Project Jenny, Project Jan soften the downtime since their debut album two years ago with this new collaborative EP. Considering the topic, their ode to unrequited love, “Pins and Needles,” featuring Fujiya & Miyagi, settles into a smooth club groove, while their work with percussion wunderkinds and fellow Brooklynites So Percussion and Mixel Pixel stirs up darker, primordial feelings. The emotional range on this EP seems to span eons and reminds me of Shriekback’s dark tone on Oil and Gold. It’s unexpected (but not unwelcomed) from the usually playful PJPJ, but they return with their usual pluck on the final tracks with Adam Matta and Clack Singles Club. No matter their mood, Project Jenny, Project Jan has left me with a bout of paresthesia, eagerly anticipating their next album, due before year’s end.
Pins and Needles Feat. Fujiya & Miyagi [MP3, 5.6MB, 160kbps]
Original Post 6/23/07:
Mapquest Project Jenny, Project Jan. Go ahead. I dare you. You’ll have a hard time pinpointing the Brooklyn duo because they’re all over the proverbial map. When their debut EP opens up with the marching band sound of “Fight Song,” you know you’re in for a treat. On their first full-length, XOXOXOXOXO, they start the party again with a nice brass section, giving way to a bright samba number. The freestyle-stylee vocals of Jeremy Haines keeps the tracks loose and the whole album will get you shake, shake, shaking your caboose, dancing the duck-duck-goose. Feeling down lately? These boys are sure to get you up and out of your seat with a little bit of banjo, a little bit of swing, a little bit of hip hop, a little bit of reggae and lots and lots of fun. Philly, Boston, Montreal, Toronto and Cleveland brace yourselves for this Brooklyn brand of electro-karaoke coming your way live next month with Fujiya & Miyagi. A match made in dancefloor heaven.
320 [MP3, 4.4MB, 192kbps]
Train Track [MP3, 3.9MB, 192kbps]
There’s something about 3hive’s hard drives and Coltrane Motion. Sam’s crashed three years ago shortly before posting about Chicago’s Coltrane Motion, and mine recently had to be replaced, too, shortly before posting about them. I had intended to also post some photos I took of Coltrane Motion when I saw them in May 2006 while in Chigaco, but I may have to blame a different hard drive crash from last summer for misplacing most of those. Which is rather unfortunate, as they played in an old church, and I got a sweet shot of Michael Bond bouncing under an enormous lighted cross while still trying to keep his mouth at microphone level and not tipping over his laptop stand. Michael, the driving force behind Coltrane Motion, is also a dead-ringer for 3hive’s Sam, but alas, that photographic evidence is also missing. I did find an poor quality shot I took with my phone inside the church, which is below. Sam’s description of Coltrane Motion still holds true, as further demonstrated by their first 7″ release “The Year Without A Summer b/w Maya Blue,” out tomorrow.
I recall an interview with Robin Guthrie of Cocteau Twins many years ago where he said that in his head the music he wrote sounded like death metal. I get the same sense with King Loses Crown. While this San Francisco duo exercises their love of hooks and synthesizers analog and digital, somewhere in their heads perhaps their music sounds more like death metal than the electronic power-rock of their self-titled debut EP.
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.
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.
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.
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, 
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. 
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.
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.
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.