na: electronic world

Sorry bdfstl2 (I’ll make it up to you later in the week, promise!), but the best new arrivals today are electronic in my mind – and we’ve definitely missed a couple in the past few weeks – so let’s run ‘em down!

Lo-Fi-Fnk - City
I reviewed this band’s debut record on Stylus and complained that the live-sounding drums hampered the track from reaching full-scale electro-pop nirvana and I still stand by that assessment. Something in the chorus just sounds profoundly off. Even so, they come pretty darn close. Hopefully we’ll get Boylife (the aforementioned album) and you’ll be able to sample the splendor that is “What’s on Your Mind?” The first track is the original, btw. The tracklisting should be fixed tomorrow.

Miss Kittin - Hometown EP
The grand mistress of detachment returns for more with her most fruitful collaborator, the Hacker. While I’ve liked some of her solo stuff quite a bit, it seems to me like these two bring out the best in one another. “Hometown” is very melodic and catchy, but I prefer “Dimanche”’s nods towards minimal and electro. It almost sounds a bit like what Audion might do if he was forced to work with a vocalist.

Mudd – Claremont 56
I actually saw this up front in a display at a record store this weekend and was intrigued enough to listen to it on the in-store player that they had set up. The results were kinda comical – after each track I had the opposite reaction. “C40” had me skipping ahead immediately. “Mount Pleasant Lane” had me wondering whether I had missed something in “C40.” “Crayfish & Deer” was pretty good – or was it? “Summe in the Wood” was pretty terrible – right? In other words, totally uneven, but check the samples because this is a perfect example of why single track downloading is awesome.

Map Of Africa - Map Of Africa
I’m slightly surprised that no one has commented on this one yet. As Doug Mosurak from Dusted writes:

Harvey Bassett and Thomas Bullock are Map of Africa, and you’re either out there on their party boat chasing an eternal sunset, or you’re on the dock, wondering what’s up. This is the first recent pop-rock record to be made by individuals known professionally as club DJs, and world-class ones at that – Bassett you know as DJ Harvey, Bullock as one half of Rub ‘n’ Tug – which reverses the trend of a rock musician converting to dance music, and effectively disarms the latent tendencies of such individuals to stick to only left-field examples as influence. Post-punk doesn’t belong here, and Krautrock and Brian Eno are given the back seat; outsized musical personalities like Pablo Cruise, Nash Kato and Billy Gibbons are the stars of this party, as well as Mark Knopfler, Jan Hammer, and So-era Peter Gabriel. Phrased with the earnest parody of Ween, Map of Africa has the mid-’80s, iguana-wearing-sunglasses vibe down cold enough to feather their hair. These two play the smuggler’s blues.

Yep.

Mouse on Mars – Vulvaland
Yancey mentioned this one already, but let me just add my support. Unlike just about every other person that I’ve ever met or talked to, I really don’t like the path that MoM has taken with their career. I respect the music that they make enormously, but nothing that they’ve made since Vulvaland has as much emotional resonance as this one. As always, I need to mention that I hate fun which may be why I hate their pop moves so much, but hey: sweet ambient house is one of my many sweet spots. I’m not gonna deny it.

Two more quick ones:

Hieroglyphic Being - Temple Of The Moon EP
Forgotten Detroit maverick turns in a distorted-to-hell, but nonetheless marvelous a-side here. It sounds like what happens when Steve Reich’s “Pendulum Music” meets Trax.

Trick and Kubic - Believe / Container
Again, the a-side is the jam. Reminds me a bit of Margot’s Soft Cell cover from last year, “Torch.”