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!
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"
You can thank Bjork. Because of her musical antics--as well as those of other Icelandic bands like Múm and Sigur Rós, Norway's Röyksopp, and Sweden's The Knife--there's a certain sound one now associates with the majority of Scandinavian alternative music. That frosty tinkling from that far-off land of ice age remnants tends to conjure images of fur-clad musicians clanging together instruments fashioned out of icicles and snowballs--whistles and wails chasing flurries and gusts up the sides of icebergs. It's all, for the most part, heavily glacial and coolly detached, and even when the beats anchor the tune to the dancefloor or the background vocals swoop in like a chorus of tiny angels, there's either an aloofness or quirkiness that grabs you while still keeping you at arm's length. It's gorgeous and often overwhelming, but even in the embrace of an opus like "Pagan Poetry," the track's sentiments belie the sense that you're making love to a robot with an internal combustion engine for a heart.
And you wanna know something else? Unless it's a duo or just one artist, no one ever knows exactly how many members are actually in most of these bands. Efterklang is no exception. Up until this point, the Danish group had, ok, five official members? Plus one guy who does accompanying films and visuals. Plus at least two other people who joined them regularly while touring in support of their ambitious 2004 debut, Tripper. That album, by the way, was the fastest-selling album in the history of The Leaf Label, and deservedly so. Its computer-guided melodies and bit-gilded strings stuttered their way throughout Denmark and across the pond, creating ripples and flooding American college radio airwaves the following year. Tracks like "Swarming"--whose video was directed by Karim Ghahwagi, that visuals guy--introduced us to a band capable of more than whispering and ringing bells.
At any rate and on all counts, all bets are off with the release of their new album, Parades. The glitchy atmospherics of Tripper are still there, but rather than forming a base for the band's music, the electronic elements have been allowed to float over the top, touching down occasionally with clicks and pops here and there. Acoustically-based performances, like the epic opener "Polygyne," build momentum and bloom into fully-formed productions whose exaltations challenge even the most majestic of post-rock outfits (hello, Godspeed!). A full orchestra and backing choir stomp and glide along with the warm male-female vocals now familiar to most fans of the band, and even the synthesized flourishes seem to develop organically, floating in and out of the mix like ticker tape.
And much like an actual parade, each track on the album approaches you from somewhere out on the horizon, bowling you over with fanfare and fireworks, then marching away to the echoing of Sousa-sized strains. Lead single "Mirador" floats in with fluttering harps and pianos that open up to Matterhorn crescendos, then back again. The accompanying video--a sort of pinball-countdown-goes-north-pole affair--is as mesmerizingly surreal as you'd expect.
Much of Parades recalls Arcade Fire or Sufjan Stevens' more bombastic fare in that every colossal action is met by an equal and opposite reaction. It also seems to happen subconsciously. Towards the end of the album, when the marching band thundering of "Caravan" flows gently into "Illuminant," you forget (if you've been good and allowed the record to play through in its entirety) that the whole thing consists of 11 different tracks rather than one homogeneous behemoth. Musical experiences like that are few and far between.
Parades took a full 18 months to record, and it shows. The music moves like a glacier, sliding smoothly at times and landing with a series of booming cracks. This isn't just headphone music. With its soaring orchestral movements and crashing drums, it's music for loudspeakers and concert halls. It's a cadence for a march of millions. Efterklang haven't just created an amazing album here--with an earth-shaking spirit that all but sends you into cardiac arrest, they've composed a soundtrack for a revolution that will melt the icecaps.
Because of its close proximity to the U.S., its numerous colleges, and the technology afforded by its relative wealth, the highly-industrialized Mexican municipality of Monterrey (capitol of the northeastern state of Nuevo Leon) has, in the last ten years, become one of the biggest wellsprings of alternative music in Latin America. As the richest city in Mexico, Monterrey was known in the past more for its factories and shopping malls than its music clubs and recording studios. Nowadays, its thriving music scene has earned it the nickname "Monterrock," and bands like Control Machete and Plastilina Mosh have helped to establish it as "the Seattle of Latin America."
Indie pop foursome Volován emerged from the Monterrock scene with their self-titled debut album five years ago. Produced by Andy Chase (Tahiti 80, Ivy), Joe Robinson (Badly Drawn Boy, Mom and Dad), and Alejandro Rosso (Plastilina Mosh), Volován spawned two international hit singles. "Ella Es Azul" and "Flor Primaveral"--both heavy on layered "whoo-hoo" choruses, tambourine, handclaps and Fender Rhodes--recall the summery beach pop of mid-century California rather than the traditionally-inspired norteño music popular throughout most of Mexico.
Elsewhere on the album, when the band isn't picking sand out of its toes, it's caught up in a sunny swoon. The power pop chords of "Invencible," bearing down in waves of bass and snare, summon the spirit of Sonic Youth and The Cars with the warm fuzzy edge of shoegazey synth.
Stay tuned at the end of the album for a quick New-Order-inspired instrumental hidden track. It's sorta nice. Then go out and buy the album--you'll wear it out in no time. As for follow-ups? Earlier this year, after whittling the band down from four members to three, Volován released a sophomore album called Monitor. Frankly, we haven't been as captivated by it as you'd think, so that's about all we have to say about that.
Chances are you know Dan Snaith as Manitoba, the musical alias under which he released two albums in the early aughts (including 2003's incredible Up in Flames). But in 2004, under threat of a lawsuit from the Dictators' "Handsome Dick" Manitoba, Snaith changed his stage name to Caribou, re-released his previous material under the new dub, and began work on his 2005 motorik Krautrock-inspired album Milk of Human Kindness.
Andorra, Snaith's latest release as Caribou, follows his tradition of musical metamorphosis. On "Melody Day," the album's first single, he fuses the 60s jangle of The Zombies, The Beach Boys, maybe Margo Guryan, and processes it through a dream pop nuclear reactor. The Four Tet remix--which you'll find alongside "Zoe" on the single's b-side--strips the original track down to an acoustic wisp of a song.
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
Sure, we could start this off with unreleases and leaks for the kids, but I couldn't in good conscience mount a foray into 2007's musical offerings without acknowledging the absolute hands-down greatest single of 2006. Onward, friends...
TV on the Radio are one of those happy flukes of musical nature. While other bands make hungry work of moving past their sophomore slump, these guys are resting on the laurels of their critically-acclaimed masterpiece Return to Cookie Mountain. After 2004's Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes scored the band a Shortlist Music Prize, expectations for their second and eagerly anticipated proper full-length (2002 self-release OK Calculator notwithstanding) were pretty high. Signing to legendary record label 4AD for European distribution also didn't hurt.
Shoot forward to the mislabeled and unmastered Internet leak of Return to Cookie Mountain and the collective gasp of fans, both adoring and hipster-cynical alike, propelling mixed-up tracks onto blogs and message boards, and you've got a pretty good idea of how the laureation begins. I don't know about you, but the first time I heard "Wolf Like Me" (originally ID3-labeled "Playhouses"), I nearly fell out of my seat for all the bopping and jaw-dropping. The album was officially released in July of 2006 (September in the U.S.) to praise worthy of its various "Album of the Year" spots on year-end lists, but it's Return's lycanthropian ode to lust that seals the deal. Not only is "Wolf Like Me" a bona-fide dance-floor packer that Meatball Magic regulars never get sick of thrashing around to, it's also a howling testament to one band's double-fisted ability to rock the fucking house. And how.
Mas Sexi promotes responsible downloading. We love music just as much as you do, and that's why we're excited to share, but please show your love for the artists by buying their music after you've sampled those MP3s we've shot your way. Musicians need to eat too, you know.
If, however, we post a track you'd rather we didn't, or you have something you'd like us to share with the world, drop us a line. We'll see what we can do.
