Gas Pop

Drool..................................

Black Dice

Their time may have come and gone, but this album (Beaches and Canyons) continues to stay with me. It had been hyped endlessly because of their association with DFA and I admit I was sucked in by the wall of hype at that time. This was not what I was expecting though. In contrast to the banging sound that the Rapture and LCD Soundsystem produced this seemed almost pastoral. Warped and noisy but yet kind of pastoral neverthe less. My favorite track is the flute centered Endless Happiness. Love those noisey hippies.

Black Dice - Endless Happiness

Bookashade

In light of the show last night, which I sadly was not able to attend, I bring you a track off of BookaShade's latest release. Night Falls would have been a great song to rollerskate to. There are certain songs that make me think of skating around a roller rink with a massive sound system and that smooth floating feeling that happens when soft fat wheels meet an extremely smooth surface.

Kenny Dope did a whole mix of early 80s stuff in this vein that always looked interesting to me.

Booka Shade - Night Falls

Noir

Now I can't claim to know much about this artist other than what I read on Discogs. I was just listening to tunes and this one struck me and so I got it. The joy of previewing music is that it can lead you away from the artists you usually stick to and so it did. This is a big tech anthem and it keeps rocking me every time I hear it.

Noir - My MTV (D. Ramirez Evil Business)

Carl Craig

Christ. I got this track early last week but have been too blown away to get around to posting it. This is Carl Craig giving fellow Detroit house producer Theo Parrish the remix treatment. Just when you think an artist has reached his creative peak sometimes he can just turn around and suprise you. This track is very recognisable as a Craig production. The sounds are all very familiar, the structure is reminicent of some of his work as Paperclip People and yet it is totally new. To my ears it sounds as if he had listened to a little Villalobos. The "drift" of the sine wave throughout most of the song reminds me a lot of Seiso. His structure is not as cluttered, which is nice. Still, it would be cool to know if there was any cross pollination.

Theo Parrish - Falling Up (Carl Craig Mix)

as a bonus a classic Theo Parrish production

Theo Parrish - Summertime is Here

Lawrence

Going back a few years for these sounds. Pre electo house and before Superpitcher had gone and freaked us all out with his adult contemporary debut Here Comes Love. Melodic midtempo techno/ house was still in its ascendancy and great things seemed possible. Lawrence released The absence of blight to very little fanfare, but much appreciation on my part. He produced a techno album that seemed to owe as great a debt to BOC as to Kompakt. Shimmering and atmosphere are words that seem to get thrown around alot in reviews of his work, as is the nefarious word melencholic. Perfect for an overcast afternoon.

Lawrence - Neighbourhood

Lawrence - Somebody hold me

She Wants Revenge

Something new and suprisingly indie for my tastes. Heard this the other day on KCRW and it just clicked. At first I thought it was a new Interpol album but then the synths kicked in and I was lost. Really on a retro 80s Joy Division vibe but fun nevertheless.

From what I understand they are a local (LA) based band so it seems as if the goth scene here is a little more vibrant than I gave it credit for.

She Wants Revenge - Red Flags and Long Nights

If you click on the band name on the title to this post it will take you to their site which has videos and such.

Nurse with wound

This is one of my favorite NWW tracks and I have wanted to put it up since I started this thing. It is rather large and long though, and that has been my main obstacle. Give it time and let it build.

From the great book by Dave Keenan - England's Hidden Reverse(accompanying cd)
(he is also the head of Volcanic Tongue)

Nurse with Wound - Pre Menstrul Music for Merry Maidens

Lincoln quote

"The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country."

What a great quote. As Joshua says, pay particular attention to the word disenthrall

Apply liberally to issues of foreign policy, racism, gender inequality, cold war thought etc etc...

Stolen from Joshua Micah Marshall at Talking Points Memo

Get Physical

Depeche Mode

Well Depeche Mode continue to defy expectations and remain relevant. They recently released a single of Suffer Well , from the album Playing the Angel, with the B side as Better Days. The list of remixers is impressive. I had heard that Martin Gore had started DJing minimal stuff out and about, and the few remixes I have heard that they commissioned confirms this. He certainly knows his stuff if he is playing. They have had James Holden, Tiga, Metrope, and this particularly tasty track by Basteroid as remixers.

This has an 80s EBM flavor to it, but is tighter and somehow darker than that genere.

Depeche Mode - Better Days (Basteroid "Dance Is Gone" Vocal Mix)

Glam

There is something so understandable about glam. Escape from the mundane and launch yourself out into a new romantic vision of yourself and the world. Punk rock had that feeling of transformation in it as well. The art of taking life into your own hands and making it of it what you will.

For most of my life Bowie was a bit of an enigma to me. I started listening to him early on. Rock radio made him a staple and his hook ladden tunes just stuck in your head nicely. For years though I didn't completely get "it." The transgender shock and weird hair didn't make much of an impression on someone who grew up in the 80s. Everyone was fey then, and Bowie seemed a bit like an older uncle that used to be cool but somehow faded in relevence.

What is amazing now is how damn solid those early records were. Hunky Dory is like a totally enclosed world with its own ecosystem, as is Ziggy. He is the original master of reinvention and he not only did it, but did it well. I have an older friend that swears she thought that Bowie really was an alien in the 70s. How is that for glamorous?

David Bowie - Moonage Daydream

The terrorists have now officially won

Now that cancer has been cured, Iraq is pacified, and the world is ok we can go after the really horrible stuff.

Thank God we have the party of small government in the White House to defend us from ourselves, otherwise we would really be up shit creek.

Patrick Pulsinger

Last week when I posted the Sleep Archive track I got thinking about older techno. I started digging around in my cd collection and discovered a few gems that I had not listened to in ages. First off was a compilation that I purchased shortly after returning to the States. I had left all my music in England and on my return I felt a bit lost without all the touchstones that I had come to know and love. Technophunk did not replace my loss but it helped me remember some of what I had lost.

What drew me to it was the incredible collection of artists and in particular the IO track Claire. In the mid 90s that track was huge. It was released and rereleased by several different labels, even Mo'Wax had a go. To me it fell in quite nicely with what was happening on warp and the artcore jungle scene of the time. I kept digging and discovered that I like quite a bit of what Patrick Pulsinger (who was IO) and his compatiots were doing at Cheap. Claire has a mellow jazzy sound. Heavily influenced by Detroits second wave, it is a treat

IO - Clarie

IO - Lense

Mathew Jonson

I have a couple of tunes here from Mr. Mathew Jonson. He really hit his stride last year with a series of great releases that were both slamming and booty shaking. According to his label, wagon repair, he is currently working on some new singles which should be out towards the end of spring.





Mathew Jonson - Put your booty shorts on

Mathew Jonson - Return of the Zombie Bikers

Chris Cunningham

You may know him from Come to Daddy or other more notorious works. Whatever your launching point this video is beautiful and on the edge of genius.

Flex

Give it time to load. Go away if you have to and come back, it is good.

Bettie

Bettie, we will always love you.

This is too weird not to post

Life is often odd, but I have yet to have this happen.

In what looked like a confirmation of the alarm raised last week alleging infiltration of ritualists in Patani ... three young men have allegedly lost their genitals in mysterious circumstances Daily Independent gathered that the incident occurred in a restaurant after one of them allegedly gave change to a man after eating. Those involved, according to reports, are Ufoma Julius (24), Stanley Jeremiah (23), and Innocent Ebioma (15), all were said to be eating in the restaurant when the dramatic incident happened.

According to one of the victims, Mr. Ufoma, who spoke with Daily Independentat the General Hospital, Patani, where they were subsequently taken for medical check up, “We were all eating in the hotel when he too came in and after eating he paid and as the boy received the N500 note from the suspected ritualist he felt a cold shiver immediately and his penis disappeared.

Mathias Schaffhäuser

I have just recently got into this artist. Generally these types of tunes are just on the edge for me. I love techno but if the edits get too choppy it disrupts my mental flow and causes disruptions in my personal CPU. This Pan-Pot remix of Lost Vox sits comfortably within my zone of appreciation though. It has a big room sound but retains an air of the personal about it.

Mathias Schaffhäuser - Lost Vox (Pan-Pot Remix)

Accountability

From Daily Kos:
Five minutes is all it takes, really. Less, if you're not that chatty. In five minutes, you can speak up for the rule of the law. In five minutes, you can put your own footprint in history, as one of the mass of millions who advocated for the censure of a President who broke the law. Years from now, no matter what the outcome, you can look back and say you stood up when Congress stood down, you pushed your party forward no matter how much it wanted to cower back in the shadows. Are you ready? Today, I ask each of you to take a few minutes and contact your Senator and ask them to sign on as a co-sponsor to Senator Russ Feingold's censure resolution. You can find your Democratic Senator's full contact info, including fax and local numbers, here.

Click through here to read the full text.

Music can be a force for change, but sometime direct action is needed.

Static Age

Painstakingly assembled on my kitchen floor from bits and bobs I have collected over the years, this track is meant to be a companion to dreams of static and life between television stations. AM radio deitrius, guitars, and effects snuggle up and play together.

UNA - noixy

Neu!

I first heard of Neu! thanks to Sonic Youth. "Two cool rock chicks listening to Neu!" off of the Ciccone Youth album first set my mind buzzing. Although the track itself is not terribly memorable it stuck in my head as an "influence" that I would have to look up. Unfortunately due to the fact that their albums went in and out of print at wildly random times it wasn't till the Astralworks reissues of a few short years ago that I was able to hear them for the first time.
Thankfully they didn't dissappoint. Although I rarely listen to the whole second album, Neu! and Neu!75 are awesome. Hallogallo off of Neu! is one of the great tracks of all time. Repetition and nonsense is one of my favorite themes and it provides it in spades. On this album, Neu!75, the sound is more varied. The two tracks I am posting are two different sides of the same coin. Isi reminds me of the stuff Lindstrom is doing these days, while After Eight sticks in my head with the same resonance that Chrome used to provoke.

Neu! - Isi

Neu - After Eight

SleepArchive

Ok, I promised this track quite a few days ago and thankfully my server has decided to be cooperative.

After much reading this is the first complete track I have heard from SleepArchive. I wasn't quite sure what to expect. Something in the Basic Channel tradition? I knew they mastered for him and he was starkly minimal. I was suprised when I finally heard him. To my mind it is very traditional. In fact, it inspired a dig around in my collection to find something to post alongside him. Turns out my cds from that time are all gone, and I am just too damn lazy to pull out the Robert Hood 12"s and record them to mp3. So I guess you will just have to take my word for it. Although I find Robert Hood even more stark than this.

Many have mentioned Sahko, but like I said those are long gone into the hands of friends. Maybe Cheap? In interviews he is very up front about his aims and influences and he definitaly bears watching. I love the power in this particular remix.

Modeselektor - Dancing Box feat. TTC (Sleep Archive Remix)

Katrina

Vakant

I just got some great new minimal tracks this weekend. I saw a picture of the Wighonomy Bros. Djing and holding up a label I had never heard of before. Thanks to the miracle of the interwebs I was able to go right out, listen to some tunes, and purchase a track from last year. Its a dark insistant number with plenty of space. Its been so long since I heard a proper sound system but I bet this one would be a killer in a large room.

Onur Ozer

Envy

Footnote TV

Every once in a while you come across something so cool that you wonder why no one has done it before. This is one of those things.

Backround info for the Daily Show news reports, among other treats.