“Lassoing my cowgirls dreams” – Castrop radio playlist 14th of May 2009

“Lassoing my cowgirls dreams” Mirah

CASTROP on RADIO Z
14th of May 2009

EVE MASSACRE mash up: “Drop The Queen”
AC SLATER – Banger (DROP THE LIME remix) + QUEEN – Killer Queen
(You can still download it for free from my last posting in this blog.)

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MIRAH – Country of the Future (‘A Spera’/K-Records)
MIRAH is a US songwriter who already has 5 albums released on the longlasting indie label K-Records, she lives openly lesbian and has already done a lot of different music things, for example collaborations with Phil Elvrum of THE MICROPHONES or with the BLACK CAT ORCHESTRA. With the latter she made a nice album with old and newer protest songs, from Kurt Weill/Brecht stuff to spanish and italian anit-fascist songs like ‘Bella Ciao’. Her full name is Mirah Yom Tov Zeitlyn and the middle name seems to mean ‘good day’ in jewish. Isn’t that nice? She often made my day a good one indeed, especially when listening to her ‘You Think It’s Like This, But Really It’s Like This’ album. I also remember the song ‘Lone Star’ from her very first EP or something being the soundtrack in the van on quite some of our FLAMINGO MASSACRE tours. We must have played it a hundred times. Inbetween ‘???’ tapes. Our drummer, Micha had a huge collection of those ‘???’ tapes and they perfect to listen to on tour because you could fall asleep while listening to one story and wake up to the next one and still they somehow made sense. Ach, sweet memories. Back to MIRAH: She will play live in Nuremberg at the K4 next week with TARA JANE O’NEIL (whose new album is wonderful, check it out! ‘A Ways Away’ is the name and it’s also released on K-Records.). I’m pretty excited about that because that to me is a dream package of songwriters with an attitude.

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THE CROCODILES – I wanna kill (‘Summer of Hate’ / Fat Possum/Art Fag)
I love how these guys sound like rainy UK while they come from San Diego. Wonderful happy shoegazie-indie melodies that contrast nicely with the album & song titles. Might be my favourite album at the moment. I wouldn’t be surprised if they took their name from the ECHO & THE BUNNYMEN album ‘Crocodiles’. Really, the whole album is really great 80s style shoegaze-indie-goodness somewhere between SUICIDE und JESUS & MARY CHAIN. To top off the band name dropping: THE CROCODILES consist of two guys who used to play in the great art/hardcore outfits THE PLOT TO BLOW UP THE EIFFEL TOWER and SOME GIRLS.

THE BIG PINK – Too Young To Love (House Anxiety)
They are an example of how great it can sound to mix good indie pop that also plays with 80s style shoegaze sound with modern, yeah, well, let me call it modern electro noise aesthetics, drones and stuff. They also are a duo, come from the UK and for their live appearances they have as illustruous as challenging guest musicians as Daniel O’Sullivan von SUNN O))) or Jo Apps of the Planet Mu label.

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SKREAM – Trapped in a Dark Bubble (Tectonic)
Sweet new dubstep from one of the big names: Skream aka Ollie Jones, devilishly tight track, dark and on the edge of boiling. Skream manages to make me like sounds (like for example those orchestra stabs or how you call it) that I never have liked with other music. Number 2 in the Tectonic Plates Series, it’s a split 12″ with Benga.

DIZZEE RASCAL + ARMAND VAN HELDEN – bonkers (DOORLY remix)
Another dubstep track I enjoy at the moment. This remix is a bit better than the original track.

THE PRAGMATIC – you blame me (‘Circles’ / Optimus Rec./free download)
Free music, yeah! 🙂 Just like FAUX PAS or SHUNDA K of YO MAJESTY this young band from St. Louis gives away an EP for free download here because they support filesharing, and a few remixes too (check www.thepragmatic.com), and gets well-deserved blog praise for that. The EP ‘Circles’ is also being released by the portuguese label Optimus Rec.) and it’s well worth your attention: they sound like a fiercer noisier and dancier mutation of POSTAL SERVICE. Or like a less-major-attention-seeking-crunchier FRANKMUSIK. The blog-educated ones among you might have come across one of the five bandmembers before: Andre Anjoy of RAC (Remic Artist Collective). My favourite track by RAC was the A-ha cover they made for the Buffet Libre Rewind 2 project.

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LOVE OF EVERYTHING – Birds, Ice Cream and Whales (‘Ghosts & Friends’ / Coraille)
The song is from a 19 song 12″ called “ghosts & friends” that has just been released on the german label Coraille Records. LOVE OF EVERYTHING is the solo project of Bobby Burg of JOAN OF ARC and MAKE BELIEVE and you can hear it clearly in his music that he has played with those bands which is a very good thing and reminds me on how much I’ve missed seeing at least one of their numerous projects a year. Their arty play with dissonances and their multiinstrumentalist approach while at the same time being totally charming pro-lo-fi guys and not cold perfectionists is simply heartwarming and I’m really looking forward to this show tonight. He is playing live with Ellissey Burg on drums, and they will be supported by PALETAZO, the songwriter alter ego of the PINEBENDER singer.

HAPPINESS – Look at the Rabbit Go (Adagio830)

This swedish band has played as backing band of TAR… FEATHERS on last year’s tour in germany and this year HAPPINESS will tour here with their own stuff. HAPPINESS come from Stockholm and sound like nice mixture of HUMAN LEAGUE and XIU XIU, and in this song even a bit like EMPEROR OF THE SUN. But then EMPEROR OF THE SUN reminds me of HUMAN LEAGUE too so that was redundand. Last year in Munich I saw HAPPINESS play two songs live and that was really beautiful sad-core experimental indie … ach, genre names… ach, describing music….

MYSTERY JETS & ESSER– Inbetween Days
Benjamin ESSER is a young man from Chelmsford, Esssex, UK who ATM does his best to make the VANILLA ICE hair cut socially acceptable again. While that would be reason enough to diss him out of the pop world he has made a fine bedroom-indietronica (yeah, fuck genrification!) album called ‘Braveface’ that makes up for the haircut. MYSTERY JETS are an indie band from the Eel Pie Islands in London whom I remember best for their song ‘Boy Who Ran Away’ reminding me a bit of early FUTUREHEADS and for a really cool re-edit or remix of THE FUTUREHEADS’ Kate Bush cover ‘Hounds Of Love’. MYSTERY JETS & ESSER teamed up for this CURE cover that has been released on an NME THE CURE tribute cd. THE FUTUREHEADS appear on it too, they covered ‘Lovecats’ sounding better than on any of the songs of their own new album. I’ll play that in the CASTROP radio show in two weeks. Or you can also hear it this Friday when I will dj with QUIRIN at a free entry party at K4’s Zentralcafe. We call this one-time-party-event ‘TONIGHT IS WHAT IT MEANS TO BE ____ !’ and you are welcome to fill the space. In any way possible.

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