When I was younger and on a major Pizzicato Five/Shibuya-kei rampage, I remember taking a great liking to Ursula 1000, partially due to the fact that he used a P5 sample in one of his older cuts.
I'm not saying that the loungey heyday of Ursula 1000, Thievery Corporation, and other related artists has come back full swing, but many DJ's seem to be attracted once again to the swanky melodies and rhythms of old jazz jams ... Latin American stuff in particular.
One such act is Ray Mang, a.k.a. Raj Gupta, a London-based disc-jockey who contemporizes the bossa nova and swinger lounge vibes of old. Imagine a Westernized Fantastic Plastic Machine or Konishi Yasuharu in 2008. That's essentially what this guy's like. (He actually toured Japan last year!)
Check out a few cuts below. "Praia do Londres" is pretty old -- it was originally released as an R&S Records 12" and later included on an Eskimo Recordings LP -- but certainly worth putting on repeat. I'm including "Angel" as a sort of joke -- I'm assuming that Gupta intended it as such himself ... Gupta accidentally sent me a bad copy of "Angel," so download it again now and you'll have the authentic MP3. It's a slower jam that just is all at once soothing and exceedingly catchy.
Lather yourself with some sunscreen, throw a linen shirt and Fedora on, grab a Corona, and relax to the smooth beats of Ray Mang on an island in the sun somewhere.
I put together a rather lengthy post on Service Records on the Anthem Online site, and since I know not all of you read that Web publication, I'm excerpting some of it here and offering the same MP3s. Read the full article here.
First and foremost, the Swedes' control of the English language is subversively contrary to ours. When Lykki Li or Jens Lekman sing of love, they express different experiences, conveniently constructed in a pop manner than alludes to unilateral and exact understanding; when Shout Out Louds or Peter Bjorn & John write of relationships and breakups, they transmit entirely different meanings conveyed through the mechanisms of mainstream indie-rock that imply only one meaning.
If only it were that simple! The Swedish experience is vastly different from the American experience, and any word a Swede pens intrinsically contrasts any word an American does.
So don't think of Service Records as another New Order-loving, post-punk-adoring collective that's prepared to pump out electronic pop ballads and guitar-driven rock songs in order to quench our undying need to always have music blasting.
Where in the U.S. will you find a manifesto like Service's, centered around the following slogan?:
Service is a permanent vacation, catalog its only luggage.
Nowhere. These Stockholm natives are in an orbit of their own, and we ought not attempt to bring them under our fold and stick them in our system.
Service brought us Studio, The Embassy, Jens Lekman, The Tough Alliance, and many more creatives, and for that alone, we must be thankful.
Now, the independent label's got a chain of new releases to doll out to listeners or all varieties, and Anthem wants to make sure you all know that and buy in to the utterly from-the-heart company.
First, there's a Jens Lekman remix release, Sipping On the Sweet Nectar, the Epic Remixes. The three-track digital download is a disco reinterpretation of our favorite European crooner. Stream one of the Bogdan Irkük edits [below] and buy the thing already!
Third, there's The Embassy's newest single, "State '08," an electronic-infused jam that's reminiscent of New Order cuts of old paired with the beachy vibe of TTA. If you're looking for a sweet and melancholic gem for those Summer days at the beach or road trips down the 1, you've found it with "State '08." Stream the song [below as well].
Fourth, Kool DJ Dust has made a killer joint, "The Quest" that has us finally convinced: the Swedes ain't all that bad on the dance floor. You can download [and stream the single below], but why not head over to the Service page and grab if from them?
Finally, Anthem would like to request that all its readers join Service. For the low price of €21 you'll be granted access to all of Service's digital offerings and opted into a music community that is truly rewarding. Plus, you'll sleep easy knowing you've helped them perpetuate. Sign up!
The Embassy - State '08
Jens Lekman - Sipping On the Sweet Nectar (Bogdan Irkük Love Nectar Remix)
Ed Banger Records got too big, too fast. In a flurry of hype, I-was-there-first banter, and musical inbreeding, the Parisian collective represented an alternative cool one minute, a trendy frat boy favorite the next, and an utterly passe aesthetic the next. Instead of turning it down a notch, though, and hiding out for a while (wouldn't some woodsheding help with the creative process?), the crew's insistent on touring forever and releasing something new every couple of weeks. While Justice has been laying lower than their labelmates, their embarrassing remix of MGMT certainly isn't helping restore their once strong image.
Busy P (who's on tour through late-August, by the way) keeps pumping out the jams, too: June 23 marks the release of Pedrophilia, an EP featuring two original songs and four remixes. (At least it's not as bad as Justice's "DVNO" release which had what, three hundred remixes of the title track on it?) "To Protect and Entertain (feat. Murs)" is the title song on the record, and boy does it suck. Busy P sets up a snake-charmer-esque, gritty electronic hip-hop beat for Murs to flow over and that's pretty much the extent of the thing instrumentally. I guess the dynamic duo thought it'd be quaint or silly to write a song about how hard they kick it overseas ... "To Protect and Entertain" is a horrendous cut that revolves around name-dropping ("Hit up LAX and got in no hassle/We left there and hit up Cinespace," "Tomorrow morning I'm gonna be on Cobra Snake making out with a chick my girlfriend hates"), astoundingly stale metaphors ("I've got a dick as big as Texas"), and in-your-face flaunting of "coolness," "hipness," and globe-trotting finesse ("DJ AM, Steve Aoki, got the dance floor packed/And it's mostly girls, girls, every day/From Paris to L.A./I snatch one up and we dance for hours.")
"To Protect and Entertain," in short, is one of the most sophomoric and egotistical songs imaginable. Here's the Ed Banger et. al. finally kicking the bucket. Jerks.
There are exponentially more mixes made during the summer months than any other season of the year, for obvious and good reason: July through September is hot, sunny, marks the fiscal year's halfway point, and is endowed with far more galas, BBQs, rooftop pool mixers, and and offers a much-anticipated excuse to whip out the blender and make some margaritas! With all the festivities, tannings, and general good will, mixtapes are inevitable.
BBBD is very impressed by don Simon's "Summer Kick Off Mix." The Swedish producer/DJ put together an hour-long, thirteen-track set that features a substantial number of his compatriots' work (i.e. Lykke Li, Sally Shapiro) and plenty of artists one wouldn't expect to find on such a light-hearted party jam (i.e. Kelly Polar, Booka Shade, Justus Köhncke). Somhow he brings it altogether with a distinctly summertime aesthetic and tasteful energy that doesn't overwhelm or exhaust. This is perfect. Download it, please. A tracklist can be found after the jump.
1. Sally Shapiro - Jackie Junior (Junior Boys remix) 2. Headman - Hostage 3. Kelly Polar - Entropy Reigns (In the Celestial City) 4. Lykke Li - I'm Good I'm Gone (Fred Falke remix) 5. John Dahlbäck - We Are The Duo 6. Claude VonStroke - The Whistler 7. Solomun & Stimming - Eiszauber 8. Booka Shade - Dusty Boots 9. esa axel - Asthma Star (Socket Science remix) 10. Justus Köhncke - Parage 11. Marascia & Dusty Kid - Sineless 12. Swen Weber - The Pusher 13. Steve Angello & Sebastian Ingrosso Vs Laidback Luke - IT
01. Streetlife Sessions Intro..................................................................................CDR 02. DJ Sneak - Let Me Show You The Way To Go........................................Henry Street 03. STA - Sex.........................................................................................Marine Parade 04. Polyester - J'aimes Regarder Les Mecs...................................................At The Villa 05. Self Preservtion Society - All Stops Out...................................................Strongroom 06. Alter Ego - Why Not........................................................................Klang Elektronik 07. Alex Metric - In Your Machine.............................................................Marine Parade 08. Alex Gopher - Aurora...............................................................................Go 4 Music 09. Thee Madcatt Courtship - My Fellow Boppers...................................................FFRR 10. The Whip - Trash (Crookers)...............................................................Southern Fried 11. S'Express - Stupid Little Girls (J-Bag)............................................................Kitsune 12. 10 Rapid - Sonic Weapon..........................................................................Neon Flux 13. Dusty Kid - Talake (Ocelot).................................................................Southern Fried 14. Zombie Nation - Peace & Greed (Yuksek)..........................................................UKW 15. Basement Jaxx - Fly Life...............................................................................Multiply
I'm thinking this post might be better suited as three separate blurbs, but since all three subjects are closely related and interdependent, putting together one mega piece is better than splitting it up.
Okay. Here we go.
Tokyo Fun Party is a Tokyo-based record label owned and operated by a pretty intriguing international crew of DJs and musicians. SoccerBoy (AKA Takashi Otagiri) started the company and quickly brought on Paris-born, Tokyo-dwelling Digiki (MySpace) to do A&R and generally kill it at the T.F.P. club nights (Juliana).
Digiki is truly a jack of all trades. The guy co-founded 101 Tokyo when he wasn't compiling his stellar Polypunk mix series, recording his own material, DJ'ing parties, and collaborating with a myriad other artists. Now, Digiki's got a whole pile of new material out, with another batch on the horizon.
Dense Music is, for the most part, a collection of remixes of tunes off the last LP, Beat Vacation. Two singles have been released so far ("Draftpunk" and "Pancakes"). Below are mixed samples of each single. You can find way more information on both (including just how to buy the things) over here.
Back to SoccerBoy, though. This guy has been tearing it up in Tokyo for a good while now, injecting an Ed Banger dose of grittiness and brashness to the otherwise hyper-melodious and bubblegummy dance scene in Japan. His stuff is a mix of everything under the sun ... a little Diplo rhythmic fun tossed around, a little Girl Talk mashing dropped in, a little Justice-esque rager sprinkled about. He can't stay still. Check out a mix he put together below as well as two remixes he did (so, so good). You can catch more remixes here and more mixes here. Now you totally want to go to Tokyo, right?
BBBD has long been a fan of London's Blamma! Blamma!, and while everyone seems to be giving the duo props these days, we can't resist this time 'round as their remix of Cazals' (MySpace) "Somebody, Somewhere" is just too good to pass up.
Blamma! Blamma! warned me to be careful with this one as "it bites," and that it definitely does. A driven, energetic remix that chugs along at a rapid, robotic pace from the very beginning to the end. Nicely filtered vocals, bouncy synth lines, and noisy beats suit the original's aesthetic well. Check it out below. (Blamma! Blamma! gets extra points for making the longest remix title in history.)
M.A.N.D.Y. & Justin Miller Interview @ La Fiesta de Fiestas, 2008
M.A.N.D.Y. & Justin Miller Interview @ Anthem Party, 2008 from Anthem Magazine on Vimeo. I briefly interviewed Justin Miller (D.F.A.) and M.A.N.D.Y. at our Anthem Coachella party, La Fiesta de Fiestas and the resultant video documenting the "round table" discussion is finally up! We had some stellar DJ's pass through out event, so it was hard to not take advantage! Other artists included Para One, Surkin, the Ed Banger crew, Boys Noize, Claude VonStrok, and a handful of others.
Check the M.A.N.D.Y./Justin Miller video out at the source! There's more L.F.D.F. love to be found here as well.
BBBD has yet to attend any Fabric club night in London, but from what we hear and from what we've got on compact disc, we know that the parties are not to be missed. Someday ... someday.
Friday, May 2 is going to be -- as usual -- a killer at Fabriclive. Switch and Sinden will be presenting Get Familiar, and boy do they have one hell of a lineup planned. Room One will feature Joe Goddard (Hot Chip), Sinden, A-Trak, and J33; Room Two will hold Surkin, Para One, Curses!, Orgasmic, Bobmo, Das Glow, and Jean Nipon; Room Three will feature DJ Fresh and Rusko. Wow. It's like a mini-festival crammed into a gigantic warehouse. But what else would you expect? Really ...
If you're in London, you can pick up tickets right over here. If you're not, here's the consolation prize: a 90-minute Fabriclive mix by Rusko. It's a banger, so get ready to have a few neurons destroyed while listening to this one.
The Victorian English Gentlemens Club Remixed by Nite Cells
BBBD can be disgustingly choosy when it comes to remixes. We want solid edits, uniques mixes, and boss original cuts to fuel each and every one of them, so a cruddy, lazy MSTRKRFT "fix" of some wannabe disco-rock track (making this all up) doesn't fly.
Be assured, then, that Nite Cells is pretty darn good ... and it's not just became they're based out of BBBD's HQ of Los Angeles, too.
The Hollywood DJ duo just remixed "La Mer" by the Welsh agit-pop outfit the Victorian English Gentleman's Club (MySpace). The trio's angular, bombastic, yet soothingly melodious cut was a jaw dropper when we first heard it, and after dozens of spins, it's relentlessly stayed fresh and appealing. The Nite Cells reinterpretation acts as a complete 180, though, integrating heavy, glitchy bass lines where spastic, noodling hooks used to reside and practically eliminating all vocals for a double dose of disco-infused glistens and swirls. To draw a cutesy conclusion, both jams are unique in their own way and we love them the same.
Apparently, the cold Toronto climes yield some pretty solid dance tunes, or at least in the case of TMDP (MySpace), an electronic duo hailing from the home of the Blue Jays.
TMDP takes pride in creating club tunes primarily with synths ... a refreshing 180 from the laptop-dominated world of dance music.
"Sex Drive" is a slower, sleazier jam that lays glistening yet distorted digital washes atop heavy-on-the-vocoder vocal melodies. It's a solid "starter," so to speak, and only leaves me wanting more from the Canadian pair. Grab the cut below and be prepared to hear this in everyone's set over the next couple of months!
Now this is a treat! DFA DJ'd a dance party at the MoMA in NYC a while back in conjunction with the opening night of Color Chart: Reinventing Color, 1950 to Today. The event was supposed to be really fun (the four DJ sets featured were by Juan Maclean, T&T [Tim Goldsworthy & Tim Sweeney], Holy Ghost!, and Justin Miller & Jacques Renault, after all!), and those of us who didn't attend felt hopelessly left out.
Fortunately, DFA and MoMA has the wherewithal and foresight to record the entire event (about four hours in total), and you can now grab the mixes right here for no charge! Quite a deal. The sets are really good ... exciting doses of funk, soul, disco -- the usual DFA madness -- prolonged for a stunning four hours. Be sure to download the MP3 files.
One of NYC's best independent record labels, Music Related, has been offering some fantastic mixes through Mr. No Music since March of this year, and judging by the series' third installment, they'll only get better!
April's eleven-track episode was mixed live by Pandatone (AKA Music Related's dedicated founder) and it shines through. The thing's fifty-minutes long and has a smooth, organic quality to it that you can't get without (a) being pretty damn talented and (b) using good DJ equipment. This is no hack job!
Featured artists include the Glimmers, Glass Candy, Lindstrøm, OOIOO (the BBBD favorites), and a few others. Overall, this is a great mix and most definitely worth listening to. Get it! Get it!
Max Barbaria & DJ Vibe, "Love Your Family" Mixtape
BBBD isn't the place for mixtapes, so consider this a bizarre exception to that unofficial rule.
Max Barbaria is one cool dude. As one of the members of the LOLA New York fashion label collective, he dabbles in his fair share of that world while also working with DJ Vibe on a series of mixtapes that they distribute and sell to various boutiques in and around New York City. The latest mixtape, Love Your Family, is ... eighty minutes of blissed-out glitchy funk, bass-heavy ghetto-tech, Italo-disco, space electro (God, I could bullshit genres all day long), and everything else under the sun. It's a jammer, it's a rager, it's one hell of a ride. I wish I wasn't confined to this stupid work chair, as I would be boogieing all up and down the street. Or something. I'll save it for tonight; this is as good as reason as any to rock out on a Tuesday!
The mix is unique in that it incorporates a whole bunch of original material that Max and DJ Vibe produced on their own. Below is one of those tunes hoested by me and a few zShare lines (my favorite!) Don't kill my bandwidth folks ... only one download per person (grin).
The mixtape is being offered as a super cool package, too ... if you're sick of 256 kbps encoded audio, pick up the special box-set containing the disc, a LOLA T-shirt, and Max & DJ Vibe Wayfayer shades at the LOLA shop (?) -- good deal!
L.A.'s Acid Girls just sent over a special new remix they recently completed for "Sirens" by U.K. grimy garage artist, Dizzee Rascal. The remix is being considered for the U.S. single release, and I honestly can't see why it won't be selected. But hush -- we can't jinx it! (For some bizarre reason, Maths + English hasn't been released in the States yet -- Def Jux is finally bringing it across the pond on April 29, though.)
It's really strong. A clatter of minimalist, reverberant beats start the rager off; a glitchy, heavy bass line drops in with Dizzee's angsty vocals; an abrasive synth ditty congeals all the turbocharged elements; a siren enters at the climax of the cut and the music recedes. Acid Girls' interpretation of "Sirens" is unique in that it doesn't too openly reject the original material, instead springboarding off it and finding something simultaneously new, unique, and fitting in relation to the first version. How many DJ's can claim such an achievement? The Acid Girls Hear It Too Remix is distinctly their own and perfect for any club ... and most definitely something that Dizzee would be happy to put his name behind. Jam to it, folks!
I just got this great remix of "Wanderlust" from Frankfurt's B-Ju ... it's a contemplative and dark club track, definitely, but the original Björk sound and style shines through despite some major editing. One of the better remixes I've heard ...
I'm not especially familiar with Brooklyn's Stabwounds!!, but know that they (a) have done a lot of remixes, (b) haven't released much in terms of original material, and (c) have a great, bass-heavy yet smooth, sensual sound that's all but disappeared from the electronic dance scene at large. These two seem ... classy.
Anyway, Stabwounds!! has some new stuff out and it's actually by them! The track's called "Rainbows & Teddby Bears" and is "dark, weird and bouncy," as the pair describe it. It is weird and definitely bouncy enough to keep a rager going or get something heavy started up. Sort of loopy, off-kilter ... like a club track from Bizarro World or something.
The Rainbows & Teddy Bears EP features the original cut as well as three remixes, one of which (Pink Skull's) is below. The whole package rocks, guys.
Cut Copy Interview, Concert, and After-party from Anthem Magazine on Vimeo. Cut Copy (MySpace) has a rigorous and super busy year or two ahead of them. After four years of waiting, the Australian trio has finally produced a sophomore LP, In Ghost Colours, and their fans -- not to mention the group itself -- couldn't be happier, more ecstatic. (It's really good, by the way.)
The three passed through L.A. on March 10 on their way to SXSW and a few other select U.S. locations before kicking off their "real" tour in April. I was fortunate to meet up with them on behalf of Anthem in between their countless interviews, photo shoots, performances, DJ sets, and scarfing down of food. We captured some photo shoot footage and a brief interview at the Modular offices in Echo Park, tons of concert footage at the Echo, and a significant portion of their after-party DJ set.
Check out the full story over at Anthem Online and stream the stellar "So Cosmic" DJ set below (too good to forget about).
