the very hush hush

song from the forthcoming album by the very hush hush. fuzzy pop of the best kind. reminds me a little of the much touted clap your hands say yeah but also a little of the russian futurists. the also operate a very hush hush website.

the shortwave set

some more summer music here. some sort of psych pop. what apples in stereo would sound like if they had grown up in london? or st. etienne if they had grown up in north carolina. who cares? great summer pop is all i want at the moment and this does the job. another song can be streamed here.

not so fast

apparently my last post was very well received & i got many congratulations and even more thanks for having given up on the blog. this was, of course, just a ploy to get rid of some of my innumerable readers. and to let the more persistent ones know that i was planning to be even more lazy over the next couple of months than before. anyway here is a song of from art brut's recent release. which i'm having trouble to decide whether i like or not. and here is a bootleg of the same song. maybe some time soon i will try to attempt to explain why i have doubts about art brut. until then you will have to decide for yourself.

urusei yatsura --> project a-ko

i stumbled upon old friends the other day. urusei yatsura are scottish and, well, they sort of sound scottish. their early albums are pavementesque hyper active pop. later on they were less hyper but guitars still sounded nice and some of the slower songs were actually pretty good. at any rate if you liked the delgados' domestique you should study upon yatsura. at any rate, the album i stumbled upon was everybody loves yatsura, which is far from their best effort but this song silver dragon is closest in spirit to their earlier stuff (which i am too lazy to dig up). just take my word for it and do the digging. so, at any rate, yatsura disbanded and three-quarters went on to form project a-ko, which well sounds a lot like yatsura. i believe they have an album in the works and a couple of songs can be found here.

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in other news: i'm bored of blogging. it such a pain now that i have to rely on ftp. + what happened to all the good music. i did catch autolux and the ravonettes the other day. autolux was louder and rougher than on the album which was exactly what i had hoped for. the ravonettes were also louder and rougher than on album but i would never have dreamed of it. i might be forced to give their albums another listen. damn impressive. oh, forgot to go see architecture in helsinki. oopss. the dears played a free show in front of bunch of people of which only about 5,84% were actually listening but the dears did a good job nevertheless.

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and for a goodbye: the best summer song royal trux ever recorded. ridiculously brilliant.

say hi to your mom

say hi to your mom's new album ferocious mops sounds fun. parts postal service and equal parts something weirder makes for a nice combination. the only complaint is perhaps that it isn't always terribly original. but still a fairly solid effort. get another mp3 over here and buy the album while you are at it.

heavy trash

jon spencer joins hands with matt verta-ray (madder rose then speedball baby). sort of the rockabilly explosion. slightly fun. a couple of tunes over here.

russian futurists

i was a pretty big fan of let's get ready to crumble and method of modern love. russian futurists have a pretty unique sound that i can't possibly describe with any sort of... words. well, it is pop. and there are loads of keyboards it sounds like. old ones probably. sounds like someone lost in toy store. i wouldn't be surprised that the russian futurists have listened to the likes of magnetic fields and maybe belle and sebastian. however, our thickness falls short when compared to the futurist's previous affairs. the place to start is undoubtedly but that is not to say that our thickness is not worth a listen or two. & probably a few more than that b/c it will grow on you.

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for the icelanders... nina nastasia is making an instore appearance at smekkleysa this saturday. thanks to helmet for the tip...

minotaur shock

minotaur shock crept in through the backdoor somehow - i had tried to listen to their earlier output but without much success. but there is something very likeable about their forthcoming album. the music fits somewhere along the path that manitoba (now caribou) from electronics to, erm, pop. some sort of electronic pastoral pop. other bands that come to mind are daedelus and boards of canada. the first single, vigo bay, also reminds me of the ratatat's retroizing of hip hop. and daft punk - while i used to like them. another great summer tune. the album is a bit uneven but at the very least it is inventive and considering i wasn't willing to cut this band a lot of slack it is a pleasant pleasant surprise.

supersystem

supersystem used to be el guapo and pitchforkmedia doesn't like them very much. now, i haven't heard their album but if it sounds anything like this it should at least be fun. actually, reading the review for their album nothing comes as much to my mind as another system, that is, the lcd soundsystem. i reckon supersystem's mistake was not to call themselves tft supersystem. at any rate, i prefer super to sound.

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nifty new feature today as well - just look above. it's an mp3 player! press start and here some tunes.... all stuff freely available on the web. listen and then buy lots and lots of albums.

madvillain vs. four tet

i don't know what genius thought of this but that genius deserves a prize. four tet remixing madvillain. no, it doesn't sound that exciting but some of the tracks here are absolutely fab!

fiery furnaces and the summer

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my summer really started when i heard this song - never mind that it has yet to reach 10 degrees. there is just something about this songs that makes me feel like it is summer. & it is not just that it has the word summer in its title. it is the sound of summer. & hopefully it will be this good.

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what else.... remember to check out ghostdogjr on www.webjay.org. i throw new stuff in there once in a while but, well, you may have to dig to find it.... perfect substitute for your radio...

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spinning (& liking): the evens (ian from fugazi and friend), jaga jazzist, alias, colleen, architecture in helsinki, russian futurists, and boy least likely to, brazilian girls, electrelane

gypsy punk ii - venetian snares

altoghether sort of gypsy punk going on here. venetian snares is best (un)known for his frantic drum'n'bass or drill'n'bass or whatyoucallit. well, in short venetian snares have been trying hard to make music that you can barely listen to - not because it is bad but because it is a bit mindnumbing. the music has always been more interesting than enjoyable. his latest album, Rossz Csillag Allat Szuletett, changes all that. though it has it shares of frantic beats it combines it with more traditional instruments - all sort of gypsy sounding. in places the album recalls portishead, in others aphex twin's flirtations with classical music. it also reminds me a bit of amon tobin's live set (last summer) which incorporated some fantastic violin samples. venetian snares weaves the electronic and accoustic sounds together with the same skill that amon tobin does. normally i turn away from a venetian snare's cd waiting for my headache to subside, this time i am waiting to hear what he does next.

gypsy punk i - gogol bordello

i don't really know anything about these guys except that they were generating some buzz with their live shows last summer and that they have a new album out east infection. and well, they sound like a lot of fun. mala vida is a cover of manu chao and, well, it doesn't sound worse than the original. the album is available over at itunes and and some more songs are available at: http://www.gogolbordello.com/

single frame ii

i completely sold myself on single frame and had to go back and listen to their old album wetheads come running. it is about 10 times better than i remembered. and not as much keyboards as i remembered. brilliant.

single frame

single frame released a quite brilliant little album a few years back that sounded a little like pavement with loads and loads of fun keyboards (and some guitars). only much better. (and by the way, i must admit that i was wrong about malkmus - his new one is quite good actually - especially when compare to his post-pavement output). anyhow single frame's new one body/end\basement basically say goodbye to the melodies and produce an electro-creepy album. can't help but think of brainiac's last and, as always, brilliant ep but sometimes the music is more funky a la the faint. the link to the video above is a good example of that side of the band - which may even outfaint the faint. but somehow i still keep expecting single frame to do even greater things - this is not the great album i was hoping for but it certainly surprised me, which can only be a good thing. but this is a killer song.

manta ray

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just got back from spain, hence my inactivity here, where i managed to discover some new spanish music. I guess manta ray hails from madrid. the music is a bit difficult to classify. there are definately some post-punky math-rocky leanings here but it is also a little bit emo (not yucky dashboard but more in the vain of that band that released birch - my memory fails me). and then there is a touch of jamc-type rock (pre-shoegaze rock?!?) to it. yeah, i make no sense but the album is quite nice. so there you have it.

wasting time i don't have

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forgot to get you friend a birthday present? no problem, go here and print out the calendar.

seona dancing

it appears that ricky gervaise from the office was in a band in the early eighties, made it onto the pages of the NME, and finally had a hit in the phillipines after they the broke up. although under the name fade - supposedly because the radio station that 'discovered' the song didn't want its rival stations picking it up. no mention of the freelove freeway though... more details all over the internet...

i also happened to catch the first episode of the american version of the office. clearly they opted for copying the original almost right down the facial expressions (with a little americanized dialogue) but the result is just a disaster. and my expectations weren't high to begin with.

red sparowes

i recommend that you give this album a couple listens before you head over to the red sparowes' website. i certainly hope some silly PR person put that together and not the band because it reeks of pretentiousness. sure, the website correctly notes that the album is stunningly beautiful - only it takes about hundred words to say so. it puts you a little off. but i can't help it but forgive them that. the music. well, post-shoegazing, post-rock. the obvious comparisons are probably mono (which i apparently have to mention in every post) and mogwai but in some ways a little bit more muscular overall, which is countered with some great use of slide guitar. something about the music also calls to mind stoner rock a la kyuss or perhaps the god machine (which may not really belong in that category). stunning.

a couple of songs are also available on the band's website (but don't tell me i didn't warn you).

british sea power

i was a little disappointed when i first heard bsp's new album open season. gone were the noisy, almost irritating guitars and instead it all appears rather polished and, honestly, rather boring. even so, just like its predecessor the decline of the british sea power, open season improves with each listen as the melodies sink in. but the faint traces of echo and the bunnymen that were buried under the "chaos" (ok, far from black dice but relatively speaking) appear very clearly here. at other times i am reminded (again) of the kitchens of distinction and the suede. distinguishly less original sounding than their debut but pretty solid, intellectual pop (as we used to call it back in the day).