We've all survived encounters with our nuclear family (presumably), and if you're like me and live up north (Canada is 3 hours away!), then you've undoubtedly had your first run in with some snow. So that got me to thinking about songs that reminded me of winter or that had a nice sitting by the fireplace sipping hot chocolate type feel. After a while, I had a whole mix, so here it is:
I don't know how I missed this, Spoon's new video for "Don't You Evah" references the viral video of the keep on dancing yellow squishy guy. Except this time he goes on an adventure through (I'm Assuming) Tokyo. Look closely for cameos from Jim Eno and Brit Daniel. If there were justice in the world, kids everywhere would get a keep on dancing yellow squishy and a copy of Spoon's Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga. You know what they say, "Be the change you want to see in the world"...
It's Thanksgiving, so that means I am going to do a little extra today by posting my radio show track by track, including my custom little promotional advertisements, which I enjoy way too much. Keep an ear out for next week, there's going to be even more ridiculous promos, which are my favorite thing ever right now. AZLTRON Station ID #1
It's crazy, before a new indie song can humbly rest into our frontal lobes, it has to be covered. If I remember right, it even took "Crazy" a couple months before the onslaught of coverage. The new cover is Ruby Isle's much more electronic take on the Hello, Blue Roses song Shadaw Falls. The Kindercore label that supports Ruby Isle said:
"Last Friday, Ruby Isle was in the middle of recording our new record and were looking for some inspiration so we decided to take whatever track was number one on elbo.ws and cover it. It turned out it was a song by Hello, Blue Roses called Shadow Falls. Hello, Blue Roses has that guy Dan Bejar in it from Destroyer and The New Pornographers. It was a pretty easy song to cover because it is very simple. Basically a chorus with some verselike parts that go in and out. Our take on it is VERY different, I hope we don’t offend HBR because we mean no harm. It was just supposed to be a fun send up of a current indie fave. Keep in mind we recorded and mixed it in about 5 hours."
In the same spirit of otherworldly dance/rockers the Klaxons comes Melbourne's Midnight Juggernauts. Their debut album Dystopia, throbs with equal parts psychedelia and stomping beats. Often times sounding like the raucous procreation of David Bowie and Justice. If you're headed into another dimension via experimental space-craft anytime soon, The Midnight Juggernauts might be just the thing for you.
Do you remember those "Greatest Hits" collections of the 1980's that over saturated the airwaves weekend afternoons? I do, particularly the "What's on Your Mind (Pure Energy)" song by The Information Society. Years later, I can safely blame a large part of my musical taste on these commercials, particularly being exposed to New Order's "Bizarre Love Triangle" from them as well. Anyway, since then I've re-examined Information Society and found them to be a great deal sillier than I thought they were in my youth. The huge hair, the science fiction clips, and barrages of silly FX rhythms were a sign of late 80's club culture, but there's something endearing about their mix and match Spock-Rock that carries through to today.
I haven't had a reason to write about Information Society before other than maybe as a fun entry for a slow day, but they released a new album "Synthesizer" earlier this year. Like most New Wave comebacks their latest release has taken a turn for the dark to conceal their former silliness. Singer Christopher Anton takes a noticeably David Gahan-esque vocal style for the album. While the songs ride on safe rave-house techno that only occasionally erupts into a full on pop collages, they are surprisingly not as embarrassing as you'd think. They've tempered their excessive sound with vintage sounds evoking their 1980's halcyon days without a lot of the cringe-able tacky-ness that they devolved into in the 90's. While there's nothing new or innovative about the album, it's cool that that Information Society can still stand with the best of the New Wave copycats.
It's been three years since the Moving Units released a full album and you can tell immediately that the band has progressed past their Rapture worshiping punk/funk style and looked farther back, taking more influence from Post-Punk. Unlike the Rapture who went straight for a polished pop sound, The Moving Units, while still more polished, kept the dark and sleek element to their music.
The electronics are brought more to the forefront on Hexes for Exes, the lead off single "Crash 'N' Burn Victims" starts off with a descending digitized bass line that subtly leads to handclaps and a digitized beat accented by synth that recalls "Anyone" from their previous album. This is a very good thing, since that was my favorite track off of the previous album. Another song that makes great use of that electronic bass sound and Flock of Seagulls style chorused guitar riffs to make an ominous atmosphere is "The Kids from Orange County", which is a front runner for my favorite song off of the album. One of the other front runners is the bouncy Age of Consent-ish "Dark Walls". While Hexes For Exes trades in it's raw funk energy for post-punk propulsion it is just as good if not better than Dangerous Dreams.
So I have a show that is broadcast from WNYO every Monday from 11-noon. I know that many people are in class or at work and cannot listen. However I am in the process of developing techniques and schedules so that everyone can listen to my show. If you can you should definitely listen next week because I have a special guest co-host. Anyway one of my plans is to post all the tracks I've played the same day.
I realize that it is Wednesday morning and that I am posting Monday's show. So, I'll just get to it.
I don't remember the exact point when I realized that I was listening to the Brooklyn band Hopewell, and I don't remember the exact moment when I realized that I liked it. I do, however, know the song that made me aware of their existence. That song was "Monolith" off of their "Beautiful Targets" album. There was a folky intensity about the structure of the song and the delivery of the hook "He stood tall and stiff, he was an ATHEIST!" sounds like a manic evangelist delivering a sermon about an unlikely protagonist. The rest of the album swirls and chimes with a garage rock meets psychedelic folk focus that's perfect for a long drive or a Sunday morning. MP3 - Monolith - Hopewell
Ah, the changing of the leaves, the sweet smell of the harvest on the air, who doesn't love the fall? Well, people who prefer t-shirt and shorts weather I suppose. But anyway, even though October is over, Love in October is not. By "Love In October", I mean the Minneapolis indie band of the same name. Their debut album "Pontus, the Devil and Me" is chock full of straight forward indie/punk with catchy choruses. Think, things you hear on the radio, Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance, now take one standard deviation away from the vomit inducing sound in your mind, add in some minimal keyboard electronics and you've got the surprisingly satisfying sound of "Love in October".
The Octopus Project is a band from Austin, Texas that play strangely saccharine pop music that often features a theremin. They have a new video out for their song "Truck".
While we're on the topic of strangely addictive pop bands, Black Moth Super Rainbow, whose psychedelic electronic pop songs have been traveling with the Flaming Lips this fall also have a new video for their song "Sun Lips", Featuring overweight men and trash bags... Take a look!
Last but not least is Dan Bejar's new project with his sweetheart Sydney Vermont entitled "Hello, Blue Roses". The music is sparse and melodious and while Dan Bejars voice serves as an anchor for the vocals, it's when Sydney Vermont's vocals take off accompanied by sweeping synths that the songs really soar. Don't take my word for it.
The London Synth-Rock band returns with a new single "Airtight", and that's exactly what the track is. It swaggers along with an authentic 80's bounce and one of those choruses that wraps itself around the beat thereby jackhammering itself into your frontal lobes where it will stay.
Kimono Kops once again drop a killer remix of an indie song. This time it's Bloc Party's "I still Remember" the U2 sustained notes are replaced with vintage synth in this incarnation and they create a delirious spinning dance number.
MGMT is a band that has been picking up a lot of attention these last few months, with their psychedelic sampling style and dance inclinations. Their full length debut "Oracular Spectacular" is a journey through college coffee shops, pagan rituals, and synth tinged nostalgic folk freak outs. Like Hall and Oates shaking hands with Echo and the Bunnymen through a Pink Floyd Filter. Trippy stuff.
The album opens with one of the strongest tracks on the record, "Time To Pretend", which has a deliriously violent bounce and narrates the cycles of modern life through eyes envious of the old playground. Another highpoint deserving of radio play is the smooth "Electric Feel". The track grinds on a galloping beat and ascends into the category of "Baby-Making Music" on the flute loops and satisfying falsetto. The woozy style and ethereal delivery of the music makes "Oracular Spectacular" the 2am album of the year. Bring on the all-nighters.
When we last heard from Treasure Mammal, he was making pleasing lo-fi electro tracks and then throwing up all over them. Awkward sound changes, unneeded spoken word fillers, and a brain melting absence of logic yielded an album that was at once exciting and frustrating. He was trying to be funny, we got that, but who was the butt of the joke? Him? Or Us?
These new tracks are more cohesive and clever, and now we can all laugh together instead of feeling like the author of the music is laughing at us for giving our time to listen. "Best Friends Forever" and "On The Computer" are chalk full of pop culture and internet culture references. Treasure Mammal's position as an educator certainly places him in the middle of how serious and childish internet culture can be (especially around children). Like a gossipy preteen crossed with Patrick Swayze's character from Donnie Darko with a pinch of Xiu Xiu, Treasure Mammal is back on the scene. He might be insane, but he's hilarious.
In the past, I've tried to get into Radiohead. Because I'm into a lot of digital sounds, Kid A has been suggested to me a bunch of times, because I like Muse The Bends has been recommended to me a bunch of times, but I just couldn't get into them. I realize they are influential, but I just never really got into them. This must seem like blasphemy coming from a music blogger, but it's true. Frankly, I didn't even know they had an album coming out until all of the hubbub about the "pay what you want" price tag. Even then someone sent me a copy of the album before I could contemplate taking a free copy (heh heh). This is where my story changes from uninterested spectator to engaged listener.
Radiohead's 'In Rainbows' springs to life with an urgency I haven't heard previously in their work. Seemingly devoid of the walls of intellectual bullshit that many holier than thou hipsters desperately cling to to establish their musical superiority. The song "Bodysnatchers" features the lyrics "I have no idea what I'm talking about", and that upfront honesty is the best thing they could have done to win me over. Though the remainder of the album doesn't quite live up to the Klaxons channeled through lite-jazz that is B-Snatch, but it's not a total snooze-fest. "All I Need" distills the urgency and bombastic drama that Radiohead wants to evoke so much, but actually pulls it off. There's also something about "House of Cards", I think it's the production of Thom Yorke's ghostly wail behind the boring guitar loop. It keeps you just interested enough to not skip the track until the line "I don't want to be your friend, I just want to be your lover" drops, and seriously who has not been there? Another ambiguously engaging statement that will pull you through until the track ends.
An album that Radiohead actually made me want to listen to, a surprising feat. The price alone should make you all want to go listen to it as well.
I remember when Performance was receiving a fanatical amount of hype from NME 2 years ago along with Editors and another band that has since faded into obscurity. All cited as being the next big thing in England. Editors had "Bullets" and Performance had "Love Life". Honestly I was more impressed with Performance. Throbbing synth, manic almost Robert Smith vocals, and a black and white video featuring children as the audience won me over almost instantly. I think the Editors just stood in a club somewhere preaching about vaccines(heh).Soon after, Editors released their debut album and emerged as a contemporaries of Interpol and later morphed into a New Order/Coldplay Hybrid to gain attention as a Snow Patrol knock-off, but what of Performance?
(We Are) Performance, as they are now known, experienced some difficult relations with record labels and funding, but they finally released their eponymous debut this year. I actually found out about it by scrolling through a friends music and saw it in his library. I then immediately demanded that he send me a copy. Upon listening to the album in full I wasn't disappointed.
The Manchester four-piece serves up delicious slices of electro-pop-rock that will feed the hungriest of indie consumers. Their Human League meets the Klaxons sound soars; utilizing fist pumping anthem choruses. The relentless fervor of each song is seemingly frozen in mid-air with the crystalline backing vocals of the Marsden sisters. They compare relationship difficulties to living in a post nuclear disaster world, and I couldn't think of a more over the top or appropriate hook to draw you into their perfectly orchestrated world.
All mp3's posted on this site are for promotion purposes only. The mp3's posted here are to encourage people to listen to and buy excellent music. If you enjoy any songs, please support the artist by buying their music. If you are the owner of the track and don't want it posted, please contact me at azltron@yahoo.com and it will be removed. Please do not have Blogspot remove the entire post. Just like the artists work hard on their music, I work hard on my posts. I take considerable time to give my articulate analysis of music as well as to contribute original artwork because I want my blog to look it's very best. Therefore it is frustrating when my posts are eliminated for just one mp3. If you alert me, I will take down the offending mp3 as soon as possible. Thank You.
If you are a promoter and would like me to review an album, song, or band I would be more than willing to, just send me an e-mail at azltron @ yahoo.com.
French Promo - AZLTRON
