Gang Gang Dance.

It's a wonder what ends up in my inbox sometimes. However, sandwiched between promises of bigger genitalia and some widow in a far off land asking for my bank details in order to collect an inheritance which no doubt does not exist I do occasionally get some gems sent to me from the lovely folks in internet land.

Gang Gang Dance make a lovely hip-shaking experimental noise with dirty synths and some tasty little guitar licks. The Brooklyn four-piece have just released their fourth album, 'Saint Dymphna,' through Warp Records, and have been remixed by XXXchange, who has previously worked with Spank Rock, and done his magic with Santogold's 'L.E.S Artistes'. The band, who are a favourite of the boys in both Hot Chip and Klaxons, have previously been described as "neo-primitivist," and I can see why as there is something tribal about the sounds they make: you can't help but move your feat to the infectious grooves. Here are two cuts from the new LP, which is now hot on my list of albums to pick up as soon as humanly possible. Liz Bougatsos’ vocals on 'House Jam' seem some way reminiscent of the haunting voices heard on The Knife's records, sticking sweetly to the synth line that punctuates the track. 'Princes' is a very different affair, sounding somewhere between Dizzee Rascal (down to guest vocalist Tinchy Stryder) and M.I.A. it's upbeat, and the guitar line that kicks in around three minutes just totally kicks.

mp3: Gang Gang Dance - House Jam
mp3: Gang Gang Dance - Princes (feat. Tinchy Stryder)

myspace: www.myspace.com/ganggangdance

You can hear XXXchange's awesome mix of 'House Jam' over at RcrdLbl.

Oh my! O Children.

I can't believe that this year I have only posted once on this lil' old blog. Shocking. However, with the little redesign I've just decided to do, comes the plan of blogs galore. So where to start? I think I shall begin by looking at what I have been playing a lot of recently on my Last.fm and go from there...

I've been listening a lot to O Children the last few days. Formed out of the ashes of Bono Must Die, the band features the enigmatic Tobi O'Kandi on vocals and keys, and it is his dramatic oh-so-low voice which make O Children sound so awesome. They make me think a little of Ox.Eagle.Lion.Man who Tobi played drums for awhile back.

Like a lot of the bands emerging from London ways at the moment, O Children play dark post-pop music for kids who like to dress in black and wear wayfarers in winter. Currently there is no record, but the demos on Myspace shine like diamonds, despite the fact the band have only been together since slightly earlier this year. Choice pick would be 'Dead Disco Dancer' with its hypnotic refrain that "the disco dancer's dead", and mechanically precise bass-line.

The band are making up for the lack of a physical release however with a pretty damned fine t-shirt which is available from PureGroove. They are strictly limited edition, so if you want to be the hippest kid in the joint you will probably want to get yours as soon as. And if you live in London, get yourself to the Learner Dance Party tonight at Punk, where they will be playing alongside Televised Crimewave, and the noiseniks known as KASMs which feature Rory of Test Icicles fame. I'm kicking myself for being ill and living in the midlands.

mp3: O Children - Dead Disco Dancer (Demo)

myspace: www.myspace.com/ochildren

Do the D.A.N.C.E.

Rhythm is a dancer and so is Mike Long. Under the guise of his youtube account "dipsetmuthafucka", Long spent a year filming a video a day of himself dancing in his hometown on Hamilton, Ontario in Canadia.

Now I like a dance and considered myself skilled in the art of shape throwing but this guy is in a league of his own. His moves are as impressive as his bravery as many passers by stop and stare and then move on after quickly concluding this man is insane.

INSANELY AWESOME!

An absolute certainty is that every video will have some skilled dancing, some shot of Hamilton Ontario, a pair of highly desirable white shoes but most importantly every song scores off the charts when its comes to cool.

The genres tend to gravitate towards Rock n Roll, Soul, Reggae, Classic Pop - with some Elctro and Hip-Hop occasionally thrown in. But I must reiterate; every song is a diamond. He has created a mighty compendium of videos that should be considered the definitive list in desert island discs.

Its under Mike Long's inspiration that I have selected a few songs that recommend you all put on at full volume and shake a tail feather too.

Creation - "Makin' Time"
Merry Clayton - "Gimme Shelter"
B-52's - "Rock Lobster"
Os Mutantes - "A Minha Menina"
The Maytals - "Pressure Drop"

Here are also a couple of videos out of the bunch I'd like to draw your attention to as well. Firstly this Chuck Berry classic which has a bit of back story from Long's 'mom'.
Chuck Berry - "Maybelline"
And with The Knife being a popular choice amongst us at wewererockstars and this video being a prime example of Long confusing the people of Hamilton I present his take on Heartbeats.
The Knife - ''Heartbeats''

On his youtube account he's challenged someone to take up his mantle. If you think you could then go for it - before I do.

Girrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrl Talk

Gregg Gillis (left) is an amazing man. If believe him to be created by God with the purpose of producing the most me-friendly music possible.

More commonly known as Girl Talk, he is music's answer to Attention Defecit Disorder. Taking the now established genre of the mash-up to new extremes, Gillis uses more samples in one minute than on the whole of "As Heard on Radio Soulwax Pt. 2"

Ok, maybe not that many, but he uses a LOT of samples very quickly and the affect is fantastic and I now cannot listen to Sinead O'Connor without hearing Lil Wayne (not that I listen to much Sinead O'Connor.

His new album is called "Feed the Animals" and I believe it to be an marked improvement on his 2006 album "Night Ripper". It uses samples from Pete Townsend, Ludcaris, Edwin Starr, Avril Lavigne Kelis, Rage Against the Machine, Jay-Z, Huey Lewis and the News, Aaliyah and Roy Orbison - and thats just the first 5 minutes.

"Feed the Animals" is available as a continuous download from Illegal Art Records for free (though you are encouraged to donate some of you own money). I listen to it on the cycle to work everyday. I use it to time how fast I gol; though I rarely get into worth before Jay-Z's Roc Boys mixed with Radiohead's Paranoid Android comes on - usually because I slow down to make sure I get a listen.

Try before you buy for free?

Girl Talk - Part 1: "Play Your Part"
Girl Talk - Part 5: "Set It Off"

Actually, this is my album of the year so far. Though I think I may suffer from the Attention Defecit thing...

Super Cute Voices!

You know how sometimes you here a band, and you just know they are special. A band you want to keep all to yourself but it is impossible, because all you want to do is tell everyone how awesome they are? Well, Super Cute Voices are one such group.

The Welsh two-piece is comprised of 18 year olds Stuart and Charlie, who hail from Aberystwyth and Llanelli respectively, and they make far much more noise than their diminutive numbers would suggest. I was fortunate to catch them live at an Aberystwyth battle of the bands competition yesterday, and even the compare seemed a little confused as to whether or not the band was ready to start, seeming somewhat uncertain as to if there was just two of them. Stuart handles vocal duties as well as thrashing away on guitar, whilst Charlie (a powerhouse of a drummer) hits the skins and sings all the vocoded vocals (oh yes!). However, what really makes this band stand out from all the carbon-copy indie pretenders is their use of electronic tomfoolery. All their songs are backed by a series of midi synths and 8-bit blippery, not to mention the most bizzare Japanese voice samples, all programmed by Stuart, coming together to make a complete package which sounds somewhat like the off-the-wall Japs, Polysics, or 70s new wavers Devo. Unsuprisingly, Stuart heralds these acts as their two main reference points, but that doesn't make their music devoid of originality. Rather the opposite: they take the prototypyical new wave sound and make it their own.

Imagine To My Boy trapped in a Mark Mothersbaugh's gameboy. Perhaps.

And if you are wondering who won the battle of the bands... well, let's just say the winners were cute.

Super Cute.

mp3: Super Cute Voices - So Desu Ka

mp3: Super Cute Voices - Work!

Post exams, pre lectures..

Woop. Finished my last exam on friday and since then have; drunk too much, wasted a day away being hungover, noticed that Aberystwyth has moved itself into a cloud, been climbing, eaten crumpets, and made postcards with far too many spelling mistakes in them for an English student.

Music wise 2008 has been bountiful, with the loan bringing the bank account into the plus figures it has resulted in me gaining far too many albums for me to type them all out (very much helped by a lovely housemate of mine :) However, I feel these definitely deserve a mention because they are just SO GOOD.

1) Erol Alkan - Bugged Out/ Bugged In mix
2) French Touch Anthology
3) Shy Child - Noise Won't Stop
4) Chromeo - Fancy Footwork

In regards to the French Touch Anthology, you most definitely get your money's worth - 4 discs costing around the same as a normal album. Currently I'm enjoying the second cd the most entitled The French Lounge however it has resulted in me daydreaming off into a world of black and white french films, where I get swept off my feet by a tall, dark, handsome french man... *sigh*

Anyhows, there are plenty of very cherry popping, heart meltingly good, bass lined beats to drag me back into the present day. Most noticably the noise is coming from those Italian boys; Crookers, Boy 8-Bit remixes and the Herve/ Sinden/ Switch lot.

To give you a little teaser, here is one of my favourites, and my aim of the next month or so? To get this played out in Aberystwyth, where it'll catch more than just myself hook, line and sinker...

Lethal Bizzle - Selfridges Girl Not On Myspace (Boy 8-Bit remix)

Enjoy!

x E x

A brief history of the twentieth century.

It is amazing to what levels I am willing to procrastinate in order to avoid doing any revision for my exam next week. Of course, there is far too much on the internet designed to help divert my attentions. One of my favourite past-times is to read up on little tidbits of history on wikipedia. Sad, I know, but I've always had a love of history, and it's pretty interesting stuff, honest!

One of my favourite things to do is combine this "hobby" with music, as in, find out what it is that so-and-so band are singing about. Now, there are only a couple of groups I have come across who do this to quite an extent, one of which I have never really given much time of day until earlier, when I heard they were releasing their third full-length. British Sea Power, Brightons's eccentric quartet, release Do You Like Rock Music? on January 14th, and from what I have heard of it so far, it sounds like a rather amazing record. Several years ago my good friend Robert lent me their debut, The Decline of British Sea Power, which I never got around to listening to, and until this very moment is still sat on my shelves back at home. God knows why I never gave it a spin, for they had so much going in their favour of me liking them: for example, their rather interesting stage shows which included dragging in folliage, stuffed birds, and a 10ft bear which the group would shoo of stage. Then theres the name, harking back to a nostalgic time in history when Britania ruled the waves. If that wasn't enough, they used history in their songs! Awesome! I feel stupid for never giving them a chance, but I can honestly say after hearing the majority of DYLRM? I am pretty much a fully fleged convert. They remind me a lot of Hope of the States, who split up some time ago, but released two brilliant records during their career, both of which take great influence from the past. My picks of the pack would be 'Canvey Island', a song about the flooding that hit the island in 1953 and left 58 dead (you can read more about it on wikipedia). Seriously, the song sounds massive, and clearly the band's answer to the question posed in the album title is a resounding "yes!" In 'No Lucifer' the assault continues, a track which sounds heavily influenced by Arcade Fire (ex-Arcade Fire drummer, Howard Bilerman was a contributor to the record), but none the less spectacular, with singer Yan informing the listener they "...can always just say no to the anti-aircraft crew, the boys in the Hitler-Youth".

British Sea Power's new record, Do You Like Rock Music?, is released on January 14th through Rough Trade, and can be pre-ordered here.

mp3: British Sea Power - Canvey Island
mp3: British Sea Power - No Lucifer

This neatly leads me on to my favourite band of last year, and one of my albums of the year, in the form of iLiKETRAiNS. The Leeds . The term 'library rock' has been banded around the group quite a bit, and this is a fair description of their blend of post-rock and wry, intelligent lyrics, which explore a whole host of topics from the ill-fated journey of Scott to the Antarctic in 1912 ('Terra Nova'), the great fire of London ('25 Sins') and the black death ('We All Fall Down'), the Salem witch trials ('We Go Hunting'), and a protest song at the results of Dr Richard Beeching's 1960s report into the railways, which reulted in the closure of many branch lines and the loss of thousands of jobs ('The Beeching Report'). As you can imagine, it's not your conventional topics of songwriting when in comparison with the majority of bands in the indie charts. But then again, that's what makes iLiKETRAiNS so special. In October they released their debut full-length, Elegies To Lessons Learnt, on Beggars Banquet, which is easily the most macabre and bleak album of the 2007: if it's happy-go-lucky indie-by-numbers you are after it's probably best to keep clear, but if you want to think about what you are listening to, and get a history lesson in the process then they could be the band for you.

And on the subject of wikipedia hunting, iLiKETRAiNS saved most of that bother by providing a "text book" with the album which gives information on the subjects they portray in their music. If only the history curiculum in schools was taught by iLiKETRAiNS!

iLiKETRAiNS's debut album is available now from Beggars Banquet, and can be ordered here, whilst their next single is released on vinyl/download only in February.

mp3: iLiKETRAiNS - We Go Hunting

mp3: iLiKETRAiNS - Terra Nova (taken from Progress Reform, 2006)

mp3: iLiKETRAiNS - TiNSLEYViADUCT (2005 demo)

Happy 2008 - Here is some sound.

I've been far too lazy this Christmas. A perfect chance for me to get back into the swing of blogging is squandered, with my time going into playing Wii until the early hours. Never mind, eh?

To make up for my absense I thought I'd put up a jumbo post of some of the stuff I'm liking at this current moment in time. Firstly, Okioki. Another amazing Aussie band, the Nintendo-friendly three piece from Perth have already played gigs with Hot Chip and Yuksek down under. Their myspace is a little vague with information, but they are worth a listen. Imagine playing guitar along to your gameboy and you are part of the way to working out how they sound. If you are expecting the art noise mess that Crystal Castles get out of nanoloop-ing and 8-bit sampling you may be a bit dissapointed, but if you're looking for a nostalgic gaming sound that could soundtrack games of the future, then this could be the hit your after.

mp3: Okioki - Defend the Gas Station
mp3: Okioki - Pocoyo vs The Incredible Machine

Next up, thanks to a heads-up from Gohan, his remix of fellow Parisians Thieves Like Us's 'Drugs In My Body'. This has become a personal fave of mine, and has been given quite a lot of playtime over in my media player. Thieves Like Us, signed over at Kitsune, ran a remix competition for the track towards the end of last year, spawning many a mix. Yet, out of the mixes I've heard of 'Drugs...' this is probably one of my faves. Tiny keys, synthesized choral line... simply love it. I've been watching over Gohan's stuff for awhile now, and if you haven't checked out his tracks over on his myspace, do so now! Thieves Like Us have UK tour dates in February, check their myspace for more information.

mp3: Thieves Like Us - Drugs In My Body (Gohan remix)

For our third sitting we have CHAINGANG. Flaming hell, Australia keeps throwing up some pretty awesome groups, this foursome hailing from Sydney. The email these guys sent me said a lot about the band all being from other bands, and having come together to create this slab of angry noize-rock. I haven't got an idea who the bands they used to play for were, but it seems that the line-up they are currently holding is pretty damn tight. Pulsing drums, dirty bass and heavy guitars, and with a distinctive punk attitude, encapsulated in front-woman Hayley's urgent vocals.

mp3: CHAINGANG - Get Off My Stage (demo)