Mas Sexi Mixtape #1: Holiday Dance Party, USA!

Hello, friends and strangers, and happy holidays! The last time you heard from Mas Sexi we were mere days from a Thanksgiving turkey-induced coma, but after a month of lazing about and waiting for snow, we've grown restless and, frankly, a little bored of hibernation. Cue the Mas Sexi Mixtape!


MP3: DJ Cuckoo - Mas Sexi Mixtape #1 (Holiday Dance Party, USA!)

In the absence of a Portland-based Meatball Magic, yours truly dons his virtual DJ Cuckoo hat to bring you an extra-special holiday dance mix via The Internets. Ladies and gentlemen: the Mas Sexi Mixtape--first of a lifelong series, no doubt--is an hour-long MP3 mix featuring some of the year's best bangers, as well as a few of our dancefloor favorites. Click above (or here, or there) to download. Consider it an early Christmas present. Or a belated Hannukah gift. Or, you know, whatever you like. Point is, dance!

Tracklist:
Stars - "What I'm Trying to Say Pt. 2 (The Dears Remix)"
Hot Chip - "Ready for the Floor"
Chromeo - "Waiting 4 U"
Calvin Harris - "Disco Heat"
Kylie Minogue - "In My Arms"
Grand National - "Close Approximation"
The Black Ghosts - "Any Way You Choose to Give It"
Treasure Fingers - "Come True Tonight"
Dizzee Rascal - "Pussyole (Old Skool)"
Lyn Collins - "Think About It"
Can - "I Want More"
Blonde Redhead - "Spring and by Summer Fall"
Arcade Fire - "Keep the Car Running"
Dennis DJ - "Vasco 2000"
Diplo - "Diplo Rhythm (Percao)"
Kraftwerk - "Tour de France"
Bonde do Role - "Marina do Bairro"
Santogold - "Creator"
Ce'Cile and General Degree - "Na Na Na Na"
Groove Armada - "Drop That Thing"
M.I.A. - "XR2"
The Postmarks - "Goodbye (Tahiti 80 Remix)"
Robyn - "Crash and Burn Girl (Jesper Dahlback Remix)"
X-Wife - "When the Lights Turn Off"
Ladytron - "Nothing to Hide"

The smell of repetition really is on you.

It's only been a year since the release of Hot Chip's Mercury Prize-nominated sophomore album, The Warning, but you know what? You can't just drop a single like "My Piano" and then say, Oh, by the way, you're gonna have to wait until next year for the actual album, okay? Come on already!

MP3: Hot Chip - "My Piano"

!K7's DJ Kicks series--the label's genre-spanning remix project--is 12 years strong this week. Hot Chip's own DJ Kicks album is the latest mix (not yet counting next month's mix by Booka Shade), and it's just as eclectic as the series' roster of remixers. Along with the first appearance of "My Piano" is an awesome Etta James & Sugar Pie DeSanto track, bookended by Young Leek and Black Devil Disco Club and fused into one big club stormer. Here's an excerpt.

MP3: Hot Chip - "Jiggle It/In the Basement/On Just Foot" (DJ Kicks)

Hot Chip's new album, tentatively titled Shot Down in Flames, will be out in February on DFA Records. The next single, which they've been performing live everywhere (and apparently features Todd Rundgren), is due out any day now. In the meantime, here are some very nice remixes they've done for various folks.

MP3: Ladytron - "Destroy Everything You Touch" (Hot Chip Remix)
MP3: Le Tigre - "TKO" (Hot Chip Remix)
MP3: Scissor Sisters - "Take Your Mama" (Hot Chip Remix)

Face the music.

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?

MP3: The Black Ghosts - "Face"

"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.


MP3: The Black Ghosts - "Anyway You Choose to Give It"
MP3: The Black Ghosts - "Anyway You Choose to Give It" (Playgroup Remix)

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.

MP3: The Black Ghosts - "Let's Get Physical"

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.

MP3: The Black Ghosts - Summer Mixtape, July 2007

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)

Up to our eyeballs in M.I.A.: Another new single.

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?

Mas Sexi coming back with power-power!

My babies, my babies! I've been in California the last few weeks, enjoying my farewell Meatball Magic. Practically every friend and acquaintance left in Fresno came out to see me off and I love you all and thank you for shaking ass to my final residential set (Roxy Carmichael-homecoming guest sets to come in the future, I promise). Daniel and I also spent a beach-front weekend in Monterey and it was a great respite before the big move. I'm now an official resident of the Portland/Vancouver metro area (as is half of California by now). This last week consisted of unpacking boxes, shaking sand out of everything, organizing too many books, and enjoying typically amazing weather. Expect many Pacific Northwest-based surprises. Just you wait.

Enough disclosures, now on to the good stuff. So many albums have leaked in my absence from the Internets that I hardly know where to begin. Most importantly? Possibly the most anticipated one yet:


YouTube: M.I.A. - "Bamboo Banga"

It's like Easter Sunday, except with less palm fronds and more lasers. The album's opener, "Bamboo Banga," is indeed a certified banger. There's a Modern Lovers reference, some now-familiar baile funk beats, speeding cars and sirens weighted with bass, and that "Power! Power!" clincher that's the drunken cherry on top of this big sticky floor-filler. The track makes way for its Bollywood foundations at the 3:40 mark (she even does a straight-up cover of this a few tracks later), and it's that layer-cake approach we're used to hearing from M.I.A. that begs us to turn it up to 11.

YouTube: M.I.A. - "World Town"

"Hands up, guns out, represent that world town," she commands on the album's clear, albeit nutso, standout. It echoes the 2 Live Crew's "Face Down Ass Up" by appropriating their call for poon and turning it into a call for worldwide revolution. The sentiment is punctuated by the click clack of guns cocking. You know, just in case you weren't sure. Also? Her use of the word "explodify" is bound to be the next "hateration." Remember that.

YouTube: M.I.A. - "XR2"

I was a 7th grader taping episodes of MTV's 120 Minutes and Alternative Nation in '92. M.I.A. was, by her own admission, listening to hip hop and learning how to jack cars in London. (If you've been under a rock, "M.I.A." is a play on her name, Maya, and the battlefield acronym for someone "missing in action" or, for these purposes, her old London neighborhood of Acton by way of Sri Lanka.) We've all been listening to that shoddy Myspace demo rip of "XR2" for months, so it's great to hear the final album version with all those freshly-polished bells and whistles coming at us from all angles.

If you want to hear it that way, though, all crisp and amazing-like, you'll have to wait until August 21st. That's when Kala drops--and no, you're not imagining things, the MP3s posted here previously have been removed by request and replaced with YouTube links. Sorry, them's the breaks. Go out and buy her album after sampling, just like us. The rest of it is just as incredible--yes, even that song she did with Timbaland that they're both sharing on each other's albums. By the way, if you should feel the need to peruse M.I.A.'s Myspace or official site, here's a tip for all you Firefox users: hitting the Escape key will save you an epileptic seizure by freezing all those animated gifs.

The sun is setting here now, and the smells and sounds of a summer barbeque next door wafting through our open windows are distracting me something fierce, but remind me to tell you about this at some point:

Where are your friends tonight?

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!


MP3: LCD Soundsystem - "All My Friends"

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.


MP3: Franz Ferdinand - "All My Friends"

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.

Party people in the place, get ready for this.

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.

MP3: The Go! Team - "Grip Like a Vice" (Acapella)

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.

M.I.A. - "Boyz"

We've been teased with "XR2," been blown away by "Bird Flu," decided that she saved Timbaland's shit, and wondered what "Hit That" was all about--now it's finally official: M.I.A.'s new album is going to be fucking nuts. A new track has leaked and, as usual, we had to listen to it a bajillion times before our brains processed the madness.



"Boyz"--hitting shelves June 11th on XL Recordings--is the first official single from M.I.A.'s forthcoming sophomore album titled Kala. That album's been a long time coming, and with her visa troubles, her break-up with Diplo, and her beef with Timbaland over stolen beats (he gave hers to Snoop Dogg), that there's a whole 'nother story.

As with "Bird Flu," her first fake-out single for Kala, "Boyz" is a huge monster of a track produced by Switch and rife with Indian influences, behemoth tribal beats, and electronic effects that sound more organic than robotic. Coming to us in 12" and USB memory stick format (yes, that's right, USB), the single is accompanied by, among other things, a video intro by M.I.A. which--cunning blogger that I am--is embedded below for your wonder and joy.



Kala is set for a late August release date. Somewhere around the 20th, we're told. We'll keep our eyes and ears peeled for you. M.I.A.'s first album, Arular, is available all over the place.

Freestyle Wednesday #2: Debbie Deb

Unbeknownst to the general music-listening public, we're all sort of experiencing Debbie Deb overkill at this point. Not that that's a bad thing. It's just that whether you know it or not, everyone's been biting her for years. The Black Eyed Peas, Xscape, Pitbull, Janet Jackson, countless Brazilian baile funk bands, and a couple handfuls of other nostalgic artists have honored their freestyle roots by sampling and covering Debbie Deb's two legendary hits.

MP3: Debbie Deb - "When I Hear Music"

Deb was only 16 and working in a Miami record store when a chance meeting with musical artist and producer Pretty Tony (member of the freestyle group named, you guessed it, Freestyle) found her recording her first single the very next day. Tony, rumor has it, "just liked her voice." That track, "When I Hear Music," quickly became a club and radio hit, ensuring that Deb would be around for at least one more hit.

MP3: Debbie Deb - "Lookout Weekend"

Unfortunately, one more hit meant just that. Deb's second single, "Lookout Weekend," while considerably successful (arguably even more so than her first), came on the heels of tensions with her record label. She had struggled with her weight for most of her life, and in a bullshit move that crushed Deb, her label decided to use a slimmer stand-in for her on record sleeves and even in live performances à la Milli Vanilli. Not ever having received any royalty payments from the label for her records, Deb ultimately quit the music business and took up work as a hairdresser.

In the mid-90s, Deb attempted a comeback with She's Back, an album full of modern re-workings of her 80s freestyle hits, and she's been riding that second wave with frequent billings on "Freestyle Explosion"-type concerts. The two songs she performs that are met with the loudest cheers and grandest ovations? It's the same two songs that everyone (including Deb herself) still can't seem to get over. And you know what? With songs like "Lookout Weekend" and "When I Hear Music," which encapsulate the 80s freestyle vibe, defined it, and even did it one better, who can complain?

Freestyle Wednesday #1: Shannon

Freestyle--also known in other forms as Miami bass or, more generally, old-school electro--is a musical genre familiar to most children of the 80s. Those who were cool enough to cruise around in a Camaro IROC-Z with 808 beats pumping out of the trunk (or who had older siblings letting them ride along in that tiny backseat) will wax nostalgically when an old freestyle song comes on the radio, and unless you were already waist-deep in either the goth or butt rock of the era, you can't help but love it to this day.


MP3: Shannon - "Let the Music Play"

Widely known as the first freestyle dance track in musical history, "Let the Music Play" has been remixed and covered by others, but it's the original record by Shannon and New York producer Chris Barbosa that made all the waves. Barbosa, along with co-producer Ed Chisolm, isolated the electro funk sound made famous by Afrikaa Bambaataa's "Planet Rock" (whose own sound was birthed by the grandaddies of modern electro, Kraftwerk) by incorporating Latin American dance rhythms and electronic elements taken from the era's emerging new wave movement.


There's still plenty of speculation as to why the resulting sound was dubbed "freestyle." Some believe it's because after the steady and consistent disco beats club DJs had been mixing together up until that point, the syncopated drum machine rhythms in this new sound gave them more creative freedom on the decks. Others believe it's either because of the vocal techniques or the style of dancing that freestyle music spawned. Most likely it's due to a mix-up between a musical group called Freestyle and the sound that became synonymous with them and their contemporaries. Whatever the reason, "Let the Music Play" topped the charts and blazed a trail that's still being tread by artists who incorporate samples and lyrics from well-known freestyle tracks in their music.

MP3: Shannon - "Give Me Tonight"

Shannon's follow-up single didn't chart quite as well as "Let the Music Play," but it was still embraced in clubs and on the airwaves. "Give Me Tonight" received recent attention from its spot on the Party Monster soundtrack as well, and while it has no shortage of fond affections due to nostalgia and the current music scene's "80s chic" resurgence, "Let the Music Play" is the one that will always be remembered as everyone's "jam." Dance pop, and pop of any species for that matter, would never be the same after that first unmistakable whiplash intro.

Kudu - Death of the Party

Death of the Party isn't really Kudu's first album, but we suspect that's what they'd tell us if we asked. An earlier incarnation of the band found them trying on a dress of an entirely different shade, and while their eponymous debut is just fine for relaxing in, say, a smoke-filled room, the electronic tendencies they hint at on that first album come out swinging in a blur of fishnet and leather on Death of the Party.

MP3: Kudu - "Suite Life"

The album's opener, "Hot Lava," betrays their influences nicely. Traces of Siouxsie & the Banshees and latin funk culminate in a lascivious hook about shaking and blowing, but it's the next track over that finally puts out. "Suite Life" opens with a speaker-rattling bass and jungle beat that's a perfect match for front-wraith Sylvia Gordon's come-hither vamping. She even spits a little rhyme before the chorus thrusts you in the general direction of her penthouse.

MP3: Kudu - "Bar Star"

The clear standout comes two tracks later. "Bar Star" is palpable Chicago post-house that always seems to make it into most of my sets. Whispered Salt-n-Pepa references, handclaps (I'm a sucker for those), and lyrics about someone with "a rhinestone rocket ship and disco balls"? We're practically all danced out.

MP3: Kudu - "Let's Finish"

An album that relies so heavily on beats and synths is bound to take it easy at some point for fear of pummeling us, and that's what happens in the second half of Death of the Party. Overblown electronics and histrionic operatics make way for fuzzy washes of synth and tinkling harmonics over falsetto come-ons, but it's a slick and easy trudge to the finish line. Just short of, actually, because it's those last few inches Gordon's begging for on "Let's Finish" that are going to bring it on home for Kudu. The street sounds of their native New York introduce the slithery affair, and that descending stab in the background seems to be beckoning you lower, lower. It's a production we know Prince would be proud of in so many different ways, and who are we to argue with that?