RSS/XML Subscribe
Archive for the Hype Train!! Category
Little Rock’s finest, the one and only American Princes, are back at the wheel again in a couple of weeks. Their new release, Other People drops on Yep Roc on April 15th. We’re looking forward to hearing this one. This single and video are good indications that it’s another strong release from one of the most promising young American rock bands out there.
But Wait! There’s A Contest! And tour dates! — More Info After The Jump –
I like this track, I love Saddle Creek Records (don’t you?) and I really like Tokyo Police Club. Their new album, Elephant Shell will be out in April. Enjoy this (sadly really low quality rip) (resolved thanks to Side One Track One) MP3 of “In A Cave” from that forthcoming album. Tour Dates after the jump! YAY!
This is the pure definition of psychedelic interstellar afro-beat jazz funk, horns, crazy Hammond B-3 keyboards, straight-up junkie rhythms from 1971 banging up the block from outer space to the human race and back again. With guest vocal effects from Karolina, Chaka Moon and Elran Dekel, we get an enhancement to what is already a nearly perfect recording. Furthermore, what I would like to call “the Stanley Turrentine/Ahmad Jamal/Yusef Lateef factor” is all over this joint, a form of high praise that I think is well merited once you get to listen (if you know anything about those cats).
The best part is that while the individual sections of this record are wonderful, it’s much better as a complete work. There’s no filler here, no rush jobs or cutting and pasting — this is some handcrafted, vintage funk/soul shit that will stay with you long after the first listen. So if you are down with the notions and the concepts, then the practice and the performance is here for you to lay your dreams in. Kutiman is set to take on the world, and it’s time you climbed aboard and slid into the groove.
Kutiman - Music Is Ruling My World (featuring Karolina)
Kutiman - No Reason For You (featuring Elran Dekel)
You can purchase Kutiman’s S/T album from Amazon (CD or MP3) by clicking here.
Guess what, readers? I’m about to break my own rule and copy/paste a press release! But, it’s because I’m headed off to GRAMMY Career Day. Regardless, enjoy this remix from Cassettes Wont Listen (which in this remix, reminds me a lot of The Postal Service..), I did.
Cassettes Wont Listen - Paper Float (Styrofoam X911 Remix)
Cassettes Won’t Listen’s “Paper Float” Gets Remixed By Styrofoam, Mad Decent (Diplo and DJA), Blockhead, Maker, Aarron LaCrate, Scott Thorough & More
Small-Time Machine EP Due March 11th 2008 / One Alternative Free EP Up To
10,000 Downloads Out Now On www.cassetteswontlisten.com
Tomorrow At Club Europa in Greenpoint Brooklyn 11 PM
Cassettes Won’t Listen is giving away one remix a week for the next month. First is by German Producer, Styrofoam (The Notwist, Lali Puna, Ben Gibbard, American Analog Set, and more) and there will be a new remix posted each week via his myspace page. Upcoming remixes are from Mad Decent (Diplo and DJA), Blockhead, Maker, Aaron LaCrate, Scott Thorough, and more.
When Jason Drake isn’t writing his electronic pop gems as Cassettes Won’t Listen, he can be found in the Def Jux offices where he is the Director of Marketing. Jason has been involved with the leading indie hip hop label since 2001, just as Aesop Rock’s Labor Days was hitting record store shelves. While Cassettes Won’t Listen is informed by hip hop, the lyrics and voice of Jason are transcendent.
And on March 11th, Cassettes Wont Listen’s will release Small-Time Machine, his first ever physical release. Entirely written, played and produced by Jason Drake, Small-Time Machine deals with many of the themes that touch us all, including: love, betrayal, hope, disappointment and the quest to find what’s missing in each of our lives. Small-Time Machine is the next chapter in the career of one of the true new voices of the 21st Century.
Cassettes Won’t Listen has had two digital-only releases, the EP Nobody’s Moving and the instrumental LP The Quiet Trial. Both records have received a lot of attention, including radio tastemakers WOXY and KEXP, SPIN, the NY Press, the notorious Perez Hilton as well as landing an exclusive front page feature on Myspace.com and being named one of Urb’s Next 100 for 2007.
In the wake of these releases, a wide range of artists, commissioned countless Cassettes Won’t Listen remixes, including El-P, (featuring Trent Reznor), Midlake, Asobi Seksu, The Postmarks, Dr. Octagon, Pela, Dirty on Purpose, Mr. Lif, and Morcheeba, amongst others.
Cassettes Won’t Listen embodies an otherworldly and distinctive blend of electronica and indie rock, with comparisons being drawn to the Postal Service, Beck, Hot Chip, The Notwist, and DJ Shadow. His live show blasts at a frantic pace with Jason hopping from turntables to guitar to keys and vocals as a true one-man band. Small-Time Machine is the sum of all these parts.
The free One Alternative covers EP of great 90’s tunes from Cassettes Won’t Listen is up to 7,500 downloads and still going strong. Tracklist includes songs by Pavement, Butter 08, Blind Melon, Liz Phair, and Sebadoh, and as an added bonus it features full instrumentals and acapellas so you can get your 90’s love remix thing on.
Small-Time Machine Tracklisting:
1. Metronomes
2. Large Radio
3. Paper Float
4. Freeze and Explode
5. The Broadcast
6. Two Kids
7. The Finish Line
Is it Electro? Is it Soul? Is it Punk? Is it Texas? It’s all of that wrapped up in an easy-to-serve biscuit you place on a turntable and lay the needle into in order to produce ass-shaking and dancing. Yes, Ghostland Observatory have a new album due out on February 26th, Robotique Majestique and I’m willing to bet you it contains musique fantastique. Here’s a vinyl remix of the song “Dancin’ On My Grave” for you to get down with. Get on down already. WTF?
Ghostland Observatory - Dancin’ On My Grave (Let There Be Vinyl Remix)
The best part of listening to thousands of submissions and suggestions from all over the map is that when a gem actually surfaces, you can see the highlights shimmering that much more clearly. In accordance with this thought, I’m completely blown away by the recently-acquired Seattle band Kay Kay and His Weathered Underground’s self-titled debut, and I needed to tell someone.
Kay Kay & co. have produced a modern psychedelic pop masterpiece: a diamond which is neither over nor under polished, a rare and precious offering full of inventively original works without an ounce of filler, each of which pays tasteful homage to bands like The Beatles, XTC, Queen and Jon Brion. There are soaring horn sections, lush string arrangements, Ringofied drum progressions driving grandiose pop songs. If you like any of the aforementioned artists, I am confident that like us, this album will end up on your 2008 short list of favorite albums. Band members Kirk Huffman, Kyle O’Quin, and Philip Peterson are three names we plan on getting to know and remembering here at Loudersoft.
The Pacific Northwest, though mostly famous for it’s ’90s rock sound, has been a hotbed for great pop music for decades — everything from Young Fresh Fellows to The Posies, Super Deluxe, Tubetop, Sister Psychic, and any number of delightful acts before, after and in-between. Kay Kay and his Weathered Underground are not just a welcome addition to that legacy, they’re a a glimmer of hope in pop music, an unsullied group of lads whose gift is wrapped neatly and perfectly, giving us a window into fresh creative possibilities pop music.
Listen to Kay Kay and his Weathered Underground - “Hey Momma”
Listen to Kay Kay and his Weathered Underground - “Santa Cruz Lined Pockets”
You can buy downloads from Amazon kay by clicking here, and it’s well worth the 0.99 a song.
200 on Rainbow Transparent vinyl
300 on Rainbow Milk vinyl
500 on Orange with Red speckles
Your purchase will enter you to win a test pressing. Test Pressing winner will be announce around the middle of March when the records should start shipping.
The world is always your oyster if you can take something that people have attempted before and put a spin on it that is actually refreshing. As such, once again the cacophony of hype is ringing in the global collective consciousness of writers about another young up-and-coming band who have defeated the dragon of producing a first effort worthy of praise and accolades.
Of course, it’s disenfranchising that the band which I am referring to is having to wait in line behind another set of lads whose sweater-driven uptown saturday night antics prove that if you eat the right Wheaties and use the most politically correct phrasings, you can borrow from the 1986 Album of the Year and people will shower you with yummy presents.
Now that I’ve told that unnamed band what I think of them, let me tell the 5-piece Oxford, UK band Foals (the Band of Baby Horses, yes I did say that) what I think of them: in short, deserving of every last bit of hype. With their first full-length release, Antidotes, they have produced what is potentially the first entirely stellar album of 2008. Indelicately blending math rock and afro-beat with the help of producer Dave Sitek (yes, of TV On The Radio), Antidotes is unflinching in its relentless percussion. The jangling clatter of mathy rhythms, slick horns blended with a healthy, honest, angst-driven vocal delivery give this album, and this band, a uniqueness. The content of the album can become droning and heavy handed at times, as math rock is want to be, but finds itself spirited away by its desire to be more than merely a carbon copy of Minus The Bear. Foals have crafted a nearly perfect freshman album.
But enough jibber jabber from yours truly. Let the music speak for itself.
Listen to Foals - The French Open
Listen to Foals - Balloons
The album Antidotes will be released stateside by Sub Pop records on March 24th. Visit the band’s official homepage for more updates and songs.
Oh, and here are some more foals. Just for comparison.
You only get an hour on these radio shows to play everything you want to play, and nothing bummed me out more than not being able to play you this track from the brand-new release by Paris’s super-fantastique groove scientist Miss Kittin. Interlacing chunks of punk and goth diced into her tight and resourceful electro-pop, Miss Kittin tears up dancefloors on the opposite side of the world nearly every single night. But don’t think she’s your average plaything with a microphone; she can do house, she can do electro, she can rave it up or slow it down. In short, she sits above the fold and gets her name above the title for good reason. Her series of vocal dancefloor classics include tracks with Felix Da Housecat, Golden Boy, Sven Vath and T. Raumschmiere just to name a few.
Miss Kittin is not for the faint of heart, and she’s RIYL Peaches, minimalist techno, new wave, goth, or just want an electronic change of pace to your day. Give it up for this song from Batbox, with tracks now available for purchase direct from Amazon. The official release date for the entire full-length album in the U.S. is March 4th.
You can’t keep a good band down, and British Sea Power are back with a much-awaited new release to prove that. Already a great critical success, largely on the strength of 2005’s much-loved Open Season, BSP have taken two careful years to craft a series of over-achieving, thoroughly kick-ass rock and roll songs that left me wanting to hear more. The Krankenhaus? EP is the precursor to February’s full-length, entitled Do You Like Rock Music?, and if anything it’s a delightful teaser as to what we can expect come late winter. There is an obvious, profound Pixies influence on these six songs, ranging from self-evaluation to self-parody to straight-ahead rock and roll.
But enough of my slobber, here’s a track for you to check out. Enjoy.
Listen to British Sea Power - Atom
Krankenhaus? EP is available now from iTunes by clicking here. Do You Like Rock Music? will be available in February of 2008.