Category

Singles

• 01.26.10
  Casiokids – “Finn Bikkjen”   Singles (0)

  

  Some songs are just born singles, perfect little gems that set up house without asking and don’t leave when asked, no matter how kindly you insist. Norway’s Casiokids’s recent release “Finn Bikkjen” is exactly one of those songs: a prefect mixture of melody, beat, and, my own personal audio aphrodisiac, a fat analog synth lead. The ice cream on top is a reverbed, vocal line with a soft melody and sung in a language I can’t understand, which for some reason only makes me love it more. The song undulates from spacier bridges to the uptempo synth-laden chorus that never fails to have induce some sort of contented nodding along. Quite simply, electropop at its finest.

  
  Casiokids – Finn Bikkjen

  
  
  
  This, in combination with their last single “Fot I Hose”, another bouncy, synthy tune leads me to feel nothing but anticipation for whatever they choose to record next. Beyond their odd inclusion in the Fifa 2010 soundtrack, I guarantee more exposure for them this year as they’re supporting Hot Chip on tour this February:

  12 – Glasgow – O2 Academy
  13 – Edinburgh – Picture House
  15 – Nottingham – Rock City
  16 – Leeds – O2 Academy
  19 – Manchester – Academy
  20 – Birmingham – O2 Academy
  21 – Southampton – Joiners
  22 – 
Bournemouth – O2 Academy
  23 – Bristol – O2 Academy
  24 – Norwich – O2 Academy
  25 – London – Camden Barfly (Headline Show)
  26 – London – Brixton Academy

  In the US, you can’t purchase their singles through iTunes, but you can grab the Moshi Moshi label compilation. It features “Fot I Hose” and the b-side “Verdens Største Land” along with tracks by Au Revoir Simone, Samuel & the Dragon, and The Very Best. To download the compilation through iTunes click the cover to the right.

  The 7″ singles for both “Finn Bikkjen” and “Verdens Største Land” are available direct from Moshi Moshi Records.
  
  
  
  

• 01.23.10
  Grizzly Bear x Hot Chip – “Boy From School” Cover   Singles (0)

  

  Today, for some reason, Grizzly Bear was on my mind. While driving around some back roads, I was listening to my favorites off Veckatimest, mulling over the evolution in songwriting from Yellow House to today. The album is certainly one of my favorites from last year and “Two Weeks” still stands as both a killer single and video.

  Sitting in my inbox almost summoned by my daylong binge I found this newly minted live Grizzly Bear track. Recorded for Austrailia’s Triple J Radio, the band covers “Boy From School”, one of the finer tracks off Hot Chip’s 2006 album The Warning. The song is given the standard, but wonderful Grizzly Bear-ification: the tempo is slowed, everything is doused in a healthy amount of reverb and the vocal harmonies snake around each other like bacon wrapped around a steak. (In general, this blog is short on vegan friendly metaphors) It’s a lovely interpretation of an already good song, and even if it’s just some under the radar promotion for Hot Chip’s upcoming One Life Stand, I’m ok with that.

  
  Grizzly Bear – Boy From School (Hot Chip Cover)

  
  
  
  Please check out Triple J’s website to hear more of the interesting stuff they have to offer.

• 11.17.09
  Hudson Mohawke’s ‘ZOo00OOm’   Singles (0)

  

  The Warp debut by Glaswegian Ross Birchard is certainly one of the most interesting albums that 2009 has dropped in our collective laps. Butter is a beautifully chaotic swirl of influences: L.A. glitch-hop, smears of Warp’s spacier back catalog, and at its weirdest there’s charmed allusions to 1970’s prog/experimental masters The Mahavishnu Orchestra. It’s a wonderfully experimental affair, something far more worthy of the Warp branding than the label’s current top seller Veckatimest.

  Trying to pick a song to feature here was a bit of a challenge. On the whole, Butter is a long and twisted affair, a bit exhausting to listen to from front to back. It’s strangely uneven too, with some songs congealing more than others, though that is often the byproduct anything so experimental. Still, it’s still one of the best this year has brought forth.

  When I first took a pass at the album, the track that kicked my ass the hardest was ZOo00OOm, because…well, I’m a sucker for a killer synth lead. Amidst the hard stomping ghost of an electrified Dilla beat and the fluttering Casio bleep accompaniment is a hard synth that creeps out an almost cheesy sci-fi sounding melody. It’s one of the more linear and charmed tracks on the album; equal parts head-nodding wonky goodness as well something to put on at high volumes to scare the piss out of your cat.
  

  
  Hudson Mohawke – ZOo00OOm

  
  

  Seriously though, I’ll throw $20 bucks on the table for whoever can get Outkast back in the studio and have Hudson Mohawke produce the album. Fuck, that would be epic.

  Also epic – the Butter album cover:

  

  Butter was released by Warp Records on October 27th 2009

• 03.05.09
  Schneider TM – Sublimely Swirling German Electro-pop   Singles (2)

  
  
  Germans have an interesting concept of pop music, especially when electronics play in to the mix. I’ll credit them with always having a strangely coherent grasp of melding the organic and the inorganic into something that felt more natural than when other nationalities took a stab at the same thing.
  
  Schneider TM, the recording name of Dirk Dresselhaus, is a guy who has a masterful grasp of a solid songcraft, threading “Slide” with a warm comforting melody that intermingles violin, vocoder, and dissonant guitar ambiance with a thin semblance of looped percussion. As much as the song has a somber overtone, there’s something genuinely uplifting about the song as a whole.
  

  Schneider Tm – Slide

  
  Buy it on Buy it on
  
  2006’s album Skoda Mluvit is a much more realized album when put in context with his earlier work. While his earlier stuff is certainly good…(you can’t really go wrong with 2000’s “Reality Check” there’s something more evolved about the production this time around. It’s cleaner and much more confident, and the whole album is far more cohesive as a result.
  
  As a bonus, here’s the charmingly nonsensical video from the lead single off Skoda Mluvit, “Pac Man/Shopping Cart”:
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• 03.03.09
  Low End Theory has a Podcast!   Singles, Social Calendar (0)

  

  Quite possibly one of the most fun things I did while in LA was to attend Low End Theory, a gathering of local and visiting electro-glitch-hop performers that was worth every penny.

  Given the schedule, I held down while in LA I rarely did much of anything, but managed to hit up Low End Theory a few times…which says a lot. I got to see Daedelus do an amazing and varied set on his magical Monome, as well I got to see Jel (a member of both Subtle and Themselves) destroy on the MPC. It’s a chill atmosphere, with the wide back porch stage and additional upstairs DJ space. Plus, the outside sound system is one of the heaviest I’ve ever had the joy to experience. During Jel’s set, I was standing at the center of the stage and the bass dug in deep…every article of clothing I had on was buzzing. One of the friends I was at the show with got quite sick from the vibrations. Serious business.

  Just today, they’ve released the first of what will hopefully be many podcasts. They’re waiting for approval from Apple to get the thing listed up on iTunes, but for now you can grab it directly from their site:
  
  

  
  

  Low End Theory Podcast Vol. 1

  
  
  This month, resident DJ Daddy Kev and the always excellent SAMIYAM split the 50 minute set. The whole thing is a fantastic blur of patented LA glitch and spacey post-Dilla hip-hop.

  Since you just missed the awesomeness of Daedelus & already TTM.com loved Nosaj Thing on the 25th, here’s two upcoming at Low End Theory nights noting:

  3/11: DJ NOBODY BIRTHDAY DRINKING CONTEST – with Free The Robots

  4/23: LAZER SWORD

  I enjoyed both of them alot last year. Santa Ana’s Free The Robots is probably one of the best beat smiths to hit my ears in a long while. He’s got the same brilliant ability to craft real songs, the same that pulled me in when I first heard DJ Shadow all those years ago. His Free The Robots EP (iTunes link) is a fantastic piece of work that easily outshines a lot of his contemporaries. He’ll be hitting Portland on May 1st at the Crown Room

  
  

  Free The Robots – Diary

  
  

  Finally, grab this free download of Lazer Sword’s Blap to the Future mix:

  

  Free downloadable mixtapes are my favorite things lately. What mixtape do you love the best?