Besides being on top of the race for “best mask of the year”, Slow Magic’s, or lesser known as your imaginary friend, debut LP “▲” is so far the best I’ve heard this year. Hidden in the grooves of this hipster-promising title are gems of a mix between chill-wave, witch-house and maybe a bit of futuregarage/-beats (he/she/it calls it “glo-fi”). Think M83 combined with SBTRKT (at least for the masks), detuned synths of a MGMT (oh what the heck, might as well throw a Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs in there) and a metric ton of sidechanneled, kicking drums and you have the product, that leaves me between a state of daydreaming and excited ghost-drumming.
The amount of compression on “Feel Flows” is just mesmerizing and suppressive, beat of beat again it feels like hard waves of sound crush against your back and as soon as the last one vanishes your about to be hit with by the next. “Youths” then in contrast to it predecessor has this very happy, positive melody-line that picks you up after the intro and sends its beat running. “◯” reminds me a bit of Stay+. I really like the filters on this one, they create this bit of noisy background from which the beat, the melody and the little vocal sample emerge and submerge. Oh, did I mention the compression?
“▲” is out on Lebensstrasse and you can stream 8 tracks of this LP on bandcamp. Love it.
Phantom (without Planet) are a Helsinki based electro-pop duo that surfaced recently with the help of The XX, who posted their video “Scars” on their tumblr “Soundboard”. Allegedly they debued with a showcase at SXSW and their bio is written a bit strange, so we’re skipping details here and go directly to their music: They remind me very much to Phantogram though they definitely have more soul and their music all in all sounds a bit more fragile. We’re very keen on what will come next from Phantom - the artwork in “Scars”, made with the help of the Kinect’s 3D scanner, is very impressive and the other tracks on their self-titled EP might not be as good as “Scars”, but they’re worth a listen.
Twin Shadow joins the formation of sophomore record announcements: His second LP “Confess” will be out in the second week of July and will contain “Five Seconds”, which sounds exactly like we’d expect from Twin Shadow: 80s-sound with drifting drums and a bit of glam and a bit of sadness. Free Download
If you didn’t already download the leaked version of the Baltimore duo Beach House’ new record, thanks to NPR you have now the chance to stream the full “Bloom” LP!
As if Santigold’s current single “Disparate Youth” wasn’t good enough on it’s own: Two Bears made an excellent remix that has been running up and down on my stereo the last days. Her new record “Master of My Make-Believe” is out on Monday and all in the UK can stream it on soundcloud - everyone else like me will have to wait three more days.
Granted, when Diplo and Switch joined up as “Major Lazer” before, the product, while intelligent named (“Guns don’t kill people, lazers do”), often came along a bit odd in my ears. Their newest effort “Get Free” however comes along very nice, fresh and airy. Amber Coffman’s vocals are doubtless part of the greatness of this track. Get “Get Free” for free (see what they did there?):http://majorlazergetfree.com/
Oh Siriusmo, you magnificent nerd.Have I ever mentioned how I admired you? Probably not, we never had the pleasure to meet in person, but I watched you from a bit a far, from the crowd. You were standing there in the DJ booths behind turntables and a pile of other electronic players, modifiers and enhancers. Your long, slightly curled blond hair waving in the wind of a cold, rainy Sunday-afternoon. And you had this grin on your face, everytime you lifted your view over the controls to the crowd, while putting on one of your tracks, that are just that tiny bit to complicated to dance to, and saw people struggling to find the right rhythm to move the cold weather out of their bones. I think it would be fun to talk to you. I don’t know what we would talk about (probably music or nerdy topics) but I think it would be a blizz. We’d have fun. Trust me.
Anyways, now you’ve released that new EP “Dr. Beak’s Rantanplant” on Monkeytown record (or rather will release on vinyl on saturday), people say as an appetizer for your upcoming new record sometime in 2012. I’d say it’s a Durststiller on the long dry way between your releases, but who’s arguing? “Dr. Beak’s Rantanplant” in any case features three great tracks, all a little different though all distinctive Siriusmo-tracks. “Doctor Beak” maybe the most striking, reminding of “popcorn” and 8-bit music as well as maybe more electronic pieces by Berlin’s Seeed. “Rantanplant” the most danceable bit with a wobbly bass and a garagey beat. “Plastic Beat” then very surprising, with R’n’B lyrics, everything maybe a bit future-garage? Is this where you’re going Siriusmo? Can I come with you there?
Five years. That’s the time it took Chromatics since their last critical-acclaimed success “Night Drive” from 2007. A very long time, especially because “Kill for Love” was delayed over and over - Kelly McClure on vice.com narrates this wait quite elegantly.
Now the forth record by the quartet from Portland, Origon is in shelves since last week and oh was it worth the wait! In 1h30m and 17 tracks - condensed down from 34 tracks that evolved during the creation of “Kill for Love” - Chromatics continue their new-wave synth-pop italo-disco sound from “Night Drive”. As The Fader described it, Chromatics’ sound creates this worlds off colorful sunsets, as seen from your roadstar you’re driving down an imaginary coastal highway, or a bike-ride through a warm summer night, from one party to another - cheesy? Yes! While listening to “Kill for Love” I’m constantly reminded of tracks like Belinda Castle’s “Circles in the Sand” (or how HIMYM very lovely worked it) or Monaco’s “What Do You Want From Me” (I wanted to use this point to quickly mention that I’m not sure if the genre “post-punk” is applicable to Chromatics. Their earlier records sure are post-punk and one can find many elements on “Kill for Love”, but in my eyes that’s probably more because post-punk formed succeeding styles… if anyone wants to argue about that I’d be happy to!) , and so I have to wonder, why we let Chromatics’ cheesiness slide.
For one I think it is the darkness Chromatics carry with them in their sounds and lyrics, they don’t create this sound-world that plays with motives from films and memories in a perfectly happy way and this is part of the main reason why Chromatics works so well: Everything is put into contrasts. Ruth Radelet’s vocals that sound very honest and untouched are countered by auto-tune vocals, somewhere between modern interpretations ala Akon and early text-to-speech synthesis like on Pink Floyd’s LPs. Their retro synth lines are counterpointed by a very modern drum-beats and the one-hit-wonder-single-likeliness is quickly drawn away by long in- and outros. Plus there is this bass-line, somewhere in the depth of the later part of the record, that seemingly stems against the drum computer-beat (that at this point feels like it has been ticking tightly for 20 min), out of tune, out of timing, but ever so very well fitting… And so critical concerns are quickly drawn away and leave us with stuff to love: Radelet’s mentioned beautiful vocals, Chromatics’ texture-rich soundscapes and that massive but very distanced drumset.
I really really really recommend you listen to “Kill for Love” - and luckily it is very easy to do so, since they put it on soundcloud, but beware, every time I start to listen to it, I don’t get anything done in the next one and a half hour. So if you don’t want to invest that much time, at least listen to “Lady” and the name giving “Kill for Love” below.
Chromatics’ “Kill for Love” is out on Italians Do It Better.
Tomatensalat turn one today, thanks to all followers for a nice first year and hopefully many more
Regina Spektor joins the line-up of succeeding records with “What We Saw From The Cheap Seats” on May 29th and the correspondending single “All The Rowboats”.
I have to say, “All The Rowboats” sounds far away from her 2004 success “Sowiet Kitsch”, way darker and also: way pop-ier. Spektor for me always was kind of a “chamber pop”, with her famous chair-as-snare drums. This production however sounds heavyer - and maybe overproduced…
Well, I think it becomes save to say that 2012 will be a good year for music. Following others, now the NYC electro-pop-house duo The Hundred In The Hands have announced their sophomore record “Red Night” to be released on June 12th. This announcement comes together with a first single, “Faded”. I always liked The Hundred In The Hands for their union of house and pop, “Faded” doesn’t disappoint in that aspect, though I think it sounds a bit darker, like last years “Austra”, so maybe that will be the progress from their 2010 release. We will know more in June.
