“And in the daylight I don’t pick up my phone
Cause in the daylight anywhere feels like home”
Matt & Kim
Againagainagain I’m late with my Castrop playlist but here you go:
MATT & KIM: Daylight
Matt & Kim’s ‘Grand’ is the perfect spring album. I tried to get in touch with their bookingpersons for a show around here but by now it doesn’t look like they come over for a ‘real’ tour anytime soon. Also a Thermals show won’t happen in Nuremberg anytime soon. Sad. A Wavves show for Nuremberg also isn’t safe but there’s at least a small possibility for him playing here early june.
Wavves is the one-man-band of Nathan Williams (though for live shows he brings a drummer). My favourite expression for what I read about his music was ‘Goth Surf’ but I guess that’s just because I always enjoy new nerdy subsubsubgenre-names. And if you try imagining what goth-surf kids would look like if that was to become the next big youth movement… awsum.
What does it sound like? Noisy lo-fi garage punk with enthusiastic beach-boys-singalong-melodies. Not the most innovative thing under the stars but among the most enthusiastic fun thing under the stars.
WAVVES – To the dregs
Jason & Theodor also are a little lo-fi and a little like sugar shot straight under your skin. They release their tapes and cds themselves. The name might set you on a wrong track: It’s not the x-th pathos-laden beardy-sad-man indiefolk thing but Doro & Sonja, who are something like the D.I.Y. Lo-Fi Coco Rosie. Very great. I hope we can invite them to play a show in Nuremberg very soon.
JASON & THEODOR – Postillon
Not so D.I.Y. but similary charming: Architecture In Helsinki whose latest single Antares of Electric Pony Noises (who have a great little mix for free download on their myspace site, don’t miss it!) provided me with: ‘That Beep’. It’s a nice little disco pop track with an air of carribean pop, and of all the remixes included I like the Radioclit one best.
ARCHITECTURE IN HELSINKI – that beep
Just before Abe Vigoda could be pigeonholed as the US indiepunk version of Vampire Weekend because they similarly combine tropical/ethno sounds and rhythms with indie they come up with something new: Abe Vigoda hits the reverb pedal and goes shoegaze:
ABE VIGODA – don’t lie
Coming from about the same spot on the musical map as Abe Vigoda but splashing a bit more disco into their sound is a band called Health. They have a great double-vinyl-remix-album and one of my most favorite tracks of it is this one:
HEALTH – Triceratops (Acid Girl RMX)
Gott & Die Welt have brandnew 7″ out and celebrated that with a great show at the K4 which made even made me wake up from the bad hangover I had from the Tainted Tracks night. My favourite expression of that night was: “dancing against windmills”.
GOTT & DIE WELT – Christoph
I think what Kouhei Matsunaga and Toshio Munehiro make could be called the musical contrary of what Gott & Die Welt play: nasty heavy noise techno. Nothing like the pop noise techno you might think of now, no: NHK – which is their name as techno act – music is stripped off melodies and anything you could call ‘nice’. It might not surprise that Kouhei has also worked with people like Sean Booth of Autechre, Merzbow and Asmus Tietchens. The NHK album is called ‘Unununium’ and has been released on Raster Noton. I made a mash up to celebrate the Dead Prez show at the Desi, combining ‘Bigger than hiphop’ and ‘entire set 2’.
NHK + DEAD PREZ: NHK is bigger than hiphop (eve massacre mix)
The Dead Prez show was super-crowded and the crowd was super-into-it and I’d like to thank DESI for making them play around here!
Some of Dead Prez’ political slogans might be controversial (e.g. cheering at the death of six cops in Oakland) but especially in hiphop I’d rather have one more band opening up their mouths about politics than just another hiphop combo that rhymes about bling&hoes, or that rhymes so cryptically-‘clever’ that no one understands what they are texting about.
DEAD PREZ: Politrikkks
The music of Ruidosa Inmundicia is at least as politically loaded as Dead Prez’ but in their music and the spanish vocals you can hear the anger about social wrongs much clearer. The 7″ from which this song is taken has 10 songs, so you can already guess that this is about furious short attacks from the hardcore planet.
RUIDOSA INMUNDICIA: nunca mas
Ruidosa Inmundicia will play live at the Keep It Evil festival at the K4 on the 18th of April and The Now-Denial will too. Keep It Evil is a really wonderful hardcore festival because it does not just care about D.I.Y. and cool bands but also about lots of fringe events, like hardcore quiz or pit-toys and many many things more.
THE NOW-DENIAL: Cesspools
More electronic music: Jesse Rose has been active as a producer since 1997 or longer. He and Chris Belsey have their own label, Front Room Recordings, he also has the label Made To Play, and he has made great remixes for other people but now he has an even greater album out with his own tracks. Many dancefloor albums have dancefloor hits on it but don’t really ‘make sense’ as an album. This does. It’s a really highly enjoyable gem of an album. It’s called “What Do You Do If You Don’t?” and is released on Dubsided. All thumbs up!
JESSE ROSE ft. DAVID E SUGAR: Miss Taker
Zodiac Cartel has made a fine bouncy remix for Franz Ferdinand. He had won me dj heart with his remix of Rennie Pilgrem’s ‘Drumma’ and since then there were quite a few moments that got me thinking he might have stepped into the repetition trap using similar patterns for all his tracks but with this he made me love him once more! I still got no clue who is the person behind Zodiac Cartel. I can only tell you that the name is taken from 12 supervillains from the graphic novel world.
FRANZ FERDINAND: No You Girls (ZODIAC CARTEL rmx)
More bounce pop comes from Ted & Francis. Their real names are David and Rhys and they come from Australia and have made a Kitsune-Blog-House version of the Grauzone hit without making it a cover version.
TED & FRANCIS: I wish I was a polar bear (arctic urgency edit)
Something more subtle for the end: Actress. Their album ‘Hazyville’ is released on Werk who also have released stuff like Zomby’s (I’m still grumpy at him for not turning up at Sub:city but the EP is nice) ‘Where were u in ’92?’. It is owned by the DJ and producer friends Gavien Weale and Darren J. Cunningham. The latter, mister Cunningham, also is the person behind the name Actress and has made a wonderful album with hypnotic reduced-to-the-core filtercutup deep dub house.
ACTRESS: Mincin’