DOWNLOAD THIS NOW: Two Lone Swordsmen, “Sex Beat” (The Gun Club Cover)
Posted on March 12, 2010
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The Song In a Couple Sentences: When Jack White was asked about the Gun Club’s influence back in the day, the White Stripes frontman simply said, “Why are these songs not taught in schools?” A fair question, especially since it took a couple of techno icons to drop one of their classics (”Sex Beat”) in our lap. This faithful/frantic cover is the perfect bridge between Andrew Weatherall’s dance tracks and his rough & tumble solo work. Definitely a must-listen before you head out the door on a Friday night.
See Also: Read more
NEEDLE EXCHANGE 009: An Exclusive Mix By … Das Racist
Posted on March 12, 2010
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Two Needle Exchange posts in one day? Sorry but we couldn’t resist. Not when Das Racist delivered the following in one killer 62-minute mix: Best Coast, E-40, Class Actress, Hell Rell, and…”Funk Dat.” Yep. Someone’s not fucking around.
Here it is, then—a surefire start to the weekend, delivered with really random drops and a priceless track-by-track commentary. No disrespect to any of our previous N.E. contributors, but this has got to be the most schizo set yet. And the closest you’ll ever get to understand Das Racist’s creative process. Read more
TEST PRESSING: Fresh Off Last Year’s Ariel Pink Loops, Lushlife Gives Washed Out a Ghetto Pass With a White Label Version of ‘Feel It All Around’
Posted on March 12, 2010
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Lushlife
Now here’s something we didn’t expect to see in our mailbox this week: a backpack rap spin on Washed Out’s steam-pressed “Feel It All Around” single. A quick background check puts Lushlife’s bootleg mix in perspective—he sampled Ariel Pink, Kanye West style, on “In Soft Focus” last year—and you know what? It’s worth a spin, as the Philly-based MC treats the track like a poetry slam session—name-dropping Sandanista! and letting Ernest Greene’s pillowy chorus fill in the gaps like a pack of cumulus clouds.
Lushlife is opening Favorite Gentleman’s SXSW showcase next Thursday. Check out a flyer for that after the jump, along with all of the above tracks and Washed Out’s original version. Read more
NEEDLE EXCHANGE 008: An Exclusive Mix By … Ernest Gonzales
Posted on March 12, 2010
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Okay, so the concept’s a little Hallmark-y. In a burst of creativity inspired by his wife Devyn, Ernest Gonzales wrote a restless instrumental record that’s paired—in typical Friends of Friends fashion—with an art book and bonus collection of remixes from Daedelus, Faunts and 14 others. An extensive site about the Been Meaning To Tell You project is here. It includes free art, remix loops and music—a genre-less blend of candy-colored chords, rubber-soled basslines and snappy beats.
To take Gonzales’ love letter concept even further, we asked him to hand over a Devyn-derived mixtape (title: Memories as Units of Measurement) that we could give to our girlfriends and pass off as ours. Yep—we’re a bunch of sneaky bastards. Read more
MICROWAVE ONLY: Things Are About To Get Dark, Aren’t They?
Posted on March 11, 2010
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Photos by Turkishomework
Each week we send Turkishomework out to capture a sliver of our city’s blurred-vision nightlife. She nearly lost herself last Friday, though, as two hometown coldwave heroes—Xeno & Oaklander and Led Er Est—served up heat-seeking synth lines and moonlit melodies at Cameo Gallery in Brooklyn. We’ll have an exclusive Needle Exchange mix from their Wierd Records label boss later this month… Read more
TEST PRESSING: Listen to a Premiere of Fol Chen’s Liars Remix While Reading Our In-Depth Cover Story About the Sordid Roots of ‘Sisterworld’
Posted on March 9, 2010
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Liars frontman Angus Andrew
[Photo by Alexander Wagner]
He’s baaaaaack. And by he, we mean J. Bennett—the rather wild and crazy guy who earned a spot in last year’s Best Music Writing book for his extensive self-titled profile on Jay Reatard. We pay our respects to Reatard in the final pages of our new issue, which debuts today along with Bennett’s cover story on Liars and the following features: Read more
PEEP SHOW: Watch a Couple of Live Mercury Lounge Collaborations Between Washed Out and Small Black
Posted on March 8, 2010
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Washed Out @ Santos Party House, 10.20.09
Words and Photos by Andrew Parks
The last time Washed Out was in town, he split a hype-raking headlining set into two distinct sections: a sideman-backed series of night light ballads and a cruise control attempt at channeling discos from decades past. The latter was way more effective, as it got right to the root of why Ernest Greene’s quickly become one of the hottest unsigned commodities in indie rock. And that is his ability to translate the barely legal loft party thrills of underground dance tracks for kids dig Daft Punk and their Ed Banger descendants, but don’t know the first thing about Detroit techno, IDM and countless other strains of crucial-but-not-quite-trendy electronic music. Read more
1MM: If There Was Ever Any Doubt That Animal Collective’s Our Grateful Dead, The Following Fan Photos Just Proved Us All Wrong
Posted on March 5, 2010
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[Photos by Jen Maler]
By Andrew Parks
One of the most striking things about last night’s “Transverse Temporal Gyrus” performance had nothing to do with Danny Perez’s depths-of-hell visuals or Animal Collective’s patient, plodding performance piece. It was the fact that tons of college kids showed up to a major art museum with streaks of paint across their face, as if it was time to play Cowboys and Indians or something.
“A consensus of the mind drew us all together, you see,” explained Samson, a student from Columbia University. “We all just showed up here and said, ‘Okay, let’s begin.’” Read more
PEEP SHOW: Watch Uncut Footage From Animal Collective’s ‘Transverse Temporal Gyrus’ Performance at the Guggenheim
Posted on March 5, 2010
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Animal Collective models the next Goatwhore cover
[Photos/Video by Andrew Parks]
To answer your first question, yes the guys in the devil’s night costumes were Animal Collective in disguise—the closest they’ll ever come to high art versions of the mimes that haunt the subway and Central Park. And Danny Perez, why, he was hiding where you’d least expect it, playing a wizard-behind-the-curtain part quite well. We found this out by chatting with Gus, one of the sound engineers brought in to help filter hundreds of raw files through 36 speakers at the Guggenheim premiere of “Transverse Temporal Gyrus.” We’ll explain why many people were bored by the patience-testing performance art piece tomorrow, but for now, all we can say is we found a new appreciation for Animal Collective’s ambition after seeing just how calculated and complex the entire thing was on paper.
Check out a video clip after the jump. And again, we’ll have a full report with lots of pro photos tomorrow… Read more
NEEDLE EXCHANGE 007: An Exclusive Self-Titled Mix By … Kammerflimmer Kollektief
Posted on March 4, 2010
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“This is the soundtrack to 1000 stories you will never be told,” says Kammerflimmer Kollektief’s sole founder, Thomas Weber. “Keep your secrets. They are all we have left.”
Don’t worry—we weren’t sure what he was trying to say at first, either. Some hints are dropped throughout the following “Do Right Woman” mix, though, as Weber weaves a midwinter night’s dream from strands of frost-bitten folk and songstresses like Nico, Yoko Ono, Lizzy Mercier Descloux, and Espers singer Meg Baird. The whole thing is as haunting as Kammerflimmer Kollektief’s own shape-shifting music, which is rounded out by Heike Aumüller (harmonium, vocals, synthesizer, percussion) and Johannes Frisch (double bass, percussion) these days.
The trio’s new album, Wildling, hit shops this week through Staubgold and can be found here. While it certainly pays respect to the group’s Lynch-ian roots (”Cry Tuff,” the rather epic “In Transition”), the record truly resembles one of Weber’s track-by-track comments below: “Her heart was supposedly a lonely hunter.” Read more
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