Fader

Every week resident FADER selector Eddie STATS runs through dancehall riddims and other artifacts from the ghetto archipelago.

Step into the future, bitches. It’s a new dawn, it’s a new day, it’s a new life for me. Also, it’s the first Ghetto Palms of '09. By all rights I should have some dancehall bombshells to drop on you because traditionally Jamaicans do Christmas big and Christmas dances are the time to brukk out with new tunes and dances that producers have been holding back all year—Baby Cham’s “Ghetto Story” is a good example. But as I’ve discussed quite a bit here and in the pages of FADER, 2008 is the year that the bizarro-word rules of Jamaican music officially went reverse-bizarro. Riddims have not completely disappeared but one offs ruled the set, and to paraphrase my doops Max Glazer who recently played a holiday set at Kingston’s Quad nightclub, Laden’s “Time to Shine”—which debuted here a few weeks ago was “the biggest forward tune that’s not some kind of murderous gun-lyric song.” more...

At the end of 2008, we sang the praises of the CFCF remix of Cassie and Wayne's icily detached "Official Girl." It's not that we didn't like the original, it's just that CFCF's version had a lot more life, like it was a misguided love letter from the high school version of Cassie to her incredibly creepy older boyfriend Lil Wayne. In addition to his remixes and weekly show on Viva Radio, CFCF's also been working on original material, which is now taking shape as an EP called Panesian Nights (out Jan 20th on Paper Bag Digital). First single "Crystal Mines" might not be our favorite song on the EP, but it does turn the played concept of music that sounds like old Nintendo games on its ear, using the fuzzy lo-fi keys associated with that sound as layers that are part of a larger, more interesting whole.


Download: CFCF, "Crystal Mines"

In case you didn't know from the interskreets, aka Charles Hamilton's blog or Little Boots' myspace: Our annual NOW issue, in which we intuit whose cassettes we will be maxing in our Walkmen for the entire year, is all about the flash and shine of Harlem delight Charles Hamilton and London glitteratess Little Boots. FADER 59 will hit newsstands and your doorstep in a few short days, and we'll be posting the entire thing here on Tuesday, January 13, exactly one week before the Inauguration. It's our time!

One minute you're getting a rubdown with a young, mostly unknown, bearded songwriter in Chinatown, the next he's getting a big fancy write up in a Condé Nast publication. Only in New York. Last March, just after the release of the now critical smash For Emma, Forever Ago, Bon Iver's Justin Vernon visited a massage parlor with our then intern David Bevan. They talked about the album and Vernon played "Flume." You can watch it above, re-upped for posterity.

Almost a year later, Sasha Frere-Jones has profiled him in The New Yorker (read it here) and rightfully gushed about that same song and album. And now that Vernon is destined for fame, Bevan can trade on that story in bars all over the world. Congrats to both of them. Meanwhile, Bon Iver's new Blood Bank EP, out January 20th, is streaming fully on his MySpace for a limited time. We highly recommend you check it out, especially the vocoder epic that is "Woods."

Said her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in her 2008 Christmas speech to her nation: "Over the years those who have seemed to me to be the most happy, contented and fulfilled have always been the people who have lived the most outgoing and unselfish lives; the kind of people who are generous with their talents or their time."

Yes, that's right, here I am, back once again unselfishly giving my time and exuding my talent (musical knowledge) for you eager beavers.

OK, enough chit-chat – let's, as they say, keep it movin'.

Let's start by very briefly looking at the above recent grime video by Ghetto (who seems to have semi-changed his name to Ghetts) and Griminal. Although it appears to be a half-finished idea – both in terms of the song (how many times is the chorus and that line at the end repeated!?) and the video (what the hell is that Fonejacker-esque intro all about?) – I still really like it. more...

Boomers and older may fear the heathen technology and the havoc demon concepts such as online newspapers, streaming audio and Twitter might wreak upon our crumbling society, but not us, no way. What terrifies us is the barren past, which included only rowboats, hinterlands, trees without leaves, dusty books, wolves, fogs, the sea and darkness, as seen in this video for the gripping dirge "If I Had a Heart." Fever Ray, who you may remember as Karin Dreijer from the Knife, is fearless of these things, apparently, as she can be seen in her own video cradled in a murky twig-and-branch web painted up like a sad calaca from Dios de los Muertos. She might be equating the frozen nature of said absentee heart to the Day of the Dead, or she might not. Either way we are going to have nightmares about this amazing scary video while dreaming about the amazing pretty song.

If Matt Mondanile makes music for sunset beach naps as Ducktails, then this 15-minute song by his band Predator Vision is what's playing when nature gets really mad and sends a series of huge waves to wash away your towel, car keys and dog while you're sleeping.


Download: Predator Vision, "This City's A Jungle" (via Raven Sings the Blues)

If you read this site a lot, you probably remember us predicting the first big trend for music in 2009: Hillbillyhall. It's a combination of achy breaky vocals, slide guitars, laptop beats and toasting. It's gonna be HAAUUUGGGE but don't search for it on here, it's really hard to find that post. Anyway, the trend is now manifested in the persons of Bosco Delrey from Philly and FADER fave 77Klash from the BK who've collaborated on one of the strangest songs we've heard since Squirrel Nut Zippers put it to bed.


Download: Bosco Delrey f. 77Klash, "Round N Round"

If you're like us, the last few days of work and reality haven't dampened your New Year's spirit, and party stories around the watercooler are still pretty lively: "Yeah, I threw up AND THEN went to sleep!" Well, while we were paying dearly for drinking too much cheap liquor, the rich and fabulous were drinking too much and racing each other in Miami hotel pools. The title kind of says it all, but this video is the best proof we've seen yet that the recession just isn't going to affect some people like it does others, and god bless them for that. After the jump, read our anonymous tipster's epic retelling of this Battle of the Stars, and then watch the actual footage here. 2009: The Year of Miracles. more...

We always applaud innovation, of course, but we were somewhat surprised by the forwardness of Christina Carter's new musical subscription series, Many Breaths. With three pricing tiers available, you get a mottle of various ephemera, along with drawings and recordings made especially for the reader by the Charlambides chanteuse. For those of you invested in keeping the arts alive, during the recession or not, we offer you something uniquely, if not somewhat peculiarly, worthy of your patronage. We're learning of this on the heels of Apple's announcement about the elimination of DRM, but this seems like something worth more than ninety-nine cents and completely unsharable.

Back in August we told you that Noreaga's web game was on point, and between his weight loss contest with Busta, the continuous video blogs and poetic Twitter updates ("Yoooo what it good be y'all I'm so focused feeling fresh good got Muslim oil on my sean john cologne and I'm just feeling marverlous"), it looks like the superthug will be running the internet by dinner time. Aside from branding himself, Nore continues to make music in the form of KISS-sampling "NY Groove" which is exactly what you'd imagine: an infectiously joyful pro-New York anthem that very few rappers (with the exception of Cam, Juelz, and, uh, Nore himself) can pull off. Our plan is to quote the line, "my city a iPhone, your city a Sidekick" until the iPhone becomes obsolete, or until everyone calls us assholes.


Download: Noreaga, "NY Groove" (via 57th Ave)

We love the coming-soon Electrik Red album, the bangers-Godzilla written for four of our favorite LA-based spitfires by his eminence, The-Dream, with the wizard Tricky Stewart. And we're consistently impressed with how many different sounds the group is able to graze without sounding impatient or fickle: there are Southern style strip club jernts, techno-y woman power anthems, funky Vanity 6/Mary Jane Girls style dance pop songs. We are in fact so googly-eyed about this music we featured Electrik Red in the upcoming FADER 59, dropping at a newsstand near you in the next week. Indefatigably jamming on our iPods however is the transcendent spectral rainbow vision of a newfangled quiet club storm known as "Freaky Freaky." It's a fully assertive booty call track, like if Girl 6 was dialing out to her man from a pile of down feathers. Which is basically like every day of our lives.


Download: Electrik Red, "Freaky Freaky"

The video for Bodies of Water's robust "Under the Pines" is one of those that immediately eclipses any lyrical insight we may have attached to the song before. Now when we play it for someone and they ask us what it's about, we can be like, "This song is about a man who hunts for diamonds in the bellies of dogs, and the consequences that arise from that." And then we can talk about how the whole video is actually a good argument against animal cruelty and not placing your jar of lye next to your jar of cookies.

If Kanye, who premiered this, is to be believed, this new Peter Bjorn & John song IS DOPE!! DRUMS ARE CRAZY AND I LIKE THE KIDS ON THE HOOK. THERE NEW ALBUM IS CALLED "LIVING THING" ..... WITH ALL THAT SAID I DON'T KNOW THE NAME OF THE SONG... LOL!!!... I'M GONNA ASSUME IT'S CALLED, "NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT." We can't say much for the kids on the hook, but the drums are pretty crazy. And in combination with the previously video'd "Hey Shut The Fuck Up, Boy", PB & J's new album is shaping up to be one of the albums to get all excited about for the spring. As far as Kanye's assumption on the song title, we can't confirm, but we can say assuming the other song was called "Hey Shut The Fuck Up, Boy" made an ass out of us and the internet because it is now officially called "Lay It Down" and is available at the band's website.


Download: Peter Bjorn & John, "Nothing To Worry About"


Download: Peter Bjorn & John, "Lay It Down" (email required)

Each Tuesday, FADER editor Matthew Schnipper highlights an underappreciated recent release he thinks we need to know about. This week it's Omar-S's "Psychotic Photosynthesis (No Drums Version)" 12-inch Listen to the song below, buy the record and read Schnipper's thoughts on it after the jump.

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Every Tuesday, FADER deputy editor Eric Ducker gets on instant messenger and "discusses" a subject that's been on his mind with another member of our staff or a special guest. Looking back at 2008, it's pretty amazing how proportionally few hip-hop albums came out on major labels, and of the ones that did, how few were any good. After the jump, read the condensed (and emoticon-free) conversation between Ducker and Eskay of Nah Right about the fate of the major label hip-hop album.

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If you're an Animal Collective fan and by some weird miracle have yet to hear or purchase Merriweather Post Pavilion, go take care of that immediately, please. As an extra incentive, Animal Collective have put album standout "My Girls" on their MySpace, and if you have not had the pleasure of hearing it yet, prepare to berate everyone around for singing along before you realize you're doing the exact same thing.

Stream: Animal Collective, "My Girls"

**Update** XXXchange gets at "My Girls" genealogy. Frankie Knuckles! (via GvsB)

Ever since Austin's Harlem released this cover of Q Lazzarus' "Goodbye Horses," as the second installment of their cover of the month club, we've been reconsidering our fiery indictments of rappers who release way too much material way too often. It's still as annoying and overwhelming as it ever was, but maybe if they dropped the releases down to once a month we'd be able to get with it. In any case, Harlem flip the icy detachment of the original version (which you'll probably remember from your nightmares) into a back porch Texas jam session.


Download: Harlem, "Goodbye Horses"

We've held a special place in our heart for Playaz Circle's Tity Boi ever since he appeared in I-20's "Fightin' in the Club" video in a Polar Bear fur-white mink coat and matching white jeans (walk into the North Pole, Honey, I'm home?). Having killed plenty of guest verses in the interim, Tity's solo aspirations took a back seat when the other half of the Circle, Dolla, was released from jail. This tape kind of appeared out of nowhere, but it's duffle-bag stuffing music if we ever heard it, and the first track features the Juice Man! (via dirtyglovebastard)

Download: Tity Boi, Trap-a-velli mixtape