06
As Major Lazer remixes start dropping officially and unofficially everywhere on the music blogosphere, I’ve picked two of the best ones for your listening pleasure.
Pretty excited for the Diplo and Switch project album Guns Don’t Kill People Lazers Do to be released in mid-June. Here’s the LehtMoJoe remix and an excellent Ghislain Poirier is after the jump.
06
Ms. Feeney returns from an extended break with second album Pages on May 29th and the first track from it is right here. There’s a total St. Vincent vibe to this: all lightness of touch and instrumentation – a gentle chamber-pop song.
Pages was self-produced and Julie composed all of the orchestral parts (which make up all of the instrumentation) – conducting an orchestra (including trumpets, french horns, trombone, vibraphone, clarinet, flute, oboe, bassoon, violins, violas, cellos, double bass, glockenspiel, sticks) over 2 sessions in one day.
05
Ponytail’s new video is probably the most random music video you’ll see this week..
05
From Icelandic electronic/folk/avant-garde label Bedroom Community which houses Nico Mulhy, Valgeir Sigurösson and Ben Frost, comes Vermont’s Sam Amidon whose fluttering avant-country folk gels into a lovely noise, justifiably comparable to Nick Drake thanks to Amidon’s singing voice.
Both Mulhy and Sigurösson who collaborated with Amidon on his recent All is Well album which is well worth a look-in but the real reason I’m posting this is because Sam is playing a couple of impromptu Irish shows this week and next in and around his ATP performance. Wednesday this week he plays The Cobblestone in Smithfield, tickets are just €5, doors at 9pm. He also has some Cork shows next week full details of which are below including a fiddle performance, a Plugd instore and a gig at Debarras – all next week. He also plays here with Phosphorescent in June. Sam is on Twitter.
Sam Amidon – Little Johnny Brown
Buy All is Well from the Bedroom Community shop.
Read full post »
05
Despite being on the radar since January or so, ‘Crystalised’ is the debut single from excellent Londoners The XX (no relation to the XX Teens). I listened to all the tunes on their myspace twice after a hectic week taking in 7 gigs in 5 days – Camera Obscura, Jeff Lewis, MSTRFRFT, Daedelus, IMRO Showcase, R.S.A.G and ASIWYFA so The XX was the perfect chill-back soundtrack to counter the madness. I wish they didn’t look so sad in the video though.
The XX – Crystalised (via The Fader)
Interview here. Buy the 7″ with an Aaliyah cover as the B-Side.
05
Hellllllllllllllloooooooo Broooooooklyn!!!!
Yes, it’s yet another band from that NY borough to kick off our post-Bank Holiday week. ‘Dressed in Dresden’ has a similar chord progression to ‘Clash City Rockers’ but this is very much a more modern sound drawing from peers in their vicinity like LCD Soundsystem and Telepathe. With added disco-funk and a nod to the post-punk of the city’s past (and still future I guess).
Jason and Eleanore make up The Hundred In The Hands: Jason formerly of The Boggs and Eleanore appeared on TV on the Radio’s Dear Science – providing backing vocals on ‘Lovers Day’. This is their awesome debut single. ‘Dressed in Dresden’ is out now with a tasty ‘Undressed in Dresden’ remix by DFA affiliated Jacques Renault – Download both songs from their THITH ZINE.
01
Last week I picked my top five Irish records so far this year and among them was Season of The Sparks the fifth album from Adrian Crowley. The album is released today and is a real step up from his already impressive fourth release Long Distance Swimmer.
Much of the album eschews the singer-songwriter with an acoustic guitar standard and replaces it with much more amibitious fare taking in swirling organ sounds, piano, atmospherics, rich imagery and a baritone voice distilled with confidence that has come out of solid years of plugging away, just doing your thing. ‘Summer Haze Parade’ is a lovely graceful way to start an album, the yearning instrumentation of ‘The Beekeeper’s Wife’ collectively transcends the humble Adrian Crowley of yore and another bee-related song, an Ivor Cutler cover – ‘Squeeze Bees’ is a floating idiosyncratic tale. The sublime ‘Horses Like to Dream’ confirms that Season of the Sparks is Mr. Crowley’s best album yet.
This new found plateau in craft also translates to his live performance. At his album launch backed by three-quarters of Halfset, Adrian delivered stirring and assurred renditions of songs new and old. See for yourself when Adrian plays an instore today in Road Records at 5.30pm. Also look out for a Daniel Johnson 8-track tribute album he recorded with James Yorkston recently.
Here’s the lead single ‘The Wishing Seat’ available here for free one week only (time up) before release on May 22nd. Read full post »
30
Oooh, new video for the infectious tune featured on our podcast yesterday from the one of the best live bands I’ve seen this year so far. Directed by Andrew Sloan. It’s from the forthcoming EP called Jupiter.(via MOKTB)
30
While Modeselektor having been busy making music with Apparat under the banner Moderat, the German duo have still been releasing their remix EPs for their album Happy Birthday!, the third of which has just been released.
So far we’ve has remixes from Rustie, Trentemøller, Marcel Dettmann and Pt.3 brings in Feadz, Siriusmo and Paul Kalbrenner. I recommend them and the excellent Moderat album (probably more on that later) for your general consumption. Track after the juuuuump. Read full post »
