British electro-rockers The Black Ghosts began splintering into existence in 2005. That's when Simian's Simon Lord and The Wiseguys' Theo Keating met with the intention of doing a few songs together. Two years later, the duo are working on an LP and have released a handful of singles and remixes. "Face," released late last year, is a tasty teaser limited to only 500 copies. Guess who's got it?
"Anyway You Choose to Give It," released on limited 12" in late 2006, is the first official single from the forthcoming album. This is the one we just can't seem to stop playing. A remix EP released earlier this year finds the Midas-esque Playgroup re-working the cut with that Lyn Collins/Rob Base drum track, James Brown samples, and air raid sirens. Seriously.
Remember Olivia Newton-John's 1982 classic "(Let's Get) Physical," in which she all but begs her date to just stick it in already? A compilation released in March (mind-blowing not so much in execution as in concept) revives the sexytime single with 12 exclusive covers done in alternating degrees of awesome. Let's Get Physical with Wesc was doled out by the shop at their store openings. The Black Ghosts' cover is, not surprisingly, the album's best.
The Black Ghosts' full-length debut, courtesy of Southern Fried, is due out later this summer. Tour dates, no doubt and hopefully, are sure to follow. Listen to their summer mixtape while you wait.
Tracklist: Syclops - "Mom the Video Broke" Beckett and Taylor - "You Gotta Work" Vincent Markowski - "The Madness of Moths" vs. The Black Ghosts - "Repetition Kills You" Lindstrom - "I Feel Space" vs. The Black Ghosts - "Something New" Noze - "Remember Love" Cursor Minor - "Hair of the Dog" Gossip - "Listen Up" (The Black Ghosts Remix) Bass-a-rani & Dexter - "Boogie Chasers" vs. The Black Ghosts - "Face" Ear Pwr - "Jack & Jill" The Black Ghosts - "Some Way Through This" (Plastician & Skream Remix)
We have no idea what's going on over at Camp M.I.A., but whatever it is, it must be just as awesomely nuts as her new album. Touring, album leaks, cease-and-desist letters, fake-out singles, elusive work visas, tearing Pitchfork a new asshole, and yet she's still got time to make another video for another new single before the album's even officially out? Yes yes, we know, settle down. Here:
A little back-story? One of M.I.A.'s favorite movies as a kid was an amazingly camp Bollywood flick called Disco Dancer (which was also huge in the Soviet Union--go figure). The basic premise is this: A little street urchin-slash-performer named Jimmy and his mother flee Bombay after they are beaten and imprisoned by a wealthy villain whose daughter Jimmy had the gall to befriend (big mistake!), and he vows to return someday to exact his vengeance. He's back 15 years later and while dance-walking down the street, Jimmy is "discovered" and soon replaces the arrogant Sam as disco king of India. Jimmy eventually falls in love with a girl named Rita, who we later discover is not only Sam's sister, but also the daughter of that wealthy villain we hate! (Stay with me.) So Sam and his father have Jimmy nearly beaten to death and in a cruel (but awesome) twist of fate, his mother is electrocuted to death by an electric guitar. No joke. Ok, so, long story short? He goes nuts and gives up disco-dancing forever, and this song? "Jimmy Aaja"? It's Rita's siren song to Jimmy, begging him to come back and dance for us once again. We're sure you can figure out the rest. And M.I.A.? This was her joint back then, apparently. She had a routine set to "Jimmy" that she did at parties--cardboard cutout guitar, cloak, the whole deal. How adorable is that?
Yes, it's been a while, but cut me some slack! I'm in California for a couple of weeks and Vance needs to start writing. Miss us? Here, take a couple of quick songs in the interim...
So, Sound of Silver, LCD Soundsystem's second studio album, was kinda hit-or-miss, right? That's not some sophomore slump bullshit, I'm just saying: when your first album is so good, and your production house/record label side-project (or main project, whatever) spits out such consistently incredible music (The DFA even made Britney Spears' scratch lyrics on that unreleased demo sound kinda cool), you've got some impressing to do. I ain't saying I was unimpressed, I'm just saying, WHY AIN'T YOU DANCING! Is it cuz the best song on Sound of Silver is not all that dancey? Suh-NAP!
The "All My Friends" single comes in a few different incarnations. The title track itself is a Roxy Music-on-a-rollercoaster chunk of belly-fluttering sweetness, and the longer album-length version is even that much more so, but it's the Franz Ferdinand version (one of two covers on the EP, along with an astonishingly just-OK John Cale version) that stretches our guts just as far as "Age of Consent" does.
It might even be, dare I say it, better than LCD's original? Don't hate, I'm just saying. Just saying! Go listen to more LCD Soundystem stuff over on their Internets. See y'all soon enough.
British uber-band The Go! Team (two drummers!) sure love their samples. So much so, in fact, that when their first album (2004's Thunder, Lightning, Strike!) was unleashed, they had to do a do-over and release a "legal" version of the record the following year after most of their samples had cleared. Double-dutch rhymes, Black Panther Party chants, Supremes and Lee Hazelwood tracks--they got it all. That sample-happy sound earned them a Mercury Music Prize nomination that year, and after touring the album and getting breaths good and bated for a sophomore release, they've assuaged fans' white knuckles by signing with famed Seattle record label Sub Pop and dropping a single that's about as hot a mess as we've ever encountered.
MP3: The Go! Team - "Grip Like a Vice" Proof of Youth, The Go! Team's second album-to-be, is out on the 11th of September. Guest vocalists include Solex and Marina from Bonde Do Role. You can pick up the "Grip Like a Vice" single on the 2nd of July. B-sides include a cover of Sonic Youth's "Bull in the Heather" and an acapella track of the single's old school rap vocals.
That's legendary female MCs Sha-Rock (of Funky Four + 1 fame) and Lisa Lee--who, along with Debbie Dee, formed the group Us Girls--and that rap is a Cold Crush callback (read: diss) from a 1984 BBC documentary on the history of hip hop (here's a clip). It's all but long-forgotten and that, right there, is the beauty of The Go! Team's archeological style. The final product of their curating hasn't, obviously, just been pulled out of thin air throbbing and alive. The single isn't simply an ape on someone else's genius; it had to have been painstakingly and lovingly pieced together by all six members of the band, and their own backing instrumentation seems not to devour the sample, but to propel it and give it weight. It's not biting; it's resurrection. It's not poaching; it's canonization. That proud proclamation of their loves and influences affords one an appreciation, if one didn't already have it, for The Go! Team's hot hot mess.
May 27, 2007 Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall Portland, Oregon
There is sometimes a certain and very specific type of syndrome many people experience after attending a particularly compelling concert. Related to the better-known "movie hangover," the "post-show stupor" can last hours, even days, and its symptoms include vertigo, swooning, fatigue, loss of speech, earworms, uncontrollable humming, and sometimes OCD-like manias in the form of pressing the "play" button on one's iPod until the related band's albums drain the battery. There is no known cure, but writing to you while my own post-show stupor is still in its death throes, I can't imagine anybody wanting one.
When Arcade Fire played Portland's Crystal Ballroom in 2005, their encore consisted of marching everyone out onto the intersection of Burnside and SW 14th and playing an impromptu 20-minute set. I wasn't there to see that, but I was still holding out for some special sort of transcendence this time.
We arrived at the Schnitzer (affectionately known as the "Schnitz" in this neck of the woods) not long after the 8pm starting time and opening band Electrelane were already well into their set. The Schnitz (once known as the Paramount Theater and easily recognizable by the large "Portland" sign on the side of the building) is a classical concert hall and vaudeville that has been restored to its 1920s Italian Rococo splendor. It's also easily one of the most beautiful venues I've ever seen. The juxtaposition of a marble and velvet theater lit by huge crystal chandeliers and scored with Electrelane's motorik art-rock created a sense of "through-the-looking-glass" surreality and it halved my head right down the middle.
We found our seats on the orchestra level and the adorable couple to my right proposed a swig of Maker's Mark from their flask. Already vibrating from the drinks we started with at home, I couldn't in good conscience refuse their offer and so I accepted. Then we spot Sleater-Kinney's Carrie Brownstein front and center and we're all having a coronary. (The Decemberists' Colin Meloy and Death Cab for Cutie's Ben Gibbard are, we later hear, somewhere out there, too.) When the 60s soul and girl group tunes being piped into the hall fade out and the lights finally dim, everyone explodes.
MP3: Arcade Fire - "Keep the Car Running" Can I just tell you? The sound? Flawless. The lows were deep and rooted at the base of our spines; the highs were loud and crisp with a snap at the top of our skulls. And once we heard the crescendo of strings that lead into "Keep the Car Running," all 3,000 people in that hall jumped up out of their seats with a shout and never sat back down.
From "Keep the Car Running" to "No Cars Go," the band started as they meant to go on: with a series of epic bangs. One song after another, even when they slowed it down for a moaner once or twice, the entire show was a constant barrage of gorgeousness. But that's not to say they were over-precious. Frontman Win Butler provided levity throughout the night with cute asides to his wife-slash-musical partner-in-crime Regine Chassagne and running jokes about the goth convention in town (three consecutive nights of goth and industrial bands at the Crystal Ballroom brought the black-clad ones out in droves all week), but Butler's own dark roots evinced his intended good humor. "Aren't they supposed to be... you know, solitary?" he quipped between songs. "The Internet is a powerful tool!"
It was organized chaos--musicians trading off instruments, going from accordion to keyboard to guitar and hurdy-gurdy--sometimes resembling a rather beautiful carnival sideshow. Percussion was banged on drums, amplifiers, the stage, even other band members' backs. Halfway through their set, the dirge-like title track from Neon Bible segues softly into "Distortions," a Clinic cover that absolutely no one expected. The room darkens and spotlights focus on Butler and his mirrored guitar, creating an effect that makes it appear as if he's made of stained glass. Shards of light shoot out of him and into the crowd as the band joins in for the last few strains. It is, if you'll excuse the sap, frankly magical.
For "Rebellion (Lies)," the last song before the encore, Butler dives out into the crowd to take pictures of folks with their own cameras. It's a sweet send-off before the fake-out exit, and when the band makes its way back to the stage after a minute or two, Butler is replaced by a cardboard cutout of himself with a display screen face. The real Butler has positioned himself at the pipe organ in back for "My Body Is a Cage" and his singing face, captured by video camera, is projected onto the figure's head. How's that for stage presence?
He assumes his place at center stage once more for the finale, and when all 3,000 fans and converts in the crowd shout along with the ten band members up on stage at the top of their lungs to "Wake Up" (the booming soccer-chant anthem from their freshman masterpiece, Funeral), it becomes more than just a music concert. It becomes a spiritual revival. That huge pipe organ up there in the back, that big open bible projected in neon onto the drapes and screens, the fog and the lights--no matter how cliched and trite it may sound, and no matter whether you're a middle-aged couple spurred by the article in the New York Times or you suspect you'll be late to first period the following morning, I defy you to say, straight-faced and honestly, that you haven't just had a religious experience. That transcendence I was looking for? Got it. And who says no one goes to church on Sunday anymore?
Setlist: Keep the Car Running No Cars Go Haiti Neighborhood #2 (Laika) Black Mirror In the Backseat Neon Bible Distortions Antichrist Television Blues The Well and the Lighthouse Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels) Intervention Ocean of Noise Neighborhood #3 (Power Out) Rebellion (Lies) Encore: My Body is a Cage Wake Up
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