Assuming you care about Pitchfork and/or the kind of music Pitchfork covers (I’ll avoid stepping into the “indie” semantic dog poo), I highly recommend clicking through on the link above. Scott is considered and thoughtful, as always.
Dizzee Rascal feat. Calvin Harris “Dance Wiv Me” (buy me)
This song is the jam. Calvin Harris’s goofball, supremely catchy synth hooks + Dizzee’s badass leftfield lyrical skills = two great tastes that taste even better together.
Conceived as a reaction to the glut of new bands called ‘The…’, we created a list of 99 classic band names prefixed with ‘The’.
Oh hey, there’s a new Lone album, I liked the last one (meaning I bought it off Bleep and listened to it at least 3 times all the way through) so I should probably listen to this one but…
Wait, here’s this Freddie Gibbs mixtape that I downloaded two weeks ago sitting on my desktop! SFJ and The Fader both liked it, and at least one of them said it sounds like classic West Coast gangsta rap and I totally love Regulate, so I should listen to this! Starting track one now!
But hey, Electric Light Orchestra! “Livin’ Thing” really might be the best song of all time! People love this band, right? Maybe I should listen to pretty much every song they’ve ever made for free on Lala!
No no no, wait, I heard “Peg” at a wedding last night and damn, that song is pure musical godhead. STEELY. DAN. There’s a band I’ve been meaning to check out for years. They’re geniuses! OK, every Steely Dan album for the rest of the day, that’s the plan. I’ll just leave it open in one of the 20 browser tabs I have open right now, 4 of which are albums I want to listen to, and I’ll definitely starting listening right after I send this half-written email.
But really all I ever really want to listen to is Ram. Paul McCartney does domesticity better than anyone else, and these Beatles reissues are definitely reminding me that they really are the best band of all time, and I bet Paul has some really great songs hidden in his five million shitty solo albums. Time to dig! What about that one he did with Elvis Costello? OK, listening to 30 seconds of the first song off that now…
But shit, Warp is turning 20 this year! One of my favorite labels ever! OK, totally going to Amoeba and buying one of 3 physical CDs I’ll buy this year (the remastered Abbey Road and The White Album are the other two) because I really like the cover design and I bought Warp’s 10th anniversary discs, and maybe buying a CD will be fun. Sure, it took me an hour and half to get out there and back on the bus (lame!) and the packaging for this CD is less “minimal” and more “bare bones,” but what the hell. And holy crap these remixes are horrible actually. But hey, I’ve been meaning to actually listen to that Flying Lotus album for what, a year and a half now? And hey, it’s actually REALLY GOOD!!
[In the middle of writing this post about how distracted I am I get distracted by this. Totally buying that and attempting to actually focus and listen to it after I finish writing this post about being distracted. New Nice Nice!!]
I still love Tribe more than pretty much any music ever! And I love Midnight Marauders so much that I’ve barely heard any of their other albums, and I heard “Scenario” at a party the other night and it ruled! OK, downloading all of their albums for $5 or whatever off eMusic right now, I’m sure I’ll listen to them sometime. And hey, what was Native Tongues anyway? The Wikipedia article mentions this Queen Latifah album from 1988 that I’ve never heard. Listening. Whatever happened to Justin Warfield? I had that cassette in my Jetta all through high school. Zulu Nation! Wow, weird website! Dolphins!
Oh hey, people are posting their year end lists! I have no idea what Sleigh Bells is. I kinda liked that one Lily Allen song actually, meant to listen to the album, had it in my Lala queue before that got 2,000 songs long and I gave up and deleted the whole thing.
Holy crap, we’re getting the entire Treasure Isle catalog in at IODA! Classic, classic rocksteady reggae jams. I could totally spend the rest of the year just listening to the five million amazing LPs they put out that I’ve never heard and probably be happy. Downloading all of it (it’s my job to know this stuff, FOCUS), adding to iTunes. Oh hey, my mom’s talking to me on Gchat! She’s on Facebook too — this internet thing is for real! Man, what do I want for Christmas?
This is overwhelming. I should totally read Michelangelo Matos’ Slow Listening Movement blog. I can relate! I’ve got the feed in Google Reader (1000+ unread!) and I’m following him on Twitter (59 updates since I last refreshed the page 2 minutes ago!), but you know, needle, haystack.
Oh hey, time to head home. Sweet, I’ve got 5,000 articles in my Instapaper queue to read on the bus. It never ends.
Here’s Brian Eno feeling optimistic about today’s post-modern recombinant musical landscape, and here’s Glenn Branca feeling quite the opposite. Branca mostly comes off as cranky, and doesn’t really make any coherent argument. Not sure Eno quite backs up his happy talk either, but he’s also not talking rocket science here. I’d rather hang with Eno, but I already knew that.
Nice Nice is an experimental electroacoustic duo (I guess?) from Portland, Oregon. They’re one of my favorite live bands ever, and I saw them many, many times when I lived in Portland.
The above video shows Nice Nice playing the PDX Pop Now! festival in 2005. I booked the festival that year, and was super excited to put them on the big stage, where they could be seen by an audience larger than the people who typically check out arty, jammy noise bands. They totally brought the house down — seriously, people were FREAKING OUT — and sold out of every piece of merch they brought to the show. They were pumped, I was pumped, it was awesome. Definitely one of my peak Portland music memories (as was the entire festival, actually).
Here’s a crappy cellphone video I took at a house show in 2005:
Warp Records signed Nice Nice in 2006. It was/is a perfect match, and as a longtime Warp fanboy, it pretty much made my year (alongside Blitzen Trapper getting signed to Sub Pop — that was a damn good year). Then I didn’t really hear anything for a few years, though friends assured me the band was still together (phew!) and carefully crafting their Warp debut.
Which brings us to the present. Starting today, someone besides me and Portland can finally start getting excited about these guys, because Warp just posted free MP3s of both tracks from the One Hit 7”. They sound good, and I’ve embedded them below. I’m pretty sure “One Hit” is actually the same song they’re playing the first video above, which is kind of a trip. “Ark Drum” is brand new to me, and really exciting. Nice Nice could get into this amazing black-lit tropical funk mode when you saw them live, but it never really came out on the records. It does here. The production sounds immaculate too — glossy, lush and detailed. Guess they weren’t just sitting around for those three years, eh?
These tracks will be followed by the full-length, Extra Wow, in April of 2010. Get excited!
Blank Meets Pettibon “We’re An American Band”
Music by Augst/Carl/Korn
Words by Pettibon
Recorded live October 31, 2001 at the philharmonie, Cologne
Coverart by Raymond Pettibon
This has “art music” written all over it, but I have to say I found it surprisingly moving. “The power trio makes louder,” indeed. John Cale eat your heart out.
John Menick - Aria (Goldberg Variations Variations, Track 1)
Goldberg Variations Variations is an audio work that simultaneously plays ten different synchronized recordings of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Goldberg Variations BMV 988. The beginning of each variation is synched, but after the first note, the performances fall out of step due to the differences in their tempos.
µ-Ziq “Phiesope” (buy me)
Really lovely little track off Mike Paradinas’ second album, In Pine Effect. Probably the only µ-Ziq featuring guitar. You can hear him warming up the melodic chops, getting ready for the greatness that is Lunatic Harness, which remains my favorite of his albums. Chill tunes for Friday, at noon.
The Skatelites The Skatalite! (Treasure Isle)
We recently signed the Treasure Isle catalog at IODA, and I for one am seriously excited. In addition to having tons of absolutely fantastic rocksteady, ska, and reggae jams, they also have some of the greatest album art ever. Exciting.
The good people at Lala are streaming this in full, a week before release date (meaning you can’t buy MP3s yet). Lala has been really cool to work with, and I continue to be a fan of the service. Ah yes, and these songs are good too! Big Black Bird has slowly become one of my favorite BT songs of all time.
Jeff Tweedy - Iskra Print Collective
…and here’s another lovely poster design.
Orange Juice “Poor Old Soul” (Postcard, 1981)
Now that’s some nice cover art. This article (where I found it) makes me miss the Woebot blog and all those nice, big cover art scans.
Here’s the A-side:
