happy new year to y’all. the start of a year is always a good time to blow out the cobwebs, tear down the walls, kick out the jams (or the chairs) – hope you can find some space to do at least one of those things this week…
ANCIENT MITH [US: COLORADO]
bloody flags (remix feat. demune & the mole) mp3
kicking off 2005 with a whole roster of artists to get your bandwidth crackling over at motionrecordings.com. i was lead there by the excellent album from mattr and friends called ‘consequence of thoughts’. mattr is a producer from switzerland who roped in most of the motion recordings crew on this release for MC duties. this is hip hop from the darkest realm, with mattrpumping out some delicious broken quasi-industrial electronic beats. material from mattr doesn’t come easy online, so i’ve selected a track from one of the ‘friends’, namely denver-based ancient mith. there’s heaps more material to get your hands on, like hawaiin producers demune and hairdresser mike. motion have also launched a remix comp and have provided what seems to be an entire back-catalogue’s worth of acapellas to throw into your own mix.
PETER, BJORN & JOHN [SWEDEN]
teen love mp3
played a peter bjorn and john track on the show from the excellent ‘it’s a trap readers companion volume one’ [site] put together by the scandanavian blog run by avi roig. (if you’ve yet to visit, this is one of the most comprehensive english sites covering scandanavian music in all flavours). this track from the band is a cover of a track by fellow swedes the concretes, whose single ‘you can’t hurry love’ was one of the shining moments of pop greatness in 2004. even without the concretes’ signature female lead and spector-esque production, their songwriting still shines through on this track. you can find this on peter bjorn and john’s new album ‘falling out’ [buy here].
HALF COUSIN [SCOTLAND]
country cassette mp3
i have to reveal a vested interest on this – my wife and i produced the web site for half cousin‘s record label gronland records last year (which, happily, was nominated for ‘best label site’ in the 2004 online music awards – plug, plug…). bias aside, half cousin‘s debut album ‘the function room’ slipped under most radars outside the uk on its release last august, although it landed a very respectable 8.1 on pitchfork. half cousin hail from the outermost area from scotland – from orkney, an island which is reached by a long and bumpy ferry ride from the northern-most tip of the country. orkney is a relatively bleak place, although the sense of nordic history is overpowering – burial chambers and other viking remanants lay scattered across the island. i can’t think of a more perfect location to sit down and put together a collection of rich contemporary folk songs, married with angular electronic production. scotland’s other famous electronic export boards of canadachose pastoral farmland as their geographic inspiration – take that notion and imagine something darker, yet no less beautiful. [buy here]. more info on their better propaganda page.
UNCUT [CANADA]
understanding the new violence mp3
last year saw the disco-punk, post-punk, new wave (‘tell me wot you call it’…) template being rolled out across a great many bands, often to alarmingly tedious effect. thankfully, one of the champions of the sound, lcd soundystem, have recorded an album that puts them at the top of the tree where they belong – due for release later this month. uncut, a four-piece from toronto, have also been referenced in the same arena, but fortunately – on the evidence of this mp3 – they’ve a lot more to offer. the signature bass-heavy 4-4 is there, but rather than opt for a stripped-back affair (ala lcd), they’ve layered this with clipped chords, riffs, fuzz and more. seems to be a natural evolution for the new wave sound – perhaps 2005 will be a breakout year for these guys? more info on their site and check out their label, paperbag records, too.