25 April 2007






Monikers and aliases among musicians have often left me feeling stupid when entering conversation about music: "Well, actually, it's the same guy...." (in a condescending you should have known that fool tone) "Oh..." I reply. We've all been there, and to be honest it upsets me. Plus sides of monikers and aliases? Well it allows the artist to re-invent himself and his sound, sometimes the result can be great.



kiD Alex are Andi and Alex who are also PUZIQUe, Andi is also D.I.M. and Alex is also Boys Noize, confused? You should be. Now listen.



MP3:


Boys Noize - Kill The Kid




PUZIQUe - Relax!





kiD Alex - Loverboy




And go listen to D.I.M. on his MySpace, Airbus Baby has the heaviest bass you will ever hear.





And another one, Hakan Libdo's Data 80 alias..... lovely electro-pop, not the usual from him.





MP3:



Data 80 - You Are Always On My Mind





Then this is something which has fascinated me all day at work, totally not music related. Hashima is a small island near Nagasaki. It was developed in the early 1900s to mine the coal underneath it and in 1959 the population of Hashima reached its peak of 5,259 - an astonishing 1,391 people per 10,000 square metres 1959, making it the the most densely populated place on earth even down until today where even Warabi, a Tokyo bedtown and the most densely populated city in modern Japan, notches up only 141 people per 10,000 square metres. In 1974 the coal mine was closed and shortly after the island was abandoned. Today, travel to it is prohibited. This is a video from a chap who was brought up on the island. Eerie stuff!








24 April 2007






I surprised myself by discovering how much 'techno' I actually own. Now techno in it's many incantations (tech-house, minimal etc) is a love or hate genre for many, even myself at times find it hard to be warm to what to me always seems to be a cold style of music. Still, like any genres there are some excellent songs held within, so therefore without further ado I bring you Techno-Tuesday....which may be turned into something fortnightly eye dee kay.







MP3:



Alex Smoke - We Like It Insipid







Alexi Delano & Jesper Dahlback - How About That Thing?







David Keno - Terra






Motor - 1 x 1











Sick of being paranoid about being caught on eBay at work? I present to you, WORK FRIENDLY the web browser that looks like a Word document, genius.






Also, thankyou to Marmalade magazine for such bonhomie regarding my music taste over on their MySpace, after debating whether I was smart and good-looking enough, ultimately I reasoned that just who is going to know? So I now eagerly await the latest issue which I just bought :-)




Possible ATP Dirty Three 'mp3-view' coming up soon.




23 April 2007






Melbourne must be a pretty sizable place given the amount of bands/artists that seem to be coming out of there at the moment. Damn Arms are another example, they are Yama Indra (Vocals/Synth), Tim Sullivan (Vocals/Bass), Ian Jackson (Guitar) and Simon Parker (Drums). Midnight Juggernauts are another perhaps better known Melbournese export, famous for asking if it's a Tombstone? Anyway, electro rock remixes electro rock here with a Midnight Juggernauts mix of Damn Arms, taken from Homewrecker EP available HERE.







MP3:



Damn Arms - The Cormorant (Midnight Juggernauts Remix)










I totally forgot how good Leslies were.... currently loving this song all over again, upbeat Swedish indie-tweepop-rock, sounds like Mew in parts, Henry's Dress in others.








MP3:


Leslies - Ignorance






Henry's Dress - Target Practice








I saw these two acts play together at Ladytron's Korova bar a while ago, they must have got on like a foul-mouthed house on fire, it's CSS and 1990s, CSS helmswoman Lovefoxxx has guested on a 1990's B-side track called Super-Legal. It will never reach the heights of You're Supposed To Be My Friend however.








MP3:




1990s - Super-Legal (feat. Lovefoxxx)












Today's news means future prosperity for Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin.




22 April 2007






Sit back, relax, and enjoy some Chromatics, the freshest sound around right now, downtempo vocoder driven italo-disco dance fever is here.






MP3:

Chromatics - Hotel




Chromatics - Lady






Chromatics - In The City Videoooh







20 April 2007






Sorry about lack of content past few days, have been down in London, catching up etc, also we hit the Generic Indie Band Crawl in Camden last night, fun was had, but only at stupid o'clock when Goose went audio-mental on the crowd to great effect, followed by more of the excellent same by Autokratz an act who you owe it to yourself to check out! But prior to that really was a tad of a let down, queues longer than a really long thing, acts of questionable quality. I like Popular Workshop, they played. Foals were Klaxons minus neon plus Moog. I was really looking forward to Black Ghosts, but live they just didn't do it for me, although we did come up with a theory that the real Black Ghosts were ill and the only last minute replacements that could be found were the Mitchell brothers. Hadouken! were everything a live act should be, energetic and loud, only the loudness had a detrimental effect on the vocals, could hardly understand them which is a terrible shame when their lyrics are as good as they come. Ho hum. I'll stick a picture or two from it whent films developed.


Good indie is still good.



MP3:
Popular Workshop - Channels




Now the other year I was obsessed with this song called Folder by Plastic Operator, as we all know, obsessions fade. Obsession has been rekindled though, Plastic Folder are releasing an album pretty soon, some of the tracks are on their space and from the sounds of it, it will be an electro-pop gem.




MP3:
Plastic Operator - Home 0207



Here's the really quite neato video to Folder



Actor/Model are a Melbourne three-piece band with a lo-fi, high energy philosophy, utilising cheap toy keyboards and synths, old beat-up guitars and inventive, pounding drums to construct simple, beat-driven pop songs with fabulistic melodies and pleasuristic soundscapes. I won't even say what or who the following song reminds me of. I will say it's all good, very very good!




MP3:
Actor/Model - S.S. Slapper





Oh and if you want a laugh any time, just take a look at the front cover of any lifestyle magazine e.g. Nuts, Closer. Some of the stories they carry include:


"100 Real Girls Boobs Inside"

"Big Brother Danielle Heartbreak As Teddy Dumps Again"


This is what 83% of the population male and female read.




15 April 2007






He's dominated the home of all things homemade and 8-bit, micromusic.net of late, in addition to that, he's landed a track on a compilation CD by the uber-cool powerhouse of electronic music, Kitsune. To me that makes him something quite special, nerdy enough for nerds and hip enough for hipsters. Kap10Kurt is a Swiss fellow living in NYC, harnessing his vintage synthesizer and other apparatus he comes up with his own distinctive sound, beefed up driving basslines teaming up with that Gameboy aesthetic result in a party-rocking time for all. The following song is amazing.







MP3:




Kap10Kurt - Dangerseekers










And whilst dishing out the ridiculously catchy attention deficit disorder pleasing tunes, here's one of my favourite songs from the whole of last year! Das Kometen is mr keyboard from Hemstad, who are currently working on a follow up album to their fantastic self titled debut, i've heard a couple of the new demo's and I must say they are great, GREAT!











MP3:


Das Kometen - Das Kometen











13 April 2007






Must be brief, off to play football in 8minutes or so.




MP3:



Sta - One Of Us

Sta - In Living Colour

Hail Social - Cherry Cola Funk (Sta Remix)



When will we tire of this sound? Latest opinion polls suggest not for quite a while yet. I want more. Sta is Canadian, he is talented, he can remix the heck out of anything, check his website for lots of goodies etc etc. Much love for him.






The following song is something I am sooooooo guilty of, normally only when talking to old women with purple hair. This is for you who always talk about the weather.



MP3:

Yonderboi - People Always Talk About The Weather (Junkie XL Remix)




11 April 2007






Quite why i've never checked out Slagsmålsklubben sooner I don't know, their sound is right up my cul-de-sac. They're 6 well loved blip-bloppers from Norrköping. The name Slagsmålsklubben is a Swedish translation of the title of the movie Fight Club. It is pronouced in English as "slawgs-mawls-club-en". They make really quite exquisite, intricate, manually operated bit-pop, and well it's a whole hunka fun. Their 4th album Boss for Leader has just got released and is tops!! I won't use the old cliche that it's like playing Super Mario 3 with only one life left, because it's not, this is 16-bit stuff, maybe even 32. This is music, good honest music, to make the heart rejoice on a perfect Spring day like today.







MP3:



Slagsmålsklubben - Sponsored By Destiny










I normally shy away from posting about stuff that's readily available on Hype Machine. But sometimes stuff is too good not to mention. The stuff i'm on about is The Field, his album From Here We Go Sublime is nigh on bliss, label it what you what, i'm plumping for ambient-trance. Start to finish the album is unskippable despite its seeming repetitiveness, just can't get enough. One of my favourites of the year so far.







MP3:



The Field - Silent



The Field - Everyday







And for your dose of authentic sounding 1980's synth-pop. Future Conditional is a new project from Piano Magic's Glen Johnson and Cedric Pin and along with a whole host of friendly collaborators (Melanie Pain (Nouvelle Vague), Bobby Wratten (Field Mice/Trembling Blue Stars), Angele David-Guillou (Klima/Piano Magic), Carolyn Allen (The Wake) and Dan Matz (Windsor for the Derby)) they have come up with what could easily pass for an obscure synth-pop album circa 1981. The album is entitled We Don't Just Disappear and it's straight up enjoyable retrolectro fun and games rolled up into 10 tracks.








MP3:



Future Conditional - The Switchboard Girl









Numbers One to Twenty was a mixtape I was told to do for someone I didn't know, with the theme of numbers. Being the unoriginal so and so I am, I simply put songs with numbers in their title and zipped it up. You may enjoy.



Here's the tracklist:



Numbers - I'm Shy

Bit by Bats
- One Six One

Zoo Brazil
- Two Steps Back

Anoice
- The Three Days Blow

Dosh
- Henderson Four

Electrelane
- Five

Six Organs of Admittance
- Bless Your Blood

Renu
- One More Than Six

John Dahlback
- Eight To Five

Frightened Rabbit
- Square 9

Mice Parade
- The Last Ten Homes

Majascule P
- Take 11

Maserati
- 12 16

Motor
- Din 13

Susumu Yokota
- 3D 14

Fischerspooner
- The 15th

MV + EE
- Sweet Sixteen

Ratatat
- Seventeen

Electric Company
- Eighteen Hard Feelings

The Harlem Shakes
- Nineteen

Christ
. - Happyfour Twenty





DOWNLOADABLE HERE in .zip format with separate tracks.






I'm well aware of bits of filler contained within. But there's some real neat tunes in tharr, spanning the genres of IDM / post-rock / techno.



x






7 April 2007








I still love Crystal Castles and all that, but, but, but...... just but.







MP3:



KAP BAMBINO - Zero Life



KAP BAMBINO - Mess In The Ruins



KAP BAMBINO - Hey!












KAP BAMBINO are just the best and really have it all going for them, provocative hot songstress up front, high energy distortion beat and bass up back, they do Nintendo-punkthrash better than most, and are certainly in a league with the above mentioned CC's when it comes to being able to make dancefloors snap, crackle and ultimately POP! Their album 'zero life,night vision' is 12 songs of unabashed discopunk for you to rhumba, rock and shimmy to in your bedroom, as well as other cool places. The album has no real low-point unlike other kids in this genre, i.e. Bondage Fairies. Most of the song measure in at between 2 and 3 minutes which to be honest is the perfect length for music of this variety. They're also French which apparently is a good thing to be these days too.




Think Dandi Wind vs Crystal Castles.






5 April 2007






April is upon us already. Roll on discount Easter Eggs next week!



Dynasty's 2004 self-titled release remains one of my fave Tigerbeat6 releases to date. One part of Dynasty, Jibz Cameron AKA Dynasty Handbag does solo stuff too, more electro, more balladic than the music produced with Dynasty, Dynasty Handbag will not cure headaches, her screechy vocals penetrate, while the synths persuade.... firm but enticing stuff.





MP3:


Dynasty Handbag - Fading Away






2003 saw the demise of Add N To (X). Their memory lives on. I see them cited everywhere as influences to more recent acts, and it's no wonder really, they were so so good. I may be wrong in thinking this, but to my knowledge they were the first in cool independent music being used for mobile phone networks. Here's a few of my favourite Add N To (X) tracks.




MP3:


Add N To (X) - Fyuz




Add N To (X) - Oh Yeah, Oh No




Add N To (X) - Plug Me In







A lucky friend of mine told me earlier on he's just booked a flight to Melbourne, seconds later I told him to go to an Acid Jacks DJ set while he's there. Acid Jacks are good.








MP3:


Acid Jacks - Pump It Up









And finally, legendary Swedish indie-pop label Labrador celebrate their 100th release and 10 years as a label with an exclusive 4 CD Box with one song from each release ever. 100 songs + thick booklet with Labrador history and interview, comments on each track, the bands list their Labrador favourites and more. It's a relative smorgasbord of inspirational indie-pop from the finest purveyors of pop music, the Swedes. You can pre-listen the whole 100 tracks, and download a fair few of the tracks via this LINK