Friday, January 23, 2009

Unfair


-Jon-

Oh my. I've been so bad to you guys lately, selfishly keeping these to myself... listening to them almost everyday in the car without any consideration to how tight these are.

La Roux - Tigerlily (not the whole thing. Can't find it. Unfair!)

Kid Alex - Fame (Headman remix). Headman myspace. Indie/electro/pop/dance/yowza. No srsly, this guy is intense. He just did a podcast for Modular here. I'm listening to the myspace songs and I think it's time to go out. With you.

Kano - Another Life. Beginning taken into Discopolis. (mp3 later)

Kaiser Chiefs - Never Miss a Beat (Cut Copy Mix) <-- Tres boss.

AAH! Get them all and start floor stomping. Not too much though. Apparently Mark Gertz of the DWD DJ's was doing a mix and it was just him and his gf and it was so good that he was stomping so hard he broke his foot. True story. My hair dude told me.

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Old Cut Copy



So I ordered Cut Copy's 1st album from Insound a while back (last year) and it finally came this past weekend. It definitely falls under the electroclash category that I discovered in 2004 (I say discovered because I know it was around in the late 90's at least). It has the electronic sound, it is easy going, the vocal effects are typical of the genre, and the repetitious octave arpeggiation is there too. The style though has many mirrors to In Ghost Colours both vocally and melodically. On this one the production is a little rougher, the vocals do not stand out as much, but wouldn't you know it they have the mini ~30sec track as an intro to 'That Was a Dream' like they do to every other song on IGC.

Cut Copy - Autobahn Music Box

Cut Copy - Bright Neon Payphone

Listening to this right now, I can't help but mention other electroclash stuff that I got via Larry Tee. He had a compilation come out that to me was less about getting all wrapped up into it and more just being knowledgeable about one aspect about the history of my kind of dance music. Just listen:

Fischerspooner - The 15th (it's a cover, but I forget of whom)

Memory Boy - (There is no) Electricity

Soviet - Candy Girl

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

More Ghosts

SHIT. So I'm drunken blogging, which probably does not bode well for my online reputation but I don't care. Listening to this song again with Martina & Christopher makes me want to hear these guys live and let loose with extremity expressions. This one is more in the vein of Dead Combo, and it is super jam. Just listen to it.

That Ghost - I Can't Help It And I Can't Stop It

Secret: I'm eating my roommate's guac. He had all the chips, but I got bread instead. Booya.

Sunday, January 11, 2009

That Ghost



Mysteriously, I received a CD & 7" in the mail, which I am not complaining about at all. (Probably another one of my online impulse buys.) Again, no idea how I found them. I'm definitely drawn to their vocal effects that The Strokes used on Is This It but they use it on every song. For whatever reason, I don't mind it unless I start to think about it whereas 808's and Heartbreaks' auto-tune is very distracting.

That's probably why I like these guys: because they kind of remind me of The Strokes and therefore freshman year of college. They are not the analogue of Vito & Co.; that's not the picture I'm trying to paint. Although, I do say that if you like the Strokes musically, you would like these guys. I would not put these fellows in the same realm of the Strokes wannabe people like The Killers or other popular "The" bands since some tracks are more acoustic and others are very hard-bluesy (e.g. they are talented). For the $15 that I spent, they are worth it.

That Ghost - I Crossed Out The Options

That Ghost - Friends in Quotations

Bonus post-it from the twosyllable label. Clue for how I heard about them? Mutual inebriation?

Monday, January 5, 2009

Geeks only



I don't know about you, but I remember seeing on PBS every so often this guy named Jack Horkheimer. His deal was that he told you what was going on in the night sky and what you should be looking for in the coming week as well. Southern cross? Orion vs. Taurus? Supernovae? He'll tell you all about it. But I wasn't so interested in all the the neat night-time things as I was obsessed with his theme song. I can't find a good version of the whole song online, but I'm ordering the album. It's actually Debussy's Arabesque #1 performed by Isao Tomita.



Isao Tomita - Arabesque #1 (30sec clip. Unfair, I know)

What is boss about Isao is that he does all this on his Moog keyboards back in the 1970's when playing electronic music actually required you to know how to operate the equipment at a low-level as to where all the cable connections go and how to connect and put in a series/parallel sequence of the 30+ pieces of oscillator/cutoff/compressor/etc equipment that are now normally all compacted in a single unit. Now, put on top of this all his experience playing music on an actual piano. Mind you most of the folks in the electro world now rely on the keyboard to do the playing and not on their hands.

Isao Tomita - Mercury (The Winged Messenger)

Isao Tomita - Jupiter (Bringer of Jolity) / Saturn (Bringer of Old Age)
From about 1:30-2:00 through this one you can hear the inspiration for a song in The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (I think the grove where the master sword exists and all the woodland creatures are running past Link).

More here.

Saturday, January 3, 2009

Braggin Writes



My friend Rose and I were looking through some records in my stack and let her borrow a bunch of winners, but it turned out to be a bunch of hip-hop rather than electro, etc. I think it's because she noticed Reflection Eternal and it proliferated from there. Anyway, i've come to realize more and more that I leave out hip-hop here. A lot of the blog so far has been playing catch-up to what I enjoy out there in terms of anything electro, nu rave, bangers, or anything with a synthesizer and dancy. So here is a guy whom I love: J-Live. Again, I can't remember how I found him only that I did. I think I got All of the Above around 2003-4 after getting Satisfied as a single.

J-Live - Satisfied

After that, Andrew heard that I was into him and when J-Live came to his campus, he got me the longest-lasting (maybe best) christmas present I've gotten (ever?): The Best Part, on vinyl, signed. I can argue that the entire album is fucking fantastic and I feel like I always pick up on some nuance that I didn't know was there before, as if the music gets better the more you familiarize yourself with it. THAT's the way an album should sound.

J-Live - Epilogue (LP rip)

Oh man, listening to this track just makes me want to tear up it's so sweet and melodic. Hip-hop for me is the only genre of music where I can actually understand what folks are saying. People love Radiohead; unless I read the liner notes I have no clue what Thom sings. Now granted the MC can't sound like The Godfather, but most often they don't, otherwise people wouldn't care about them (that's not quite true. see: Mystikal).

Thursday, January 1, 2009

Glamourous



So for my NYE last night I went to see Justice + company: Dark Wave Disco DJ's, Willy Joy, Zebo, So Me, and a little duo called The Glamour (alt site). I feel like I've seen them before, but I have to say, they are excellent. Don't get me wrong, DWD will always have a place in my heart, but there are other people out there. Something about their style is different from Trancid and Co. probably due to the ~10 year age difference and location or maybe that I've been going to Sonotheque for 3+ years for DWD and I know the standard feeling of songs that they play. When The Glamour put on that Quicksand remix track by La Roux, the deal was sealed. It's funny that you can meet/hear someone from a remote location anywhere, or even in the same city, and they will be into the same music that you're into, if not the same songs, and it's not something like Beatles or Franki Valli but things that you think are obscure and in your secret stash (granted, La Roux is on Kitsune).

About my new found aural pals: Asher Grey lives in Milwaukee and goes by Diamonds when he's not paired up and Richard Galling (The Kelly Green) goes to art school in Pasadena (according to myspace, although Asher said last night that he goes to Yale... I'd prefer to believe the live person).

Per their myspace, they did a mix for DiscoBelle. Slightly old, but badda bing:

The Glamour - Mixin' It Up (direct link to mp3)

More and more, i'm discovering that Milwaukee has stuff going on there... you just have to dig harder than you do in Chicago. Let's go!