Didn’t think it’d be worth downloading cause I honestly can’t listen to this song anymore but this is the last version of “We will rock you” you might ever need – nice electro-fied mix. And while you’re there you should also check out the electro-burped “milkshake” version of cry.on.my.console. Get it from: www.wiredsounds.tk
Two more cute mixes from bootleggers:
Bittersoundfoundation, “The Tricky Mash Episode“, a great Mash Up including Tricky, Dre, Chic, Janet Jackson, and many more.
A punky electromix of Peaches by yet another alter ego of .. Chicks Dig Scars.
It’s a shame I don’t find time to d/l and listen to more mixes, cause I bet there were more great ones but this is what got stuck with me from this last week.
Another MP3 recommendation: the awesome THE PLOT TO BLOW UP THE EIFFEL TOWER have a a taster for an upcoming release up on their website. THE PLOT is a band who blends breathless Soulpunk à la Nation Of Ulysses, the openminded euphory of At The Drive-In, the snottiness of Monorchid (or Sid Vicious if you like, their singer always reminded me of him), with cool jazz vibes inspired by the likes of Mingus or Coleman, and they do anything but make a secret of being queer. Get this and don’t miss them on their european tour in September!
Here’s “One Stab Deserves The Other” of their debut album ‘Dissertation, Honey’
and
“For Francis” of their upcoming 3-Song-EP ‘If You Cut Us, We Bleed’.
By the way: Chris Thomson who sang and played in a couple of heavily inspiring bands (Circus Lupus, Monorchid, the one I least liked was Skull Kontrol) now has this new band called RED EYED LEGENDS and I was so excited when I got their album (GSL Rec.) that I waited a couple of days because I was afraid of being disappointed and to be honest, that’s what happened. It’s not that they are really bad or boring, it’s maybe more about me expecting too much. RED EYED LEGENDS again has this typical dirty punk ‘rawk’ stylishness (someone wrote something about “equal parts of noiserock and Roxy Music” but I’d rather agree with another guy who hears some Wire in Red Eyed Legends) but compared to e.g. THE PLOT my first impression is – dare I say it… yeah: it sounds slightly half-assed.
Insound.com hosts an MP3: “The High I Feel When I’m Low”.
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Another band that came to my mind today is ENON. I always loved them especially as a live act, and don’t really get why they didn’t get any bigger yet – they have all the discopunk stylishness and sexyness you would think it takes. And they did the cutest cover version of Gun Club’s “Sex Beat” ever.
Watch a nice little video (.mov) for “Carbonation” here: ENON video
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I always had thought the big difference between making music in a band and on your own is the lack of creative exchange when you don’t play with others. So it was somehow surprising that what actually stroke me as a new challenge now is a change in perspective: in a band songwriting always was (and maybe had to be) from a live point of view. Now I move in more of a studio situation: the focus is not only on what I play but on the ‘how’ and the sounds – all those really small things that often become overlooked in a band practicing room situation.
It also surprised me that the communicative element of songwriting doesn’t really get lost because as soon as you have the ‘first drawn line on the white paper’ and you think about what to add, it suddenly turns from something you create into something more objective you interact with. And there are always unexpected side effects that suddenly seem to grow in importance and get moved to the front.
I guess I never wrote a song of which I could say this is me, or I made this. From a certain stage on all the single parts or sounds seem to develop a life on their own and I can only affect or stir them or play with them, but it doesn’t feel like I ‘created’ the whole thing. On the other hand music is so fucking highly personal to me. There are things with which language fails, things I can only express or communicate in music. It’s more like most of the time I feel shattered and switch from one part time personality to another, and by creating a song some of these splinters feel attracted to each other and cling together to form something, sway together and for a moment, when a song is finished I get this feel of being whole and comprehensible. Am I getting too esoteric? Oops.
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Last Friday I helped at the bar at an alternative country show, and I liked it: Andrew Bird and Clem Snide played. Andrew Bird heavily used delay pedals, and these are simply THE effects to transform this ‘virtual band’ feel of solo songwriting to a working stage concept. He had a drummer with him but played all the other instruments himself, e.g. he first played a violin part and looped it, then put a whistling layer over it, then grabbed his guitar, and sang and so on… And he didn’t only sound like your standard American songwriter but had all kinds of influences leaping into his songs, from jazz to klezmer to latin music.
Clem Snide was awesome in a similar way. Good songs, broad instrumentation (samples, horn, etc.), and singer Eef has a wonderful dry sense of humor and they had those love-for-details surprising moments, like when they suddenly used Kelis’ “Milkshake” lyrics for one of their own songs. And they have a sweet rocking cover version of Christina Aguilera’s “Beautiful” (some nice person put up a live mp3 of this here: “beautiful” – this flugelhorn melts me away! 😉 ) Apart from their quality: you can’t but love a band with popculturally heavily significant song titles like “Joan Jett of Arc” or lyrics like “but if he was our hero as he promised he promised he could be, than he’d still be imperfect just like you and me, and it may have been the last hope for our poor empty souls – Enrique Iglesias’ mole”…