New Wave || Disco || Synthpop || Industrial || Post Punk || Electrofunk
Ohh! Oh my! Come now, make haste to your weendow! A foundation of porcelain forms een silence, and zee whorled ees blanketed anew! As we watch zee majesty of nature descending slowly from zee sky, freegid as eet ees beeyootiful, we often wonder aloud to hourselves: how ees eet that we too can purify hour sensibilities??
And then, like a snowflake creestallising eenside off hour minds, we recall with glee: Ah! eet ees almost time once aigain, time for Brooklyn’s premiere evening at zee discotheque! And we are knowing then for certain zat Adonis Jackson and Scallywag will play hour musik… zee musique which brings us theese feeling off rebirth within!
Zee Legendary Diana Ross most certainly knew how to confront zee cold with fearless abandon! Fanged creatures off zee ice are but off no match for a diva of theese magnitude!
And we mustn’t not forget off Freeez! For their chilly namesake gives way to a bounty of crazy hot steps and fiery rhythms! Wees keytars theese heavy, you can not barely weestand zee urges you haff to burst wees sweat!
So eet ees settled. Een but merely two days, we will go boldly een to zee white off night, laughing at zee cold as we pay no mind! Instead, we shall heat the dancefloor as we twirl een deelite, igniting zee midnite fellowship wees zee fires eenside off hour hearts!
Goddamn, that man could sing. This is EASILY one of my favorite songs of all-time – any era, any genre. The Thelma Houston version was a bigger hit apparently, but the Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes version is just untouchable: so huge and uplifting, yet filled with heartbreak.
Rest easy, Teddy, and thank you for the music.
BONUS: Extended Tom Moulton version + killer edit of “The Love I Lost” . Do the world a favor and play one of these at the end of the night this weekend.
So I used to make a ton of lists. Mostly they were personal ones – movies, books, to-do’s – but at some point I realized I had to ease up on all the jotting and tabulating because the whole process was cutting into my “go time.” Not gonna beat the Internet just by scrawling down chicken-scratch on some gaw-damned looseleaf all day, ya know?
But yeah, the only list that has managed to persist is my Top 10 Albums one. I used to try to make one every month or two, but turns out that that’s fairly impossible in this day and age – what with time constraints and most albums being kinda shitty and all. But without getting into it, I continue to believe that, for the most part, it’s still the most satisfying medium for delivering a fully realized artistic statement. So now, every time I feel I can post a solid 10er, I try to at least throw it out there via the twitter / myspace / other spiderholes I frequent.
Anyhow, I think the last one I made was sometime in August? Here’s the new one:
1.Lee Fields – My World
2.Dj Sprinkles – Midtown 120 Blues
3.Health – Get Color
4.Dj /Rupture and Matt Shadetek – Solar Life Raft
5.Redshape – The Dance Paradox
6.Edan – Echo Party
7.William Basinksi – 92982
8.Ben Frost – By The Throat
9.Hudson Mohawke – Butter
10.King Cannibal – Let the Night Roar
Pretty solid spread of genres too. Here’s some toobs to get you acquainted.
PS. Oh, and I only list relatively new albums, for whatever reason. Kinda funny, seeing how they seem to account for less and less of my listening these days. Guess I just like to make it hard for myself?
PPS. Working on my year end ones right now too. Might be able to post them here when I’m done, but a lot of these are on it. I also think it’d be cool to see some of the other Shruggers’ ”best of” picks regardless, wouldn’t you? B-) B-) B-)
Also gonna do a best of 00’s one w/ at least 50 albums before the year is over. Need to wait until I get home for the holidays though, so I can actually trawl through the majority of my records. Low key Christmas, let’s goooooo.
PPPS. …annnnd it’s probably pretty obvious that my lead-in was bullshit, huh
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still make a shit ton ton of lists
still never scratched off the bulletpoint that says “Fix Your Life”
still not mad at it at all
still hittin’ them corners in them low low’s, girl (?)
Check out these records made from glacial meltwater straight outta Iceland. Artist Katie Peterson got three of these discs pressed up, and named them Langjökull, Snæfellsjökull, and Solheimajökull, after they icebergs they were culled from. Then she let the records play out on turntables for about two hours while they melted away, their swan songs slowly becoming lost in a puddle of their own makings. Finally some conceptual art i can relate to!
The audio on the discs were actually recordings of the sounds of the glaciers themselves. If you are really hard up for something to do right now, you can zone out to a .wav of some of the ice rumblings right here. Be sure to think deep, profound thoughts while listening…
Well the meteor shower was a bust in New York City, so I had to find other ways to keep my mind trained on the night sky.
Wanna know where Daft Punk jacked their swagger from? Or where else rather?
Look no further than this slice of vintage awesome, courtesy of pioneering electronic band, Space. Huge fan of this video! Primitive green screens, tons of analog gear – it’s got that perfectly dated mystique that I crave in spades. Little did I know, these guys are by no means obscure. They actually managed to go multi-platinum in their native France and charted all around the world during the late 70’s and early 80’s, with this instrumental track “Magic Fly” being their biggest hit.
So sure, Daft Punk get the badass award with their oh-so-measured measured head bobs, but you’d be pretty hard pressed to deny the slightly giddier gyrations of this band of astro travelers. I mean, c’mon…look at that drummer. Dude is in a league of his own.
Again, more visual influence for DP, this time manifesting itself in their movie, Electroma. Think it’s a stretch? Peep this pic (nsfw) and then tell me those two spent their childhoods just dreaming of electric sheep instead.
BONUS FACTOID: the opening to Deliverance was chopped up to become the backing sample for one of De La’s best latter day tracks, Rock Co Kane Flow.
Anyhow, there’s plenty more cosmic goodness where that came from. Here’s two tracks that have been remastered and beefed up substantially for an upcoming ‘best of’ compilation via Nang Records. They are also re-issuing all their LP’s, so be sure to check em out if you are feeling these tunes. Sister label Tirk has commissioned a slew of remixes as well.
Plus one more older rip of one of their more orchestral leanings tracks: a baroque odyssey of intergalactic proportions (should you feel the need to shed a tear for the Leonids, young city-dweller).
So I’ve been noticing this little ditty churning through the internode’s various buzz-centric faculties as of late. It’s being promoted as a remix of Florence and the Machine – “You’ve got the Love,” but it’s definitely a cover or rework in actuality, seeing how it consists of entirely redone vocals and instrumentation. I’m not mad at this song at all, it’s quite nice even – props to The XX - but I’m throwing it out there mostly for the sake of being topical. For whatever reason, I happen to know a lot about this jam and its various incarnations. Given that, hearing this pretty much forced me to stop and really map out just how many degrees of separation this tune has from its original musical kernel.
Turns out that when you break it down, this current blog fave is actually a cover of a cover of a remix of an early “mash-up” consisting of a.) a vocal track recorded for a documentary about a homeless guy, and b.) a classic early house song (which itself was built around an italo disco joint). Kinda nutty huh? Lucky for you there are giant nerds like myself who will jump at the chance to walk you (backwards) through a track’s musical etymology.
New Grizzly Bear vid for Ready, Able this time showcasing gumbified versions of characters from artist Allison Schulnik’s work
QUICK SYNOPSIS: So Sasquatch sees his doppelganger and it causes a rupture in the spacetime continuum which then causes Bizarro Sasquatch to melt into the river. Sasquatch is like whoa but then finds a bunch of pocket goblins in his hand and decides to fead them to a nearby gila monster who wigs out and grows mickey mouse ears. Then of course the aliens show up and beam sasquatch aboard their plaz-tek spaceship. There’s kind of a jump cut and things get a little iffy but next thing you know, Sasquatch is back looking pretty ashamed with all signs pointing to exhaustive probing. Then all the sudden everyone and their mother shows up just morph face like crazy while laughing at poor ol’ sasquatch, who slumps away into the night – frightened and dejected.
So yeah…props to Grizzly Bear for yet another beautifully terrifying video that leaves you thoroughly mangled on the inside. As always, there’s a powerful message encoded deep within the whirr of colours and shapeshifting riddles, but this time it truly is one of the sagest pieces of advice worth imparting.
The moral of the story?
Do NOT drop acid by yourself in the woods, dude. You will totally freak the fuck out.
Hottest house music around coming straight outta Burkina Faso…only not really though. Just finding out now that they are, in fact, two dudes from Germany after being blown away by this track right here about a year ago:
So maybe they aren’t West Africa’s finest musical export after all, but their RA podcast proves they’re still miles ahead of the game, forging a bridge between tribal sounds and new wave synth lines that sounds appropriately raw but engineered with modern production finesse.
Anyway, this podcast is chock full of new material from them and the rest of the Brontosaurus label. Definitely one of my favorite podcasts of the year from RA. It will only be up until Monday before being stashed in the archives, so get it while the getting’s good. Oh, and you DO have to register to download it, but that takes 2 minutes and RA is pretty much the best dance music news source on the planet at this point (that’s coming from someone who actually works for a rival mag…shhh), so if you haven’t ever checked it out, consider this link the keys to the kingdom.
And just in case you don’t make it in time, here’s a track by Lars Bartkuhn that they reworked, also featured in their mix. Enjoy.
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