Patience. Give it a moment of your time. You need a break from your lightning paced life. Breath in. Hold it. Breath out. Repeat three times. Now that you’ve fed your brain a healthy dose of oxygen, feed your head a healthy dose of ambient beats courtesy of Jon Hopkins, pianist, composer, self-taught producer. At once his compositions soothe and haunt. Audio rorschach tests, you hear what you are, where you are, where you want to be. Hopkins merely holds a mirror up to your soul—you decide what it means. The break down at the end of this track signaling a break from tranquility, or a break for lunch. Me? I’m always up for the latter.
The Egg
Compared to my pals here at 3hive, I don’t know jack about electronic music. I can tell you all about country and jangly guitar pop, but deep down inside all those synths kind of freak me out. Maybe it was too much Herbie Hancock back when my dad built a pirate MTV converter in 1985 or so. Therefore, if The Egg isn’t cool, you’ll have to forgive me, ’cause I think it’s pretty kicking. At least it doesn’t give me a headache, which every other electronica track I pull seems to do. So here’s how I found out about this British quartet that’s been making records for a decade or so: SXSW. Every year, the website for this Texas blow-out has about five hundred free MP3s, and I get all download crazy for a day or two. The Egg was one of my random grabs, and it got me moving, and one click begat another… Enjoy “Funky Dube,” live from Glastonbury, and forgive me if it ain’t all that. I kind of think it is.
Casiotone for the Painfully Alone
Here’s one that’s long overdue for an update and what do you know we’re just in time for Casiotone’s single collection due out this week. It’s called Advance Base Battery Life. The opening track, “Old Panda Days,” is classic CFTPA and highlights Owen Ashworth’s cunning command of couplets rhyming “boyfriends I shouldn’t have kept” with “stupid flatbeds we never swept.” You’ll have to listen to get the context. Not one to leave us hanging, Ashworth will quickly follow his singles and rarities collection with his fifth album, Vs. Children, of which “Optimist vs. The Silent Alarm” is part and proof that while Ashworth may be a one-man band, a one-trick pony he ain’t.
Note: Be sure to check out the SXSW Megamix from Tomlab, K Records, and Asthmatic Kitty. No medley nonsense here, just lots of full-length gems.
Old and Panda Days [MP3, 3.2MB, 192kbps]
Optimist vs. The Silent Alarm (When The Saints Go Marching In) [MP3, 2.1MB, 160kbps]
Sam’s original post 2/4/2006::
Casiotone for the Painfully Alone has been one of those monikers that kinda gives away the ending before you even press play — like Rage Against the Machine, or Insane Clown Posse. I say “has been” because now Owen Ashworth (who from some angles looks remarkably like 3hive’s Jon Armstrong, see for yourself) has joined forces with producer Jherek Bischoff to expand his sound beyond its lo-fi trappings. “Young Shields” is the lead-off single from the resulting album, Etiquette, which by all indications still speaks to the Painfully Alone, just with less Casiotone (and a lot more of everything else) than before. “Cold White Christmas” is also from the new joint… Where was this track when I was putting together my Christmas podcast? Oh well, this one defies seasonality. When isn’t a good time for some chilly melancholy?
Young Shields [MP3, 2.9MB, 128kbps]
Cold White Christmas [MP3, 4.6MB, 128kbps]
Bobby Malone Moves Home [MP3, 2.5MB, 160kbps]
New Year’s Kiss (version) 4-track home recording [MP3, 2.5MB, 160kbps]
Graceland [MP3, 2.5MB, 160kbps]
Milke
My mother prides herself on being “with it.” And compared to 99% of mothers I guess she probably is, as far as any mother’s “with-it-ability” goes. People are still often surprised to find out that she’s my mother since she looks too young and flashy to have a son who looks as old and frumpy as I do. And she was quite the early Facebook adopter amongst her friends and her generation. Speaking of which, this morning she expressed dismay at the fact that one of our mutual friends would use a photo of herself with her tongue sticking out as her profile picture. “It’s sexually suggestive,” my mother said. She may be up to date on technology, but her sexual boundaries are still quaintly old-fashioned. No mother, Shari’s picture is fun and sassy, this is sexually suggestive and *gasp* highly androgynous.
This is the artwork to Milke’s new single, “Love Get Out of My Way.” The duo mix French electro with soulful pop vocals for a sound that’s sure to be burn its way through the club scene and get the blog-o-kids all geeked. The two principles behind Milke are from opposite ends of the music world: producer Andrew Friendly has been DJing and remixing his way around the world, remixing the likes of Justice, LFO, and Darren Hayes, while singer Ra has been holed up on his own, flying way below the radar, until Friendly heard his work on the Black Grass album. Now with Milke they’re writing tracks that transcend their former domains. It’s big, bold, and yes, suggestive, synth-y disco. My mother will love the music, but loathe the artwork. I’m bracing for the response she’s sure to fire at me on Facebook (Hi mom!) Speaking of which, here’s a reminder to join us there too.
Faunts
On their second full-length, Alberta, Canada’s Faunts reign in their epic song structuring, meandering less while managing to maintain their expansive sound. Their new album tends to use more electronics (a more dour Postal Service?) without sacrificing the ringing guitars. In “M4 (Part 1)” guitars loop repeatedly a la Michael Brook’s infinite guitar and Faunts’ ethereal tendencies in many of their songs remind me of similar moments in The Cure’s Seventeen Seconds. Faunts get plenty of comparisons to The Cure, but unlike many of their contemporaries the similarities lie with the instrumentation rather than Smith’s warbled vocals; however, bald-faced comparisons to any band do a disservice to potential fans, because Faunts transcend simple analogies to any band that’s come before, and Feel.Love.Thinking.Of raises expectations for any band choosing to follow Faunts’ lead.
Michna
Asking me to pick my favorite track off Magic Monday is like asking me which child I love the most, or which food I love the most. Ask me on any particular day and I’ll have a favorite, sushi for instance, in fact I’ll be enjoying my favorite faux-sushi of all time, the Bungee Roll, this evening. Actually I wouldn’t do the same with my children. My favorite quote from Michna himself comes when his label’s owner asks him to list the samples he’ll need to clear, to which Michna responds, “What samples?” I’d like to hope Michna’s reply represents a new, knowing artistic naïvety in which a new generation moves past the plundering of hip-hop’s history and forges on with their own original beats and breaks (not that there’s anything wrong with samples!). He’s been paying his dues DJing parties in New York with tapes (yes!) and cutting remixes for Diplo (with his previous Secret Frequency Crew), Bonde Do Role, and surprisingly Jandek. Made playful by his trombone playing and use of found sounds (especially the answering machines, air hockey, and skateboards) his bass heavy pastiche work remind me of our old friend Alan Sutherland aka Land of the Loops (where ya at Al?). If you’re in the market for a good slow and steady, fun groove: Michna’s your man.
Loyal Divide
This makes me sick! (Well, the sick feeling probably comes from the dizzying bout of Neuritis I’ve been battling for the past week. Makes typing a bit tedious.) Peeved may be a better word. Either way, I can’t believe I let 2008 lapse without mentioning my favorite EP to come our way at the end of the year. Chicago’s Loyal Divide is at once cold and earthy, shoe-gazey and trip hop, Nine Inch Nails and Autolux, Laurie Anderson and Portishead. Your not so typical post-industrial-shoe-goth if you don’t mind me taking such liberties. “Labrador” is tethered to time as the track unwinds into a chugging locomotive pace, driven by Can’s tribal basslines, until ethereal vocals hauntingly give way to a languid narrative about a dog with “blackest eyes and softest mouth / she buried her bones behind the house / she grabbed a bird trying to steal my food / she squeezed its head until it cooed.” The vocals float along through punchy bass-lines and electronic tickings and tweets as everything but the bassline drop out, then rush back in. The Loyal Divide creates the most compellingly textured music I’ve heard from a new artist in some time.
Pallers
Just the other day, my buddy Roland from my freshman year of college said on Facebook that “Love Like Blood” by Killing Joke was the best song ever. While I think “The Fall of Because” is Killing Joke’s best song (let’s not even get started on the topic of “Best Song Ever”), it did cause me to pull out some old records of other electronic tinged artists of that era that Roland introduced me to, namely Click Click’s Rorschach Testing and Clan of Xymox’s self-titled LP. The Labrador Records site describes Pallers as “the darkest and finest electronic music we’ve heard in a long time.” That’s the perfect description of Pallers, who take the dark electronics of the previously named bands, yet add vocals with an amazing Swedish pop sensibility a la fellow Swedes The Radio Dept, making what was old new again.
Skew
The opening track on Skew’s debut album is a bit of an understatement. Stadiums are more than just OK. Stadiums are where things first got skewed for Skew. I’m assuming as much. At six, a young Skew got turned onto the rock ‘n’ roll at an Iron Maiden concert. Afterwards, his grandfather financed guitar lessons, he ended up at Berklee College of music, and the rest is history. Skew sludges out ethereal rock riffs and then lays down hip hop beats to keep the party moving. The result is a grittier Ratatat with a raw, bone-rattling low-end. You can hear his progression on the baskets of tracks on his site. There are plenty of originals along with his under the radar remixes—Radiohead, M.I.A., Yeah Yeah Yeahs—and his mash ups of Nirvana and The Beatles against themselves. Get Skew today (the album’s fresh on sale) and expect plenty more from him in the future.
Lykke Li
Now that Santogold can be heard on light beer commercials, I’m ready for another obsession (I’m not that fickle, I just need to back off from my one-a-day dosage). 22-year-old Swede Lykke Li might just be the answer. Her songs ooze modernity and warmth — restrained rhythmic backdrops meshing seamlessly with her instrumental lyrics. And then there’s her voice, that entrancing siren call… It may be too early to call her My Angel of Stockholm based on a debut album alone but dang diggity if she doesn’t melt my ears and heart.
(Thanks to JM3 for the suggestion.)