It seems like Edmonton's Faunts are equally interested in hearing others' interpretations of their music as they are in making it. Last year they released a CD of 14 remixes of earlier material; and now that album number three, Feel.Love.Thinking.Of, has had time to rest on store shelves they've commissed another batch of remixes. Like Faunts, Lemonade and Home Video straddle the line between electronic dance music and rock. Lemonade turn their cumbia fascination on "Feel.Love.Thinking.Of." and end up taking it seaside to let balmy guitar lines whip through listeners hair and rolling bongos provide the beat. Meanwhile, Home Video finds Radiohead in Faunts' "Explain," letting the tension build behind swelling synths and smoldering guitar lines. Now it's time for Faunts to step up to the remixing console.
If you’re not into getting your party hijacked by me and my best friend doing our synchronized lip sync to “I Got A Man”, then you’re probably a total buzzkill who hates snow days and the smell of freshly baked cinnamon buns. At least, that's what we tell ourselves when we're asked to leave, which is all the time.
Next time you're shot down, why not try this failproof line: Well I can get ragamuffin.
Ladies, feel free to retort: Are you a chef? Cause you keep feedin’ me soup.
There are moments in your life when clarity hits you like LaVar Arrington. The other day I was looking down at my leather Clarks while waiting to cross the street, sounds from Bowerbirds' forthcoming Upper Air whooshing into my brainspace via oversized, nerd-alert headphones. Then the moment arrived as did the realization: I am very white.
"Beneath Your Tree" was the song and it just happens to be the second and maddeningly good mp3 preview from said album.
Describing Hot City's music would require numerous microgenre references, some ill-advised adjectives, maybe even the use of the dreaded prefix "nu," but none of that would convey how awesome it is to hear "Setting Me Free" use a keyboard patch similar to the one in Inner City's "Big Fun." 'Cause that is like the best song ever. Whoever Hot City is–yes, yet another anonymous British producer–he will be performing at next Friday's Fabriclive event in London, alongside a bunch of other dudes with names that end in "a". Flyer after the links. It's probably going to be very sweaty.
Whatever took Miss Kittin & The Hacker eight years to make a second record together appears to have vanished, as the duo are following up the release of TWO with a new 12" for "Party In My Head" and a lengthy summer tour of Europe already underway. The "Party In My Head" release–out June 19 on Nobody's Bizzness–features flips from Kiko, Mr. Pauli, and our Parisian friends Thieves Like Us, who turned in this Clavinet-heavy version. Whenever we hear Clavinet we strangely envision massive conga lines (and Stevie Wonder), and this tune does nothing to alter those connotations.
The next time you are buying too-short shorts at American Apparel and hear Shuggie Otis on the PA, thank Viva Radio. The Brooklyn-based internet radio outpost–broadcasting 24 hours a day, 7 days a week–is the official in-store music network for AA, piping carefully selected and crushingly deep playlists into speakers around the world. Among their many programs is Me + You, an intimate interview/performance show where rising artists stop by to wax with host Ted Shumaker and play some songs in a stripped-down setting (MGMT, Andrew W.K., and The Teenagers are all previous guests). Promising Brooklyn indie band Violens recently swung by the M+Y space, where they recorded this acoustic Death In June cover. We're hosting the MP3 exclusively below, but head to the Me + You page for the rest of the session. And stay tuned for more M+Y + RCRD LBL collabos; we're thinking of calling ourselves 2ManyConsonants.
In anticipation of their 15th year of existence, San Franscisco house label Om Records has commissioned a two disc CD compilation that looks over its past and future. OM 15 is split into two halves: one to get the blood moving featuring Om's house and techno side, while the other brings you down while highlighting the label's downtempo artists. Sandwiched between uber producer Radio Slave and Fish Go Deep on the first disc, Pezzner brings an Eastern feel to his hypnotic "Chapter Two." Punctuated by handclaps and Chiclet-sized marimba melodies, the tune catches dancers in a whirlwind of Asian influenced motifs. May Om be blessed with another 15 years to explore this further.
Sounds like: Guillaume & the Coutu Dumonts, SIS, Luciano
Lo-fi? Finally Punk are the lo-est of the lo(-fi), the Californian quartet whipping up a stunted, staccato din for people who think the last Mika Miko album was "too polished". They've been around since 2005, too, when No Age were still Wives, when Wavves wasn't born, when Blank Dogs was but a whelp, gnawing mournfully at mother's teat. It's a horrible image and one that Finally Punk fully manage to sustain, both with their ode to Johnny Depp's role as Private Gator in "Platoon" and with their cover of Nirvana's "Negative Creep". A 26-track album, Casual Goths, will be released in the UK on June 27th to coincide with the British leg of their European tour.
Sounds Like: Mika MIko, Bikini Kill, The Vaselines
