Sunday, March 29, 2009

Slow Jams

A wintry Chicago morning... in March. Oddly enough the first thing I thought of when I saw the snow was "Damn, frost for crops," which translates to "Not as great farmer's market this year for me." Now hearing of tales of packing snow, I think it's time to go outside and have a ball.

In the meantime, curl up and watch these:

From Sam:
Oren Lavie - Her Morning Excellence


From the BSQV:
Department of Eagles - No One Does It Like You


From a long time ago. Hopefully I didn't post it up before (too lazy to check):
Sebastian Tellier - Divine

Friday, March 27, 2009

Booka

I just returned from a Booka Shade show. I was tired at 9pm and sleepstanding in the hallway when Sam return and asked me if I was sleepstanding. It's funny how it is such hard work to get the desire to go to a show on a school night. Could I miss the show and still be ok? Is it really going to be that awesome? Naturally, the gamble is there and depending on who is play and what the crowd is like it can turn out a number of ways. But I tell you this: If you had a desire in the past to go, go, and stand in the fucking front and center and dance it. The Booka Shade show beat Cut Copy by 3:1. After sleeping in my contacts the night before making exposure to anything more than 3 candlepower an excersize in sustained squinting, the sign warning me before the show "This show has intense strobe effects" did not bode well for my well-being. Just the RGB lights on stage prior to anything even happening cause a retinal aversion to everywhere but the floor. Bite it, and dance through it.

No there are no pictures. No i'm not posting a song. Perhaps you are disappointed. Know this: if you ever get a chance to see them live, you better go for it and do what I did right in front of them to where the beatmaster (the other guy was just playing electrodrums over a beat) looks at you straight away and opens his eyes momentarily at you suggesting "yeah, this is pretty good eh?" while you answer as a dancer.

Thank you Christopher for reminding me and quasi-dragging me out.

Thursday, March 26, 2009

Videos to watch

Two, one old and one new (to me.) I suggest watching these full screen.

Etienne De Crecy did a show:



I don't mind people taking the Daft Punk concept of the pyramid and making it their own. I wonder if those guys took the concept of performing in a 3D shape from someone else? Also, I was hoping that Etienne would incorporate the Star Wars targeting computer when used on the Death Star. Oh man! That would be tres geeky pour moi, n'est pas?

Next while looking for the video from the prior post, I found this one by the Pet Shop Boys of their new single, 'Love Etc.'



That is all. A quick one while I'm sitting being king for 15min...

Now for PNAU

After a posting misshappening, I need to throw this one up again. First off, the video for Baby



Next a track,

PNAU - With You Forever

Both are tight.

I finally got PNAU's cd in the mail after waiting 3mo for it. I'll make this short and sweet and you should go and find the album if you can in the US or pay the big bucks and get it imported from AUS. By the way, lately FR has nothing on AUS.

Saturday, March 21, 2009

Lips at Logan Square again

I wasn't going to go to the show until Tim convinced me to head out to it after an internal struggle of picking these guys over Cut Off Your Hands since I saw them the day before. Luckily for me, COYH played later and I got to see both shows.

They finally get on stage and the lights still haven't come on yet. People are losing it in front of me, where I am the line of demarcation for slam dancing. Stage lights up and the first thing I see is this guy with his fantastic grill the price is right shining disco lights. cred.

Tim pointed out to me that we've been to three Black Lips shows at the Logan Auditorium so far and asks "Why don't they play the Metro or something?" They're big enough, their shows are high energy, and they've been coming to Chicago how many years now? I don't know what's the last show I've seen at the Metro with a mosh pit, but I'm pretty sure that has a big part to do with it since stage security at the Logan is lax.

Black Lips - O Katrina

Black Lips - Short Fuse

After returning from the show, I had to play this guy:

The Stooges - I Wanna Be Your Dog

MM! Money.

Strange Love

I've been trying to find this fantastic video (with minimal effort) for the past month or so online. I have a DVD of music videos by these guys and rather than going through the trouble of ripping it and posting it somewhere, I'd just figure someone else has done it already (are you noticing a trend here?). It reminds me of this past video from Front 242. Is it too pompous to reference yourself in your writing?

Maria Eisen is a Badass



I got invited to Morseland to hear my friend play in one of her bands (she's in about 10). After seeing her mother and pop for the first time in I don't know how many years ("Hey, so what ever happened to you being a chef, Conrad?") she then introduces me to the lead singer of Rubblebucket Orchestra, Kalmia. Pretty, a little shy, but so far winner by association (and by her light red (not pink) dress wardrobe selection).

After trying to have conversation with my company, I find it too distracting from the music. This is not what I would normally be listening to: a crooning madame backed by chill afro-funk. Maria is playing bari sax and rocked it; I haven't seen her yet not. Not only that, the trunk of Maria's musical branches was there too playing soprano sax.



I've always associated that clarinet of an instrument with Kenny G, which in turn gave it a very sour stigma in my mind. No more. Anyway, I got their CD hoping that Maria would be on it, but I didn't see her in the liner notes. The album doesn't do the live show justice (which is saying a lot). À Bientôt Maria until you grace Chicago again.



Rubblebucket Orchestra - Rubblebucket

Rubblebucket Orchestra - Kuma

Saturday, March 14, 2009

Chat: Cut Off Your Hands



Last night while at Darkroom, I had a bit to drink and I got the idea that I should do an interview with Cut Off Your Hands. Well, I did. Today. My first. Sauntering sheepishly into the Hideout with notebook in hand I saw their press dude Jay Ché (nice guy with dreads, Chicago local that told me to come during soundcheck at 6). Nick, the lead, was hungover and huddled over on one of the side tables in the stage room, so I was introduced to Phil Hadfield. In the morning the folks were hanging out with these girls and since it is Pi day (3/14), they made pies for them. Phil, though, raves about the savoury rather than sweet pies in Auckland from Big Ben and Mrs. Mac's. (He was part of the Drudgie pie kids club). He hasn't tasted a White Castle yet.

I made the comment that I thought the album was rather varied in terms of style and it sounded a little like they brought together their best stuff to show off. Furthermore, I conjectured that they had a lot more stuff put together in the background. Before the album, they were doing shows and people wanted to buy stuff, so they finally put together the Shaky Hands EP right before a show just so the folks didn't go away empty handed; it was the same for Blue on Blue. Phil says "yeah, everyone writes. The next album should be a much tighter fit," which they have been working on since Dec. "Each one of us probably could create a solo album if we wanted to." Nick for one has a project called Stealin' An' Thievin'.

With all their touring, they are going to a wide variety of clubs but not finding a wide variety of music. I tell people to listen to COYH but they are still hung up on MGMT. Phil says that everyone keeps playing Electric Feel and Vampire Weekend tracks and it is getting bothersome. It seems that the country is getting inundated with the same promotional gig and if you're moving around the country by large distances in short periods of time, you are experiencing the national marketing campaign that is MGMT. Don't get me wrong, I love Oracular Spectacular, but please be a little more creative in your music selection. I then suggest that they go to Neo.

Speaking of them, the tip from Phil is that you should check out Amazing Baby (CMJ) who has been dubbed by someone as the next MGMT. Future post material while eating a Mrs. Mac's?

P.S. Looking on their blog now, they have a picture of the US up of their tour route and I made an extremely similar sketch on my little pad. I don't ever remember seeing it though. Maybe Phil was thinking of it a the time.

P.P.S. Don't use pickup lines in AUS or NZ. The girls will not dig them the same way they do here. "Oh, are you in Camera Obscura? No? Can I buy you a drink anyway?" It probably helps to have an accent too.

P.P.P.S. I've got a difficult decision to make. Black Lips or COYH tonight. Merde. Even my interviewee wanted to go to that show.

Sunday, March 8, 2009

24 25 hours a day



This song has been on my myspace profile for... oh I don't know... a year at least. Partially because I never log onto myspace anymore and also because it is such a chill groove that I have no reason to change it to anything else.

25 Hours A Day - Mother Afrika

After a self-myspace check, I hypemachined him and found an Ohh! Crapp post with all these other tracks. Tres bonne.

Charlotte Gainsburg - The Operation (25 Hours A Day Remix)

It's true, this guy is underhyped. You know what's genius on this track: around 1:25 the singular kick-snare. It's so simple, such common sounds, but it placed so well that you wonder why you're in the mood to jump. I haven't heard the original, but I'm rather enamored with this track right now. I really hate thinking about deconstructing music, especially on the first go of listening to it, but it's an automatic litmus test in that if I feel that I could come up with what I'm listening to, or that 'I could have thought of that' or 'I can play that' moment that the mystique is gone. I don't have that problem with this guy. By the way, he's an unsigned producer in Paris. Someone get this guy a plane ticket!

Cassius - See Me Now (25 Hours A Day Remix)

Alex Gopher - Carmilla (25 Hours A Day Remix)

Phoenix - Long Distance Call (25 Hours a day Remix)

Hey look at that, another French group. Apparently Phoenix, Daft Punk, and Air are all cut from the same cloth in that at some point in their histories they were intertwined in bands. One of the members (Laurent Brancowitz) was in a band named Darlin' before he joined Phoenix. The other two members of Darlin' were Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo. P.S. Don't watch Electroma.

Saturday, March 7, 2009

Old MGMT


cred.

There was an official complete discography put out by (blah), but then my buddy Mike found this torrent of a DVD's worth of MGMT stuff... this one guy's vision of an discography by the artists formerly known as "The Management". Why I didn't dig through this earlier is beyond me, but I stumbled on MGMT's original album. Yes sir. Back in 2005 they released Climbing To New Lows which is a boop boop beep beep but milder version of that electroclash sound. Casiotones, lower-fi synths and drum loops, and all around stuff that I feel I could make now (except I can't play piano) make up the bulk of the album. I probably wouldn't think much of this album if I heard it 4 years ago, but the post-popularization of the pan-hipster pop makes me appreciate it. For example, here is the version of Kids that is actually the original. Different production, but you can tell the maturation of this style versus the Oracular Spectacular.

MGMT - Kids (Afterschool Dance Megamix)

Maybe another one too...

MGMT - Hot Love Drama

First there was Bright Like Neon Lights by Cut Copy and now it's this by MGMT? Discovering my guys' original recordings is proving to be fruitful. Does Santogold have early tracks? I found another Broadcast album, but I'll save that for another post.

Oh hell, here's another two from the compilation: early bootlegs. Can you hear the Of Montreal (on the first)?

MGMT - Supervolcano

MGMT - We

Monday, March 2, 2009

Videopop Mirror

So I basically just bamboozled a bunch of Italo off of Videopop. It's fantastic. I'm not feeling very inventive, but I am feeling dancy (how is that different from any other time?) One of these days I'm going to DJ an Italo party and Beth is going to have the biggest, baddest hair of them all. Damn! MMM mmm! Money. MMM mmm!

Angie Gold - Don't Talk to Strangers

Katy Gray - Hold Me Tight


Al Corley - Cold Dresses

Al Corley - Square Rooms

This guy's voice sounds like the typical 80's Depeche Mode style that I love. I think this stuff is turning more into pop than the Italo stuff that I know. Obviously I'm ok with that.

And how about that, more fag jams. Did I tell you that a guy kissed me (on the cheek) at Smartbar? Why! Unlike Greg, I don't think that I'm 80% board 30% boardwalk crosser. Just because I wear 80's Calvin Klein attire shouldn't make me a target for the boys in the hood.

Ok, so while listening to Futurecop right now I can't help but be reminded of this prior video. It's excellent.

Futurecop! - Eyes Like The Ocean