Tuesday, 25 August 2009
Anti-Pop Consortium - Volcano (Four Tet Remix) (2009)
Sometimes I feel like giving up on hip hop but then a track like this comes along and I enjoy it again. Every time I try to get out, they suck me back in!
Kenny Carter - Showdown (1966)
One of my all time favourite soul tracks. Amazingly baroque and mournful arrangement with some heavy lyrics. Skip the preamble as that's only for anal music hounds like myself.
Feeling Washed Out?
There's something about this guy. His tracks feel like faded memories. It's like browsing through hundreds of those stock photographs found in picture frames that you throw away full of listless plastic smiles, hair product, blue-eyed wholesome families or women undressing under waterfalls. Those pictures seem to illustrate that a sickening faith in consumerist culture will provide a forced optimism in the stark face of economic downturns, terrorism and nuclear annihilation. It makes you feel drained and blinkered yet somehow elated like an aural Prozac. I guess Washed Out (a.k.a. Ernest Greene) could fit in with the 'Hypnagogic Pop' movement if his music wasn't so overproduced. But thankfully it's sounds just right, somehow straddling the decades in a retro-futurist manner and leaves you dreaming of DeLorean's and electric sheep rather than recession and the hopeless decay of society.
Thursday, 20 August 2009
Marc Hunter - Big City Talk (1981)
Probably Marc Hunter's best song (perhaps somewhat akin to picking the healthiest stool from a medical chart) set to some period visuals and the only one I can use as the 'official' video version has embedding disabled. Dirty punks.
Marc Hunter - Nothing But a Lie (1984)
Another strange shiny turd from Marc Hunter, full of fake dogs and 80's Volvo's. It sounds a bit like 'What A Fool Believes' by The Doobie Brothers but I can't help myself.
Marc Hunter - Island Nights (1979)
Completely naff yet totally awesome. I'm loving Marc Hunter hard at the moment. As well as being a solo artist he sang lead vocals with the Aussie rock group Dragon who are equally as generically tramp yet cool. The lyrics are very Vic and Bob-esque with 'tattooed leather gypsies and burnt out saxophones'. The best line? At one point he sings 'Nothing grows in Holland. Nothing ever will'. It could be Harlem or something else. Can't tell. No shit.
Alphabet City (1984)
Was turned onto this after reading David Keenan's 'Hypnagogic Pop' article in The Wire (cheers for the info Nick) and found out about this film 'Alphabet City' (1984). The soundtrack is rare as hell and was composed by Nile Rogers of Chic. Madonna apparently featured on a track early in her career called 'Lady Luck' by The Breakfast Club that can only be heard in one scene. The voice over claims that the soundtrack is available on Island Records yet all searches on the 'net have lead nowhere. Shame really as it all sounds kinda cool.
The Gentlemen Losers
Bibio who I've mentioned before in this blog spoke highly of these guys in a Pitchfork interview so my ears pricked up naturally. Yeah, I can see why he likes them. Their songs are like postcards from rusted towns, languid yet mournful. Check out their MySpace here
Don Slepian 'Reflections' Music Video
Found this whilst researching this 'Hypnagogic Pop' movement on Nite Jewel's MySpace site. It reminds me of office training video music yet it's oddly beautiful at the same time.
Saturday, 15 August 2009
Thursday, 13 August 2009
Monday, 10 August 2009
Zomby - Where Were U In '92? (2008)
Get out your glowsticks with this postmodern retro/futurist nonsense. Yippee!
Friday, 7 August 2009
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