pop, only awash in shoegaze distortion. Check out some jams at 5 Acts, and make sure to catch them next time they play...
FEATURED: The Duke Spirit
We recently caught the Duke Spirit at their American comeback show at Mercury Lounge, and they were just as good as we remembered them back in 2005 when they blasted onto the scene with their first record, Cuts Across the Land. When that album came out, the single "Lion Rip", with it's absolutely KILLER shoegaze-y guitar crunch, was one of the best songs of that summer. Anyway, The Spirit are coming out with their long-awaited follow-up Neptune fairly soon, and if their Merc show was anything to go by it's going to be awesome. Culture of Me (that blog just keeps getting bigger and bigger doesn't it?) has a link to the brand new video for the single "The Step and The Walk", and information on how you can vote for the Duke Spirit on MTVU so they can make it onto their show Freshmen Five.
DOWNLOAD: Band Of Horses - No One's Gonna Love You
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As much as we like candlelit spaghetti, we spent Thursday night with our best palentines, Dirty On Purpose and Band Of Horses. They took us to the Brooklyn Masonic Temple, an echo heavy bread box with a great poster collection, where they serenaded us all night with gentle love songs.
Now I gotta switch over to "me," because I haven't been as up on DOP as my RCRD LBL brethren. Got seduced by them once in a sidebar at SXSW about four years ago, but quickly lost track after that. And whaddya know? Totally new band. Paranoia and reluctance have given way to full on swagger. They've taken big sonic steps toward Nashville and California without ever taking their eyes off their shoes. Twangy, beachy and mopey, all at once. Call it shoehaze? Sure. Anyway, very pleasant surprise to find them blossomed into a real deal band with a wallop of a sound. Consider me re-seduced.
And then there's Band Of Horses, who recently told The Fader, "we should be the biggest band in the fucking world." And as bad a look as that may be, gotta tellya, standing there with my elbows on the stage (got real lucky that way), it sorta felt like Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Not so much musically, but the feeling... you know? Total daydream. As that Village Voice blog bumout says, BOH isn't rocket science, but it is a good ol' time. Definitely lobbying hard for heavy airplay on our kids' classic rock radios. Man... that'll be weird, won't it? Here, have some music.
DOWNLOAD: Band Of Horses - No One's Gonna Love You
DOWNLOAD: Dirty On Purpose - Leaving, Hard To Tell You and more...
DOWNLOAD: Sian Alice Group - Motionless
You ever see somebody play the bejesus out of a xylophone? The two hand attack, arms crossed, eyes darting everywhere, not a note out of place? Well we saw it a few days ago waiting for the train and it was a sly wink from God like, "Hey buddy, you're on the right platform." Or at least that's what it sounded like at the time. Turns out we're hard of hearing and God was actually saying, "In a couple days you're gonna freak out about Sian Alice Group's epic-as-fuck pow-wow explosion."
And God was right. How do these geniuses make distortion and fuzz and modern language sound so primitive? On "Motionless" they set jagged downbeat guitar stabs and pristine casino xylophone solos (!) to this crude, campfire drumroll that turns the whole thing all bugged out hunter-gatherer. Totally witchy and enthralling. Kinda like if you took away Mobius Band's keyboards and gave them a cave.
Big, big bonus: They're in from England and playing Annex TONIGHT. Definitely paint your face and get there. Buncha other Social Registry heads on the bill too, so don't blow it. Watch for an interview next week.
UPDATE: Catch Sian Alice Group 2/21 @ Mercury Lounge
FEATURED: LSD And The Search For God
It’s so great to randomly stumble upon bands on the Internet. Five minutes ago we knew absolutely nothing about LSD And The Search For God, except that they have the best band name and logo of all time. Now, we know that they’re a heavy shoegaze band from San Francisco, who sound like the meeting of My Bloody Valentine and the Cocteau Twins, and that the three songs on their MySpace page are an absolutely delectable blend of distortion and uplifting guitars. We highly recommend “I Don’t Care” if you’re yearning to have your ears blown off your head. Check out their MySpace below and get into it.
FEATURED: Blonde Redhead
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Blonde Redhead recorded a podcast session with Spinner, on their weekly video show The Interface. We’ve been fans of the shoegaze threesome for a while, and their new album 23 would have been near the top of our year-end list (if we believed in such things!). Check out the session below and fall under the atmospheric love-spell of the title track off the album. It’s pure bliss.
FEATURED: Gui Boratto at Pitchfork's Top 100 Tracks
Congratulations to Kompakt's very own Gui Boratto for making it to #24 on Pitchfork's Top 100 Tracks year-end list! It's great to see pure dance genius recognized. The song in question, the nine-minute-long, epicly-swirling "Beautiful Life" will forever shout "happy fun times" at us from the summer of 2007 until the end of time. Check out Gui and the rest of the list at the link below, and while you're at it download the original version of "Beautiful Life" too.
FEATURED: Beach House
One of the biggest indie runaway hits of last year was Beach House's eponymous debut record, a laid-back, lo-fi LP of ballads and droning slow jams. The album, released on Carpark Records, gave the band the opportunity to open for Grizzly Bear on their national tour, and heavy coverage with all your favorite bloggers. Obscure Sound (a fan from the very beginning of the Baltimore two-piece's career) has just featured two tracks from Beach House's new record Devotion. Like Beach House, the new album revolves around the duo's soothing warmth and organ/keaboards/guitar instrumentation. Check it out at Obscure Sound and prepare to adjust your end of lists...
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