That’s right, baby. To My Song by Captain Comatose is the feelgood hit of the summer. At least it is round these parts. (Free download, innit?) And judging by the glorious sunshine flooding through our kitchen window, summer may - finally - be here. Yay.
Archive for the 'Music' Category
A musical baton has been passed to me by Neil "51.67GB" Lee and at last I’ve found the will to grasp the candle and bang on…
Total volume of music files on my computer: 32.24GB, 4951 songs, 15.4 days.
The last CD I bought was: Optimo Presents Psyche Out, on the wildly obscure Eskimo label, straight outta Belgium. It’s awesome. A mix CD with a difference, seamlessly blending minimal german house music with, erm, Hawkwind and the Temptations, all beautifully mixed with, I strongly suspect, Ableton Live.
Song Playing Right Now: Beats In Space radio show playlist by Tim Sweeney. If you visit the aforementioned link you can listen too, since he posts his shows online in downloadble MP3 format. Tim is DJing at Our Disco tonight, which I’m really looking forward to, having belatedly got into the whole electro(cl**sh) type thing. Eclectic is the word. Good is the other word.
Five songs I listen to a lot, or that mean a lot to me:
(This is, of course, wildly arbitrary)
- Nighttime/Anytime (It’s Alright) by The Constantines. Toronto’s finest band, who deserve to be huge. Always reminds me of skating - somewhat stoned - through a moonlit night in downtown T.O.
- Cause = Time by Broken Social Scene. Toronto’s other finest band. It’s just a rockin’ good track and they are one of the finest live bands I’ve ever seen. Particularly when all 13 of them are onstage together, as at the free gig they did at the Harbourfront centre in Toronto, the week we arrived there.
- You Don’t Need A Weatherman (Superpitcher Remix) - Carsten Jost. From the Godlike Immer Mix CD by Michael Mayer, head honco of the mighty Kompakt label outta Koln; superstar DJ and minimal pasta enthusiast. It reminds me of a jaguar stalking sleekly through the rainforest. Wearing some jaguar headphones and wiggling it’s jaguar hips slinkily. Go figure. Immer is great for night driving, also.
- What’s Going On - Marvin Gaye. Genius. That is all.
- Ice Cream - New Young Pony Club. Fabulously obscure, probably only available on ultra-limited 7" white label, and I only ever hear at the frequently mentioned Our Disco. But it sticks in my head and makes me shake my booty, man. What can I say? Oh, you can buy it here. Sadly, I don’t own a ‘record player’.
That’s me done. I’ll pass the baton on to…um. I can’t think of anyone. Let me know if you want a baton…
Beats In Space is the home of Matt Sweeney’s radio show on WNYU Radio, and it rocks (apart from the frames). You can download or stream his playlists and shows. Matt will be DJing at ‘And Did We Mention Our Disco?‘ in London’s passé Shoreditch on May 20. So if you like ‘punk, funk, no wave, rock and roll, fucked up house, sleazy electro or mutant disco’ I might see you there. It’s slightly Nathan Barleyesque, but not as much as you might think.
Following on from my earlier post on the topic of Simplicity and how it is generally a good thing, my friend Melissa at Fabric has launched a new record label called Simple Records. Lovely.
(I’ll be heading to Fabric this saturday to enjoy the mighty Akufen, who will doubtlessly deliver a killer set. How about a follow up to My Way this year, M. Leclair? Pretty please…)
What could be finer, on a Monday morning, than the combination of music from the mightly Kompakt label and cute little kittens in a winter landscape? Kompakt Kittens! (via mefi)
It’s been great to come back to London and ease back into the swing of things with not one, but THREE wonderful musical evenings out in the last couple of weeks. First off was the Kompakt guys at Fabric - Superpitcher, DJ Koze and Michael Mayer - nearly ten hours of pure german house dancey smiley killer sound system bliss. Rumour has it that they (German DJs) aren’t too keen to play in the UK since most of the sound systems in the clubs don’t meet with their approval, but what with Fabric Room 1 being totally amazing in that respect, they are there fairly often. Happy me.
Last night, however, was extra special - Michael Mayer (again) Miss Kittin and Mad Professor rocked the crowd at Plastic People, an intimate venue in Shoreditch with strictly limited numbers allowed entry - there were only 40 tickets on sale at the door but luckily we got there an hour before doors opened. I say luckily because by 9pm the queue must have been 300-400 strong. So anyway, we got in, and I had the most wonderful evening. Mad Professor was OK, but I find dub a little tedious so didn’t pay too much attention. I had heard the Plastic People sound system described in hushed, reverential tones by the cognoscenti, but on my only previous visit (to see Murcof) I was completely underwhelmed. I was feeling kinda the same through Mad Prof’s set, but then Miss Kittin came on and they actually turned it up. And I heard that it was good. And felt it. And I was obliged to dance from that point on. The room’s walls and ceilings are covered with black foam rubber panels and it has to be said that the sound was very good indeed. I was told they even have deaf clubbing nights once a month where they REALLY crank it up. You can go if you are not hearing-impaired, but you have to wear earplugs. Yay!
I hadn’t heard anything by the lovely, young and French Miss K (who was very fetching in bobbed haircut and Cheongsam-style dress) but she was most excellent and eclectic, combining detroit tech house with old school classics, electro, minimal and just plain funny stuff. The crowd was really into it and by the time M. Mayer came on the vibe was excellent and the dancefloor crowded (but not too crowded). I’ve been lucky enough to see three top female DJs lately - Magda, Ellen Allien and Miss Kittin and they were all great. More women on the decks, I say!
Michael Mayer, of course, completely owned. He can do no wrong, IMHO, and he played my current favourite Kompakt track (Brutalga Square by DJ Koze, fellow geeks) early on, which was nice.
I have recently discovered that I absolutely LOVE to dance - I mean, I always used to like dancing, but always felt somewhat self-conscious about it. Some time while we were in Toronto this went away - possibly because there seems to be an emerging trend toward, for want of a better word, weird dancing. Like a malfunctioning robot, only minimal, or something. Anyway, I learned to just free my mind and lo, my ass did follow. Result. I was even told that I ‘had moves’. Sweet. I find it helps to imagine that I am a psychdelicized cyborg from the future - maybe that can work for you, too!
My favourite DJ twice in a couple of weeks, and in between I also got to see the finest metal band in the history of the world, MASTODON. Gosh, I’m so eclectic. The gig was totally awesome - they are incredibly tight, the drummer is an insane genius, they look great, and the crowd were going metal mental. I made the devil horns unironically quite a few times. I also noted that whereas folks used to hold lighters aloft, they now hold up their videophones, presumably to capture some blurry footage which will forevermore remind them of the night. Or just because they can. Why is it that no matter how good the music, at least 10% of the crowd will be texting at any one time? I find that quite irritating. Just leave it alone for a few hours, willya? Phone zombies. Ah, I’m just feeling superior ‘cos I haven’t had a cellphone for six months…
And so but, it is feeling good to be back in London. I really enjoyed living in Toronto and met a lot of great friends, but London is doing it for me right now. I’ll live the manic clubbing life for six months or so before retiring, exhausted but happy, to the peaceful environs of Cambridge. That’s the plan, stan.
My good friend Pier is coming up from Southampton this weekend for Ricardo Villalobos at Fabric. Should be great. And so it goes. I hope my ageing knees hold out.
Last night I celebrated the successful completion of my second week at my new job, by heading along to the Bit Rock evening organised by my new friend Jeff, who played a storming set in his Minisystem guise - I felt that it was a great hybrid of Ulrich Schnauss-like prettiness and melody and the harder end of the Kompakt roster, like the stuff on Speicher.
I met Jeff a few weeks back at an Open Source evening, where we quickly recognised one another as kindred music geeks. Mind you, given that the premise of Open Source is that folks turn up and play their selection of three songs, usually from their iPod, then by default almost everyone there is going to be a sad music geek. I knew I was among my fellows when the organiser (Alan, a very nice guy who is part of the wabi design collective) approached me after my ’set’ to tell me that Dexter by Ricardo Villalobos (from the wonderful album Alcachofa) was his very favourite Ricardo Villalobos track! Imagine that! Major geek karma points scored. I think I will apply a custom flame paintjob to my iPod before the next event. Hm, there’s a business idea. But I digress…
Anyway, it was a very enjoyable evening, and it was inspirational to me to meet people who are actually getting off their arses and doing stuff. I may, finally, get round to trying to make some music of my own. Particularly since Live 4 looks like A LOT of fun.
I met another very nice guy called Josch (Canadians are so easy to meet and talk to, it still freaks me out a bit) who, naturally, is another music producer and is into the same sort of music as yours truly. There probably aren’t that many people in Toronto with the same tastes as me, but I think I met quite a few of them last night. Yes, I have found my tribe! I will have to establish a blog for the ’scene’. Is there no situation in which a blog can’t improve matters? I don’t think so.
I just had the opportunity to listen to the new Bose SoundDock ‘digital music system’ for iPods, and I have to say I am hugely impressed! For a small unit it has freakishly powerful, crisp bass response and a great sound all-round. It also goes quite loud without any distortion - not quite up to eleven, but perfectly adequate for a party in a smallish apartment. At $400CAN it isn’t cheap, but I am sure it will sell by the assload. I, for one, welcome our new compact yet stunning iPod amplifying overlord.
Thanks to the splendid and patient folks at Bay Bloor Radio for letting me play with it for 20 minutes and crank up the volume.
animal collective. best band in the world. no, really. l love them already. i saw them live last week at the shoreditch electricity showrooms with some other really happy people and they were amazing. and panda bear gave me his wig, which was stinky but i was still really pleased to receive it, and i was very annoyed when i lost in on the bus in hackey. but i got a good photo of me wearing it on my phone, so as soon as i can work out how to upload picture from a phone to the internet i can show you. or i could just take a photo of my phone with my digital camera. yes, i’ll do that.
anway. animal collective were amazing. really amazing. like nothing i have heard before. i guess it is folk-psychedelia laced with freakouts, amazingly beautiful harmonic vocal pieces, weird ambient orchestration, pulsing hints at the brilliant kompakt label, purveryors of finest cologne microhouse and fellow gods amongst men. their new album sung tongs is surely the album of the year. unless michael mayer releases an album of his own stuff.
you can buy it at boomkat, who are a great store. they used to be pelicanneck in afflecks palace in manchester in my day.
sorry, i can’t add hyperlinks as i really have to go out. but you know, google…
rabbit or a habit? habit or a riddle?
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