In the age of instant satisfaction...

Bands not called Arcade Fire seem to be having trouble writing satisfying, good, interesting songs that last more than 3 minutes. Everything these days seems to be "get in, get out, wham-bam-thankyoumaam." What the fuck is up with that? What ever happened to courtship? starting slow and building up? What happened to romance? What have we come to? How many questions can a blog post have? What is the meaning of life?

Well, Family Cactus are changing that, they've got a new album called Come Howling full of 4 minute plus songs (with a couple of exceptions).

Here's "Come Howling" coming in at a never boring 6.47 minutes:

Come Howling by Family Cactus

And here is their first video for their song "Kingmaker:"

More Feminists

Melancholic synth-pop from Portland, OR.

Carolyn Berk, she of hypnotic voice and powerful songwriting, has been performing as 'Lovers' since 2001. Now, the band 'Lovers' is her plus two friends (feminist-hardcore band ex-members) that bring in the synth touch for the most recent release, Dark Light. The whole album is worth checking out. Here's one very feminist song as a sample.

Lovers - Figure 8:


Trivia: Lovers are signed to Badman Records. Other artists in Badman include Thao, Portland Cello Project, and Starfucker (a LastChoice pick).

Suffering Season

This was a song I brought to The Awkward Off (and how awkward it was) but didn't end up playing. Anyhow, I like Woods a lot, and I think this time of year is suffering season for a lot of us, what with grant proposals, elections and so on, so I'm posting it now.


Woods-Suffering Season by malaise

Photosynthesize, This Is How We Realize.

Jazz is back motherfuckers and it's bringing Hip Hop with it! The Beats realized the connection between spoken word and Jazz in the 50s and 60s (Mexico City Blues, Amiri Baraka, Ferlinghetti and Stan Getz, etc.) and now The Revivalist is showcasing this renaissance for all the interweb. The below comes from a collaborative album between the jazz singer Nnenna Freelon and The Beast, it's free to download from http://revivalist.okayplayer.com/.

The Beast - Freedom Part 2 feat. Nnenna Freelon & Suede (produced by Apple Juice Kid) from BECAUSEUS on Vimeo.

Dead, contagious genres

Purists, fans of Rusko and Burial 'before they were big', claim that dubstep died when it left London. Well, fuck them, everyone from Jay-Z to JayBiebz has a cheap-dubstep-based song now. I guess dubstep has joined the Zombie Genre club, together with Rock, Punk, Baroque et al.

Stupid intro done. These two tracks are dubstep remixes of old songs. They are 'Constanza/Mennen' tracks, if you know what I mean. Listen two/three times...

Nina Simone - I Put A Spell On You (MiM0SA Remix)


Freestylers - Cracks (Flux Pavilion Remix)

PLZ SEE MY VID, IT ROOLZ

Wolf just posted this on facebook, but I already had plans to post this today... I swear. Damn you Wolf and you thunder-stealing ways.

Anyway, because all of us dreamed about it, finally a band mixed "lolcats" with "Steve McQueen's Bullit"

Enyoy Red Lights by Holy Fuck.

Oh Hot, Last Choice Radio

Oh Land has a new video and the good news is she's still very cute. I'm also pretty obsessed with Gold Panda's new album, but apparently so is every other music blog. Speaking of music blogs, Last Choice is going old school tomorrow and changing the our energy form of our communication from pulsing light to self-propagating, electromagnetic waves: 7-9am on KVRX 91.7. Tomorrow is a Tuesday. If you're a friend we see often tune in via radio, if we're neglecting you and using geographic distance as an excuse,use the inter-web.

Oh Land "Sun of a Gun" from Oh Land Music on Vimeo.

Monday morning pop-up

Brooke Fraser is some sort of New Zealand pop star, who is pretty and makes me feel happy on gray Monday mornings.
Full disclosure: she is also super christian, and thus outs me for my alleged love of god rock. Try to ignore that and enjoy this catchy fun Monday song.

This means warr

Total Warr is a charming electronic pop duo from Paris. They released their first EP "Cascades" in September. Their names are Kiki and Guigui, and they say they came up with the songs after a trip to Eurodisney.

Good for them, I went there once and all I came out with was vomit in my mouth and empty pockets.

Total Warr - Gangsta rap by Total Warr

No Time for Cameras, We'll Use Our Eyes Instead

New single from Matt & Kim. Bring on the smiling contest!

Cameras by theawkwardoff

FanFanFarlo

Reservoir by Fanfarlo is probably one of my favorite albums of last year. I've had it up on the "Audio Fix" portion of my blog for a long time but I honestly haven't gotten tired of listening to it, so it hasn't come down.

They remind of Beirut, which is obvious. But remember that first album by Clap Your Hands Say Yeah?... It was so awesome... it reminds me of that too.

Here's their relatively new video for their song "The Walls are Coming Down"

The Enchanted Forest of Lyngen

Previously unreleased freeby from Röyksopp, download here: http://royksopp.com/track-of-the-month-october

I Wanna Know by Röyksopp

Deerhoof Vs. Evil

New track off of Deerhoof's upcoming album. "The Merry Barracks" from Deerhoof Vs. Evil.Have no fear, they haven't stopped being a touch weird.The Merry Barracks-Deerhoof by theawkwardoffShould have some Hoofdriver soon.

One If By Land, Two If By Tuesday

I bet Major Lazer doesn't have to write grant proposals, but if he did they'd be pretty simple: download existing proposal, replace 15% of the words with the phrase 'major lazer,' snare drum sample, and release. The video also montages many of may favorite cultural icons

Best Coast, New Video, Effectively Unrelated, Enjoy

Junip

I really enjoy Jose Gonzales' solo stuff, but didn't realize he had a band as well. Although Junip is described as Folk Rock / Healing & EasyListening / Jam Band on MySpace, which may be one of the most brutally unappealing combinations of adjectives I have heard since Hungarian Retrofunk Psychedelicthrashpop, I still like them. They have been around for a while, but just put out their first full length album, Fields, in September.

They have a song called Rope and Summit, which can be our soundtrack for a chilled out climbing video one day, but I like this one better.
JUNIP Always


I have not decided how I feel about the video, but here it is as well. Air guitar world championships!

MAP Digest (Delicious Accents)

You may have heard about this MAP (Music Alliance Pact) thing that has been going for two years now. Music blogs from around the world (current number is 35 countries) contribute one song every month. I've followed it for some months now, with an average "meh" grade. This month's, however, I found to be above average. My favorites were Denmark, Chile, South Africa and Scotland. Those last two are below. The South African one is fun and danceable. The Scottish one is sappy, but sung in a terrific accent.
Goldfish - Fort Knox
Bear Bones - Oil & Lacquer

And talking about delicious accents, I ran into this song by The Suzan (remember Tokyo Pop?). It's also good timing for it because The Strokes rocked so hard at ACL.
The Suzan - Take It Or Leave It (The Strokes cover)

You will cough up crows that peck my eyes and I will do nothing but go blind

New little obsession... Andrew Jackson Jihad are a duo from Phoenix that have been putting out a bunch of albums out for the past 7 years or so. Their last album (I think) "Can't Maintain" was released last year and had this amazing Neutral Milk Hotel feel to it without sounding too copycattish.

Here's "Love Will Fuck us Apart"



And here's "Love in the Time of Human Papillomavirus"

Hungarian Retrofunk Psychedelicthrashpop Band

This sentence is false. The title of this post is also false or pretentious bull shit, but the song is kinda catchy and they have a kick ass band poster. They're no Movits, but for everyone besides me that's probably a good thing. Funk is king and don't you forget it. PS - Moment of silence on Sunday, it's the curtain call for the Liberace museum in Vegas.

Mellbimbo by The Qualitons

Sweet, Sad Folk + Star Wars

Ok, I hadn't heard of Jeremy Messersmith until today, when one of my favorite blogs brought my attention to it (if you can decipher Spanish, and like good things, you can visit Las Reseñas de la Nonna). But this is too good not to re-post.

Also, for those few of you that haven't seen the original Star Wars, now you know what happens.

Yellow Ostrich

Yellow Ostrich is a guy living in New York called Alex Schaaf. His full album, The Mistress, is available for download on his bandcamp.

Yellow Ostrich - Libraries:


Yellow Ostrich - Hate Me Soon:

Raping and lousy rapping

Where I grew up, October 12th is celebrated as the Día de la Raza. I've always liked this name because I feel it means we're remembering that we are the result of the massive clusterfuck that started on that day, and celebrating our diversity. This is, as opposed to celebrating the day in which a) we were saved from pagan gods or b) we claimed this land as ours by killing 10 million people.

Clusterfucks, mixing, 'fusions' and Latin America, October 12th is a good day to listen to Isa GT. She's a colombian musician (living in London now). Apparently 'girlcore' is the appropriate term for what she does.

Isa GT - Pa'las Mamacitas (Original Mix)


And here's an 18-year-old song that still gets stuck in my head every time I think about October 12th. Be warned that it is teenager latin ska.
"Hijos bastardos de colonias asesinas…"

Cardinal Sin? Just Don't Call Me A Moral Compass

I'm sure one of our ground rules was not posting a bunch of shit from the same band, but if so I'm ignoring that here. Belleruche's new album is out today and it's fucking amazing. This song has found its way to my headphones 5 times already, enjoy!

The Track: Cat In a Dog Suit, The Album: 270 stories


Cat In a Dog Suit by morichio

Papa can you hear me? No I'm dancing...

Duck Sauce is the collab between DJs Armand Van Helden and A-Track under Fool's Gold Records.

It's weird that we haven't danced to this at Barbarella yet, but now we can dance to it in our own parties.

Duck Sauce "Barbra Streisand" from Mr Goldbar on Vimeo.

And just to show how fucking ahead of the retro-curve we are, here is a picture we took of Sam and Liz months before Duck Sauce ever had a Barbara inspired hit:

In The Daylight I Don't Pick Up My Phone

...Cause I'm still dead asleep at home.

Ralph and I were discussing my last post and reflecting on how rapping over someone else's song just isn't what it used to be. Thoughts? These guys have ninja in their name, are from Brooklyn (impossible to be cooler than that) and are playing ACL tomorrow after The Very Best. Let's go early and listen to bands that should never, NEVER fucking be made to play while the sun is up.

The Mountains Goats and Adult Swim

A Morel Orel video to The Mountain Goats' "No Children."

Please someone keep me from stalking Darnielle today.



whoa apparently there are a lot of these.

Is it Christmas?... No it's AudioDax

So, we all have soft spots for our hometown, unfortunately mine is in the middle of a corn field. The up side, I get to invent a new music sub-genre: Hoosier Hop*. I'm now only listening to music in genres I invent. Anyways, AudioDax is pretty new and got started at DePauw University (you haven't heard of it) and while they're not likely to save Indiana music, they aren't half bad either. Below is their take on a classic from Crystal Castles. You can download the summation of their catalog for free and for legal from their website. Ralph, they remixed a Vampire Weekend song and I'm not posting it here, but I can only assuming the electrons from your computer are racing to download it as we speak.


http://audiodax.com/




*Indiana is the Hoosier state

We now have Country in our blog, so suck it Pitchfork.

There's this girl called Caitlin Rose, whose music I just got introduced to through a certain southern gal. The song is a lot of fun, it almost reminds me of The Moldy Peaches but with a Country twang.

She's going to be playing Saturday at ACL really really early, so if there are any early birds out there go check her out.

This is Docket:

Oops

Pilöt is a band. As far as I know they are French. I heard the song featured here as the score of the trailer for SigGraph2010 (animation festival). Although it was hard to find good info about them, I found and (legally) downloaded their recent release, Mother. I like it quite a bit. In fact, I like it a lot and it was hard to decide on one song to post.

Pilöt - Oops:


Yesterday I heard good comments about our blog, and not all of them came from Sam. I was very pleased and excited that people are enjoying the music we post.

Salud!

First Aid Kit

Not new, but still timely: Swedish, poppy, and adorable, these ladies are right up my alley. They will be at ACL, but overlap with The Very Best is likely to keep me away. Anyone want to check out their $10 pre-ACL show at Stubbs indoors tomorrow night (10/7)?

FIRST AID KIT | HARD BELIEVER from RADAR MAKER on Vimeo.

El Baile del Gorillaz

I know it's not kosher to just post stuff that you find on Pitchfork (especially because they're kind of assholes). But just today they released the new Gorillaz single, Doncamatic (All Played Out) and it's really, really good.

Enjoy,

Last Choice, First Month

If you're a hardcore fan of Last Choice, you might have noticed that some songs disappeared from the player. Well, here they are, all together in two zip files. One full month of poor choices. PLUS a little Easter Egg, courtesy of Belle & Sebastian.

The internet is policed by robots. So: you know how there's this site called mediafire dot com? And then, after the .com you can write a bunch of nonsense and get to the file you want? Well, add these two strings after the .com (one at a time) and you'll find our two-part compilation of September. Simple.

Part1:
/?xc0lqv2a07rxztc

Part2:
/?iqis9fxaqmrtbb9

Combatientes de Cristal

Spain has been producing really great music in recent years. Behind the El Guincho and Delorean come bands like Crystal Fighters, subject of this post. Good videos, too.

Crystal Fighters - Follow:


Crystal Fighters - In The Summer:


(Further listening of Spanish pop: Klaus&Kinski, Nadadora, Anika Sade. These will eventually find their way into this blog).

LoFi morning

Yesterday I woke up in terrible mood due to some combination of factors including, among other things, several glasses of red wine, a possum in the hen house, and rats in the ceiling.
This song, while not making me feel better, suited my mood perfectly yesterday and still feels right on this fresh new crispy fall day. Thanks to Pete for the heads up on it.

The Barr Brothers were founding members of The Slip, and are now doing their own brotherly thing.

Beggar in the Morning by the Barr Brothers
01 Beggar by emski2

God Wants To Change Your Life... Where Yo Money At

Rhymefest co-wrote a pile of Kanye's decent tracks and worked with other Chicago types, think Common. This is off his new Album, El Che (Rhymefests' first name is Che). Hip-hop can do soul too.

Starfucker

Here's Starfucker... o wait are they called Pyramiddd now?... oh no they changed back to Starfucker. Anyway, great dancing music...



For those of you with Vinyl fetishes, they're selling a limited edition of the single you just heard through polyvinyl, just click here to get your fix.

Alert FOX News!

Los Campesinos! are invading Austin.

They're playing La Zona Rosa on Oct 23rd.

To celebrate this announcement I'll leave you with my favorite Los Campesinos! song, Death to Los Campesinos! (which is actually one of Lou Dobbs' favorite sentences).