Pop It, Lock It...

try to whip these ones out most times i go to a club. 

camera effects included. 

The Song is the Modeselektor Feat. Puppetmastaz - The Dark Side of The Sun

it's this week/month/year's electro banger.

Come Get Some

feels good man.

a new-found love of vanilla tea overwhelms me

had some really good times over the past few weeks.

but at the end of the day its always nice to chill out with a few essentials:

good tea

some nice friendly music**
something fun to watch
a comfy bed/sofa
good company


and i think i've been doing enough of that.
welcome back mads






** Regarding nice friendly music - this should do quite nicely

Bains Numériques

Anybody want to join me? Yuksek and moderat..

Yuksek is french. His album is called "Away from the Sea", 
and i really have a weak spot for it.
He gave us that lovely little symphony you can hear in the back of that video,

MODERAT is the aptly-named collaboration of Modeselektor (who really really REALLY haven't had enough mention here, those crazy german trippers) and Apparat.
They gave us this life-changingly great song (the video's not bad either):

if that song isn't stuck in your head, you haven't listened closely enough.


If it is, get stuck into this list.

Three Beautiful Women

Karin Dreijer Andersson (Fever Ray)

Björk Guðmundsdóttir (Björk)

Yukimi Nagano (of Little Dragon)

Need i really say much more about these amazing women?

Fever Ray gave us The Knife, then her own solo album,

 both of which blew me away, and now she's still making music!

This is a cover of a Vashti Bunyan song called "Here Before"

(hey dude, that name sounds familiar! - that's cause Vashti Bunyan was 

the woman singing on Animal Collective's Prospect Hummer EP)

Bjork gave us Post. No more needs to be said - but she didnt stop there,
no she didn't, our little icelandic heroine.
Homogenic, Vespertine, Vessel, Medulla and Volta came after, 
and Debut had already been (amazing). 
She just never stopped.
Hyper-Ballad has already been blogged here. 
So i'll give you something more too







Yukimi Nagano, other than having a name similar to that chick who
battled pink robots, worked alot with Little Dragon, her band (they're Swedish)
but also on Plastic Beach - Gorillaz' newest album, she lent some writing skill
and amazing vocals.





and if that wasn't quite your thing (which i personally can not comprehend)
this is an entirely different affair



non-live version here.


So please, everyone join me in a salute to these three
amazing women.

shaaaaaaaa-wing

BeyonGa

Have I ever mentioned that i'm a big fan of GaGa?

these two songs with Beyoncé are the 2 best things she's ever done.

The videos are great too

   
  

Exit 2010

see you there!

i hope this satisfies as a Banger Of The Week until tomorrow...

Hyper-Ballad

Staring At The Sun

Electro-Banger of the Week no's 1-8

This is a weekly institution i had in mind to start at the end of last year, but i held it off, knowing that i wouldn't have enough time to do it once per week before about now.

I have Bangers from weeks one through to eight for y'alls, in whatever order you want because i kind of forgot the order i put them there... also i'm really sorry that they're in youtube video format - i can't actually get them onto a website to make players and ting cause
a) i don't have an account
b) the internet where i am can't actually upload - don't ask why.

I'm not going to go into a 500 page essay on why i like each artist so much, because chances are if you think like me they'll come to you too through these bangers of the week. this isn't the spot to talk about the artist and their history, this is a place for a tune.

1. Together - The Presets
an Australian electro duo who go particularly hard in this song.
crunchy and distorted but still contains a really strong sense of melody.
also has a nice distinction between each section.


2. No More Violence - PNAU
another australian duo, 2 brothers this time. 
this song i really like -  i have no idea why, it must be the hard rocker in me coming out. first time i heard it was live at Big Day Out '08 - a good year - and i absolutely loved the energy which came across with this. it really works well too as a mixture between rock guitar sounds and electro-synth strange noises which PNAU are now famous for.
(there's a dumb remix of by the way by red hot chili peppers that comes in at the end of this, cause it's from a stupid mixtape which sucks. there are no other versions other than this or live ones available. sorry again)



3. Lover - PNAU
basically rave done well. more PNAU, kind of shows difference in their style - the two songs here i think are really quite different, and perhaps in later weeks, more PNAU will come by. 
i love the peak and drop in this song, the production and timing is essentially perfect.



4. Hold My Hand -UNKLE
good english duo who do so much work with featuring artists that they almost put Gorillaz and N.A.S.A to shame. i love this song, and also another one of theirs called Restless, where Josh Homme from Queens of the Stone Age sings.
this song builds well and just.. is nice.



5. Anywhere - The Presets
what do i need to say? if you're one of those people that can't find interest in this song, then don't worry. i can understand in a very roundabout, backwards way, how that may happen because the start is very minimal. but seriously. come on.



6. Someone Great - LCD Soundsystem
the best breakup song ever written. if i could do this, i wouldn't need to bother getting together with people. i'd just break up with them over and over again so i could play this song for the girl, just again and again and again.



7.  Midnight Request Line - Skream
this started my love for dubstep, what more really needs to be said?
Skream (the artist) also basically started dubstep as we now know and love it.
best listened to in HQ if possible, with headphones or a huge motherfucker of a speaker.



8. Summertime Clothes - Animal Collective
what CAN i say about the animal Collective? they're like nothing you've ever heard before, or will ever hear again (it seems). i only hope that in the weeks/months/years to come, they receive the acclaim and praise that they deserve for what they've done.
this song is incredible, and for those of you who are in love and looking for "our song" i'm sure this would do nicely. just have a listen.

The Gorillaz

I've had a soft spot for these guys since two thousand and god-knows-when

 * (did my research, it was actually 2001) 

 when i received their first album as a gift for a birthday. 

I was only 10 at the time, but this album, along with Linkin Park's REANIMATION would soon become the albums that got this intrepid little child into his hip-hop in later years,

and into good music from such an early age.

Who was i to know JUST how much i would love this and appreciate it as my years wore on?

anyway - the reasons why i like hip-hop have NOTHING to do with this. 

What i wanted to originally say about this album is that it amazed me from the first time i'd ever heard it.

it was like nothing i'd ever heard before - with songs ranging from 
Clint Eastwood  to
Rock The House, and Latin Simone
i was pretty stunned by the range of things they could produce.
so i loved the album for all of its individual songs, and if you don't have it already, i'd like to recommend it to you.


SO to follow up this album, Four years later, they released Demon Days.

the list of "featuring" artists on this album is incredible. De La Soul, Neneh Cherry, Roots Manuva, MF DOOM, Ike Turner, Bootie Brown of the Pharcyde, Shaun Ryder, Dennis Hopper, and then some choirs (a Gospel Choir and a Children's choir). 

That is not to say that the previous album didn't have some impressive people co-working with Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett (two geniuses). These included Del Tha Funkee Homosapien, Ibrahim Ferrer, and Miho Hatori, amongst a few others, but obviously the Gorillaz' little black book became a little less little after the reception and reputation of their first album.

IN SHORT, Demon Days was fantastic. if you play it for a friend and they don't enjoy it, it's time to get some new friends. 

[NB i'm always looking for friends.]

but anyway, Demon Days is even better than their first Album. after each of these they've released an album of B-Sides. respectively they've been G-Sides and D-Sides, and they've been mainly B-side tracks but also some fun remixes and re-edits, always good to listen to.

however, you do need to kind of focus and think about some of the songs.

and then some group who i've never heard of called Spacemonkeyz released a full CD of their own remixes of various Gorillaz songs, in dub and reggae style.

It's Called Lalika Come Home - but i think thats mostly a typo, 

cause it's a reference to Laika, the space dog.

Needless to say (almost) this album is really good. It's really nice and chilled and makes for good relaxing music with friends, driving music, background music, or anything really.

BACK TO REALITY. Four years after Demon Days, as if on cue, the Gorillaz announced Plastic Beach (their third studio album). of this, i've only heard as much as you fine people, 

the one track they've released - Stylo.

Now this album has a featuring list perhaps even more impressive than Demon Days:

 Snoop Dogg, Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, Kano, Bashy, Bobby Womack, Mos Def, Gruff Rhys, De La Soul, Little Dragon, Mark E. Smith, Lou Reed, Mick Jones, Paul Simonon, sinfonia ViVA and The Lebanese National Orchestra for Oriental Arabic Music.

I'm puzzled, intrigued, and excited about hearing what Lou Reed and Gorillaz do together.

i like the album art, too.

A live countdown to the album's release is available at Gorillaz.com, and as of this moment, there rests one day and seven hours on the countdown.

i'm excited, people. Very, very excited.

a wild genius appeared!

if this is what the future sounds like, i want to go now

number 2 particularly is good for watching robots fighting.
advice: Mute a youtube montage of Transformer fights... such as this or this and try to get some synchronisation going. it looks really cool.

reasons why paris is better than anywhere else

 

sorry team, i'm not entirely motivated to write a huge poster, just thought i'd show off some really cool things going on where i am. 

i'll hit up a large long post soon - it's the weekend after all - with links and things embedded and all the bells and whistles. really the kind of stuff you start reading blogs for

other than that though, new music lately has consisted of the dirtiest dubstep known to man, a dude named Excision who's from somewhere in england. his music is so industrial and fucked.

i think it should be the soundtrack to the transformers films: