I found this Barcelona-based producer thanks to a recent remix (or 'vocal refix' as he calls it) he did of the wonderful Teengirl Fantasy's underheard 2010 anthem 'Cheaters'. It's great - completely chilled with deepened vocals, giving the already-classic song a completely different vibe.
This song below, 'Leave Me (friendly pattern version)' is a solo effort by John Talabot and certainly not his first. It's a masterclass in giving a song time to build up by letting it breathe and lift organically, rather than forcing dynamic with sudden syncopated changes in volume or tempo.
Though repetitive (and what dance music isn't?) this chilled house is extremely easy on the ears, a sampled "Don't leave me..." gradually finding its way through the chords to become the main focus of the song around two thirds of the way through, when Talabot really goes to town, messing with the sample till the close of the track. Nearly perfect, you'll be melting in the sun to this track.
And if you like that, and if you like house music, you'll love his 'Summerized mix'. Released a year ago to his SoundCloud page, it's an hour-long festival of sun-dreched poolside cocktail-soaked chatter-driven party-forged obscure disco house tunes, mixed together with more than a small dose of knowledge in how to create and sustain an atmosphere. I'm listening to it in the garden right now - this mix chills to the max.
So now you'll know exactly what to play when the starts setting at your next Saturday barbecue; summer is definitely, and finally, here.
'Leave Me' is soon being physically introduced to the world via German label Permanent Vacation's latest compilation, beautifully named If This Is House I Want My Money Back Zwei. Due for release on 26th August, and if John Talabot's input is anything to go by, it's going to be a delightful experience. Have a listen to a quick teaser mix of the album - the quick and dirty Megamixx.
• Have a listen to more of John Talbot's music on his Myspace page
• Check out his amazing tracks and mixes on SoundCloud
• Check out his or even Like his Facebook page
• FOLLOW HIM ON TWITTER
• Permanent Vacation's official site
• And here's their Facebook page
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Saturday, 30 July 2011
MESS ME LIGHTLESS
Discovered whilst nursing a headache in bed, this is the sound of a Swiss guy who according to the blurb on his SoundCloud is an "ex member of a bunch of punk hardcore bands but
too tired to play the guitar" - so he's now a DJ/producer. And he makes music like the track below, 'Lightless'.
This is hardcore electro - not surprising given his background in hardcore punk bands - and it's good, too. The cut-up nature of the synth lends itself to a very French kind of electro (he's Swiss, but...) similar to Justice at its heaviest, and someone like Mr Oizo in his more stable moments. Mess Me manages to capture a rough-housing hard electro sound, chainsaw synths grinding and exploding all the way through - though the drums are a little weak and could do with packing much more a punch behind the wall of bending elastic fuzzed melody. Not a song for a hangover, but I can see its potential - a sweaty Paris nightclub or something.
And if we're lucky, we might just get to hear more of his stuff in a more official way:
• For more electro goodness, listen to Mess Me on SoundCloud
• And check out his Facebook page
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too tired to play the guitar" - so he's now a DJ/producer. And he makes music like the track below, 'Lightless'.
This is hardcore electro - not surprising given his background in hardcore punk bands - and it's good, too. The cut-up nature of the synth lends itself to a very French kind of electro (he's Swiss, but...) similar to Justice at its heaviest, and someone like Mr Oizo in his more stable moments. Mess Me manages to capture a rough-housing hard electro sound, chainsaw synths grinding and exploding all the way through - though the drums are a little weak and could do with packing much more a punch behind the wall of bending elastic fuzzed melody. Not a song for a hangover, but I can see its potential - a sweaty Paris nightclub or something.
And if we're lucky, we might just get to hear more of his stuff in a more official way:
• For more electro goodness, listen to Mess Me on SoundCloud
• And check out his Facebook page
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Friday, 29 July 2011
TEENGIRL FANTASY CHEATERS /// DANCING IN SLOW MOTION
It's about time I shared some Teengirl Fantasy (great name right?) songs here. Though these are probably about two years old, I've still been blasting these out every so often because it's simply so good. But who are Teengirl Fantasy? Made up of Logan Takahashi and Nick Weiss, it's a little like a musical revolution - so different to anything that I've heard in a while. Predominantly, these songs are a mix of dance, techno, trance and EBM, super chilled and more catchy than a cold circulating through an airplane.
Watch out for this psychedelic video for the glorious 'Cheaters':
Having that trippy visual within the video actually really helps to focus on the song itself - unless you're listening to it in the background, in which case that's a terrible shame! No, I'm only joking. But on this heavy grey morning, what else could you ask for but the blessed vibes and chilled modulatory waves of this anthemic dreampop number cuddled by its pulsing beat?
And great advice too in this brilliant song too - "Cheaters never win, winners never lose, that's why I'm sittin' here crying the blues." Too right.
A wonderful mix of emotion and complete carefree dancefloor-dreaming disregard for anything exterior (or interior) pervades the atmosphere of these two tunes, floating in the air like a tipsy neon cloud of absolute pop-heaven and raining down heart-shaped parcels of ethereal electronica.
With that in mind, I think we can safely say that this slightly melancholy-sprinkled next song, 'Dancing In Slow Motion', is the complete harmonious manifestation of what I just said above.
Featuring soulful heart-wringing vocals from the powerhouse Shannon Fuchess (part of !!!), this song is a triumph in sound. Simply put, this song is perfect - slow in speed but huge nonetheless, its sense of 80s nostalgia by way of the chimes and the pre-drop toms, the voice - everything is great. I hope you have enjoyed listening to this should-be-known musical outfit.
Both songs come from Teengirl Fantasy's 7AM, released mid-late last year.
• Listen to more Teengirl Fantasy on their Myspace
• Have a laugh at their crazy old homepage (no longer updated)
• Check out their Facebook page
• And follow Teengirl Fantasy on Twitter while you're at it
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Watch out for this psychedelic video for the glorious 'Cheaters':
Having that trippy visual within the video actually really helps to focus on the song itself - unless you're listening to it in the background, in which case that's a terrible shame! No, I'm only joking. But on this heavy grey morning, what else could you ask for but the blessed vibes and chilled modulatory waves of this anthemic dreampop number cuddled by its pulsing beat?
And great advice too in this brilliant song too - "Cheaters never win, winners never lose, that's why I'm sittin' here crying the blues." Too right.
A wonderful mix of emotion and complete carefree dancefloor-dreaming disregard for anything exterior (or interior) pervades the atmosphere of these two tunes, floating in the air like a tipsy neon cloud of absolute pop-heaven and raining down heart-shaped parcels of ethereal electronica.
With that in mind, I think we can safely say that this slightly melancholy-sprinkled next song, 'Dancing In Slow Motion', is the complete harmonious manifestation of what I just said above.
Featuring soulful heart-wringing vocals from the powerhouse Shannon Fuchess (part of !!!), this song is a triumph in sound. Simply put, this song is perfect - slow in speed but huge nonetheless, its sense of 80s nostalgia by way of the chimes and the pre-drop toms, the voice - everything is great. I hope you have enjoyed listening to this should-be-known musical outfit.
Both songs come from Teengirl Fantasy's 7AM, released mid-late last year.
• Listen to more Teengirl Fantasy on their Myspace
• Have a laugh at their crazy old homepage (no longer updated)
• Check out their Facebook page
• And follow Teengirl Fantasy on Twitter while you're at it
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Tuesday, 26 July 2011
MIA 27 TRIBUTE
Spooky, eerie, strange, controversial, stupid, bad, not up to scratch, brilliant, wonderful, different, wreathed in mystique, fantastic - these are just a few of the words that the 200,000+ minds who have listened to M.I.A.'s new tribute track '27' might have thought of it. What do you think of it?
It is indeed a spooky sound, a thin beat applied like an exotic lotion throughout and speckled with crackles and fizzes that sound so ephemeral that MIA might have made this in some alternate dimension. The lyrics to this song are darkly honest, and pertain mainly to the whole 27 club thing, charting her friendship before a friend killed themselves at the age of 27 (whether this is analogous to an actual real event, I'm unsure). The stand-out line, for me, is the bleakly mundane, "I bought you coffee and a muffin, and you quoted me some Lenin", followed by the stark and pretty horrible closer: "When I left, you befriended a rope, and I saw you both were hanging."
Obviously this is a tribute to Amy Winehouse - whether or not it's actually about her, her death clearly sparked the making of this song. But how did she do it so quickly? Well, it's actually an unfinished demo that the superstar music-maker had made previously, and she said it was a dedication to "all my friends who died at 27", announcing this with a tweet that read: "I recorded this song B4 vickileekx and never put it out. It's a unfinished demo. R.I.P Amy".
Typically, The Daily Mail has reported this with some amount of contention - "However, it has been seen as not only being too soon after the singer's death, but in very bad taste as well." This is due to the subject matter, purportedly being too much about the tough times that people go through with addiction, plus romanticising the whole 27 thing. But what can be seen as harrowing can also be seen as the truth, and what can be seen as romanticising can equally be seen as a folly of youth.
Either way, in all fairness, it's a song and it was done as a tribute. It's controversial, but if people see it as negative, be that on their own thick, closed-minded heads. And it's a decent track too. Shut up.
• Check MIA's one-track SoundCloud - I'm sure there'll be more stuff up soon
• Here's her official site
• Follow MIA on Twitter
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It is indeed a spooky sound, a thin beat applied like an exotic lotion throughout and speckled with crackles and fizzes that sound so ephemeral that MIA might have made this in some alternate dimension. The lyrics to this song are darkly honest, and pertain mainly to the whole 27 club thing, charting her friendship before a friend killed themselves at the age of 27 (whether this is analogous to an actual real event, I'm unsure). The stand-out line, for me, is the bleakly mundane, "I bought you coffee and a muffin, and you quoted me some Lenin", followed by the stark and pretty horrible closer: "When I left, you befriended a rope, and I saw you both were hanging."
Obviously this is a tribute to Amy Winehouse - whether or not it's actually about her, her death clearly sparked the making of this song. But how did she do it so quickly? Well, it's actually an unfinished demo that the superstar music-maker had made previously, and she said it was a dedication to "all my friends who died at 27", announcing this with a tweet that read: "I recorded this song B4 vickileekx and never put it out. It's a unfinished demo. R.I.P Amy".
Typically, The Daily Mail has reported this with some amount of contention - "However, it has been seen as not only being too soon after the singer's death, but in very bad taste as well." This is due to the subject matter, purportedly being too much about the tough times that people go through with addiction, plus romanticising the whole 27 thing. But what can be seen as harrowing can also be seen as the truth, and what can be seen as romanticising can equally be seen as a folly of youth.
Either way, in all fairness, it's a song and it was done as a tribute. It's controversial, but if people see it as negative, be that on their own thick, closed-minded heads. And it's a decent track too. Shut up.
• Check MIA's one-track SoundCloud - I'm sure there'll be more stuff up soon
• Here's her official site
• Follow MIA on Twitter
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Sunday, 24 July 2011
YACHT LIVE @ HOXTON BAR AND GRILL
Now, YACHT are a strange one. Established since 2002, it all started off as the solo project of Jona Brechtolt - a young musician who since his high school days has been focused only on making music. Later, in 2008, YACHT welcomed in long-time collaborator Claire L. Evans and since then more band-members have joined the fray - most recently including Rob Kieswetter (aka Bobby Birdman), Jeffrey Brodsky and Katy Davidson as mainly touring members of the band.
Now, according to their official site, YACHT seem to be (much like Pictureplane) much more than just music, evolving to encompass some kind of philosophy in carving the way forward for progress in their music. Or so that's what I understand from it.
YACHT will continue to travel, speak, sing, give ontological birth, and seek to know the importance or insignificance of existence. YACHT and the YACHT Trust will strive to build a larger and larger community. The path will be long and strange.But aside from all of this philosophising, YACHT are essentially a two-piece, Brechtolt and Evans hailing from Oregon and Texas respectively, who create upbeat electronic music with a light smattering of grunge in occasional studio drums and guitar riffs. With their musical output being rather too prolific to begin to go through all sorts of different tracks, here are two - the first being 'Summer Song', for which the odd-humoured video is below.
As you can hear it fits pretty snugly in the ranks of indie/electro/dance that nearly personified the general sound of 2007-8. With its completely disco-entrenched beat and bassline, 'Summer Song' reeks of dancefloors and summer evening barbecues - it's soft with a sharp edge, combining noisy high pitch synths with who-cares group vocals to create one achingly non-sedentary piece of music. There might be a little owing in this one to the likes of LCD Soundsystem and The Rapture.
The second track is much newer, coming from Shangri-La released earlier this year; here is 'Dystopia':
Encompassing the same pop sensibilities as 'Summer Song' with its catchy refrain and razor-edged hi-hat disco beat, 'Dystopia' is a carefree announcement of Earth's demise. The sounds in this song are tinged with an upped production value, bound to come with years of practice and notoriety, yet the charm is still there: the happiness, the life within the music, and the overall earworming nature of it all.
So if you liked these two, that's probably a good enough criterion to get yourself down to Hoxton Bar and Grill this Tuesday 26th July, where YACHT will be gracing London with their presence alongside some special guests.
Tickets are £8.50.
Doors open at 8PM.
• GET TICKETS HERE
• Check out YACHT's beautiful-looking but ultimately weird official site
• Have a listen to some tracks on their Myspace (no longer in use, but still...)
• Or have a look at YACHT on SoundCloud
• And follow YACHT on Twitter
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