Dirty Beaches

Just found Dirty Beaches's Badlands, & I'm listening to it right now. Pretty swell. I liked this album back in 1977 when Suicide released it too.

Seriously, though, Badlands is good.

Foster the People: Torches

I first heard a track off of an Itunes SXSW sampler. A fellow WWALTer posted the link awhile back. The story of the band is here. Alternative, synthpop, with a dash of electronica thrown in. They are from L.A. so I'm sure the hype machine is in full effect. This is one of those,"No way I'm gonna dig this" releases, but I do. There are 4-5 tracks that are, "pure pop sugar". Check out the track "Houdini".

Boris

Sometimes Boris is wacky, sometimes Boris is predictable. The 24th of May, they managed to be both at once, releasing one album of fairly standard big-ass Boris rockers

called Heavy Rocks 2011 (not to be confused with Heavy Rocks 2002); and an album of dream-pop

called Attention Please.

Heavy Rocks 2011 is non-essential if you have the first Heavy Rocks, Pink, or Smile (none of which live up to the godliness of such titles as Amplifier Worship, Absolutego, or Akuma No Uta), but if you just can't get enough, you won't be disappointed.

Attention Please, on the other hand, is a weird one. It's essentially a wistful dream-pop album with A BIG FREAKING BEAST UNDER THE HOOD! On first listen, I pretty much wrote it off as a nice little experiment (and lord knows, Boris aren't afraid of trying different things), but it actually grew on me by about the third time I listened to it.

I'm not big on the dream-pop stuff (I did listen to a bit of Opal and Mazzy Star back in the day, but I never joined the Bjork legions), so I'm not the best judge of how this works, but I like it quite a bit. And, though the description may have you thinking "Pixies" almost immediately, it doesn't sound at all like that either, which is fine by me, not being the world's greatest Pixies fan either.

This isn't a great album, but it is a good one, and very listenable. And, as an added bonus, it's one album that both the wife and I can enjoy.

Sam Prekop

What's up, dudes (are there are any women on this blog?). I've been checking out some albums by Sam Prekop that I didn't have and going through his work with the Sea & Cake. Such good stuff, and it can kind of slide by under the radar because it's mellow and slightly elusive, not super-hook laden, though an easy listen. I like the way the reviewer at Pitchfork put it about how his solo album, which came out just in time for summer in 2005, "there's no better use for this music than getting massively chilled out in your suddenly sunny apartment". That pretty much sums up the vibe in my apartment lately as I listen to his stuff. I also didn't know about his latest solo album, Old Punch Card, which came out in 2010. This is a total wild card if you're into his stuff. It is way closer to Aphex Twin than the Sea & Cake. Really surprising and cool if you're into that kind of electronic/ambient stuff, though his tendancy to bleed cacophanous sounds into more melodic soundscapes is I think a bit overdone and takes away from the overall listening experience.

Oh, and I paid to see the Sea & Cake in Prague in, like, 2000, so I'm cool with downloading all his music (easy score, no lurking websherrif) for the rest of my life, I'll pay to see him when he hits Brooklyn. But my latest idea is I'm going to try to actually purchase music by new bands, in particular ones based in Brooklyn, that I like and have the album priced right. Headless Horseman is my first one, local, cool sound, $5 for the album, done.

Not to be all on the Pitchfork or Bon Iver (my last post) tip, but they have a cool interview up with him. From everything I've ready about him he sounds like a really likeable, down-to-earth dude who is really searching and growing as an artist, it's fascinating to read about his approach to his new album, which continues to impress me in terms of the songs and his evolution as a song-writer. I hesitate to call this out but his defense of that awful last track "bath/rest" included "I cried while working on that song". Hahaha, TMI, dude. Here's a link to the lyrics from his new album that I got from the interview, which I was keen to check out because it's hard to understand what he's saying, reading it is interesting, he's making up words and conjuring images, writing in a really non-linear way but nonetheless telling a story or creating visual landscapes when combined with the music.

Song of the day: Lucinda Williams "Seeing Black"

This is a rockin jam, rhythm section is really locked in. Elvis Costello is playing guitar. Check out the outro guitar solo, reminds me of CrazyHorse. This is off of her new album. Rock on WWALTers!

Favorite song of the day

dc

Glitch FM Soul For that Anachronistic Ass

One of the dudes from longtime NYC FM Soul outfit Tigercity (Part of a whole little slice of NYC scene trading in anachronism that arose about 6 years or more ago that included Chromeo, 33hz, Tigercity, LCD Soundsystem, and thousands of bands I was never cool enough to know about) and the dude who calls himself Oneohtrixpointnever, whose work I've never listened to because I hate the name but who has nevertheless been getting plenty of critical blowjobs from the bloggy press the past couple of years in spite of my royal disdain, have gotten together to form a superduo of sorts. Ford & Lopatin!

Highly, highly enjoyable, I can't recommend this strongly enough because my doctor says I won't survive another treatment for priapism.

This sounds like what would happen if Billy Ocean were to step into the chamber of mirrors from Enter the Dragon to engage in some kind of trippy soul-transfer congress with Squarepusher and Max Tundra.

The New Kool Keith Joint

Discuss.

dc

Web Sherrif

I always thought the Web Sheriff was a goof or some blog guy fooling around. With the volume of music sharing/blogs how can they monitor even a small percentage of what is out there? Side note; I was at a party rapping with a dude about music, and he said he had heard of WWALT!

Bored in Montreal/Bon Iver

I'm up in Montreal at a conference on international economics and it is so damn boring. Maybe I just haven't given it a chance, I'm interested in the subjects, I just can't be bothered right now. I fucked off most of the morning, ordered room service, went down a little while ago and bailed almost right away. All those people in suits and austere glasses hobnobbing in French, meh.

So I'm in my hotel room listening to the new Bon Iver yet again. No one has posted about it. I don't know if I have any profound insights about it, I just like a lot, though some songs a lot more than others. "Michant" is one I was feeling right away, along with "Holcene" and "Hinnom, TX", but at the moment "Minnesota, WI" is my joint, one of the best things he's done, and very unique. I wish I could understand his lyrics because when I can I think he's a really interesting lyricist. But this story in the NY Times Magazine says it doesn't really matter. A couple of the songs are clunkers, "Beth / Rest" sounding like something Sting did while he was dreaming about unicorns or some shit. Anyway, I know I'm going to burn this album out but for now it's really working for me.

I wonder if the strip clubs open before noon?

Computerised Dub

I found this record at my local spot... Prince Jammy, "Computerised Dub", 1986, Greensleeves.

It's exactly what you would expect... vintage drum machines, 80's synths, Commodore64 effects. It reminds me of all that Jahtari stuff, actually.

I also love that it has all song titles that were very space age for 1986: "Modem", "256K RAM", "Megabyte", "Synchrostart".

Great stand out is "Wafer Scale Integration", banger from start to finish, which Madlib sampled on Quasimoto CD ("Goodmorning Sunshine"). This record is dope.

Lucky for you jokers I found it on Mediafire as well. But, for the record, the vinyl copy I found is stone mint clean copy.

Also, in case you missed it (I did), I saw in Bla Blazo and Gabino's comments in a post below that this site has some of those Blood and Fire comps that are so great.

So, yeah, every one's reggae collection should be pretty stacked right now.

dc

Rahsaan Mediafire Orgy

Your friend Gabino, making sure your hard drive has everything it needs. This is missing a bunch of later albums, the Atlantic era that's been compiled a lot. Honestly, I've never thought that stuff was as cool as him just blowing (relatively) straight with a small group. Check out the rest of this blog also, pretty rich.