Feeling the same always felt a con. Slack jaws tighten with the approach of sobriety’s edge, the first promise of illicits - cigarettes put to mouth even: James Dean never told you about his seized GI tract. All these auld reflex mechanics burn at control like misplaced metal surface sores… better that feelings emerge transitory and formless like sudden hot flushes. Skin overcome with mystery blood. Roman Photos provoke the attentions of emotional fluids previously unfamiliar to each other - flickers of deep-seated content, slow, swirling puffs of vanity like perfumed dust beaten from an old chaise longue, humid washes of mirth. Down they plummet into cymbal-sent motor tics and procession melodies, sensations like a lift full of falling strangers mangled, upon impact, in gross mire together. Such new melds won’t hold themselves together too long. They’ll die again quick, fearing consignment to the same emotional antiquity suffered by happiness or slow-mo, tedious kicks to the teeth.

Find more here. 7-inches more after that to follow in September through armyofbadluck.



MP3: Roman Photos - Out Of The Sun



MP3: Roman Photos - Resident

Alec has the Golden Eyes when all the songs really need are a twenty piece orchestra with various string sections, double tracked kettle drums, Clarence Clemons, three conductors, a prismic sunset, sideways waterfalls, non-dripping clocks and a good soul tip.



MP3: Golden Eye - Eraser

Forest Swords - aka ‘the Brian Wilson of the Wirral’ - goes back with us a bit. Good, then, that the ‘Rattling Cage’ single is out through the No Pain In Pop label now. Available on limited edition 7″ vinyl, visit the release subsite for more info.

“This is remarkable and everyone involved should be given the freedom of blogland. It’s making me cry at my desk. 10/10.”
Vice Singles Club



MP3: Forest Swords - Hjurt

Found someone out in the rain, sun came out, lost them again.

Don’t look me up - it’s ▲POPDRONE.



MP3: ▲POPDRONE - belong-to

RxRy and Evenings echolocated each other. This is the sound of that - curious ears and eyes, paralleled hours, no pars.



MP3: Evenings - BBABBE (RxRy remix)



MP3: RxRy - Thunder/Language (Evenings remix)

Away up there you’ve no chance of catching conscious breath. No air around to age this - just the need to shut eyes and turn into what’s become a time-proof and gilded span, dust caught in ecstatic lifts: remnant and fighting between the push and pull. Not all of it glimmers, but its dark patches permit no sinister lurk. The moment’s safe. What is, is. What was is gone. What’s to be’s irrelevant (for now at least - there’ll be quests to recapture, there always are).

So it’s all yeses, and Space Dimension Controller’s there too, somewhere, rewiring minds, etching compulsive grin, shutting eyelids. Rumble shakes ephemera, ribs jump. You did everything they told you to do and you got trapped there with them.



Fabrice Lig - Digital Forest (SDC’s 33 Degree Tape Mix)

What and where is it, that private, wry glee riding tandem with resignation: like getting thrown from a club but being sober enough not to argue about it, or settling down to prise all the splinters from the day and still finding yourself no closer to sleep: some lost itch nonetheless hovering over and vibrating the murk within, impossible to grasp and reason with. How is it they’ve come this far, Winks, but still they sound like Psychobuildings if Peter LaBier hadn’t figured out how to dance yet, defied forever in thudding drums of resignation, “re-sig-nay-shuuun”. Tangling themselves in knots. Kicking themselves in their own head. Leafing through one thousand photographs, not one of which is their youth.

Or future… Oh.

There’s a pink silk mist on this horizon. We’d better head for that then, I suppose.



MP3: Winks - Sometimes I Can Fake a Smile

This lush, lax, go-slow version of Patten’s ‘This Sharpened Mist’ aches with the whir of guilt through brain gears: each regret squeezed by ribald synths that lead it on into snare-snaps. The synapse working original version shall appear soon on a special, new No Pain In Pop compilation. Details to follow…



MP3: Patten - This Sharpened Mist (Slow Turn Version)

Something comes into view: behind your buzzing head.



MP3: Vondelpark - Caliornia Analog Dream

For you: two cops of beautiful swelter, the first Grievous Angel’s 2-Step Heaven: Volume 2 mix, the second a beguiling, indefatigable melee of Balearic disco and houses both deep and cosmic made by John Talabot for PlayGround.

Sweat out your crimes.

John Talabot’s ‘Summerized’ Mix (SoundCloud)
Grievous Angel’s 2-Step Heaven: Volume 2

The new Nate EP Planet Mu have compiled neatly tears Nathan Clark’s recent past in two: pairing itchy, hyperactive aggro-display music with softer, more soulful swipes like this that tug the heart strings but do so at around 160bpm.

Which is pretty dangerous, obviously. The 20-year-old Chicagoan’s Hatas Our Motivation EP arrives August 2nd: an album some time beyond that.

MP3: DJ Nate - Make Em Run

Two birds, no stone for Denver’s Weed Diamond, who can afford to let cares melt in the fever of things left. It may be ludicrous cabriolet, but you know the views - fringe hair on forehead, fingertips on arms, there. And, while our faceless protagonists brush tanned skin happy, it’s warming to me, loitering in what’s left, to hear how “Mint in My Mouth” relaxes the further it speeds from small-town border: chorus opening out into the embrace of something infinitely promising and vast, like the film script you’d write if you’d never seen a film at all and weren’t as jealous of other love.

Found on Carry On + Sweater Kids combo CD, out now through Bridgetown.



MP3: Weed Diamond - Mint in My Mouth

‘Qiyamah’’s for those who feel like light left-behind, impatient for late-night dramas to come. It’s suggestive of that - an intense yawning want for some kindred soul’s next orbit, waits of love that turn into knotted stays of execution.

There are so many things that could go wrong - but for now it’s all glimmer, no dazzle for Chris D’EON.



MP3: D’EON - Qiyamah

The weighty drum-pop of Bathcrones - aka Atlanta, Georgia’s Matthew Jackson Johnson - just seemed to fall straight into our hearts. Who knows - our guess is the cupped breast of Ra in the 10th Summer of Love - from where? Regardless, his debut, entitled ‘Psychorama’, is shortly to be released through our No Pain In Pop label.

He’s already made a summer soundtrack mix for those over at Vice so we thought we’d ask our Jah Pat to guest together this shades-of-all-seasons album preview by way of further introduction.

‘Psychorama’ is available to buy on limited 12″ vinyl from August 2nd 2010. Preorder here.



MP3: Bathcrones - Psychorama (Jah Pat album preview mix)

Back home in California, Leftist Nautical Antiques have finished school for the summer. Inbetween flirtations with the Henry Miller Library, upcoming tapes readied include Jeans Wilder, sunburnt Deep Sht and this effort from Shep & Me.

Forest Swords‘ ‘Rattling Cage’/'Hjurt’ strictly limited 7″ vinyl single is out on 26.07/2010 through No Pain In Pop. More info and preorder links at our release site.



MP3: Forest Swords - Rattling Cage

‘It drips from you.’

‘From where?’



MP3: Evenings - Friend

“The sexiest damn lo-fi pop group to have stalked these shores in quite some time”
NME

A band surely soon to soundtrack a high school summer slowly falling in on itself,
Veronica Falls’ ‘Beachy Head’ is out today on limited edition 7″ vinyl through our No Pain In Pop label. Backed with ‘Staying Here’, the single is available for pre-order direct here and the above video was directed by the fantastic Philippa Bloomfield.

Failed 2 drop, so came up asleep. Spine drank itself away ’til there was nothing left and my body was water for electricity to pass through. Passed throughout - tingling slime and reconditioned bliss bits adrift in sweat ponds and defunct, empty cartilage trays. Boneless, now: the ponds turned into oceans for the blue dot to traverse, its endless, electronic sweep charting new, aqueous surfaces.

“Kev,

Here is this new “super-single.”

It is 3 tracks rolled into one big stretch
a yawn:
a morning drive.
wake up to birds
enter vehicle exit
walk into buildings
past trees
that sing.”

I am blue bolt on the agua; searching for midnight jolts. Scaring you from sleep. The guts that never gave up.

Rx. Ry.

Demons gag for joy.



MP3: RxRy - Hllo Snrys _ Shdw Blsd _ Hly Brds Hym (stage version)

More transmissions from the dark place, now, as Vondelpark winces back into earshot. ‘Hippodrome’ is high life residue: the post-teen torment of the most popular kids in school.

Get it again, all over again. Too tired…?



MP3: Vondelpark - Hippodrome



MP3: EASY - Venice Beach (feat. Vondelpark)

No Pain In Pop is refreshing itself. Here’s something to ease the silence. Something not new to remember us by ’til we re-emerge.

Two similarly fine EPs in on today’s breeze. The hazier - Hypermagic’s ‘Tangerine Dream’ - remains perfectly paced despite sounding like it’s evaporating with each beat. The other - ‘Land Huxt’ - is Arch M’s gloriously characteristic beeliner for the sun. Those who fly too close..



MP3: Hypermagic - Window Rat Sundae



MP3: Arch M - Cave Grill

More glacial than the name suggests, maybe it’s fitting that Echo Lake’s ‘Everything Is Real’ holds a boldness without losing its beauty. A medley of chiming chorals, strangely metallic sleigh bells and string hit snares, it’s ‘Teen Dream’ on the case of Fitzgerald’s green light.



MP3: Echo Lake - Everything Is Real

Husband are one song old. One song. Double time speeds, quadruple times, single times. Many deftly layered loops. Probably four to eight Tascam tracks. Is that a keyboard? Perhaps a few samples. And two voices. “The drums! The drums!”



MP3: Husband - Slow Motion

Here we have Jalisco’s Los Amparito typecast as the hemispherical jester swinging to his own lopsided beat. Reminds me of favourite words (long may they last)…

‘Let yr summer winds burn and call me when they get too hot - I am an expert on those things.’



MP3: Los Amparito - Por Medio De La Lectura

London’s mysterious Vondelpark fall through blue, and the flocks, as at ease as rain, ‘California Analog Dream’ rubbed with morose machinery, XX-isms and a 2-step pulse with an almost ironic kick. Resigned, languid, sunburnt, sullen – I guess it’d be kind of arduous to be conscious of every breath.



MP3: Vondelpark - California Analog Dream

Thank your parents John Jagos, you could be anything. Here’s the Ohio University student in his Brothertiger guise - formed from slow burning synths and volcano drip bass. Both tracks are from his Visions Tunnels EP, available to buy direct from the artist here.



MP3: Brothertiger - Vision Tunnels



MP3: Brothertiger - You’re Afraid

A young gazelle negotiating his tricky step by steps through the gracelands of the home counties, Oxford’s Chad Valley makes beautifully ascending polyrhythmic pop with a soul. Reminds me of those happy days when everything you see creeps in through the rosiest of wayfarers.



MP3: Chad Valley - Acker Bilk

:visited know those blues, or the loneliness of the long distance loner, play out kaleidoscopic gloom… or dance the bitterbug, or clip their own heels, or sunbathe through syzygy…



MP3: :visited - Like Sheynius



MP3: :visited - My Broderie

Creeping in with the first shade of summer, London DIY’ers Clan Destine Records just put out Among the Bones’s debut EP. Chosen Sons Of Snakes is deep and lustre, available direct from the label and pairs with an accompanying mixtape with tracks from the Ocean, Liturgy and numerous others.



MP3: Among the Bones - Under Earth and Soil

Gauze-hearted, interstellar lope from Jessa Farkas and Camilla Padgitt-Coles’ Future Shuttle, the latter of that pair responsible for turning the sounds Blondes and Teengirl Fantasy see into colours we can too.



MP3: Future Shuttle - Saturn Red

Check the stars - Adventures in the Beetroot Field’s annual Easter all-nighter at London superclub Fabric is almost upon us. Taking place this Thursday, it features such favourites as Dam Funk, Darkstar and Mount Kimbie, as well as No Pain In Pop DJs and our very own Banjo or Freakout and A Grave With No Name. We’ve a pair of tickets to give away to whoever answers this question in the best/funniest way.

What’s the dam funkiest track ever written?

Simply post a Youtube link to your track - and email address - in the comments section below. Comments appear to be broken - email us instead. The competition closes Thursday morning and the winner will be contacted via email. For the less lucky of us there are still tickets on sale.

I’m not normally one for the mid-rangers but Latvian producer Dunian’s first batch of tracks seem to entwine frequencies around a solid spine of shifting and transparent beat with lazer gild precision.



MP3: Dunian - Love To Match



MP3: Dunian - Where is the Problem

Is the future something to step into, or something that comes hunting you? It’s a lonely traipse, one moment to the next. Never quite sure who’ll make it with you. Jah Pat’s latest mix finds comfort in tomorrow dirt, suggests the absence of clean moments dislocated from each other. If this gleams it’s ’cause someone wants it that way. No purity without purification.

Come to the Old Blue Last tomorrow night, the 20th of March. It is free.

0030 - 0200 George Fitzgerald
2330 - 0030 Jah Pat
2300 - 2330 Family
2230 - 2300 C Powers
2200 - 2230 Lois Magic
2100 - 2200 C Powers
2000 - 2100 NPIP



MP3: Jah Pat - NPIP005

Joy Orbison - The Shrew Would Have Cushioned the Blow (Actress Remix) [Aus]
Deadboy - Brock Lee Riddim [Well Rounded]
DJ Phantasy - LTFC is My Life (Steve Gurley remix) [white]
Delphic - Halcyon (Julio Bashmore remix) [unreleased]
DJ Mystery - Speechless [white]
Joy Orbison - So Derobe [Aus]
Martyn - For Lost Relatives [Aus]
October - Medium [Immerse]
Ikonika - Bastard Kids remix [East]
French Fries - Senta [Youngunz]
Mosca - Nike [Night Slugs]
Bowly - Bleeps [unreleased]
Pangaea - Neurons [Hessle]
Mosca - Gold Bricks I See You [Fabric]
Bad Autopsy - Bad Beamer [unreleased]
Pangaea - Sunset Yellow [Hessle]
George Fitzgerald - W.R [Doldrums]
Four Tet - Plastic People [Domino]

Been around a while, too good not to post. If rays of light could shatter bedroom windows. Out as part of Glasser’s True Panther Sounds EP.



MP3: Glasser - Learn (John Talabot Remix)

If you could swap your tired eyes and all the muck they’ve seen to peer at the world through crisp lens pixels… would you fear the memory lack? Ever so sharp, Bathcrones‘ ‘Vineyard of the Sea’ waves a sad goodbye to tangibility, an acute idyll meditative hacking on humid bliss evaporations.

Originally out through Beko DSL. Thanks to Joel Wright for the tip.



MP3: Bathcrones - Vineyard of the Sea

A sudden thing, now, from Patten, whose ‘Fire Dream’ surges like if London traffic were made up of homing missiles. Can’t wait for the more to come: vrooming west in light piles.



MP3: Patten - Fire Dream (c90 Demo)

MP3: Mon Insomnie - Barbed Wires

Rather than turn to boyed, cloud statues, Peepholes continue to swim deliriously towards the heart of the dying of the lo-fi light: rushing headlong into cataclysm like anti-matter hungry for return to a previous non-galaxy. ‘Lairs’ is torn from a new 12″ out through Hungry for Power, you should get it, get it here.



MP3: Peepholes - Lair

Mixing West Coast chills with the Baleares heat, London’s Hypermagic does it simple. Soft, warming and high - evocative still with the gaudiest of primary colours.



MP3: Hypermagic - Jackie Dash



MP3: Hypermagic - Pico Bilsco

The Brown Acid - ‘Bastard Kids’ (Ikonika RMX). Out the 1st of March through East Recordings. Music enhanced by the wire-bound ‘this is a promo’ lady.

Both ‘Double Rainbow’ and ‘Breaststroke’ seem to exist in a yearned-for summer haze state where everything is confusing, but everything is good. Protect-U’s former is the more agitated of the pair, rattling away and ready to burst like John Talabot jamming with Blondes jamming with Invisible Conga People jamming with Aphex Twin or just the sun caught in a giant glass marble, while Mathemagic’s is a more sedate baffling, languorous and listless and all those other words that essentially just mean ’sunshine’.

Find ‘Double Rainbow’ on the A-side of Protect-U’s debut 12″ at Discogs and the Future Times website. Thanks to Peter O’Grady for the tip.



MP3: Protect-U - Double Rainbow



MP3: Mathemagic - Breaststroke

Montreal’s d’Eon shows his worth, quells nagging doubts and answers questions like ‘Would a heart still be wet if it bled instead of wept?’ What’s here is ticklish and panging, like champagne through the eyeballs or if Ariel Pink preferred the anonymity of the wailing house diva over lost FM transmissions. You’ll drift on oblivious. Felt divinity-propelled. Time for us to burst, then.



MP3: d’Eon - Prochaine Station



MP3: d’Eon - Across the Sea

Forest Swords just drafted a mixtape to promote his forthcoming 12″, debuting this batch of reworkings in the process. Two of 2009’s best tracks submerged in the same dubby zen as last year’s incredible ‘Fjree Feather‘, they show a gauzy, sophisticated control of texture and emotion rare in any genre. Pre-order ‘Dagger Paths’ now, out through NYC’s Olde English Spelling Bee next month.



MP3: Burial / Four Tet - Moth (Forest Swords rework)



MP3: Wild Beasts - Hooting & Howling (Forest Swords rework)

Here’s one toxicology report you wouldn’t want to fuck with. Fresh and familiar with a few noted others right now, London producer Bad Autopsy takes a depth charge to garage’s high end stutter and comes up with the bends.

Tracks now due for release - stream only.



MP3: Bad Autopsy - Beam Beamer



MP3: Bad Autopsy - Psionic Terror

Ain’t nothing Lois Magic can do about the weather. CS on FLA last decade.



MP3: Lois Magic - Dead Quiet

Of blue lather and yearning girls, humid midnights and gritty palms, Psychobuildings sits on suburban kerbs waiting for his friends to find him. He is descended from the first man who ever thought to put a bulb inside a bedside globe. His name is Peter and these tracks will feature in a series of singles put out through All Hands Electric and Cass Club.

Sounds a bit like The Cure playing Nite Jewel songs for dreaming children.



MP3: Psychobuildings - Birds Of Prey



MP3: Psychobuildings - Paradise

Chatter with FaltyDL, Pariah and Grave Babies over at Viceland.

MP3: FaltyDL - St. Marks



MP3: Pariah - Blackfriars



MP3: Grave Babies - Haunted

More from Seattle’s Grave Babies.

The future fighting through the fug. Silver rocket rising through the mud.

What about you? What do you like?

“I don’t even know. I’m beginning to think I’m pretty anti-social. I ignore a lot of phone calls and chances to do stuff. Like I said, I’ve started to record bands other than my own, but sometimes even that feels like a drain on the time I could be spending laying in my room doing nothing.”



MP3: Grave Babies - Haunted



MP3: Grave Babies - Gouge Your Eyes Out

Next month should see an Eternal Summers EP released through through Meal Deal.

A million miles from Kal-lif-forn-yah, Dazzle Ships.



MP3: Dazzle Ships - Paradise



MP3: Dazzle Ships - Spell On Me (demo)

The Human Race are pretty great, barrelling around as they do in wool jerseys and prosthetic horse heads, banging drums that sound like your girlfriend falling asleep so you can go back downstairs and carry on getting high, forcing thoughts ‘pon you like, ‘Is it me or the music that’s a petty, reptile-brained arsehole?’

And if you don’t know the answer to that already, you’re fucking doomed.



MP3: The Human Race - Incantation



MP3: The Human Race - Insane Trip

Wider than the heavens? Deeper than the oceans? Taller than the mountains? Denser than the sun?

In perfect pervasive singularity, as of right now Among the Bones have their ‘Profile views’ stuck exactly at 6666. Always goin’ that extra mile..



MP3: Among the Bones - An Alter For Snakes and Vermin

I haf written a article:::: ‘Glo-fi and the Sadness of the Advertised Man’ ///

Here, as part of the Quietus’ dying-decade ‘Wreath Lecture’ series.

Normal service shall be resumed shortly.

She slunk away and fell asleep, beneath a tree in electric swamp; propped up where the dogs won’t find her, away from me in electric swamp. Ghost Hunter’s remix of E.Gold and Alexis’s ‘Separate Our Hearts’ has dreams riddled neon in opportune hidey-holes, full of baleful, searching light and swung by womb-bound heart beats. The original’s out through the mighty Angular Recording Co. in March.

E.Gold showed me this brilliance - anyone know where I can get a copy of Oneohtrix Point Never’s Memory Vague DVD?



MP3: E.Gold feat. Alexis - Separate Our Hearts (Ghost Hunter remix)

Seattle’s Grave Babies stay loyal to their undead schtick - a glance at track titles from last year’s Deathface cassette (out through Skrot Up) reveals ‘Eating Babies’, ‘Demons’, ‘Graves’ and ‘Blood Forever’. Doom-eyed and downhearted, they’re not all bite, bite, bite. Their melancholy is as indebted to Eighties post-punk and industrial as it is to Misfits, all crudely trapped beneath familiar lo-fi gauze-glow. It’s a sound that makes being undead seem like a solid life choice and one you’d revel in, if blood were something you could revel in.

Find the whole album here, choice cuts (tearings?) below. We’ll endeavour in the mean time to strip new slabs from their disintegrating hides, some of which can be heard at the band’s MySpace page, linked above.



MP3: Grave Babies - Eating Babies



MP3: Grave Babies - Ache

Bok Bok’s thrown a big mix over at Lower End Spasm - blows hot and cold on brains like fever (grime ice + tropical ardour). Highlights come in the bounce of Aphrodisiax‘ ‘Unfinished Business’, Egyptrixx‘ ‘The Only Way Up’ and Jam City’s still murderous refix of ‘Ecstasy’ by Endgames.

Given the latter pair are due out on a tooled up Night Slugs label (releases from Mosca, Kingdom, Greena, Girl Unit, as well as Bok Bok and L-vis 1990 are also in the pipes) it looks like 2010’s mostly gonna be spent throwing roses their way. Snag the mix here, tracklist after the fold.



Bok Bok - Jan 2010 Mix

BOK BOK - Jan 2010 Mix

MR MAGEEKA - ‘Diffrent Lekstrix’ [Numbers]
APHRODISIAX - ‘Unfinished Business’
EGYPTRIXX - ‘The Only Way Up’ [Night Slugs]
DVA - ‘Natty’ [Hyperdub]
BEEZY - ‘Dejavoodoo’ (GEENEUS remix)
MOSCA - ‘Nike’ [Night Slugs]
COOLY G - ‘Digitally Higher’
GIRL UNIT - ‘I.R.L’ [Night Slugs]
BOK BOK - ‘Citizens Dub’ ft Bubbz [Blunted Robots]
BOK BOK - ‘Hands Riddim’ (JAHDAN vocal)
ENDGAMES - ‘Ecstasy’ (JAM CITY Refix) [Night Slugs]
BOK BOK - ‘Ripe Banana VIP’
TERROR DANJAH - ‘Sidechain’ [D.O.K Remix]
MOSCA - ‘Square One’ (BOK BOK Remix) [Night Slugs]
UNTOLD - ‘Bad Girls’
KINGDOM - ‘Mind Reader’ [BOK BOK Dub] (Fool’s Gold)
2562 - ‘Love In Outer Space’
BAD AUTOPSY - ‘MAG’ (Rare Cymbals Version)

Fwd to Year 2017. CD compilations as the avant Dewey Decimal? Back to Year 2010 and Ghost Hunter and Ice Castles are the highlights of Don’t Die Wondering’s ‘Volume 1′ tome - an exercise in brevity and beauty which can be ordered here.



MP3: Ghost Hunter - Through The Haze



MP3: Ice Castles - Deers Den

Taken from the as yet unnamed follow up to last year’s transitory classic-in-situ ‘Death Control‘, these new Night Control tracks suggest a certain soaring, meditative quality has been added among the acute pop plaintives the debut was acclaimed for. Due through California’s evergreen Kill Shamen sometime this month.



MP3: Night Control - C S



MP3: Night Control - Maybe There’s A Chance

You wouldn’t leave a football match early.

Tracks

1. FaltyDL - ‘To New York’
2. Joy Orbison - ‘Hyph Mngo’
3. Washed Out - ‘Feel It All Around’
4. Blondes - ‘Spanish Fly’
5. Wild Beasts - ‘All The King’s Men’
6. Burial & Four Tet - ‘Moth’
7. Deep Sht - ‘Sidetripping’
8. Floating Points - ‘J&W Beat’
9. No Age - ‘Losing Feeling’
10. Toro Y Moi - ‘Sad Sams’ 
11. Kindness - ‘Gabriel’
12. The Horrors - ‘Three Decades’
13. Karizma - ‘Drumz Nightmare’
14. Atlas Sound - ‘Quick Canal’ (feat. Laetitia Sadier)
15. Lone - ‘Joy Reel’
16. Joy Orbison - ‘Smother’
17. 141 - ‘In Out’
18. Trailer Trash Tracys - ‘Strangling Good Guys’
19. Jam City - ‘In The Park’
20. Actress - ‘Ghosts Have A Heaven’

Albums (in no particular order)

Kurt Vile - Childish Prodigy
FaltyDL - Love Is A Liability
Wild Beasts - Two Dancers
The xx - xx
The Horrors - Primary Colours
Martyn - Great Lengths
Night Control - Death Control
Telepathe - Dance Mother
Karizma - A Mind Of Its Own V2.0 - The Upgrade
A Grave With No Name - Mountain Debris
Nite Jewel - Good Evening
Atlas Sound - Logos
The Smith Westerns - The Smith Westerns

Recorded in a community hall in Brighton, you are maybe now able to understand the acute engineering concerns that have hampered The Sticks‘ ascent, only now able to flaunt their debut LP. As with their 2007 split EP, The Sticks is available through Upset The Rhythm, and finds their crude garage kicks in rude health; warped Joe Meek claustrophobics hugging a doting Diddley jukebox clatter.

MP3: The Sticks - Messing Around

MP3: The Sticks - I’m Wrong

A Grave With No Name’s debut album - ‘Mountain Debris’ - is out through No Pain In Pop now. Buy a copy direct on CD or digital release here.

“A uniquely 21st century take on lo-fi that compels spectral washes of sound to tussle with fuzzy guitar breaks in a considered game of cat and mouse. 8/10.”
NME

“A shoegazing masterpiece to round off a year of lo-fi brilliance.”
Dummy

“Overall contemplative and haunting, it takes several spins before the album’s full depths and stark beauty can be fully discovered. With this album they’ve cemented that they’ll be remembered, if not by the masses then at least by those that really matter.”
Loud and Quiet



MP3: A Grave With No Name - And We Parted Ways At Mt. Jade

A stunning, opulent mix from dapper London gent Sam Butler, ‘The Workout’ features cuts from Claro Intelecto, D5 and Kenny Larkin, as well as a jaw-dropping centre-piece in the form of Orlando Voorn’s sullen and balmy ‘Power Of Beauty’. Techno and house music to kick you on through the snow and out the other side - tracklist after the fold.



MP3: Sam Butler - The Workout

Vince Watson - ‘Ethereal’
D5 - ‘Floatation Tank’
Ben Klock - ‘Sub Zero’
Claro Intelecto - ‘Above’
Dimi Angelis & Jeroen Search - ‘Our Life With The Wave’
Claro Intelecto - ‘Great Day’
Kenny Larkin - ‘Without Sound’
Orlando Voorn - ‘Power of Beauty’
Kenny Larkin - (unknown)
The Other People Place - ‘Sorrow and a Cup of Joe’

This one’s out to all the lonely souls. Seams is James Welch from London, who says ‘Nightcycles’ “is inspired by the freedom of 3am bike rides on deserted roads, and is constructed primarily from samples taken from a Nineties Elliott Smith documentary.”

It sounds nice if you play two versions of it at the same time. Start the second six seconds after the first, if you like.



MP3: Seams - Nightcycles



MP3: Seams - Nightcycles

Zach Steinman of twilight marvels Blondes told me the only thing I know about CCHG.

“That track was made by my two friends at Oberlin [college, Ohio] while they were on a lot of ecstasy! Haha!”

Explains as much as and everything you need to know, really. Twilight is ecstasy’s time, find ‘Chinaman Papa’ standing between different shades of dark on a recent ‘Purple Glazed’ mix Blondes put together for Vice.



MP3: CCHG - Chinaman Papa

Austin’s Pure Ecstasy are a hapless mob. All their songs sound like elegies for honourable intentions, downtrodden, friendless, loveably out-of-luck. More specifically, they’re fucking great - like optimism if it was alive today or The xx trapped in a hoover’s womb. Hear their moonshine lament, painted with all the ripe colours of woe - woe!

‘Easy’ and its twin, ‘Baby’, will arrive on a 7″ through the marvellous and nascent Light Lodge in the next couple of weeks (”hopefully”). 500’s your limit; all white vinyl - another 7″ will be out after that through Acephale.



MP3: Pure Ecstasy - Easy

A round table of sorts - members of Hype Williams, Hounds of Hate, Arch M, Dream Tennis, Paradise Sisters and Design A Wave form the Bo Khat Eternal Troof Family Band. Recorded live at the Ministry of Life chapel in London on 21st November 2009.

Duration = 00:22:51



MP3: Bo Khat Eternal Troof Family Band - #005

New video for These New Puritans‘ ‘We Want War’, directed by Daniel Askill. TNPs new album, their second, is called Hidden and will be out through our friends at Angular on January 18th 2010 (Domino worldwide).

In which Kindness (i.e. Adam Bainbridge during his time at The Philadelphia Institute for Advanced Study) teams up with the equally glorious Kurt Vile and weirs out a surf of felt-just-beyond-the-fingertips sea drone and caught, spectral noise. Find Bainbridge’s whole Live In Philly collection here.

“Live in Philly is Adam Bainbridge’s contribution to the Eric James Johnson Memorial Fellowship program. It consists of an album recorded during his stay at the Institute in May 2007, and a small pamphlet illustrating the work, typeset by hand. Employing a variety of musicians from the Institute and the rest of Philadelphia, as well as sound sources and records found or recorded in the city, the Kindness album is a personal and welcome contribution to the Institute’s body of work.”



MP3: Kindness and Kurt Vile - Acceptance is Path to Serenity pt. 2&3

Leaden bass knuckleheads, take note: this is how you get heavy. Joker stands apart - he’s a low-end brute with rare flair, adding subtle licks of rainbow paint to his dub storm, doling punches that leave you smiling wry at the psychedelic bruises on your arm. While we’ve slunk from dubstep in recent times for things more lithe and surprising, Bristol’s Purple master offers a sound that’s impossible to resist, coming on like a modern day musical echo of Gabriele d’Annunzio or Alex DeLarge: young, skilled yob daubing art with victims’ blood.



MP3: Primary 1 & Riton - Radiates (Joker RMX)
(via The Fader; via NME)

The strident shimmer of Dante’s ‘Reb Ib’ is a future-sex seduction dance to entertain the courts of fat sultans, music box memories raided and made strong by seven circles and the wrong end of a lash. Grinning, the sultan will die, his organs splattered across the walls, the ceiling and the floor like exploding graffiti, his court now a prism of light and peace, his seven circles a cold, sunny day walk in the park.



MP3: Dante - Reb Ib



MP3: Dante - Denwens

More confusion-as-sound from Cleveland’s truant Cloud Nothings, this time pulled from their eight-track full-length Turning On, out now through Bridgetown. Limited edition, naturally - 50 CDs and 100 cassettes for the spittle-flecked few. Get drenched.

In other Bridgetown news, boss man Kevin Greenspon’s re-issuing a CD he took out on tour with him this summer. Get that into your ears through Tired Trails (we don’t post excerpts, Greenspon!).

Even if your shit is golden. Shit like this “pre-teen pop punk song” (from a split called Blue Crush Kevin made with Nicole Kidman).



MP3: Cloud Nothings - Can’t Stay Awake



MP3: Kevin Greenspon and Nicole Kidman - Tyrone

Jah Pat has been eaten by machines. He liked it, though - conveyor belts reeled him in grinning, tireless rubbery tongues delivering him unto a belly of cogs, cables and tiny lasers made huge by the chewing of him into blissful invisibility. Busy and supremely well-oiled, NPIP004 is the greatest mix Pat’s offered up yet - the ever-reliable bassland sentry going deeper, darker, seeing more than ever before.

Taking in Darkstar, George Fitzgerald, Daniel Wang, Joy Orbison and Deadboy, the full tracklist can be found after the jump.



MP3: Jah Pat - NPIP004


Tyree- ‘Video Crash’
Darkstar - ‘Aidy’s Girl Is a Computer’ (Kyle Hall Mix) (Hyperdub)
Martyn - ‘Mega Drive Generation’ (Hyperdub)
George Fitzgerald ‘Don’t You’ (Doldrums)
Fuzzzy Logic - ‘In The Morning’ (white)
Joy Orbison - ‘The Shrew Would Have Cushioned The Blow’ (Aus)
Instra:mental - Leave It Behind’ (Applepips)
Daniel Wang - ‘All Flowers Must Fade’ (Environ)
Floating Points - ‘Vacuum Boogie’ (Eglo)
Zomby - ‘Tarantula’ (Hyperdub)
Kenton Slash Demon - ‘Singla’ (Tartelet)
Deadboy - ‘U Cheated’ (Well Rounded)
Bubblez - ‘Ice Rink Refix Instrumental’ (white)
2562 - ‘Like a Dream’ (Tectonic)
Gucci Vump - ‘Sha! Shtil!’ (L-Vis 1990 remix) (unreleased)
Gremino - ‘Shining’ (unreleased)

Imagine being born with wings yet choosing not to fly. These searching, compression soaked half-arpeggiates from Virginia producer Annu retch the upward thrust whilst never truly soaring. The Def Vibrations record is out through his hometown’s Chocolate Milk now.



MP3: Annu - Juice Smoke

The crystal clouds of Deep Sht’s Weird You EP have finally drifted close enough to catch us all in their heavy rainfall. It’s out now - buy a copy direct on 7″ or digital here.

Find a dream-goading and gently exhilarating new track from crestfallen London flaneur Tom Watson below.

“Tremendous Garageband-gaze ephemera… fizzy, scuzz-smeared noise pop that’s abstract, littered with blissfully intangible pop dynamics and somehow still manages to rock.”
Boomkat



MP3: Deep Sht - Sidetripping

Relax your shoulders. Pull the top edge of both ears forwards. Furrow your brow, then lift your cheeks so they close your eyes before your eyelids do, then stretch your chin down as far as it’ll go. Stay stuck, then move side-to-side in time with the second hand on your clock. You are now appropriate for Weekend’s ‘Youth Haunts’, a stunning, doomed darkness on the B-side of All American, a 10″ forthcoming through the mighty Mexican Summer.



MP3: Weekend - Youth Haunts

And here, ‘The Making Of…’

Joy Orbison refixing Four Tet’s ‘Love Cry’ into something that still sounds like it exists in the elastic gravity between the ‘floor and some golden being’s golden sole.

Too uncool for school? There are only three things we know about Cloud Nothings, pictured above. The first is that they’ve been kicked out of every educational institution they’ve ever been enlisted in for playing truant. The second is that their lo-fi is better than your lo-fi. The third is that you can get at that lo-fi on a CD out before month’s end through the Californian heroes of Bridgetown Records.



MP3: Cloud Nothings - Hey Cool Kid

Soap box joyride and Slush Puppy fatalism from Seattle’s worryingly named Gape Attack!. I suppose this was what 2009 must have sounded like.



MP3: Gape Attack! - Be With Me

Still up from Halloween? Loosen that headswell with some sparse, weird ambiance at London’s the Lexington on Wednesday night, courtesy of a rare UK outing for Kranky’s plaintive and poignant pairing of Benoit Pioulard and Boduf Songs, plus A Grave With No Name, whose debut album ‘Mountain Debris’ is out later this month. No Pain In Pop DJs also feature, and tickets are online here. Also worthy of a fitting but fleeting mention is the new CS from Word Wood Salad, due out on Hockey-Rawk shortly.



MP3: Benoit Pioulard - Tie



MP3: A Grave With No Name - You’re Gone



MP3: Word Wood Salad - Side A / Hockey-Rawk CS

Suburban mirrorball funknagogics from San Francisco, America’s Rangers, courtesy of Todd at Olde English Spelling Bee. ‘Deerfield Village’ will feature on a forthcoming LP called Suburban Tours, out through OESB and Future Sound before year’s end.

Peepholes are from Brighton and play lo-fi music, but don’t let that get your backs up - their ‘Airforce Trainer’ tears, static scream surging like rips jets made in the cloth of the skyline. Why are vapour trails always utopian? Why are vapour trails always Utopian?



MP3: Peepholes - Airforce Trainer

More glide. And does Future Trends glide - through gears and problems, evading chemical sludge and girl trouble, out the other side somehow clean and fresh as a diamond. ‘Moonraker’ and ‘Dangerous’ feel like being born outside in the rain, like Jan Hammer was. Some of us are just blessed like that, I suppose.

More wine?



MP3: Future Trends - Moonraker



MP3: Future Trends - Dangerous

…to make this better.

X YOUR SIGNATURE X

Hold tight for our Halloween line-up… bigger than big.

Not too much surfacing at the minute - but Walls give bliss from above, without ever getting too deep. Expect something on Kompakt shortly. The equally upholding Forest Creature have a record due on the imposingly gloomy Blackest Rainbow sometime inbetween their stilted, stuttered flex jaunt.



MP3: Walls - Gaberdine



MP3: Walls - Burnt Sienna



MP3: Forest Creature - 2



MP3: Forest Creature - 6

Dan Avery’s mixes creep covert into the world like wrong, dark loves, the sole determined mind in a muddle of confused intoxicateds. This latest - Autumn, 2009 - takes that moment when ivy club laser falls upon you like tractor beam and stretches that moment out into 50 minutes of odd, alien lucidity. Lemonade, Fuck Buttons and Gold Panda are encountered along the way, as well as Florence and the Machine, Simian Mobile Disco and Tiga - let’s be clear, these people could never appear here without Stopmakingme’s turning them into something more subtle and sly, rushed into the bunker club in fake ‘taches and comedy specs. That’s the way, though - the odd lucidity, bunkered up, hunkering down, turning the world inside out from beneath its busiest bricks.



MP3: Stopmakingme - Autumn 2009 mix

Lemonade - ‘Bliss Out’ (Gold Panda Remix)
Mountain People - ‘MountainPeople0083′
Tiga - ‘Beep Beep Beep’ (Phonogenic Remix)
DJ Sprinkles - ‘Grand Central’ (Part I - MCDE Bassline Dub)
Florence & The Machine - ‘Drumming Song’ (Boy 8-Bit Remix)
Fuck Buttons - ‘Surf Solar’
Simian Mobile Disco - ‘ASPIC’
Runaway - ‘Black Label Honey’ (TBD Remix)
Delphic - ‘Counterpoint’ (Delphic’s En Route Remix)
Lump - ‘Confusion’
Jive Rhythm Trax - ‘112 BPM’
Donnacha Costello - ‘Miss Synclaviera’

The very good folk at Glasgow’s LuckyMe x Wireblock conglomerate have re-up’d some of Hudson Mohawke’s classic 2008 ‘Ooops!’ EP. He’s got a scattered new LP - which half sounds like it’s come straight outta of Wham City - due on Warp this fall, but this is him at his boundlessly inventive, genre splicing best. Also - in completely accidental duplicity - he’s playing our Nail the Cross festival next month.



MP3: Hudson Mohawke - Ooops



MP3: Hudson Mohawke - Still On It

Here are two new productions probably from Zomby. I guess he wants you to hear them.



MP3: Zomby - Vertigo

Ghost Hunter stalks lithe prey through gleaming wetworks of Cristal future, getting his air from bubbles and other odd things like that, in amid the pink fluid spats and rainbow melt. In ‘Barbados Island’ Verrecchia puts the Impressionist wash on the work of sharper bassland sentries; the weirdo synth flutter of Lone and FaltyDL submerged in a weighty bloom of synth pollen and dewdropped Teengirl Fantasies.

Verrecchia is from Sheffield, and has a release out now through the admirables at Enough Records.



Ghost Hunter - Island Barbados

We’re pleased to say the debut single - ‘Candy Girl’ / ‘You Wish You Were Red’ - from Trailer Trash Tracys is out through No Pain In Pop on 7″ only now. Order it here.

“Debut single-of-the-year contender.. overwhelmingly gorgeous.”
Gorilla vs Bear

“A brilliant slice of woozy guitars, hazy vocals and noise pop.”
the Independent

“No Pain In Pop’s New Cross noise-pop farm continues to reap a rich harvest..”
NME



MP3: Trailer Trash Tracys - Candy Girl (demo)

No Pain In Pop and Adventures in the Beetroot Field’s annual festival of new bands, producers and art - Nail the Cross - is taking place on Saturday October 10th in our native New Cross. After last year’s trist with Domino, we’re pleased to announce that this year we’ve got the good people at Hyperdub involved. To celebrate their upcoming fifth anniversary they’ll be hosting a stage with the legendary Kode9 + Spaceape, Joker, Ikonika and a very exciting live set from Darkstar. There’s lots beyond this too - with Hudson Mohawke, Banjo or Freakout, Male Bonding, Arch M, Forest Swords, Trailer Trash Tracys and many more playing - as well as art curated by Off Modern and Take Courage. Click the poster for the full line up, read more details and then buy limited £10 tickets here.

Here’s a teaser of what to expect from the Hyperdub side of things - an Ikonika set from Ustream last night.

DOWNLOAD: Ikonika - 09/09/09

We’re busy, but Navajo Bixby sent in some new tracks a while back that demand a listen.



MP3: Navajo Bixby - Moonlighting



MP3: Navajo Bixby - Many Ways

New things on the way, but with September on, an ask - track of the year so far? So busy, so on point. FaltyDL’s the real thing, red and violet sparks in the dark. New EP Bravery’s out through Mu in October.



MP3: FaltyDL - To New York

The acclaimed debut album from California’s Nite Jewel - ‘Good Evening’ - is released today through No Pain In Pop. The free launch show is on October 3rd at London’s Cargo, and is the final date in her upcoming European tour.

Buy the release direct for £7 here.

“Like the phrase ‘Nite Jewel’ itself, Good Evening is minuscule and precious…”
Pitchfork



MP3: Nite Jewel - Weak For Me

Curb Crawlers recently posted some tracks from upcoming UK producer Doc Daneeka. As they say themselves, it’s the rolling, dark + soulful vibes (most apparent on this brooding remix of 2004’s DMZ classic) which stand him out from the more abrasive funky cuts of Lil Silva, Roska et al - those between which he effortlessly dot joins on his latest Rhythm & Bass Vol. 1 mix. Expect to feel more of the same if you’re heading out Carnival way this weekend.



MP3: Doc Daneeka - Funky Bit



MP3: Digital Mystikz - Pathways (Doc Daneeka Remix)

As part of Off Modern’s week long South East in East festival - designed to highlight the best art and music coming from the capital’s thriving but forgotten quarter - we’re hosting a No Pain In Pop label showcase this Tuesday. We’re sad to say the previously announced debut shows from Forest Swords and Among the Bones will not be happening - they’re victims of prospective employment and swine flu respectively. However, we are very excited to announce a special guest from the label will be joining A Grave With No Name, who are releasing the ‘Mountain Debris‘ collection in November, and Deep Sht, them of October’s ‘Weird You EP‘ , on the bill. So, to confirm, it’s on Tuesday 1st September at Vibe Bar on Brick Lane, London, and tickets are available on the night for £5. We’ve a pair of tickets to give away free, just send us an email - us@nopaininpop.com - with your name and we’ll pick a winner at random.



MP3: Deep Sht - Hector



MP3: A Grave With No Name - Sofia

I like how the drab architecture’s gawped at like beautiful women. And the colour of the noise at the beginning.

It’s just gone half past nine in America and Drew ‘FaltyDL‘ Lustman continues to explore clubland’s intimate spaces, the skipping, mooning ‘Party’ out soon alongside ‘AlpaFun’ on a Ramp 12″.

Raise your hands and hearts for another predictably great release from Forest Swords. ‘Glory Gongs’ does nothing if not maintain the ridiculously high standards set previously, running off the same slow release Satori and soulful ambiance. Backed with a brilliant cover of Aaliyah’s ‘If Your Girl Only Knew’, the cassette is out very shortly on US label Woven Tones and should be pre-ordered forthwith.



MP3: Forest Swords - Glory Gongs

If God stays up all night, does time re-sync around Him? I wondered that. I listened to Blondes and I thought of the push and the pull and of how the faces of stretched out hours might contort like concrete gargoyles. Rain batted at them, then at the crystals in the corners of my eyes. A film fell over my eyelids and all the colours started running as one, shapes were impressions and lights succour. I imagine the imminent rain was replaced by more imminent rain.



MP3: Blondes - ‘Spanish Fly’

As winter will likely slow the recent glut of lower-fi beachside pop, we might as well strip + bask when given the August chance. So, some more tracks to let your ears pick holes amongst the sound and float around - this time courtesy of Cleveland’s brilliantly titled, possible Arch M referencer, Cat Killer.



MP3: Cat Killer - Tree Limbs Together



MP3: Cat Killer - My Magazine Heart

I’m gonna chance my arm and say that, yes, Teengirl Fantasy have definitely at some stage or another “been alone/in a room”. Logan and Nick are resident DJs at The Bedroom Club, luring house ghouls away down pitch black cul-de-sacs and slaying them before repainting the carcass in its own juices, like Manet and Guillaumin with paws covered in bloodcolours. Juiceboxxx have them sussed - stifled loner tension dreams drifting off out an open window, the still-life tableau of an idler’s lair bursting with explore, friction between static and move most evident in drum machines all set to jack but ultimately kept pent by brick, mortar, glass, oak, angst, cash, shame. This is the fate befalling post-generics across the cosmos. This is why they’re almost always skewed parts-sad, -mad, -ecstatic.

‘Hollywood Hills’ b/w ‘Love Don’t Live Here’ - originals out through Dick Move at Pukekos.



MP3: Teengirl Fantasy - Hollywood Hills (Juiceboxxx’s Borders of Canada Remix)

11/04/08
21/07/08
15/08/08
05/09/08
21/09/08
24/09/08
20/11/08
24/11/08
08/12/08
12/12/08
27/12/08
18/02/09
15/06/09

It’s with this code that we catalogue our love for Gentle Friendly, at the approach of another giddy apex - debut, debut, debutants. Let heads fall back and eyes swivel in sockets, jaws jut, muscles flux. The album’s out through Upset! The Rhythm, where you’ll also eke the rest of this - “shall we call it a digital single?”. Let’s, they’re dead.



MP3: Gentle Friendly - Clean Breaker

WCW = William Carlos Williams, World Championship Wrestling, William Cody Watson. Whilst the opening pair have their respective merits, it is the latter who co-runs Bathetic Records - responsible for recent Jeans Wilder, A Gal and the Dawns tapes. Here are the latest Cough Cool and Nude Beach tracks, both from upcoming Bathetic releases, plus a missive fired from the debut album of WCW’s own Pink Priest project, due soon on the increasingly interesting La Station Radar label. I’m not quite sure who’s in what band - I think they all share members - but I’d like to think the whole thing can be traced back to a hulking collective-conscious lurking somewhere West Coast, drawn shy and speaking only in C20.



MP3: Nude Beach - Nude Beach



MP3: Cough Cool - Roxette



MP3: Pink Priest - Vultures Circling Weird Carcasses

Over the last few years Baltimore has been quietly squeezing out numerous bands you’ve probably already fallen in love with. Let’s hope the next will be Happy Family, proud parents of a new EP and triumphantly sun-gliding the same head-spinning cloud trip as recent Atlas Sound and Washed Out efforts. Speaking of Washed Out, he may have been around the internet a lot since we hosted a few tracks a while back, but as long as he’s coming up with tracks as wrought and perfect as ‘Feel It All Around’ the chances of his wavve breaking soon are pretty slim.



MP3: Happy Family - Cups



MP3: Washed Out - Feel It All Around

Hmm. Dignan Porch seem to blush some kind of furious, sedate mania - seeping out from your most vivid recollections through the haziest of hums. Any regrets from the last decade left? Run if you will, but they’re bound to catch up after fifteen joyous seconds.



MP3: Dignan Porch - On A Ride



MP3: Dignan Porch - As You Were

We’ve been waiting around long enough for a file or video from the new release, so here’s ‘Set U Free’ from over a decade ago. After Anotha Black Sunday’s future-funk fried Detroit numbers at the turn of the year, Kenny Dixon Jr is back behind the Mahogani production desk for II, former Slum Village head Andrés’s first album in six years. Or something resembling that; apparently this is the second part of the record, with the first half not yet released (hence the name). Either way, following on from last year’s ‘About Time’ 12″, not miles away from the sort of snapshot beat collage that Omar-S pieced together for SIDETRAKX 2 a couple months back with tracks sloping in and speeding off, ‘Change Your Mind’ lifts a GQ tune Theo Parrish sampled for his Ugly Edits and is one of ten tracks here that, amid the rogue skits and gospel choirs, is nothing but bliss. Alongside det.whippet Kyle Hall, another set of heavenly cuts from Motor City.

Cheque.

Also, whilst you’re with us, check out Legowelt finding his afrobeat feet: hummer.

Via XLR8R.

I don’t know if Chris Powers prefers to lay with men or with women, but ‘Pashuniv’ is gayer than a pink flannel, soft pillow-synths floating skyward to be smeared with beats that swipe like swinging dicks upon tight drum skin. The track’s pulled from a fine four-track EP of “summer jams” you can find at his MySpace page, along with the Honky Walk mixtape, the title of which and the tracks it contains summing up Powers’ powers near-perfectly.



MP3: C Powers - Pashuniv

So, nostalgia became hauntology? Thank god Lost Girl are pretty dissolute - distant enough to make it stick and down to work. Like falling for a silhouette, it’s L-O-V-E nonetheless.



MP3: Lost Girl - Quivers



MP3: Lost Girl - With Scissors

This year’s Field Day festival takes place next Saturday - 1st August - in Victoria Park, East London. Playing alongside such indelible talents as the Big Pink, Wild Beasts, Four Tet, the Horrors, Skream, Mogwai and the XX will be No Pain In Pop DJs. To commemorate this merry occasion we’ve a pair of tickets to give away - simply provide us with the best/funniest answer to this question:

If any act on the line-up were to be an animal - running gaily around a field - who would be what, and why?

To enter, post your answer and email address in the comments section below. The competition closes this Tuesday, and the winner will be contacted via email. For the less lucky of us there are still tickets on sale.

Hashim B easy and on point. Sometimes it’s pretty wonderful not to have to see something, or rush to anything. This is from Dublab’s new Echo Expansion comp, out on LP/CD on the 18th of August through Porter Records. Buy your copy here to keep Dublab in scenery like that ^. It’s where they belong.

Full tracklist - including Flying Lotus, Blank Blue, Ras G, Daedelus and Take - after the fold.



MP3: Hashim B - ‘Tokyo to LA Steez’


The Life Force Trio - ‘Alice!’ (live at the Natural History Museum)
Adventure Time - ‘Set On Satellites’
Blank Blue - ‘Eyes Close’ (Private Stash version)
The Gaslamp Killer & The Gonja Sufi - ‘Robots’
Flying Lotus - ‘Backpack Caviar’
Ras G - ‘Stealth Mode’
Daedelus - ‘Dnt Fk Sgr’
Dimlite - ‘Jose’s Views’
DNTEL - ‘Sundial’
Langhuis - ‘Million Ways’
Jahbitat & Daniel Gutierrez - ‘Tonada del Tormento’
Kutmah - ‘Song Song’
Hashim B - ‘Tokyo to LA Steez’
Take - ‘Wonder Man’s Flash’
Matthewdavid - ‘Tomorrowspirit’
Andrew Pekler - ‘New Fibrillation’

This song makes me unbearably happy.



MP3: Atlas Sound and Panda Bear - Walkabout
(via The Fader; live version here)

Friend actioning at the Lock Tavern, free from 8pm ’til 1am.

8pm - 9pm Sampha w/Young Turks
9pm - 10.30pm - Mount Kimbie w/James Blake
10.30pm - 11.30pm - Jamie xx
11.30pm - 1am - Sbtrkt

Resuming the fight between up-beat melancholy and a lo-slung shuffle, Washed Out may be from Columbia, South Carolina but they string far closer to our favoured West Coast set of Nite Jewel, Ariel and Geneva Jacuzzi than the 2120 miles between them may suggest. They’re all at a different game of course, but I wouldn’t doubt synths so hallowed they’re positively transcendental couldn’t form some kind of ethereal coast straddling plane and meet in the middle. Also, it’s been around the web for a while but here’s Pearl Habour playing Coleridge through Brian Wilson - another solid gold heart stealer.



MP3: Washed Out - Get Up



MP3: Washed Out - New Theory



MP3: Pearl Habour - Lost @ Sea

We’re proud to present the third NPIP mix from the stalwart Jah Pat, its tracklist reading like a Greatest Hits of the year so far in bassland music. From DVA and HardHouse Banton to FaltyDL and Untold, via Pearson Sound and the totemic centrepiece of Joy Orbison’s ‘Hyph Mango’, his NPIP003 emerges from the dank energised and invincible, looking to throttle.

Full tracklist after the fold.



MP3: Jah Pat - NPIP003


DVA - ‘God Made Me Funky’ [Fantastic 4]
Kode9 - ‘Black Sun’ [Hyperdub]
Joy Orbison - ‘Wet Look’ [Unreleased]
HardHouse Banton - ‘Sirens’ [Spoilt Rotten]
Darkstar - ‘Need You’ [Hyperdub]
Blaine - ‘Mutant Funk’ [White]
Ghost - ‘Lyrical Tempo’ [Tempa]
Mala - ‘Forgive’ [Deep Medi]
Fantastic Mr Fox and Rich Reason - ‘Lofive’ [forthcoming Black Acre]
Joy Orbison - ‘Hyph Mngo’ [forthcoming Hotflush]
Brackles - ‘Get A Job’ [Apple Pips]
Martin Kemp - ‘No Charisma’ [Blunted Robots]
Joe - ‘Rut’ [Hessle]
Kode9 - ‘2 Far Gone’ [Hyperdub]
Pearson Sound - ‘Indelible’ [Aus Music]
Untold - ‘Just For You’ (Roska remix) [Hotflush]
FaltyDL - ‘To London’ [Ramp]
Burial + Four Tet - ‘Moth’ [Text]
Aphex Twin - ‘Xtal’ [Apollo]

Steel Harmony covering ‘Transmission’ at the Manchester Procession last weekend.

Silk Flowers despair. Why? It’s hard to say. ‘Sand’ articulates it better than you’ll ever understand. It’s about calming, or the lack thereof. It’s about the endless passage of information through the brain and the fear that the brain may get bored. Does the brain ever get bored? How many times have you been bored today? How many times were you bored on this day five years ago? Seven years ago? A decade? Time slips through the fissures, so Silk Flowers position themselves there, in the skull of a great rock like pus in a pore, defenders of the slip. You glimpse them from across the pass; martyring faces pained and desperate at the time mounting up and the sand seeping into their eggheads, brains expanding thus, irrepressible surges of vision and thought and whimsy and emotion and sensation and sound and pressing against cavern walls, until there’s a burst of muscle and blood and the body drops limp into the chasm below.

What were his last words?

“HURRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR”

Low cloud comes to cover up and PPM scrape brain remains into a jar, bottle it, send it to your homes. Midnight feast teens chomping on sinew.



MP3: Silk Flowers - Sand

New ‘Dragnet’ column up at The Quietus looking at the best tracks of the year so far. Includes Joy Orbison, Floating Points, Lone, Karizma and ten others.

Click here to read.

Already responsible for one of my favourite releases of 2009, Forest Swords could cease to exist tomorrow and I’d still count them as one of my favourite acts of the decade. As it stands, their latest release is due out on cassette tape through Leftist Nautical Antiques in August (pre-order), and they’re playing their debut show at our No Pain In Pop showcase on September 1st in London.

The video looks like it should really belong to someone like these guys, but the weird organic samples and chasmic guitars - a combination that somehow seems to sit strangely somewhere between two of my other picks of recent times, Burial and Arch M, plus a hundred other influences I’ll never place - pulls it off, as easy as light through burn’d shade.



MP3: Forest Swords - Miarches

Latest column for Drowned in Sound - original link here, read in full after the fold.


141’s ‘In Out’ has got the shakes. It’s a sullen brooder; destined synths and sweaty percussion speaking a repetitive mantra of glowing-, tumbling-gut bass swells that are to be clung to through soft drizzle and bus stop mind drift, a way to cope with the sudden and mundane heckle of sirens. It doesn’t sound like it’s used to being outside, quite simply - it’s an agoraphobic thriller, devoted to tight spaces and interior angles: backs-to-the-wall rather than scrape-me-off-the-ceiling, deflated rather than pumped.

It’d be wrong to describe Ben Thomas’s recording project as being at the forefront of anything. His bounce - this bedroom Garage – is pretty shy but just seems extra-repped at the moment and is relatively detached from anything currently holding sway in the network of clubs that constellate UK bassland. It’s a sound forged by and for lonely bedroom boys rather than the out and sweat-drenched, inducing not dance action but a whimsical inertia frozen in place by the glare of whatever it is hidden in your memory that’s regretful and bites. To return to ‘In Out’ – the thing just sounds like one, long sigh. I suppose when you’re as far adrift from something as 141 is from turn-of-the-century UK Garage, what comes out is always gonna be lacquered maudlin and bittersweet. Producers like Thomas – along with Sbtrkt, FaltyDL and Pariah to name three – are, for me, the continuing afterglow of UKG’s first burst, inevitably detached from the communal euphoria that existed first time around, the sound of these orphans now suitably forlorn.

Moving away from the quiet, barely-remembered tragedy of 141, FaltyDL’s Love Is A Liability LP – available now through Planet Mu – rounds out this backwards vision with synth sounds that are alien and exploratory, like the eye stalks of some ecstatic snail. Recalling Detroit revisionist Terrence Dixon, ‘To New York’ bleeps and blinks with a feeling for Drew Lustman’s home city that is at once uncontainable and inexpressible. By acting as an agent for such a dilemma the track almost manages to extricate itself from notions of backwardness and forwardness altogether, until around about two thirds of the way in, when clubland’s eternal anonymous diva starts grunting and the moment once again belongs to memory – or at least a playful, loose idea of what that memory may have been had it ever had the chance to form.

The most stoic purist couldn’t begrudge Lustman those ideas – he only started making music of his own two years ago and even that he describes as Jungle. Garage wasn’t discovered ‘til later (“I wanted to slow down, I needed to slow down. I dropped the bpm by about 40 and found this shuffle. It’s amazing”). As such FaltyDL has no guilt in skewing the objective truth of past sounds. One with deeper ties to Garage is Londoner Sbtrkt, whose recent mixes are more dancefloor-ready but possess a considered introspection that hints at something not built merely from the here and now.

“UK Garage was a huge influence on me from ‘96 to 2000,” says the anonymous producer, who sported a mask during a set at FACT’s latest Lock Tavern night.

“It was the driving force and why I wanted to get into music production. I spent heaps of money on random 2-Step white labels back then in London record store basements. Uptown, Release The Groove…”

“It seems there are quite a few producers using those UKG influences - taking the bounce, the extra double time rhythms and not being too dark and serious about everything.”

MP3: Sbtrkt - NPIP001

Those producers are numerous and all worth checking – Bok Bok, Hessle Audio’s Ben UFO, Oneman, Brackles, Joy Orbison. But where they differ is that their tunes sound geared towards clubland now - taking in elements of Funky House and Dubstep – rather than embarking upon an isolated raver spinsterism. Ambling spliff-headed back towards the bedroom we find Pariah, or 21-year-old Londoner Arthur Cayzer, whose ‘Detroit Falls’ was picked up by the usual (GvsB, Pitchfork) after it was posted at No Pain In Pop around this time last month.

‘Detroit Falls’ itself – a hip-hop cut that that lopes like Dilla and was built from one diced-up Motown track - isn’t representative of Cayzer’s take on UKG. For that, see the glowering, somnambulant ‘Don’t Go’ or a forthcoming remix of The xx’s ‘Basic Space’. The first chimes with the loss of 141, but in a more urbane, less visceral way; as if whatever was eating away at Cayzer’s guts has been momentarily quelled – perhaps by the track’s own self-awareness, in a ‘it thinks, therefore it is’ kind of way. It exists, at least, and is spurred on by a sudden, surprising knowledge of that – as if it’s been willed into existence by sheer melancholic boredom – even if its hesitant middle section needs the rumbling, rolling 2-Step bounce to shake it from its reverie. It bounces eventually, but when ‘Don’t Go’ bounces it does so quietly and half-heart, gently rattling windows in their frames and mildly aggravating the dreams of sleeping neighbours as it aches from so many strewn bedroom clubs.

http://nopaininpop.com/2009/05/sling-it/ (Pariah)
http://nopaininpop.com/2009/03/dead-dove/ (141)
http://nopaininpop.com/2009/06/sweat/ (Sbtrkt)
http://nopaininpop.com/2009/05/swinging-jaw-faltydl/ (FaltyDL)
http://nopaininpop.com/2009/06/that-doldrum-joy-sound/ (Joy Orbison)

—

Ben Thomas also records as Singing Statues and in collaboration with the fantastic Teebs. I’d recommend you check out all.

It doesn’t really matter who Hole Class are. They’ve a record out through Medsiv and it’ll be as seminal as it is probably now unattainable.



MP3: Hole Class - True Temper



MP3: Hole Class - Two Anarchist Children

Another beery blitzkrieg, guitars like the minds of maniac children, drums like their suffering parents: vocals sing the theme tune to some cross-eyed caper. Taken from the new Lovvers album OCD Go Go Go Girls, out through Wichita on the 10th of August.



MP3: Lovvers - AXTXTXIXTXUXDXE

Opening with a sequence that sounds like Martin Denny’s delicate numbers suddenly being swamped by Madlib’s blitzkrieg beats, a exotic idyll turned into mutant wasteland, Pelican Island seem in the habit of turning scraps into moveable feasts with this “Three Part Collage”. Never sure quite how seriously to take him but the Barbados native, having grown up cutting samples on cassettes on his sister’s karaoke machine, is now stationed out in E3. Plans are to release a beat tape in the next month or so, piecing together in the same hurdy-gurdy glories as The Samps, but until then it’s just another average day of “wake halfway. cereal. beats. take out. beats. beats. sleep. beats. wake halfway. dream.”



MP3: Pelican Island - Three Part Collage

The video for the relatively sedate, near-beatless ‘Mercury’s Rainbow’, as shot by the man/woman/beast himself. It was originally posted by Ramp, so you’d imagine it might come out through them at some point.

Endlessly seduced and mashing like rabbits, Family Time’s latest sprog is pumped out wailing into the sun’s first glare, covered in bits of gut and exploded Tascam - this one 26-years-old already, and moustachioed. A shock, then, but a shock allayed by the song of the Norse Horse - Ryan Beal’s music ripples out like a quelling beam, enveloping all within earshot in its grand, mass hallucination of short shorts, Mariachi and the liberties of children drunk on Coca-Cola. As it staggers from its birth sack, the ‘Horse breaks into an ungainly quadruped mince and everyone cheers at the unexpected parade, the nag wailing, still, and smiling as it squints into dawn rays.

An eight-track cassette and CD-R called Secret Geographies will arrive through the heroes at Family Time some time this month.



MP3: Norse Horse - Gangplank Galleon



MP3: Norse Horse - Swamp Trotter



MP3: Norse Horse - Sleepers

This has been out there a few weeks now, but we’ve been slack. It doesn’t get any more astute than this coming together of heads, lead by S.E.F. and T. Williams, backed by Don Morris and Cooly G. Deep Teknologi will be putting out some releases “in the next few months”, but for now there’s Mix 1.0. Listen to them dismissing Funky dilettantes with MA1 before talking up Fingaprint, Fuzzy Logik and Morris’s forthcoming DT Records number ‘Inda Groove’; gems that sit gloriously alongside the likes of Dope and Dokes, muscular yet not quite as militant as the likes of Lil Silva, further showcasing how healthy House’s netherregions are at the moment. So, about as dramatic as it gets, S.E.F.’s Deep Teknologi Mix 1.0:

MP3: Deep Teknologi - Mix 1.0
(left click through to SoundCloud)

Probably worth mentioning the new Karizma compilation that’s coming out on R2 in a few weeks whilst we’re talking these tongues, while another of his R2 releases - ‘Necessary Madness’ b/w ‘Drumz Nightmare’ - is well worth getting teeth into, particularly for the B-.

The video to accompany new Wild Beasts single ‘Hooting and Howling’, out on the 20th of July. Head over to Domino to download a free remix of the track by Debukas on MP3.

New Wild Beasts album Two Dancers will be released on the 3rd of August and we await it eagerly.

Peter O’Grady’s last mix - recorded for us under the Vitamin Club guise he shares with the infamous Impey - was a stunner, no rowing, and since then PO’G’s been played ‘out’ on Gilles Peterson’s Radio 1 show and at the end of this, the mix put together by Ben UFO of the mighty Hessle Audio to promote the label’s takeover of Fabric. Back now as Joy Orbison, Pete’s strung something to top nearly all the mixes I’ve heard this year; DLDRMS001 celebrating the imminent launch of his DOLDRUMS label (the lobster guards the flag). To these ears, the choicest cuts come with Karizma’s ‘Drumz Nightmare’, Martyn’s refit of Efdemin’s ‘Acid Bells’ and new Joy Orbison track ‘Tentative Bidding’ as well as, of course, Joy Orb’s monumental closer ‘Hyph Mngo’, due for release at some point in the near future through Scuba’s Hot Flush imprint. UK Funky, 2-Step, post-Dubstep sounds - it’s all gilded, all fresh, all sharp and completely on point, with a skip to evade the most fearsome of thugstep bores… DOLDRUMS in the mix, with a lurker intent; tracklist after the fold.



MP3: Joy Orbison - DLDRMS001


1. Pearson Sound - Indelible // Aus
2. Karizma - Drumz Nightmare // R2
3. Nu-Birth - Anytime // Locked On
4. Tonya Renee - About You (Karizma Boucha Remix) // Home Recordings
5. Altered Natives - Rass Out // Fresh Minute Music
6. Joy Orbison - Smother // DOLDRUMS
7. Efdemin - Acid Bells (Martyn Remix) // Curle
8. Shed - Selection One // Soloaction
9. Ultramarine - Hooter (Carl Craig Remix/JORb EdiT) // Real Soon
10. Joy Orbison - Tentative Bidding // DOLDRUMS
11. Martyn - Hear Me // 3024
12. Joy Orbison - J. Doe // DOLDRUMS
13. Joy Orbison - Hyph Mngo // Hotflush

With Ariel and Geneva playing pop pretenders from underneath their duvets, Pearl Harbour want you down, down on the beach, where Nite Jewel’s alt-disco pebbles are being kicked around by the oily surf, Skylar K and Piper K’s drifting coastal hooks digging in deeper for their kaleidoscopic wash. You might have caught wind, but we’re proud to be putting the Nite Jewel record out over on these shores in the next couple of months; more over this way. In the meantime come get sunburnt, sea-stained.



MP3: Pearl Harbour - Sunburn



MP3: Pearl Harbour - Vapor Girls

More summer jams for your flannel fraternity. Best Coast are from California. Finally Punk are from California. One has sunstroke, the other’s continuously stubbing its toe. Apply both to bothersome sores.



MP3: Best Coast - In My Room (Demo)



MP3: Finally Punk - What The Fuck, Missile?

We’ve been admirers of London’s anonymous Sbtrkt for a while now at No Pain In Pop and that love’s shared by the gaggle of labels - the best labels - hurling offers in his general direction. Confirmed releases come through Planet Mu, Salvia/XL, Brainmath and Universal soon enough, for now though the time’s right for a mix, all sun coloured synth swirls and dazed, reeling eyes, heat rashed and raw. “Seems there are quite a few producers using those UKG influences,” Sbtrkt noted recently, “taking the bounce, extra double-time rhythms and not being too dark & serious about everything.” His mix carries the work of Burial and Radiohead in a cluster of new Sbtrkt tracks, but things never get too dark, too serious - and if they do, MJ Cole’s always on hand to bail you out.



MP3: Sbtrkt - NPIP001


Sirius Mo - ‘Let Me In’
Erobique - ‘Arf Patzo’
Heavyweight Kru - ‘The Dream’
Seiji - ‘HoHoHo’
MJ Cole - ‘Gotta Have It’ (MJ Funky Dubb)
Sbtrkt - ‘Migration’
Sbtrkt - ‘Right Place’
Burial/ Four Tet - ‘Wolf Cub’
Sbtrkt - ‘Rundown’
Echaskech - ‘Future Sex’ (Sbtrkt Remix)
Sbtrkt - ‘Mindless Funk’
Martyn - ‘Twenty Four’
Sbtrkt - ‘Lovin You’

Chicago’s Smith Westerns have been circling the better parts of the internet for a while now. I guess they just remind you can sing joy + hope + fun + love + life in equal parts mono-syl-la-ble and still get a heart beat through the other side.

Hear some tracks from their self-titled debut LP - out now through HoZac Records.



MP3: Smith Westerns - Be My Girl



MP3: Smith Westerns - Boys Are Fine



MP3: Smith Westerns - Gimme Some Time

“As the more brained mainstream proponents of US hip-hop and Rn’B begins to endorse rhythms that conduct dances thus far unseen on Britain’s universal sticky, satellite town dancefloor, so a new generation of UK beat bane, lead by Hudson Mohawke, became Timabaland-esque presences on our top ten; re-configuring notions of popular rhythm as grime’s predatory thug embraced, with the collateral of making British rap artists commercially viable for the first time.”

Fast-forward - June 29th brings Glasgow’s LuckyMe collective the first union of old voice with the new beat. Nadsroic over HudMo - a ghost ship Lumidee.



MP3: Nadsroic and Hudson Mohawke - Leopards

The outstanding Rogue’s Foam recently posted Loving Wonky, one of the most interesting things I’ve read on a blog in a while (probably since this).

I would/could never attempt to paraphrase his argument, but the notion of ‘wonky’ as a musical avant-genre seems a strangely pertinent way of placing Manchester’s Fantastic Mr Fox & Rich Reason in context. Whilst they do tread much of the middleground over which Zomby, Joker, Ikonika and Flying Lotus are commonly umbrella’d, there’s something else there - manic, free and nameless.

Their debut 12″ - ‘Plimsoul’ / ‘Bleep Show’ - was out through Hemlock Recordings in March and, before they head to pulsemakers Ramp, they’ve another forthcoming on Black Acre - ‘Fall’ / ‘LO-FI-VE’ - this month. Oh, and re-check Jah Pat’s second No Pain In Pop mix for ‘Bleep Show’ in it’s fullest.



MP3: Fantastic Mr Fox & Rich Reason - Hemlock 12″ mix



MP3: Fantastic Mr Fox & Rich Reason - Black Acre 12″ mix

that probably explains the song playing during that conversation (kinda).”



MP3: Hype Williams - Lophophora mixtape

Speaking to Mike Sniper recently, it was interesting to hear him attempt to define this home recording mo(ve)ment we currently seem to be passing through, as well as his and his label’s place within it. Captured Tracks, he said, isn’t a ‘Punk’ label, nor is it an ‘Indie’ label: rather it should be seen as an independent rock’n'roll label, a prism refracting through it bands like La La Vasquez and Girls At Dawn that may seem vaguely similar, but to busier ears have their obvious differences and personal tics. As for the term ‘lo-fi’ - “too easy”, according to Mike, firstly because it refers specifically to recording techniques not all of the bands involved employ and secondly because it’s already been claimed, by those DIY frustrateds back in the Eighties who’d tend to transpire from nowhere, sullen and staring from the covers of perfect debut 7″s that seemed to simultaneously exhaust any inclination to build a back catalogue. Those sleeves - previously lost to the ambiguity of record shop crates - are pored over now, of course, posted up at ‘blogs like id Reverberations and Pukekos for all to study and re-present in their own image, to mess with, to alter the genetic make-up of just slightly and so now we have this pack of confused, young new Centurians, DIY DNA tamperers, experimenting on themselves, manufacturing their own branch off of the family tree and with it, a kind of righteous authenticity. They may only be one step away from Black Tambourine’s Complete Recordings, but at least they definitely are that one step away, and so in some small way different, mutated, progressed. It’s not just DIY recording, it’s DIY selective breeding: new sub-species emerging every day in a manic fuck frenzy of Eugenic blank dogs. Graffiti Island are Afghan Hounds, Wavves an Alsatian, PENS Chihuahuas.

Something else to emerge from that conversation with Mike was the brilliantly subdued Beach Fossils - or rather my knowledge of Dustin Payseur’s Brooklyn niche, as I doubt even Mr Sniper has the talent-spotting skills to conjure bands fully-formed from the air of a transatlantic phonecall. ‘Vacation’ and ‘Daydream’ may well find a home with Captured Tracks and they drift in the same lax zones as most of Wavves‘ work, i.e. those soft-focus moments between the torturous rites of teenage passage, the holiday, the beach, the street. Beach Fossils are sharper, though - there’s little in the way of fuzz and the thing floats on, meandering to a contented close in carefree clarity.

Thanks to Mike Sniper for the tip.



MP3: Beach Fossils - Vacation



MP3: Beach Fossils - Daydream

Watson has, he says, been “negotiating the cynical/bitter tightrope since 1987″.

Read chatter with Deep Shit knucklehead Tom Watson at the Viceland Music Blog.



MP3: Deep Shit - Other People’s Lives

Another name for your young beat collective: London’s Arthur Cayzer, AKA Pariah, whose tracks glide with a rare poise. ‘Detroit Falls’ confuses soulful Dilla bomp’n'clap with haunting dubplate textures and house roll to authoritative and addictive effect, while ‘Don’t Go’ is a crystal-eyed 2-step meditative for Cayzer’s beloved night bus. ‘Jelly Baby’ is different - all sloppy synths flaring up around your jowls, an itching, wobbling thing that fruits around amid the safety of hench bass-weight.

There’s something incredibly exciting about all this whateveritis - this constant spooling, globular mutation taking place out on the electronic hinterlands. And whateveritis wasn’t supposed to sound like a medical condition, but maybe that’s the best way to see it; as something gone awry in medicated minds, something lost or just absorbed differently in the initial awe at heroes like Dilla, MJ Cole, Parrish and Burial and the defect gets hammered out over and over again until it takes on traits of its own for others to see and send skewiff. We are all ears cupped and tilted at odd angles.

Anyway, Joy Orbison, 141, FaltyDL, sbtrkt, Floating Points and now, Pariah - heaven is a Zone 2 house party with this loose troop. Sling it, all summer.



MP3: Pariah - Detroit Falls (Mixdown)



MP3: Pariah - Don’t Go (Unmastered Demo)



MP3: Pariah - Jelly Baby (Demo)

If these are: the y e a r s /of/ w e i r d o POP, senile and lost in bedrooms that float lone and adrift from mortar, of wet eyes surrounded by trinkets from Aunty and personality bubbles that are somehow yet to BURST, if this is: d e a t h of the pop(ular) chart, in place of ‘Top Tens’ scrawled not from sales figures or coin-in-pocket hand thrusting but from the extent of readily available memory cells (dependent upon: in-brain booze linger/the e m p t i n e s s of moments//enthusiasm) dialled like the digits of a (possibly defunct?) telephone s u p p o r t line: if this is: the breaking apart of EM P A TH Y into hardened stones to hurl the way of a hundred other hardened stoners: if this is: POP IDOl prog-bait (‘lo-fi’) F-I-Z-Z open-bracket-) ‘in eyebrows raised the way of inverted commas’ readthegapsbetweenletters proselytes* then Chaz Bundick is surely set to swim in lemonade forever.

Toro Y Moi is Bundick’s side-project and it sounds like Ariel Pink or Night Control jacking Air France’s Warm Jets and turning them Midas gold. Bundick is from Columbia, South Carolina, where he also plays with The Heist And The Accomplice. Sample line, coming through the F-I-Z-Z: “feel the night slit my throat”. Heavy snares. Squidgy, sullen, gut-jump synths. Messages into bottles and hurled out into space. Glug.



MP3: Toro Y Moi - Sad Sams



MP3: Toro Y Moi - 109

An interview with Drew ‘FaltyDL‘ Lustman, written for the next issue of Plan B magazine. His Love Is A Liability is one of the best albums of the year so far - it’s out through Planet Mu on the 8th of June and you simply must grab yourself a copy the second it becomes available to pre-order.


NYG. Not UKG, but NYG – as in ‘New York Garage’, as in ‘gar-ij’, as in a hybrid, as in an invader. Much chatter’s been had over Simon Reynolds’ idea of a ‘hardcore continuum’, a lineage that since 1990 has seen UK dance music distinguish itself from American House and Techno. Reynolds argues that some common and basic tenets – among them diasporic, Afro-Caribbean bass weight, MCs, breakbeats and a subculture of clubs, dubplates and pirate radio – have coursed through the blood of every non-spoddy British dance strain of the last 20 years. Back the bloodlines go, from Rave on to Jungle, then to Speed Garage and turn-of-the-century 2-Step, after which the ‘nuum seemed to see Darwin in the face of ageing ravers, went for trigamy and planted its sullen seed in Grime, Dubstep and Bassline House. You’ll have heard of others - ‘Wonky’? ‘UK Funky’? – but people are still a bit ‘Wot Do You Call It?’ about those, so the DNA tests can wait. NYG – we’re back – is the music that Andrew ‘FaltyDL’ Lustman started making when he first tumbled off the continuum in 1995 (Jungle becomes Drum’N’Bass), only to clamber back aboard in 1997 (Dem 2 release ‘Destiny’) and then again last summer. What’s important, though, is that all that tumbling and clambering only took Drew two years.

What? Reach over the decks and rewind, all the way back to year 00:00. Or 1996, when the FaltyDL story starts.

“That’s my background I guess,” Drew concludes enthusiastically. “Everyone had an amazing album that year – Drum ‘N’ Bass for Papa, Feed Me Weird Things, Richard D James Album.

“That’s where I’m coming from. That special time where with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water-mark – that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back… it had nowhere to go from there, yet everywhere to be.”

The fact that Drew didn’t start making Jungle of his own until two years ago is interesting, as is his choice of cultural totems. All three of the albums he mentions – by Luke Vibert, Squarepusher and Aphex Twin, respectively – dealt with Jungle or Drum’n’Bass but in the abstract; records that could reach in and screw around with the sound because they hadn’t been fostered by or have to answer to the community, evidenced in their makers’ eventual abandonment of the Jungle sound. Stunning new FaltyDL full-length Love Is A Liability is similar in its non-linear appropriation of British dance music - in fact, you could argue that the work of these dilettante auteurs constitutes a kind of in-law continuum - but the ‘nuum’s moved on since 1996, so Love Is… updates the template. ‘To New York’, like the majority of the record, skips along on a hyped 2-step bounce, while ‘Our Love’ is poised sublimely between that Dubstep bass which seems to swell up from the bowels of a great ship and the alien synth spools of Terrence Dixon (who, in tandem with Techno Godfather Juan Atkins, helped revise Detroit’s Minimal blueprint).

It’s poise that most characterises the alien sounds of FaltyDL (“Falty for short”, since he was 12). Tiring of the “awful jungle renditions” he was making two years ago, Drew “wanted to slow down, I needed to slow down. I dropped the bpm by about 40 and found this shuffle. It’s amazing.”

Secure in his shuffle and the low-centre of gravity UK bass traditions afford, Drew hopes FaltyDL “will eventually bring out this sound I have been hearing in my head forever.”

What is that sound?

“The groove, the rhythm in your step. You, yours! I watch you people all day long out my window.”

That’s FaltyDL – watching on with nowhere to go, yet everywhere to be.

DC’s honorable Underwater Peoples are dropping a Summertime Showcase compilation, out May 28th. Here’s a few picks - namely Liam the Younger, Julian Lynch and Pill Wonder. Given that it also glimpses the exceptional Sad City, Ducktails and Real Estate - you should probably make hay to download the record in full here, and then buy the CD by dropping them an email.

It’s pretty much all anthemic lo-fi (”nu-Americana”?) and it’s pretty much all so wildly good it’s quite hard to comprehend. Maybe it’s just that each track has a weird setting-sun nostalgia, synchronized and slowly drifting down with my early morning eyelids.



MP3: Pill Wonder - Wishing Whale



MP3: Liam the Younger - Country Wide



MP3: Julian Lynch - Banana Jam Pt.1

I writ: ‘The Horrors Daub Their Name In Brit Pop Tradition With Primary Colours’ - read in full over at The Quietus.

“You know when you get that feeling sometimes, when you’ll be listening to music or just hugely excited about something,” asks Hayward, “and it feels like someone has got their finger under your ribs and it draws you [moves hand away from chest] . . . I just wanted to capture that. The big thing for me was to get that on record. Making people, if they weren’t feeling it before they listened to it, get it and get drawn. What is that?”

Gut rush.

“Gut rush!”

They both crack up.

“But no, you get it in certain situations don’t you? It always feels like it’s there and you’re like ‘Ooh this is amazing’ . . . and you don’t ever stop moving, do you? It’s that constant feeling of movement and how you don’t stop.”

“Maybe you’ve got loads of serotonin receptors just there” ventures Furse, gesturing towards his diaphragm.

“Yeah, but it’s like your diaphragm’s gone mental . . . I just wanted to get that feeling across.”