No Pain In Pop

@DazedDigital

No Pain In Pop playlist up now at Dazed Digital. Details below, thanks to them for their kind words.

Old Blood - I Win
Arch M - Cat Grave
Night Control - Good Looks
Little Dragon - After the Rain (Floating Points Remix)
The Mayfair Set - Already Warm
The Samps - Magnetic Thys
A Grave With No Name - And We Parted Ways at Mt Jade
Sunni-Geini - SG Main Theme
Nite Jewel - Chimera
Banjo or Freakout - Archangel (Burial Cover)

Tags: arch m, banjo or freakout, dazed digital, floating points, little dragon, night control, nite jewel, old blood, sunni-geini, the mayfair set, the samps

‘Totemic’: a blerk index

Links to sate the baying who’ve arrived here after hearing my unflinchingly pretentious ramblings on BBC Radio 1.

The Mayfair Set
The Samps
Arch M
Gentle Friendly

Our next compilation will be issued on the sixth of April.



MP3: Arch M - Cat Grave

Tags: arch m, bbc, gentle friendly, huw stephens, the mayfair set, the samps

Swinging Jaw: The Samps

The Samps‘ super-fidelity, submarine flinch-funk sounds like it was made by a team of professional stoners: athletically pumped and hi-res, but full of thoughts and ideas that survive only a few seconds before bursting like champagne bubbles at a late summer gang wedding. The Samps are a Californian band that run with a few other Californian bands. Cole MGN plays guitar with Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti and is shacked up with Ramona Gonzalez, better known to you perhaps as Nite Jewel. Jason Whitemare runs a label. Harley plays drums more angrily with Dimesland and Wild Hunt and more calmly with Stan Hubbs. You should give The Samps your money and your love.

Read our interview with The Samps’ Cole MGN at the Viceland Music Blog.



MP3: The Samps - Magnetic Thys

Tags: the samps

2OO8 ≠ 32

Photo: Tom King

It’s hard not to feel berk or beast when attempting to cram 12 months into 700 words, so we won’t even try. This late in the day there’s going to be omission to an extent that outstretches the impatient collateral of memory loss, especially as the mind wanders back to recall a year of live music that’s without peer in my 23 on this earth.

So, there’ll be no divvying up of 2008 between movements and moods here. Just a necessary trawl through the shipwreck, flotsam fished from choppy waters and beacon buoys twinkling in the ocean of our terrible collective memory.

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Tags: 20jazzfunkgreats, abe vigoda, aids wolf, alice coltrane, apple pips, arch m, baby venom, bo diddley, bradford cox, darkstar, flowdan, flying lotus, harmonia, harvey milk, health, holy fuck, mark brown, martyn, my bloody valentine, nite jewel, no age, no shows forever, oneman, panda bear, primavera sound, ramadanman, rustie, sam butler, skull disco, teengirl fantasy, telepathe, terrence dixon, the bug, the dovers, the samps, theo parrish, trg, wild beasts, wiley, zomby

Thys N Mash

Coming up for air from beneath the suffocated AM transmissions of Ariel Pink, Haunted Graffiti guitarist Cole Train’s solo works with The Samps gleam with infinite sonic clarity. After the mighty ‘TrainCUMMINGS a Litl More’ was cast with such ruvid ease, ‘Mashed Skins’ and ‘Magnetic Thys’ hurtle us on to the secret level at odyssey’s end, replenished to full health and triple gunning for boss blood; flooding out to explore every avenue your ears are unwilling to offer up with the erraticism of the later, greater Jay Dee and the low-slung gambol of Flying Lotus. Such comparisons offer nothing in the way of clues - why depend on words plucked from wet air when you can just press play and let the weekend’s collisions begin.



MP3: The Samps - Mashed Skins



MP3: The Samps - Magnetic Thys

Tags: cole train, haunted graffiti, the samps

Flamingo Dancer

Th£ Samps are hard to pin. First, there’s the name - Th£ Samps? The Samps? Th Samps? Yeah, three whole choices. It’s certainly a quandary. Whatever - the similarly equivocal ‘TrainCUMMINGS a Litl More’, flown suburban birds, glides in a kind of taxed mundane, a dance pushed the way of small-town, big-bar cohesion by the bump ‘n grind intimacy of others but dosed with enough madden to set it flailing exempt, a wastrel booty bumping the drinks of statue bores, catching far riddim.

MP3: Th£ Samps - TrainCUMMINGS a Litl More

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Tags: cole, the samps, th£ samps