Download (105.7mb)
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01. Something Good Can Work (Two Door Cinema Club)
02. Inch of Dust (Future Islands)
03. Now That You’re Here (Jap Jap)
04. Yellow Wings (KeepAway)
05. Vinterbarn (Fredrik)
06. Bad Day (Darwin Deez)
07. Snow Crystals (Apparatjik)
08. West Side (Studio)
09. Silent Snow (The Magic Theatre)
10. Sudden Rush (Erlend Øye)
11. Kenya Dig It? (The Ruby Suns)
12. Focal Point (Valgeir Sigurðsson)
13. Dumb Terminal (Simon Bookish)
Download (50.7mb)
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01. Bones (Summer Dregs)
02. Come to Nothing (Car Stereo Wars)
03. New Wife, New Life (Truman Peyote)
04. Bearbones (Total Babe)
05. I Walk The Earth (King Biscuit Time)
06. Neo Violence (The Tough Alliance)
07. Video Kid (Video Kid)
08. You Don’t Know Me (Ben Folds cover)
09. I Will Come Again (Bobby Birdman)
10. M.A.G.I.C (The Sound of Arrows)
11. In the Sun (She & Him)
12. This Is the Dream of Win & Regine (Final Fantasy/Owen Pallett)
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Leave to Divide and Kreate to take something I absolutely loathed and make it surprisingly tolerable. I’m about as big a fan of I’ve Got a Feeling as this guy, but as it turns out, if you nix will.i.am’s voice and replace it with La Roux’s, things aren’t as bad as they first seemed.
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Divide & Kreate – “Peaproof (La Roux vs Black Eyed Peas)”
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Remember Jack-Jack from The Incredibles? Y’know, the kid that was a cute, docile infant for most of the film, and then turned out to have the powers to turn into a crazy-ass demon at the end? Well, Your Infamous Harp is kind of the same way, in that regard.
Their album Prah Suomafni Ruoy (!ti teg I ,gnilleps sdrawkcab ,ahah) starts off as a really fun brain-fizzy fusion of IDM, glitch-hop and synth pop (think Faded Paper Figures meets Pogo, with a bit of The Flashbulb layered on the edge), but then tapers off into… something else. Namely, dissonant cacophony, screaming, and Aphex-Twin level breakcore. Take, for example, ‘Danger Danger’, which starts off as a Mummers-style cabaret tune, but then takes an aside into demonic hell-sounds for a good five seconds before returning right back to Style A as if nothing had ever happened. Odd.
As such, I can really only recommend the first half of this album wholeheartedly, which thanks to modern online transaction capabilities shouldn’t be too much of a problem for y’alls. You can pick up the whole record if you like, but only if you’re sure that 18-minute tracks of empty corridors and headphone-damaging yelling is really your kind of thing.
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Your Infamous Harp – “Danger Danger”
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Oh cool, you have a band? How many members are in it? Just five, including you?
Well that’s real cute, but everyone knows it takes a 20-person female ensemble to really get anywhere these days!
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GAGGLE – “Mowgli’s Road (Marina & the Diamonds cover)”
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While I formerly only knew him for his novelty Christmas mashup album, DJ Whoquestion finally dropped a new album on us last week, which I really enjoyed. This one won’t blow you away the same way E-603 and Super Mash Bros will, but if you were old enough to hear radio around the 90s and beyond (Kokomo!) you’ll feel a nice sense of nostalgia listening to Big Big Trouble.
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DJ Whoquestion – “Feel Me Now”
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Think Belle & Sebastian with just guys and a thicker accent, and you have Spaghetti Anywhere. While the album title (Spaghetti Anywhere Ep) isn’t that imaginative, they more than compensate with the joyful tone set by the tracks, featuring that nice combination of bells and casio-keyboard instrumentation that I seem to have a aural fetish for.
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Spaghetti Anywhere – “Gregory’s Girl”
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I was introduced to The Blow (now better known as that group that YACHT used to be in) by my fellow magic co-conspirator Spencer Peterson a while ago, but didn’t really get into them much until I stumbled across this track again a few days ago. Since then it’s been looping on my iTunes the same way Ambling Alp was near the end of December, which is a quality I always strive to seek out in my quest for fresh musical enjoyments. If only every track on Paper Television was like this.
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The Blow – “True Affection”
Made it! I know, I know—I’m just as shocked & surprised as you are. Consistency is a scant commodity here at visualmadness (see: KABAAM), so I take the two-time perpetuation of this tradition so far as a pretty good sign of things to come.
That being said, there’s no time to waste, folks! The sands of time are slowly a-slip-slip-slippin’ through the hourglass figure of eternity; there are mouths to feed, bellies to fill, thirsts to quench, and songs to hear. So let’s get to it!
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Vampire Weekend’s new album Contra leaked all over the internets well near two weeks ago, but I hadn’t posted about it in last week’s T.W.I.M. because, well, frankly… I wasn’t that impressed. Sure, there were a a few tracks here and there that I really liked (Horchata, Run, Giving Up the Gun), but compared to their lovely debut it just didn’t have the same aural punch or catchiness that I’d come to associate with the band over the last few years. Where were you when I needed you, strings?
Still, not all hopechata is lost. Here to save the day is Toy Selectah, upon whom Ezra & Co bestowed the task of restoring Contra’s aforementioned punch & catch. As it turns out, while the record’s tracks were at best lukewarm on a separate basis, combined they’re a whole ‘nother beast altogether. Fitting that it’s dubbed a Megamelt too, because that’s exactly what happened to my brain when I first heard it. Zwwooaaarr
Apparently the 3-track bonus album came with certain in-store album sales of Contra, although according to a simple consultation of The Googles an ‘unofficial’ acquisition process is by far the more popular route many have taken. Either way, if you like it, get it—that goes for everything in the rest of this post, too.
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Vampire Weekend by way of Toy Selectah – “Contramelt B“
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While in L.A. for the weekend living large with a bunch of D.B.s, I got the chance to catch instrumental post-rock (redundancy?) group Lymbyc Systym do a set at The Bootleg Theater on Sunday. Granted, it took my friend and I nearly half an hour of trudging through the sketchiest part of Koreatown to get there, but by god was it worth it. And much like the Michael Weber Incident circa 2007, I ended up speaking to Mike Bell for nearly 10 minutes prior to the show before finding out that he was in the band. *slaps forehead*
But enough about me and my social embarrassments. This is a post about music, and music you will get. Here is a sample of Lymbyc Systym’s music. It is good. Buy their albums. All of them.
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Lymbyc Systym – “Fall Bicycle“
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Allllssssoo at the show was Helios, who opened for the two brothers and their violin-wielding accompaniment with a fantastic one-hour set of lush textures, ambient sounds and complete, utter chillage. Truth be told, while I absolutely enjoyed LS’s set I mostly came to see Mr. Kenniff at work, as Unomia, Eingya and Ayres had all practically functioned as my RL-soundtrack for most of Summer 2009. As a testament to Helios’ chillage, near the end of the set almost the entire audience was sat down on the floor—not because they were bored, but because his music is just that soothing. Jigglypuff, take note.
I had the pleasure of talking to Keith after his set, this time with the advantage of actually knowing who he was beforehand. Suffice to say he’s an incredibly nice guy for a being a living prodigy and all, which was inspiring to say the least. It’s definitely not workout music, but if you’re looking for a calm, eventless evening on the couch with a good book and a nice, warm mug of hot cocoa, it wouldn’t hurt to add some awesome musical accompaniment in the form of a Helios record to the mix.
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Helios – “Dragonfly Across An Ancient Sky“
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“I am now going to sell five copies of The Three E.P.’s by The Beta Band.“
If you don’t know where that line is from, not only do you have another album to add to your shopping cart, you also have a fantastic John Cusack movie to check out. I finally un-dummied up last week and picked up this little compilation of the British music group’s early work from ‘97—’98, which I was surprised that I enjoyed, considering how I don’t usually take too kindly to music hailing from the pre-21st century era, Boards of Canada being one of the rare exceptions (sorry Kev).
I was going to write a lengthier description of this album to try and get you to check it out, but then I realized that if the fact that John-effin-Cusack recommended the album wasn’t enough to faze you, then nothing will. Seriously.
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The Beta Band – “Dry The Rain“
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…and now we’re back to the present! Whew… thank god for that, I was starting to get flash backs to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for a second there. Anyway, it appears we’ve made our little segue through time a little too far into the future, as this self-titled album by Broken Bells doesn’t come out till March! Officially, at least.
Being the combined efforts of Gnarls Barkley member Danger Mouse and James Mercer from The Shins, Broken Bell’ debut resonates with the best parts of both contributing parties’ emphases and talents, making this yet another one of those great ‘put on and leave on’ albums that everyone wishes their collection to comprise of nothing but. For whatever reason I didn’t dig the album too much the first time I skimmed through it, but after giving it another go it’s really grown on me, and I assure you it will do on you too.
Provided you remember to go out and get it when it comes out in two months, that is.
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Broken Bells – “The High Road“
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Speaking of revisiting bands, I decided to look into Bombay Bicycle Club again after noticing a last.fm similarity ranking in regards to The Temper Trap. And while I haven’t been able to sit down and listen to I Had The Blues But I Shook Them Loose all the way yet, I’m going to break unwritten T.W.I.M. protocol and recommend the band anyway, based solely on the merits of their single Always Like This, which has a bassline that gets my head bobbing like a well-paid hooker, or any other compatible analogy. Worse come to worst, if the album isn’t that great you can always play the tracks backwards and try and discover hidden messages. Works for me. Ha! Ha! Disregard that, the album’s great.
But, but!! This segment is less about the that band than it is about this band, ‘this band’ being Run Toto Run, who I discovered via their cover of the exact same aforementioned song from the previous paragraph. Their extremely well-received Passion Pit cover notwithstanding, it’s surprising how little-known RTR is in terms of their non-cover work, given Rachael Kichenside’s increeedible voice and how good their Plastic Gold EP was (thanks Alex). I’d suggest supporting these guys in any way possible, at the very least following them on The Twitter so you can get notified of when they drop a full LP later on this year.
Anyway, the two versions of the song follow below. Clicky clicky & checky checky.
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Bombay Bicycle Club – “Always Like This“
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Run Toto Run – “Always Like This (Bombay Bicycle Club cover)“
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Seeing as how one of the bands in the previous section has the initials BBC, I think it’s only right that I inform you of Two Door Cinema Club’s awesome mini-mix they did for the BBC. Starting off with a Daft Punk sample and getting progressively awesomer by the second, this mix shows off the British (4th time this post, jeez!) indie pop group’s knack for devising an incredibly addictive sound that was evident in their 2009 EPs and singles.
That reminds me, I have to go and listen to Something Good Can Work on repeat at least 57 in a row now. Be back in a few.
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Two Door Cinema Club – “BBC Radio 1 Annie Mac Mini Mix“
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And seeing as how that TDCC mix practically bookends the Contramelt recc from the beginning, I’d say now is a good time as any to wrap up this week’s T.W.I.M. before Jay Leno comes and takes over. As always, I had fun writing this, and I hope you enjoyed reading and/or listening (to) it.
Till next week—peace, love, happiness, and Megazords™ to you all.
“When we’re young, we act first and think later. But as adults, we rationalize everything. Basically, the song is about capturing the innocence of youth.”
- The Temper Trap on Sweet Disposition
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