“I don’t give a damn ’bout my bad reputation!”

Continue reading ‘na: joan jett!!’

It feels very retro to describe something as “the latest dance craze sweeping France”  - I thought that dance crazes stopped sweeping nations at some point in the late eighties. But I was wrong – and here are some French tektonik dancers to prove it. Retro the phrasing may be, but tektoniks has spread in a truly modern fashion, from the clubs of Paris and out via the medium of YouTube and then further out as kids well below clubbing age congregate in the street for dance offs.

The dance is part vogue, part body-pop and partly a move I remember club kids pulling about ten years ago which we knew as ‘the bomp and twist.’ The music most of them seem to be using… well, it ain’t that great. It’s somewhere between old-skool electro and straight-out Europop, with the synths and asthmatic-whooping-cough ‘whoo-hey’ samples of hardcore rave and the out-and-out bangingness of hard house. And then there’s Yelle. I like Yelle.

Yelle is a French singer, somewhat in the mould of M.I.A. but with a fresh cheekiness and a poppier, more electro sound. So far she’s the biggest export to come out of the tektoniks scene. Her fame began to spread when she dissed rapper Cuizinier, responding to his many slights against the female sex by writing a song claiming that his gentlemanly charms were rather on the small side. eMusic recently got a Yelle single ‘A Cause Des Garcons’ via the French tastemaker label Kitsune. It’s worth a listen.

See the video here: Yelle - A Cuase Des Garcons

Typically the summer is a slow stretch for new releases on eMusic, as the indies quiet down with college radio on hiatus and the blockbuster-type stuff takes over. Summer = catching up on your save for later lists. However, this summer is looking a whole lot different. I want to give you a quick sketch of the stuff coming up in the next month or two, and if you don’t get excited I dunno what to tell you. For instance, there is:

Kompakt — We talked to them yesterday, and it should be up at the end of May. This will not be the entire catalogue to start; it’s going to be coming in phases.

Liz Phair — The big reissue of Exile in Guyville in June.

Santogold — The album, coming in the next couple of weeks.

Southern Lord — The entire back catalogue, including the new Boris record!

Also new releases by My Morning Jacket, the Hold Steady, John Mellencamp, this band called Au who are incredible and on and on. Some seriously amazing stuff.

One final note: the next round of Selects was scheduled to go live in a week or two, but we’ve pushed it back to mid June. We want to get this next round perfect, and that extra couple of weeks is gonna help. We’re really hyped about these next artists.

Anyway, let’s get excited, everyone!

Three new ones for the club, three new ones for the home.
Continue reading ‘na: electronic!’

Yet another landmark day in the history of eMusic. Continue reading ‘na: radiohead, famous l. renfroe’

We’ve had some really great albums land on the UK side of things over the last few days. Here’s my mix of the good and the ‘interesting’ (yes, I’m looking at you, so-called Russian Madonna.) Continue reading ‘NA: Russian pop, 80s computers’

A few fantastic titles turned up on the site over the weekend, so I wanted to take a few minutes to point ‘em out. Before I do, though: your day will not be complete until you download tracks 17 & 18 from Life Goes in Circles. I re-discovered these two over the weekend. Holy cow, man.

Continue reading ’sing a hit song’

Four notables from today:

Do Make Say Think, Goodbye Enemy Airship the Landlord Is Dead: This was the first Do Make Say Think that I got really into, and it’s still my favorite. A little more Tortoise-y than their current stuff, but definitely in the same neighborhood.

Fennesz, Airport Symphony: A collection of various artists building ambient pieces out of field recordings of planes taking off. I haven’t listened, but this seems like my kinda thing.

Fly Pan Am, Fly Pan Am: And speaking of airports, there’s Fly Pan Am, another great Constellation band from Quebec who share members and a similar sound with godspeed you black emperor. I used to be totally hooked on this album — I used the second track on numerous mixtapes.

Reverend Jeremiah Wright, America’s Chickens Coming Home to Roost: Ugh. No clue who Grace of God Records is, but someone’s trying to cash in.

1) Last night Joe, Maris, Alex and I went to see the Crystal Stilts play the Yeti release party. They were so good, despite the fact that their keyboard player — in his first-ever show — showed up sheepishly halfway through the second song. Live, there is such a great Velvet Underground vibe, and people were eating it up. Bonus: Dean Wareham (Luna, Galaxie 500) was there, and is a fan as well! Bonus Bonus: Standing outside on Ludlow, Dean was on the east side of the street, comedian Demitri Martin on the left. Before we knew it, Dean crossed the street and they were talking to each other! As Alex said, “99.9% of the world would have no idea what this means, but it’s rad.”

2) Longtime eMusic favorites Frightened Rabbit will be having a huge night tonight, as their song “Good Arms” will be played in its entirety during the last five minutes of Grey’s Anatomy. Congrats Scott and the boys!

The Long Blondes, Couples: Not sure where to begin with this one. I loved the last LB record (as my glowing eMu review attests), but Couples is a pretty radical departure. A collaboration with dance producer Erol Alkan, Couples is a lot more dependent on synthetic rhythms, neon-like synths and twitchy guitars. It’s really not for me, I’m sad to say, but Anna, our UK Editor, is a big fan, so I’m hoping she chimes in to stick up for it.  Joe Keyes, 17 Dots, May 6^th.

It’s been called cold, The Long Blondes’ “Couples.” People have called it shallow and soulless and lacking in talent. I like to think if the album were a person it would face the critics, blow cigarette smoke into their faces, turn on a high high heel and leave. It would probably go home and cry too, but the exit would be perfect.

I can see how “Couples” could seem chilly and superficial on first listen. Erol Alkan has given the band a latex sheen. The frenetic Elastica-glam of their debut ‘Someone To Drive You Home’ breaks through occasionally, particularly on ‘Here Comes The Serious Bit’ and ‘I’m Going To Hell.’ But for the most part the sound is slinky disco with a touch of art school, with singer Kate Jackson pushing her voice into new areas (and on ‘Guilt’ new octaves.) It sounds flash – a trashy attempt at sophistication. For me that works. Continue reading ‘In defence of “Couples”’

I’ve had the song “Night Creature” by Woods on repeat for the past month and a half and it still will not leave me alone. Listen to the sample here and see if it sticks with you too. But BEWARE.

Having grown up with musical siblings, I know well the value of parental support, and how much it means to young bands. So when it came time to think about a feature for Mother’s Day, I thought it might be fun to get the moms of beloved indie rockers to tell us which of their kids’ songs was their favorite, and why. Their answers, I am happy to say, are absolutely heartwarming — incredibly touching, sincere and sweet. You can see the results — which includes quotes from the moms of Adam Green, Bon Iver, Headlights, Holy Fuck (!!!), Beirut and many, many more — here. Of all the editorial features we’ve ever done, this one might be my favorite.

A nice surprise arrival on the site today: the Egyptian Lover catalogue.
Continue reading ‘egypt egypt’

Everything from gurgling electronic music to buoyant kiddie pop hits the racks at eMusic today — here’s a spin through some of the notable titles!

Continue reading ‘na: blank blue, firewater, matmos’

An album called Forgotten Guitars From Mozambique is pretty much the perfect record ever for me, and Joe’s now in the doghouse since he never told me about it when we first got it in a while ago. (Joe has much ’splaining to do.) The record was put out by Dutch label SWP Records, which solely puts out a mix of African field recordings and slightly more professional stuff. The Mozambique album sounds more like a blues record than it does a “world” record, the vocals being an obvious big difference.

There’s way more amazing stuff at SWP — I’ll let Joe, that slimy bastard, speak to some of that in the comments — including Royal Court Music From Uganda, which is one of the most amazingly bizarre records I have ever heard: the lead vocals are hyper-fast and the backing music is a mix of what sounds like weird wind instruments that sound like attacking cockroaches and vibrating human voices. I can’t quite splice what it is, but just incredibly nuts. Check “Gganga Alula” for the deal.

Finally, there’s Kalimba & Kalumbu Songs, a collection of likembe music that sounds like Konono No. 1 on opium. So good.

I don’t know much about Alex Attias, although something tells me I should. AllMusic’s Andy Kellman, always a great source for hidden gems, counts his 1999 single “Transitions” as one of the strangest and thrilling singles to ever bear the label “broken beat.” As usual, he’s right.

But I’m here to talk about another hidden gem, taken from Attias’ excellent source material, 2004’s Back Home. Late last year, Swiss producer Quarion remixed the final tune on Back Home, “Finding Who We Are” to magical effect. What was once a simmering, jazzy track is transformed by Quarion into a deeply propulsive house, anchored by Colonel Red’s vocal vamping. It’s been my soundtrack this gray morning, serving as aural hope that spring will finally get here in New York…and stay here.

Thanks to some random youtubing the other night, I came across a video that sparked a conversation with my friend about some of my “favorite shows” in the past few years. I’ve been missing the Mid-West and the West Coast a fair amount lately, so I kind of needed a stroll down memory lane. These are the ones I came up with, leading off with the video that started the discussion: Continue reading ‘five shows’

We are pleased to announce a big day in the short history of eMusic Selects: High Places have signed with the venerable Thrill Jockey! We couldn’t be happier for them, and we eagerly await their first proper album coming in September. Soon, Thrill Jockey will reissue the 03/07 - 09/07 compilation (still) exclusively available on eMusic, and we’re pretty much convinced that Rob and Mary will be bona fide superstars soon thereafter. Seriously, they are the best people ever, and we are so so so happy that they have landed with such a great label. And give yourselves a round of applause, too: if all of you hadn’t so enthusiastically downloaded them, who knows what might have happened? Now, who is going to sign Breathe Owl Breathe, Hands on Heads, Susu and Crystal Stilts? We expect a couple of those to be snagged soon for sure. Fingers crossed!

The Monks’ Monk Time is one of those all-time legendary cult recordings, the kinda record that’s referenced way more than it has been heard, in part due to insane $30 import CD prices and being incredibly tough to find. Well, for us eMusic peoples, that stops now, as the album hit the site today, and you’d be wise to snag it.

Monk Time often gets credited as a punk precursor, which is half-true. It certainly has the frantic energy of, say, a Devo (themselves only punk in the loosest sense of the word), but its origins are very much of its time (late ’60s), with lotsa organ drone and staccato guitar strumming. It is also, to put it lightly, very very very weird — sudden exclamations like “SHUT UP! DON’T CRY!” coming out of nowhere (”Shut Up” is one of my faves on the album), and then of course “Complications,” probably the best-known song on the record, which is about as soothing as a porcupine sandwich. So good!

The best way to clinch this is a YouTube video. Here’s the band playing in Germany in the ’60s. Anyone who likes the early Captain Beefheart stuff (Safe As Milk is one of my favorite rock albums ever made) needs this ASAP!

So after a number of false starts, we’re back. Again. Looks like Wordpress is the culprit — something about feed caches or feed storage bins or I dunno what — and so I don’t know what that will mean in the future, but for now, we are here. And your RSS feeds should have awoken again, too. Hollaback, RSS!

What happened while we were away? Well, there’s My Morning Jacket of course, a whole bunch of albums, with their new one to come. Truth be told I can’t say I like them at all, but I recognize I am in the minority here. Other things of note: Titus Andronicus, who are from New Jersey and are apparently very good (I have yet to hear). That Quiet Village record, parts of which Todd thinks are really great, parts of which he detests. I haven’t spent much time with it, but I have enjoyed it when I have. But what about you? What have you been listening to? We need to catch up, us and you. We went first. Now it’s your turn.