code pie & people for audio

well, i guess there is really no end to the good music coming out of canada! no sooner had i posted my last post than i bump into a couple of more bands that sound great ... and happen to be from montreal. code pie falls somewhere in between do say make think (or is it do make say think... i can never remember) and the arcade fire without sounding too much like either. and i'm not sure that these comparisons are all that appropriate. but if you like either of those bands chances are you will like this. this habit is, well, a very elegant album. there is something very classic about it - the songs remind me of some british indie band from the late eighties (whose name i can't remember) - sort of timeless in that way. definately worth our attention. more songs here.

people for audio, on the other hand, have little to do with pop. again, another montreal band, godspeed...., is the easiest point of reference. but whereas godspeed sort of like their instruments to melt together, people for audio like you to be able to tell the instruments apart although i suspect they want their music to have a similar effect. this is a risky strategy because it is a more 'traditional' approach but most of the time they pull it of. it is also a little jazzy in places, not dissimilar from karate (who apparently have called it quits). check out the title track from and this will be our homecoming. (15MB)

troubled hubble & the most serene republic & wolf parade

it doesn't seem that long ago that i was making fun of my canadian friends (behind their backs of course) for how bad canadian music was. but now the stream of fresh new bands from canada just doesn't seem to stop. at any rate, my suspicion is that canada always had a bunch of good bands around but that noone was listening. and that is probably true about every other country - i've mentioned norway as another example of this before. but at any rate, i'm ready for the backlash to begin - it can't be a long wait for that to happen. especially since some of the stuff is a little like arcade fire - which is not necessarily a bad thing. the most serene republic might fall into this category. but still damn good if you ask me. try content was always my favorite colour. from their debut underwater photographer. troubled hubble has been around for awhile and making beds in a burning house is their 4th album. it is hard to avoid comparisons with modest mouse - but again not thing to be compared to. the song above, ear nose & throat, also sounds a bit like rem but relax, like rem while they were still worth listening to [correction. troubled hubble is from chicago which is not in canada]. finally, wolf parade is probably the most promising of the bunch. they just released an ep on sub pop. they are perhaps a little bit more difficult to pin down. certain songs lend themselves to obvious comparisons with other bands, including some of the above, but what makes them interesting is that their range seems greater. that, of course, may just mean that we'll have to subtract points for lack of consistency. you are a runner.

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other going ons. caught trs-80 last night. great show. on one level the music is hopelessly geeky but then somehow it works and you can't help groove to it. which i guess makes me a geek. also playing were odiorne, which is jimy chamber's new band. chambers was mercury rev's drummer/sometimes singer(?) - on what probably were the best mercury rev albums. sadly, live they were a disaster - partly thanks to a busted speaker which made the vocals sound like slipknot (or how i imagine they sound) and i guess the bassist and keyboardist must suffer from a minority complex because i could hear them all too well - at the cost of only hearing the guitar when i was in the bathroom. odiorne's heavy wish.

other stuff on the stereo. julien neto - pretty, quiet, pretty. pelican - loud, pretty, loud. swervedriver - good, better, best. oxes (new ep) - loud, fast, dangerous. buck 65 - twang, beats,........

abstrakt keal agram

abstrakt keal agram share a label with m83 and you may have heard their remix on one m83's releases. i started out thinking that abstrakt keal agram was sort of an ambient hip hop after listening to clusterville, which was the second album. their last album, bad thriller, released last year makes things more difficult and now i just can't figure out where to file abstrakt keal agram. m83 might be one reference point but you could also imagine these guys enjoying themselves, the postal service and blonde redhead. bad thriller lacks the menacing tone of clusterville but it makes up for it in terms of diversity. never anything less than interesting to listen to and i doubt there are any more successful efforts mix seemingly incompatible genres together.

abstrakt keal agram's hell mix can be found here

icelandic music

by request - an old one - some icelandic stuff. some good, some bad.

jan mayen - the new kids on the indie block. old fashioned indie rock a la, maybe, pavement. nothing too original but, god damnit, some hot tunes. shut up shut down.

mugison - everyone's darling these days. really a cuddly bear that everyone from, well, me to my grandma loves and adore. even if they have never heard his music. he is the perfect anti-anti-star. so down to earth, hailing from a remote village, occasionally brings his father on stage that he should never be a star. but it is exactly that which makes him the biggest star. undeniably talented. i would love to hate him but i can't. i want you.

trabant - along with gus gus (which were actually not that horrible a long long time ago) this band represents almost everything that is wrong with iceland. pretentious pretty much sums it up. and pretty horrid songs. although their shows can be mildly entertaining (which can not be said for gus gus - god, i hate them). nasty boy

eberg - noone seems to know eberg. he released a little popgem a year and half ago that went almost completly unnoticed. one can almost forgive having been a member of spoon (uh, the icelandic spoon - not the really good one). he is a little difficult to listen to at first because he sounds like he has inhaled helium but after a couple of listens it becomes clear it is surely the most innovative pop album released by an icelander (with the possible exception of mugison). single drop from sea

the funerals - i resisted the funerals for a long time. can you blame me? an icelandic (alt-)country band? their album lordy is, however, a pleasant surprise being more reminiscent of bonnie prince billy - of course, a comparison that noone can live upto - than say, uh, more countrish country. stockholm city

mínus - i'll have to give mínus a credit for being pretty tight live. but that is all they get from me. terrible singer, unoriginal songs but yet, for some reason, are billed as the saviors of icelandic rock'n'roll. here comes the night

úlpa - i was completly blown away by these guys the first time i saw them play. they reside somewhere in between flaming lips and radiohead but throw a healthy dose of rock in the mix. i have high hopes for these lads. dinzl

slowblow - slowblow are just a nice band. they sound nice and use all sorts of instruments. which i sometimes wished they didn't b/c the songs themselves get a little buried under the instrumentation. at any rate i do have to admit that i liked their older stuff better - it was both more melodic and edgier somewho. i still suspect that those elements are still there i just find them damn hard to find but in the meantime i'm quite content with the saws and the sewing machines. very slow bossanova

ampop - electronic pop influenced by radiohead. quiet and quite nice. their new material relies less on electronics which in some ways is an improvement because they sound less like radiohead but unfortunately that means they sound more like coldplay. but on the whole quite pleasant and to be fair sometimes they are more post-shoegaze pastoral pop than the aforementioned. worth a listen. a fresh one.

hjalmar - there is something fundamentally wrong about an icelandic reagge band. which is why i avoided them for the longest time and was very surprised when i found out i actually like them. now, this may just be that may taste in music is bad i can't tell. it just seems impossible that something this wrong can be this good. here is a live one.

kimono - is the best band in iceland because they know who polvo are. japanese policeman is from their last album which was good but didn't quite capture their live shows.

some others:
tenderfoot - country
graveslime - 362 days until christmas
skakkamanage - flames of fire
skatar - halldor asgrimsson

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.