White Russia

White Russia‘s new song is like walking around a demented house party.  Each room reveals new horrors: grisly bodies moving like machinery, chattering ghosts, slavering prostitutes shooting up, girls crying… As you hurry on, a voice uncannily like Bjork’s sounds hypnotically overhead, and secretly you rather like being in this terrible place.   Just the same is true of KC Blitz’s remix, available below, too.

White Russia – Charmless State (KC Blitz Remix) (mp3)

Monday Music – 27 September 2010

Brrrr it’s bloody freezing int it?  Here’s a special winter warmers-themed instalment of Monday Music:

Wintersleep – New Inheritors (mp3)
This is a sweet song about those kids, the next generation, the bright young things, the blighters who don’t know their luck, who are seizing control.  But it’s also a maudlin, muddily beautiful slowburn about grouchily growing old, about mortality, about the unfairness of it all.  Maybe the drugs do work.

El Guincho – Bombay (mp3)
A typically lively effort from the Spanish maestro, blending passionate vocals and Balearic beats into a pulsatingly-paced, breathlessly-sung belter.  There’s no better way to block out the winter.

Twin Sister - All Around And Away We Go (mp3)
Remember the playground, on the roundabout, going round faster and faster, the sky above, the world around, the future ahead, the sun out…?  And then gradually, imperceptibly, it clouds over, and things become complicated, and cluttered and you can never quite get those feelings back, however hard you try.

Julian Lynch – Rancher (mp3)
My flatmate said recently that he believe rainbows come down someplace on earth; it is just a case of finding where.  I’m not sure I believe him, but if he’s right, I know exactly where it’ll be.  I’m not telling though – it’s my dizzy little secret, one I clutch close to my heart like a winning lottery ticket.

Givers – Up Up Up (mp3)
I hear the intro to this song, and thoroughly expect to hate it.  My hand hovers over the delete icon like a hitman impassively behind his sniper.  But then I do what any musical assassin shouldn’t: I fall in love with my prey.  It’s warm.  It’s full of fun.  It’s alive.  Dammit, but it’s all the things I want to be.  I lay down my guns and walk into the future.

Monday Music’s a weekly post (guess which day?) where I temporarily abandon my London focus for five songs from artists anywhere that I’ve enjoyed in the past week

Dysneyland

You’re at a dimly-lit warehouse party.  It’s late and you’ve been dancing for hours; your friends are here, but somwhere else, and you’re almost moving mechanically now, the music inside you, a private concert in your head.  You’re dimly aware of bodies around you, but they’re peripheral and shapeless.  Slowly, eventually, the fog clears, the sound ceases, and the lights go up.  People appear.  Eyes are rubbed.  Phone numbers are exchanged, hands shaken and cigarettes rolled.  Taxi men appear, like mosquitos. You brush past people and your friends are nowhere, long gone.  It’s nastily cold outside, all gray light and sun-glints.  You mumble something and start out for home.

Dysneyland – Dirty White (mp3)

Offset / Last.fm night at the Macbeth

I’ve just stumbled across an ace-sounding night coming up at the Macbeth in November.  Arranged by Last.fm and Offset, the Hoxton joint will play host to upcoming London bands Teeth, Fiction, Is Tropical (now signed to Kitsune) and Hounds of Hate, a Dalston electro collective about whom a devoted blog shall soon follow.  Club.The.Mammouth are among the DJs and it’ll likely be just a fiver in.  In the words of Fiction, let’s see what happens?

Fiction - Curiosity (mp3)

Life In Film

As I told a fabulous new friend recently, I adore churches illuminated at night.  They look so mystical, holy, entrancing, ghostly.  I saw the one above at about 4am last weekend while strolling home, and it was perfect – a warm-ish night, some wine inside me, leafy streets, no cars and now this window to heaven glowing above me.  All that would have improved things would have been a little of Islington band Life In Film‘s chilled-out, melodic and gorgeous music - pretty much the pop version of a hot-water bottle, only far cooler.

Life In Film - Sorry (mp3)

Monday Music – 20 September 2010

“Dear lord God: thank you very much for bringing the following songs to my attention.  They’re the fucking bomb!  Amen, Richard.”

Wu Lyf – Concrete Gold (mp3)
This song by the secretive Manchester sextet/dectet surprises me every time, even when I’ve listened to it five minutes ago.  The crackly voice, the mournful tone, the sudden histrionics, the subterranean feel, the little-boy-lost lyrics, the gorgeous electro, the impossibly huge pause in the middle, the perky outro… it’s just unique.  And that, in today’s world of musical diversity, is amazing and really exciting.

Sexy Neighbors – The Chain (mp3)
This slice of slurry, punky hoopla feels distinctly lo-fi and louche, but also barbarian, bohemian and bloody brilliant – and all that despite, sadly, not being a Fleetwood Mac cover.   It’s also got a firmly foot-stomping bassline and the sort of messy, murmury vocals that positively demand drunken singing along.

Foster The People – Pumped Up Kicks (mp3)
There’s something distinctly by-the-numbers about this: gargled vocals, repeated and high-pitched chorus, bouncy guitar hooks, humdrum structure… But for all that science, it’s darn irresistible: catchy, pretty-sounding and – crucially – possessed with a whistling mid-section. (Basically, if you want to get on this blog, send me a song with whistling in it.  I can’t say no.  I just can’t.)

Diddy – Dirty Money – Hello, Good Morning (Grime Remix by Skepta)
This is the grime remix says Skepta happily, and he be damn right.  Bringing pulsating beats and a feverish pace to Diddy’s already exciting table, Skepta has basically done the musical equivalent of adding clotted cream to scones, butter and jam.  If only there was a video…

Wonder Wheel – How To Slow Down (mp3)
Singer Paul A. Rosales sounds like he’s signing at the end of an incredibly long tube, the sound coming through tinny and rarefied as it reaches your desperate ears.  This eerie, empty feel permeates to the point of shivering and nervous jumps when the stairs creaks.

Gold Panda

(photo by David Luraschi)

The only London act named in Stereogum’s 40 Best New Bands of 2010, producer Gold Panda possesses a Salem-like ability to make electro somehow so moving and narrative that I want to cry or whoop or gasp.   In Back Home, I stand on the precipice of the main chord for ages, begging, yearning for it to come.  When at last it does, stringy and melodic, I go slack and giddy-eyed in the face of such digital goodness.

Of course, there are times when all I want are tribal chants:

Gold Panda – Back Home (mp3)
Gold Panda – Quitter’s Raga (mp3)

Monday Music – 13 September 2010

This edition goes out to the wonderful Catherine Stevens – a friend regained.  Happy days…

Alana Stewart – When The Wind Blows (mp3)
I adore modern Americana/country stuff like this: simple and stunning.  In between slow handclaps and empathy with EU citizenship, Alana pledges to make it better, betterrrrrr in some of the dreamiest vocal soars you ever heard. (NB This Alana Stewart is not that Alana Stewart)

Diamond Rings – Wait And See (mp3)
Things you need for autumn: 1. a chunky knit jumper; 2. a ready grumble about how the Christmas decs appear earlier each year; and 3. a burly, surly rock anthem with grr-able melodies, rites-of-passage lyrics and vocal peaks warm as mulled wine beside log fires.  Oh look – here’s one!

Sissi – I Hate You (mp3)
More gold from Don’t Die Wondering.  This blends diva vocals with sudden digital taps and vocal loathing, utterly unexpected and so fucking rad, as the cool kids do say.  Is this nu-soul?  Notown?  Discno?  Oh, let the genre-police worry about that, boy – we gots some wiggling to do…

Run DMT – Spruce Bringsteen (mp3)
Run DMT’s a Baltimore chap who apparently specialises in silly names and getting stoned.  Two excellent pastimes, I’m sure you’ll agree.  He also specialises in maverick, honky-tonk alt-folk songs, although none are as good as this most recent pearl.  Somebody pass that man a joint!

Phantogram – When I’m Small (mp3)
Today in London was atmospheric – rain-speckled air, swirly winds, clouds streaked with foreboding.  I felt so alive.  On days like these you need thrilling, intense songs, just like this humdinger.  It’s a bit electro, a bit harmonious, and a lot great.

Blue Daisy

That’s a shot from my balcony earlier – look how weird the moon looks, almost as if it’s been photoshopped on, right?  RIGHT?!!  Hmm.  This sort of inanity has typified my today – blurry, whirry and slurry, with some trippy climbs up the stairwells and no end of zonky notions.  As a soundtrack to such madness, the ephemeral, lo-fi electronica of Blue Daisy is perfect.  Brighton-based singer Anneka is singing on this one, a sleepy track from his forthcoming EP, Raindrops.

Blue Daisy – Blood, Petals & Roses (Feat. Anneka) (mp3)

A.HUMAN

Last night I was in Dalston thinking how nervous the eyelined guys and scarily hip chicks make me feel.  Next time I’ll seek out the company of locals A.HUMAN; the (now) trio’s wide-ranging songs, from dressing-gown rock melodies to kinky keyboard ditties to both combined, tell happily familiar tales of bittersweet worlds and sinister girls.

No MP3s, as nothing from the new album, and post-sixpiece life, is available.  They are playing White Heat on Tuesday 21st, though…