I did an edit of Black Moth Super Rainbow's "Twin of Myself" (featured here a couple weeks back). Hope you enjoy.

Twin of Myself (P Bayne Edit)

Just what the hell are the Danish up to these days you ask? Well there's Lamburg Tony. Sound collage hip hop (sort of) made with pots, pans, toys and field recordings (casinos?), drums and bottles, and vintage synths. Then everything gets recorded onto old tape machines (why?) and sent of to get mastered by electronic agitator Goodiepal (?!). Just what the hell are the Danish up to these days? They're outta their minds, that's what. Who said it was ok to make music this free? Why is it that this music has zero presence in the American avant pop scene? I can't get my hands on his full record unless I fork over 22 euro and wait for the LP to show up that's partly why. Lamburg Tony is opening for Black Dice on some European dates so maybe we can expect something but I'm not holding my breath. I've got one track off Hip Hop Nation which is a gem, and makes Prefuse 73's new album sound like it was made in 1992. Screwed up vocal samples, glissing harps, a cut up ragged flute line, and a dirty ass drum beat. Try out his myspace for more or get ambitious about the LP.

Værtshussport

This new Basement Jaxx single makes me want to be 15 in a European club for the first time, drinking shitty weak cocktails and watching sweaty Spaniards sweat on unassuming but generally enthusiastic American girls wearing miniskirts too short for the suburbs. When the beat drops at 1:00 everybody is gonna jump up and down like idiots and it'll all start making sense. There's about 6 too many gimmicks in this song, but you got to hand it to them for the stacked density of elements and the buzzy engine driving the whole thing. I could of used not ever hearing the lyrics "Just like a waterfall, straight through the heart of me", a seriously cringeworthy moment that nearly derails the whole track. But listen, imagine all those sweaty Spaniards shouting those lyrics in broken english and then earnestly leaning in for a sloppy slurp and a mean dancefloor hump and the picture starts to look a bit more benign.

Raindrops
Beautiful cut n paste video from shoegaze band Ducktails of their summery, expansive track "Landrunner".

Brand new Dirty Projectors from their forthcoming record Bitte Orca. This is one of the most adventurous bands, at least vocally, that I know of. Two albums back, on Gettysburg Address, Dave Longstreth's (composer/singer/guitarist) first LP, the same could be said of their arrangements which were all sorts of weird. Cutups of orchestral arrangements of very idiosyncratic pop hooks, very odd beats, irregular time signatures and loss of tempo altogether, modern and chant like choral passages mixed with Longstreth's oddly shaped, melismatic melodic lines, sung in an unnerving falsetto/chest voice hybrid. It was basically a completely modernist take on pop that I'm truly surprised the New Music community never noticed. Then on Dirty Projectors second full length, Rise Above, they turned more rock, covering (at least lyrically) a Black Flag record but sporting a West African influenced guitar language (with hints of hardcore) and songs with just a hair more narrative continuity. Now on these few preview tracks from their new record, it seems like they're getting more involved with beats, straying even further from the orchestral and focusing straight on the vocal harmonies and flourishes and west african guitar tones, trills and runs. The lead single, "Stillness Is the Move" has an 80's programmed beat palette with an almost latin feel alla Janet Jackson's circa Rhythm Nation. Combine that with Amber Coffman's (correction!) scarily agile Mariah Carey impression which takes the premise of Longstreth's melismas (which are normally just right on the verge of R&B) much further into readable territory. The short of it is that this is more accessible stuff (I think) where melody and rhythmic structure act a bit less like an epileptic cat, and you can even dance a little. But the oddball theatrics are still around. Check out the superhuman vocal hocketing midway through "Remade Horizon" (I'm pretty sure that's only two people), or the guitar solo in "No Intention" which is built almost entirely from baroque ornaments. It's almost all fluff but it's gorgeous and completely tender at the same time. But on the whole Dirty Projectors are culling their strengths and playing to them. It makes it utterly enthralling for the rest of us to watch.

Stillness Is the Move
(Links removed by request of the label!!)
No Intention
Remade Horizon

Gooey globs of sun crusted bong haze packaged in a sticky orange wrapper. What is Black Moth Super Rainbow's new single "Twin of Myself" like? Plinky toy pianers, vintage drum machine oomphs, some nice imitative counterpoint between the rubbery bass line and the purest, truest of synth melodies they've come up with to date, everything else gets enveloped in a fuzzy blanket. Midway through an engorged synth line stretches over the whole proceedings threateningly. Oh if everything could be this perfect. I don't plan on stopping listening to this any time soon. The lyrics are fascinating in a disgusting kind of way. Something about creating a new twin of yourself from "the seed of the big black cloud above." I imagine something almost as mythologically twisted and narcissistic as this image above from their art on forthcoming album. Only with more viscous fluorescence.

Twin of Myself
Amazing video from Philly band Man Man of "Rabbit Habits" of their album of the same name. Fred Armisen and the actress Charlyne Yi (the stoner chick from Knocked Up who puts in an amazingly hilarious performance here) are on a blind date which turns terribly wrong. It helps that the whole video seems to have been shot in my hood. There's the Short Stop, the Vista, and Echo Lake...

Here's your Friday Finds back from hiatus somehow this wasn't posted on friday but here 'tis afterall.

141 - In Out
Baby Charles - Invisible
Royal Flush - I Never Made 20
Shogun Kunitoki - Riddarholmen
Bobby Blue Bland - Ain't No Love In the Heart of the City
Rhythm Based Lovers - Boogie Vision
Them Use Them - Able
The Lines - Have a Heart
CFCF - You Hear Colours
Steinski - Everything's Disappeared
Bonnie Prince Billy - I Won't Ask Again
Ilija Rudman - In Motion
George Clinton - Too Tight For Light
Little Feat - Fool Yourself

Click here to download the zipped mix

I imagine Higamos Hogamos travel in big stupid hats and fur coats. I think they might be the most self assured sounding rock band I've heard in a long time. Before grunge and indie rock, rock bravado was a given. Now to hear a band that really knows what the fuck they're doing is such rarity. It think that's partly why I lean so closely these days to dance music and hip-hop. Because in those genres it's all about the outward assurance of musical prowess. It's about showmanship and talent, it's about carnal entertainment. You'd be hard pressed to find anybody in hip-hop feigning malaise and passing it off as hot blooded the way a vast majority of the indie rock scene does. Higamos Hogamos sound so seasoned they make you believe they might have actually accumulated their influences straight from the source. You know, maybe they WERE hanging with Popol Vuh in Munich in 1971, maybe they really took guitar lessons from Zappa, or had a few pleather capes tailored by Bowie's costume designer. What's totally thrilling about how the motorik works its way into this music is that it doesn't just come as a principle function, it's not the motivating force, or the ritual, the way it might have been for Can, for Neu, or any of their contemporary droids. I'm just thinking that the drummer is a fucking rabid animal, who can only play a few different beats, but at least he plays 'em hard. It's not an anemic aesthetic, it's a discerning one. There's an amazingly balanced interplay between synths and guitars. So many groups playing off krautrock or glam end up with 20 different moogs and korgs on stage and no one wielding an axe. The marketplace is too overloaded with vintage synthesizers!! Listen to the opening track "Infinity Plus One", how the synth licks move from foreground to background as the guitars do the reverse. It's smart writing here, it's not all cock and stance. They have a brilliant way of slipping from certain territory into something totally surprising without making it look planned. "Little Switch" is a captivating romp of T.Rex punk that drops the dark machismo mid way through and gets all southern rock. "Moto Neurono" sounds most like a Can groove here, but ends up in a total prog paradise. "The Illuminoids" starts out like Italo disco nightscape and ends up in Eno's detuned spazz world from Here Come the Warm Jets. This is an awesome record everyone. Let it not get remixed ever again.

Infinity Plus One
Moto Neurono
Little Switch
The Illuminoids
Major Blitzkrieg


** For those interested, the story with the name Higamos Hogamos is that they got it from a story about some early 20th century philosopher named William James with a penchant for illicit substances particularly nitrous oxide. One particularly experimental evening, James discovered the meaning of life and wrote it down. The next morning he woke up and having forgotten his discovery of the previous evening he picked up the piece of paper on which was written "Higamos Hogamos".