Category: Reviews

EDITOR’S PICK: Mount Kimbie + King Krule, “You Took Your Time”

May 15th, 2013 | File Under: Editors' Picks, Listen | Leave A Comment

As King Krule continues to avoid releasing his eagerly anticipated debut album, we’ll certainly settle for songs like the latest Mount Kimbie single. A slow-burner with some serious bite , “You Took Your Time” is yet another striking example of how this little red-haired teenage—or did he turn 20 finally?—Londoner can pass for a grizzled old gangster on record. Starting with the blunt lines “Now did you see me?/ I killed a man/ They all stayed down/ But he chose to stand,” Archy Marshall wraps his street-seasoned poetry around Mount Kimbie’s bubble-gun beats tightly, bringing a level of grit to a LP that feels like more of a living room listen. (This is a good thing; we expected an actual album from the duo, not a collection of post-dubstep bangers.)

Check out “You Took Your Time” below, and look out for the rest of Cold Spring Fault Less Youth on May 28th through Warp…

Posted in: Editors' Picks, Listen

THE END CAP: Five Recommended New Releases

May 14th, 2013 | File Under: The End Cap | Leave A Comment

Photo: Steve Gullick

Now that every Tuesday is a frantic scramble for the best streamable/downloadable/sharable new releases—in our office, at least—self-titled thought we’d save you some time and share five records we stand behind every week. Here’s what we’re digging at the moment…

Posted in: The End Cap

EDITOR’S PICK: Various Artists, ‘Think and Change’

May 8th, 2013 | File Under: Editors' Picks | Leave A Comment

The Artist/Album: Various Artists, Think and Change (Nonplus+, 2013)

Our Review: Anyone looking for an antidote to the rise of lunkheaded EDM loops needs to crank Boddika’s expertly curated Think and Change compilation. Reaching well beyond the Instra:mental producer’s drum & bass roots, it features everything from drill sergeant drums (SCB’s “Dissipate”) and bout-ready-to-jak breaks (Endian’s “Straight Intention”) to a Joy Orbison duet (“&Fate”) that sets the bar high only to have it hammered home by the A-game attitude of everything that follows. That includes Four Tet, who treats his guest appearance (“For These Times”) as a filler-free calling card for just how far he’s come from the inherent trappings of ‘folktronica’. So good, all of it.

Available At: Amazon · iTunes

Posted in: Editors' Picks

LIVE REVIEW: Drone Activity In Progress @ Knockdown Center, Featuring KTL, Body/Head, Vatican Shadow and More

May 3rd, 2013 | File Under: I Was There | 3 comments

Words and Photos by Andrew Parks

It’s amazing they pulled it off—they being the Red Bull Music Academy, and it being their Drone Activity In Progress event, easily the most well attended wildly experimental show we’ve seen in years. And while it thinned out near the end, it wasn’t because people were bored; it was because they were exhausted, mentally and physically, from spastic light shows, a tectonic sound system and sets that bled into one another like the syllable-tripping sentences of a madman.

Here’s a few photos and our full breakdown, via the self-titled notepad…

Posted in: I Was There

EDITOR’S PICK: Clothilde, ‘French Swinging Mademoiselle’

May 1st, 2013 | File Under: Editors' Picks | Leave A Comment

The Artist/Album: Clothilde, French Swinging Mademoiselle (Born Bad, 2013)

Our Review: Don’t let the language barrier on this long overdue French-pop compilation distract you from just how brilliant it is. Cut back in 1967 by Clothilde and her two main collaborators, Jean-marie Di Maria and Germinal Tenas, the songs on French Swinging Mademoiselle span just two EPs yet every single track is intoxicating. That’s because they’re straight-up bonkers, bursting through your speakers on the back of cartoonish cackles, tongue-in-cheek entendres, and kitchen sink arrangements that toss brassy horns, candy-colored chords and psych-steeped guitars in the mix and at your face. The thing is, you won’t even want to duck.

Available At: Amazon · iTunes

Stream ‘French Swinging Mademoiselle’ in its entirety via Spotify below…

Posted in: Editors' Picks

LIVE REVIEW: Opeth + Katatonia @ Music Hall of Williamsburg

April 30th, 2013 | File Under: I Was There | Leave A Comment

Two of Sweden’s top underground metal bands—Opeth and their old buddies Katatonia—played a rare intimate bill at Brooklyn’s Music Hall of Williamsburg Monday night, reminding us of a couple key things:

1. Katatonia’s come a long way since their classic Brave Murder Day album; who knew they were this poppy?

2. Opeth frontman Mikael Åkerfeldt oughta moonlight as a stand-up comedian…when he’s not hitting every note right on cue and making us wish they played more songs from this period.

Here are our additional notes, limited to one page per act…

Posted in: I Was There

LIVE REVIEW: Goat @ Music Hall of Williamsburg

April 24th, 2013 | File Under: I Was There | Leave A Comment

Photo: Andrew Parks

So we thought we’d try something new with tonight’s Goat review—limiting our thoughts to one sheet of notebook paper, like the late ’90s all over again…

Posted in: I Was There

EDITOR’S PICK: Various Artists, ‘Deutsche Elektronische Musik 2′

April 23rd, 2013 | File Under: Editors' Picks | Leave A Comment

The Artist/Album: Various Artists, Deutsche Elektronische Musik 2 (Soul Jazz, 2013)

Our Review: The second installment in Soul Jazz’s Krautrock survey lives up to the last in terms of being an incredibly thorough discovery tool, from familiar underground favorites like Brian Eno’s second collab with Cluster and the groove-locked Faust song that gave this pseudo scene its name to the Neu! school of Motorik madness (You, Wolfgang Riechmann) and outré strains of prog (A.R. & Machines), psychedelic folk (Gila, Bröselmaschine), fractured electronics (Rolf Trostel, Asmus Tietchens) and free-jazz (Niagara). It’s pricey but goddamn the two-part, 4-LP pressing of this compilation sounds great. Even Julian Cope would approve.

Available At: Amazon · Soul Jazz

Posted in: Editors' Picks

10 Things We Took Away From TNGHT’s Webster Hall Show

April 19th, 2013 | File Under: I Was There | Leave A Comment

Photo via LuckyMe

Words by Arye Dworken

The amped, bass-heavy beats of TNGHT rolled through town Wednesday night for what was supposed to be the second of two consecutive dates at New York’s Webster Hall. (The Tuesday show was cancelled, either due to a lack of tickets sales or the simple fact that the guys needed some rest in between their cross-country Coachella flights.)

Here’s what we know by now: When Lunice and HudMo lock into a groove like a bull rider at a rodeo, it’s thrilling. But unlike the duo’s floor-quaking set in Brooklyn last fall—and Lunice’s incredible set at SXSW—their Webster Hall performance suffered from the venue’s usual pitfalls, including lax decibel levels and a crowd that’s a bit too bro-down for our tastes. Which certainly doesn’t help when all TNGHT has to fall back on are laptops and a bunch of knobs.

At any rate, here’s what stood out about Wednesday’s show from a TNGHT first-timer…

Posted in: I Was There

EDITOR’S PICK: TNGHT, “Acrylics”

April 8th, 2013 | File Under: Editors' Picks, Listen | Leave A Comment

Earlier this morning, we heard rumblings of a new TNGHT track that was set to premier on Zane Lowe’s Radio 1 show. And what do you know; the official LuckyMe x Warp co-release is already available to download from iTunes.

As expected from the duo’s recent live performances, it’s got more in common with the endorphin-flooding head rushes of a warehouse rave (circa: 1989, or one of the Prodigy’s seminal records) than the token trap-rave tracks TNGHT are often lumped in with. Setting things off with a MC shouting “DJ!” and roaring, rumbling layers of synth lines, it’s obviously engineered to drive peak-hour crowds up a wall, from its BPM-slowing music box breaks to its meteor shower melodies. Which is fitting considering Lunice and HudMo are about to do a victory lap around Coachella, Philly (April 10th), New York (April 17th) and San Francisco (April 20th) before dropping who knows what later this year.

Listen below, right alongside the duo’s essential Radio 1 mix…

Posted in: Editors' Picks, Listen

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