kid606

Venezuelan-born Miguel Trost Depedro is the DJ/producer known as kid606. Now based in San Francisco, he runs Tigerbeat6, his own record label, and is part of a burgeoning breakcore scene which employs the talent of Bong-Ra, Venetian Snares, Duran Duran Duran, and plenty of others.

The key to kid606, and what separates him from the crowd, is its accessibility. Particularly in his recently released, Pretty Girls Make Raves, he combines the traditional hard hard beats, rough rhythm, and pounding drum machine with danceable elements that borders on techno. He's opened breakcore open to a wider crowd. Genre-melding is his game, dance to it or make spastic head jerks - your choice.

kid606 - Chicken Fight [mp3] [buy]
kid606 - Meet Me At the Bottom [mp3]
kid606 - Who Wah Kill Sound? [mp3]

Wall of Sound

Scandinavian shoegaze (or "newgaze") has been fairly prominent lately - Serena Maneesh and The Radio Dept. spring to mind, as does the Icelandic collective Singapore Sling. 'Sling formed in Reykjavik in 2000, released their debut album, The Curse of the Singapore Sling, in 2002, which was met with some glowing reviews and high expectations for the future.

As expected, the band thrives on distortion, thick dense layers of feedback, shrieking guitars, and shrouded vocals. Pop-tones are prevalent, sometimes gritty (a la Velvet Underground) and sometimes sweeter (in the noisiest way possible) like The Jesus & Mary Chain. Not surprisingly, these guys are extremely similar to JAMC - Henrik Bjornsson's vocal stylings sound like a carbon copy of Jim Reid's with an added snarl at times. However, they do bring a lot more power to the table than most shoegaze bands, raucous sounds bouncing off walls in every direction.

Their second album, Life is Killing My Rock 'N' Roll, is a lot heavier and noiser. It falls further from JAMC and closer to Sonic Youth in their Daydream Nation days. Not full-on noise to the point of spazz, but adequately imbued with thrashing and drowning sounds. It's also darker with a guitar and buzzed out voice that's drawn up comparisons to BRMC.

Singapore Sling - Summer Garden [mp3] [buy]
Singapore Sling - Dirty Water [mp3]
Singapore Sling - Sunday Club [mp3]

Bark Bark bark

I really dislike Malcolm McLaren. He's despicable, vile, and most importantly a manipulative greedy bastard. He was fake. He manufactured images for monetary profit. He valued integrity less than the money from last week's paycheque (I didn't get one). He was a businessman and capitalist, not an independent artistic producer. He destroyed punk's primary values in the way he ran the Sex Pistols.

When you allow the shroud of controversy to clear though, he's quite an impressive man. Following the Sex Pistols bust-up, he put his guile to use and took on a new project. Bow Wow Wow was formed out of a defunct Adam & The Ants (defunct because of McLaren's doing, which isn't surprising I suppose). He carefully created one of the most original and fun groups in post-punk. Not to mention an extremely unlikely cast pairing.

BWW's debut was the amusingly titled See Jungle! See Jungle! Go Join Your Gang, Yeah, City All Over! Go Ape Crazy!, released in October 1981. Its bass and percussion runs wild. The album is raw, seemingly untouched and unstained by impurities. Looking beyond the surface reveals the bizzareness of the lyrics, song content, and Annabella Lwin's vocal stylings. The backbone of their sound (in the beggining) is tribal, yet the vocals (apart from the chanting) and guitar don't fit with it. Songs about televisions and such, it really was a fascinatining experiment - transplanting African sounds and rhythms to the West and mixing it with new-wave. I almost feel like I'm listening to Dexy's Midnight Runners when 'Jungle Boy' comes on. Certainly they did turn to simple synth-pop in time, but for a short while they were unique and progressively brilliant amongst their contemporaries.

However sarcastic it was meant to be, one line that struck me as odd, in 'Chihuahua', is "I'm a Rock 'N Roll puppet, in a band called Bow Wow Wow." Given McLaren's reputation, and having Lwin pose (at only 15) for See Jungle!, I'd be willing to bet there's more truth to it than originally believed.

Bow Wow Wow - Jungle Boy [mp3] [buy]
Bow Wow Wow - Chihuahua [mp3]
Bow Wow Wow - (I'm A) TV Savage [mp3]
Bow Wow Wow - Golly! Golly! Go Buddy! [mp3]

Mash-Up Roundup

I've spent a good part of the past two and a half years hunting for interesting mash-ups, regardless of the artists involved. Sometimes two artists mix well together, regardless of how shitty one (or both) is on their own. Case in point, Mark Vidler's mash of the Beastie Boys and Las Ketchup. Mark Vidler (pictured above) is the man behind Go Home Productions, the first (and still the best) masher I've listened to. His back catalogue features mixes of The Stone Roses, Public Enemy, Television, My Bloody Valentine, Elvis Costello, and hundreds of other notables. Besides GHP, there are several other DJs that provide mp3 links on their websites, as well as forums that offer them, including GYBO (get your bootleg on). Below are a selection of some recent favourites.

Beastie Boys vs. Las Ketchup - Beastie Ketchup (GHP) [mp3]
Daft Punk vs. Dead or Alive - Spin Me Harder (DJ Tripp) [mp3]
DP vs. U2 - Around the World on New Year's Day (Martinn) [mp3]
Elvis Costello vs. The Police, etc. - Wrapped Detective (GHP) [mp3]
Gorillaz vs. White Stripes - Dirty Doorbell (Jimmi James) [mp3]
Klaxons vs. Todd Terry - Can You Feel Magik? (Dunproofin') [mp3]
Radiohead vs. The Beatles - Karma in the Life (GHP) [mp3]

Post-Punk Mix [DAN 001]

1. The Durutti Column - Sketch For Summer [mp3]
2. Cabaret Voltaire - Nag Nag Nag [mp3]
3. A Certain Ratio - Do The Du [mp3]
4. Orange Juice - Rip It Up [mp3]
5. Josef K - Romance [mp3]
6. Aztec Camera - Oblivious [mp3]
7. Subway Sect - Ambition [mp3]
8. Swell Maps - Let's Build A Car [mp3]
9. Pere Ubu - Nonalignment Pact [mp3]
10. Public Image Ltd. - Careering [mp3]
11. James Chance & The Contortions - Contort Yourself [mp3]
12. Minutemen - The Big Foist [mp3]
13. Mission of Burma - That's When I Reach For My Revolver [mp3]
14. This Heat - S.P.Q.R. [mp3]
15. Gang of Four - I Found That Essence Rare [mp3]
16. The Specials - A Message To You Rudy [mp3]
17. Au Pairs - You [mp3]
18. The normal - T.V.O.D. [mp3]
19. The Fall - Barmy [mp3]
20. Suicide - Cheree [mp3]
21. Killing Joke - Follow The Leaders [mp3]
22. Throbbing Gristle - Hot On The Heels Of Love [mp3]
23. Devo - Mongoloid [mp3]
24. Joy Division - She's Lost Control [mp3]
Length - 82:00

I've switched mp3 hosts to a private one provided by myDataBus, which provides 5GB of webstorage free of cost - highly reccomended. I've decided to start things off with the next host by posting a mix of mine. I posted this mix up a few months ago on my last.fm, but the download link has long since expired. These are essentially a roundup of some of my favourites of the post-punk era. There are a plentitude of artists that are missing and I'd like to add them on a future mix I create. Joy Division's 'She's Lost Control' was not in the original listing, but decided it was worthy of inclusion. Ian Curtis, Joy Division's frontman, is pictured above. If you're interested in buying this material, click the artist link which will lead to their last.fm page, which can be followed to Amazon.

Au Revoir

A few days ago Mazarin, a great indie-pop collective from Philly, were legally bullied into retiring their band name. Apparently an obscure (and stubborn) Long Island group shared the same name and released music before the Philly boys did.

The final solution, from the band's site:

In short, MAZARIN A and their attorney decided: either cease and desist, or we go to court. Considering MAZARIN B had no disposable income to fight the case, plus information had come to light revealing that one of the members of MAZARIN A was in poor physical health, yet still paying his attorney some four hundred dollars an hour, all the while desperately soliciting donations for their legal and medical funds via their website, MAZARIN B and their management concluded the whole predicament was so sad and despairing that instead of dragging out a lengthy litigation, which they had neither the time nor money to commit to; fuck it. Clearly, the name is cursed.

Shame, I always liked the name. I discovered them while I was studying French history and the ancien régime (Mazarin was an influential French minister for Louis XIV) so I felt an interesting connection with it. Oh well, apparently the band's members will release new material, in time. Good to hear, a really promising band.

I've posted up 'Another One Goes By', an absolutely brilliant pop number. Shades of Orange Juice's fantastic guitar pop (the Glasgow band) and the Shins' blooming vocals and precious structure. Their finest song from a great album.

Mazarin - Another One Goes By [mp3] [buy]

Klaxons

Love or hate the English press, they're a powerful instrument. Whether it be oversensationalist claims (#5), or... well actually that's about all they're good for. The NME has been pushing for this "new rave" genre as of late. A proposed renaissaince of sorts for rave, which was huge in the UK by the early 90s. Groups like 808 State, A Guy Called Gerald, the Prodigy, etc. thrived under the drug-crazed genre, packing clubs like Manchester's Haçienda. For several reasons it eventually died off and split into a bunch of sub-genres which retain remnants of the dead genre.

This all leads up to yet another group the media are warming to, the Klaxons. They've been getting a lot of press lately, largely in part of the blogosphere. And they're interesting to say the least. Whereas the Arctic Monkeys seemed a tad simple-minded, the Klaxons appear to be fairly well read and intelligent. They're avid fans of avant-garde novelist William S. Burroughs, a writer I've recently taken an interest in. As for their sound, it's not quite like the rave of old, but more modern and edgy (what I'd expect). They've got an indie-rock pedigree (bass and guitar that sound very garagey), but the hard electronic backings are evidence of the rave influence.

Their first EP, Xan Valleys, was released a month ago, a good listen. Their full-length debut is apparently set for January, which I'm looking forward to.

Klaxons - Gravity's Rainbow [mp3] [buy]
Klaxons - Atlantis to Interzone [mp3]
Klaxons - 4 Horsemen of 2012 [mp3]

Jim Noir

Bowler hat, blazer, matching slacks, striped shirt and tie. He's a proper English bloke, a fine gentleman. Noir is from Manchester, the borough so many richly talented artists have called home. His music is a nice blend of charming pop and multi-instrumental psych-folk.

To date he has released one album, Tower of Love (Barsuk, 2005). This past summer he rose from obscurity to minor fame when 'Eanie Meaney' was used in that wonderful Adidas World Cup ad campaign (Jose+10) in which he sings "If you don't give my football back, I'm going to get my dad on you". Surely an allusion to his childhood days in Manchester, supporting the city blues. 'My Patch' is another great nugget, his single from this past May. Fightin' words with some nice strings. It's also the funniest vid I've seen in a while, featuring a fight with a giant chicken. His sound has been continuously compared to that of the Beach Boys, and while I don't completely buy it, certain songs ('Turn that Frown Into a Smile', 'A Quiet Man') have sonic similarities to older pop groups fused with eclectic instrumentals and dreamy soundscapes.

Jim Noir - My Patch [mp3] [MV] [yt]
Jim Noir - Eanie Meany [mp3]
Jim Noir - Turn that Frown Into a Smile [mp3]

Post-Punk Artist Du Jour - Thomas Leer

Leer was a DIY pioneer, literally making his music single-handedly in his flat. Amazingly, in his early days he didn't use a synth to create the seemingly electrostatic feel. Instead he created several methods to improvise for this absence - heavily processed instruments and extremely primitive electronic gizmos.

Private Plane was his first single, released on his own label, Oblique. It was successful, especially for a DIY, becoming the NME's single of the week. 'Private Plane' is very celestial. It starts off with a bassline combo'd with a scrambled transmission from a "plane". Leer whispers meekly throughout - so that his girlfriend, who shared his flat, wouldn't be woken at night, but hey, it perfectly fit the song. As the song closes, further bleeps and blorps are heard. Again, amazingly without use of advanced electronics. " International" is similar, in that it's a quiet exposé of Leer's vocals, but it also includes a great guitar 'n bass combo. While other Leer tracks are more experimental ('Letter from America' is a kind of mutant funk) and unfocused (possibly in a good way), these two are his most accessible.

Thomas Leer - Private Plane [mp3]
Thomas Leer - International [mp3] [buy]