Graffiti6

But you know what, summer?  Screw you.  We’re not done yet.  Get this: I’m going to wear bleached tee shirts, carry my trunks at all times, pretend it’s like 40° outside and positively drown myself in tan oil.  I’m also going to listen repeatedly to the pop of London’s Graffiti6, aka sun-drenched producer TommyD and soul-angsty singer Jamie Scott.  I might even go to their official site.  Deal with it.

Graffiti6 – Stare Into The Sun (mp3)

Blue on Blue

That there’s the view from my kitchen just now.  The rain’s torrential, mighty seas of the stuff crashing over London’s grey streets without cease.  It’s a day for cups of cocoa, mean bus drivers, trusty trainers and Blue On Blue: a London shoegaze act melding gently-throbbing guitars with trippy digitalisms to become a funkier, clearer version of The xx.  Their stuff is languid, blissful and fuzzily warm – ample protection against any bastard downpour.

Blue On Blue – Summer Daze (mp3)

Blissed Out (tube strike medicine)

Rush-hour London was crazy mary today, a tube-stricken frogmarch that strangely brought to my mind a line from Ani DiFranco’s amazing 9/11 song-poem Self-Evident: “the exodus uptown by foot and motorcar / looked more like war than anything I’d seen before”.  Everyone was dodging, braking, glaring, glistening and overtaking, all bereft of the right medicine - the Zen-like, down-tempo electronica of NYC’s Blissed Out.  That’s Dr SOIWT’s prescription, anyway…

Blissed Out - Ceballitos (mp3)

Magnetic Man

NME says of this London trio that dubstep’s crossover moment has arrived.  To my uneducated ears, it sounds more like the genre’s gone to Ibiza and come back cheesy and chavvy.  Magnetic Man are eminently listenable, but tracks like I Need Air sounds so calculatingly chart-focused I want to laugh.  Better to treat your ears to darker, fizzier numbers like MAD (below) or Glitch.  Basically, the ones where dubstep’s like it normally is.

Magnetic Man – MAD (mp3)

Monday Music – 6 September 2010

Five for this week:

The Pierces – Secret (mp3)
Stand by for a classic blogger gripe… With an imminent Polydor album produced by Guy “Coldplay bassist” Berryman, these NYC sisters are suddenly hotly tipped - having been great for bloody ages.  First appearing in 2008, this track – part seadog ditty OD’ing on accordions and part chilled-out woodsmokey jazz, speeding up to a furious fairground finale – proves as much.

Passi – Famille Et Amis (mp3)
Inevitably from Awesome Tapes from Africa, this slick Congoese (by way of France) number features tight rapping and sweet female chants over a nicely subdued, sundowner tone.

Auteur – Ultra Violet (mp3)
Maybe it was the sadness in me at the moment, or perhaps it was just the chemicals in me that evening, but at some point on Saturday night my warehouse party just quietened: it was ear-pumpingly loud there, but in my head all was diffuse, distant and oh so lonely, like this saintly electronic blur.  I danced simply because I knew to, because I couldn’t think of anything else to do. (thanks DDW)

Solid Gold – Just Like Everyone Else (mp3)
I bought two new cardigans this weekend, but neither makes me feel as cosy as this newly discovered song by my beloved Solid Gold.  It has all the Minneapolis band’s staples: heart-pained vocals, delectable keyboard beats, intensity and an echoey feel, plus some bonus swearing and a cynicism that really tempts me right now.

Dengue Fever – Tiger Phone Card (mp3)
But I refuse to be depressed, and instead surf my head along happily to this warm-hearted duet by another of my faves, ironically about a long-distance romance (the thing I just lost).  With a singalongability rating of 11 and more crests than your average surf beach, it’s the perfect pick-me-up amid this Armageddonish London of tube strikes and thrashing rain.

Lanzarote

Lanzarote is a freak-sounding London night starting on 16 October.  It looks to be run by Sexbeat and the Take Courage gallery and they’re going the viral route in terms of marketing it, with the enigmatic video below the first of a promised four.  All that’s known so far is that’ll be at an EC2 warehouse, and that HEALTH will play live.  But that’s a pretty decent start…

HEALTH – USA Boys (mp3)

Disclosure – Linstigator

You twist and turn compulsively in your sweaty, stewed bed, striving to find an angle which most douses the swell in your temple.  Distant real-world noises drift in through your window and a valuable day flits by – unseen, missed, tragically wasted.  But it’s all okay, it’s fine really, because she’s here too, she’s experiencing this awful comedown as well, and you like that common ground.  You’re on an adventure together.  But then you wake a few seconds or days later, and she’s gone, vanished, and maybe she was never there in the first place. 

Disclosure – Linstigator (mp3)