Premiere Stream: El Guincho, “Antillas (Prins Thomas Remix)”
- story Matthew Schnipper
- photo Leonie Purchas (F54)
In his feature about El Guincho in FADER 54, Jace Clayton (aka fellow collage artist DJ /Rupture) outlined their shared nerd-out:
After 15 minutes shooting the shit about Dilla and Guinean label Sylliphone and how focused Dr Dre was when NWA first dropped, I’m outclassed when he starts talking about Frank Sinatra’s use of spring reverb. The conversation drifts from Milton Nascimiento (Zeus in El Guincho’s Pantheon) to calypso king Mighty Sparrow, and he says, “When I started producing, I was obsessed with exotica records.” It’s odd to meet a musician so energetic about other people’s music. Some can’t do it even when you specifically ask them too, but El Guincho’s a guy who big ups Martin Denny’s use of panning right before sharing this thoughts on Trinidadian harmonies, a guy who remembers where the cymbals were placed on that Bowie record.
El Guincho and Prins Thomas both have similarly varied tastes and keen ears, and the ability to reap a cross-section of sounds and house them under one rainbow. For his remix of “Antillas,” now available on 12-inch, Prins Thomas does not scamper far from the source, simply chopping and extending much of El Guincho’s vocal and removing and then teasing the original’s main melody, abstracting many of the song’s ancestral samples. It’s a cut up job, but more a sidestep and extension than a progression or regression.
Stream: El Guincho, “Antillas (Prins Thomas Remix)”
Premiere Stream: DM Stith, “Thanksgiving Moon (Michna Remix)”
- story Peter Macia
- photo Andrew Henderson (F56)
With Turkey Day less than a week away, you may already be thinking about how you’re going to burn off a gallon of egg nog and three pounds of green bean casserole so that you still look good for holiday spooning season. We might have a remedy here in the form of Michna’s heavy duty remix of DM Stith’s brand new “Thanksgiving Moon.” It appears on Stith’s new EP of the same name and just made us jump up and do the most epic Grumpy Chicken of all times. Here’s how it goes: bounce on the balls of your feet so that your heels raise about half an inch, bend your arms at the elbows and flap them to the beat, grow a bunch of white hair and hit on 26-year-olds. So fun and so healthy! The dance of 2010 no doubt. We’re gonna show it to Michna when he plays Plan B in NYC the day after Thanksgiving. Meet us there and be a part of history.
DM Stith, “Thanksgiving Moon (Michna Remix)”
-
posted on Nov 20, 2009 in MP3 / STREAMS tags DM Stith, electronic/dance, Grumpy Chicken, Michna, premiere
Busy Signal, “Nuh Fraid of Them” MP3
Busy’s take on Drake’s all-star monster “Forever” cites many vessels of technology, but mostly it just got us wondering who was the first person to namedrop Twitter in a song. Pretty sure Nore was early in the cut with his verse on Cassie’s “Must Be Love” remix in first quarter ‘09 (She hit me on Twitter/then I gave her my email/Told her that my love come free/Just like Gmail—a verse that we’re almost positive happened in real life). Surely Puff has mentioned it somewhere, or has an archived verse of Biggie shouting it out that he plans to release on another “duet” album in 2012. But Busy’s Twitter check is the best thus far, coming amidst a barrage of brags til the beat drops out and he goes Whoa, as if he can’t believe he’s even uttered its consonants. The real wild thing about this is that he released this song via his Twitter, which further proves our theory that life in the internet is just an elaborate labyrinth made of mirrors—and if we take a wrong turn we will be eaten by a super-scary fanged clown in giant rubber shoes. Then our bones will get ground up and made into cat food. Shout to Poquito and Mochipet back home.
Download: Busy Signal, “Nuh Fraid of Them” (via The Heatwave)
Holiday Shores, “Your Motion Says” (Arthur Russell Cover) MP3
- story Sam Hockley-Smith
This is not an invitation for every band to cover the immensely coverable Arthur Russell, but we will say that the majority of reworks we’ve heard lately have been pretty solid. Next in line is Holiday Shores‘ cover of “Your Motion Says,” which actually benefits from the fact that it originally came from a super limited cassette. Tape hiss is prevalent, it’s intimate and sparse and singer Nathan Pemberton turns Russell’s hushed vocal quiver into an imperfect gauzy moan. Catch the band on tour and pick up Through the Thin Cloud if they still have them and if you still have a tape player.
(via RCRD LBL)
Alley Boy f. Pill, Yung Ralph & Big Bank Black, “Heavy in the Street” MP3
- story Sam Hockley-Smith
This is a little too full-bodied to be an actual snap song, but Big Bank Black’s growl-sung chorus is giving us crazy visions of when it looked like Fabo was going to ride the funk wave to argyle-socked superstardom (we can still hope). Plus you also get Alley Boy nimbly bouncing over the track, Pill channeling Killer Mike and Yung Ralph fast-rapping and showing some I’m-not-just-Gucci’s-weed-carrier chops.
Download: Alley Boy f. Pill, Yung Ralph & Big Bank Black, “Heavy in the Street” (via BLVD ST)
Sia, “You’ve Changed” MP3
Last year Lauren Flax made one of our favorite songs of the last ten years in “You’ve Changed” featuring her friend Sia, who happened to be in town when Flax was composing it and came by her apartment to lay down some tracks. We are clearly not alone in our admiration because Sia decided to make her own version of “You’ve Changed” for her album proper, imbuing it with a disco treatment that sits as a lovely companion piece to Flax’s breathless house version. You can get with this, but you should also get with that, they’re equally sweet.
Download: Sia, “You’ve Changed”
Stream: Animal Collective, “Graze” (Zamfir Jam)
- story Peter Macia
In a few weeks, Animal Collective will release the Fall Be Kind EP on Domino but as usual the internet released it for them already. One of the previously mysterious tracks from the EP, “Graze,” was picked up by Stereogum on YouTube, and starts out with a few minutes of wavy atmospherics and Avey Tare singing about chilling out and stuff. But then around the three-minute mark, the claps kick in and a maniacal pan flute pipes in from what we can only assume is the seventh dimension of the AC galaxy. If you’re an ’80s or ’90s baby, you might not recognize this bewitching sound as a sample of Romanian master flutist Gheorghe Zamfir, but it is, and it is genius. Here’s Zamfir’s “Romanian Wedding Song”, which isn’t the sample’s source but is also genius. If you can tell us the source in the comments, we’ll buy you a beer tonight somewhere in New York City.
(via Stereogum
-
posted on Nov 20, 2009 in MP3 / STREAMS tags Animal Collective, electronic/dance, psych/folk, Zamfir
Chief, “Mighty Proud” MP3
- story Matthew Schnipper
Every once in a while, Levon Helm of The Band opens his upstate New York home to friends and family (and those with about a hundred bucks) and has a Midnight Ramble, an open group session of riffs and trills. We have not been, unfortunately, but friends who’ve attended describe the communal twang as universally transcendent. We want to go to both relive the ’60s blowing-in-the-wind freedom, and to celebrate the fact that the era’s unwieldy creativity still breathes. Chief, new signings to Domino, have clearly felt similar pangs, as evidenced by “Mighty Proud,” from their 7-inch released earlier this week. They’re long-haired flannel and denim wearing dudes like many of us, but they’ve earned their stripes (or patterns), with smoky hooks and group singalongs of tracks tailor-made for union rallies. We’d say they were born in the wrong era but then we’d have no peers.
Download: Chief, “Mighty Proud”
Human Tetris, “People” MP3
As a goth and/or existentialist band names go Human Tetris is up there with Crash Worship and Sisters of Mercy, the latter of which is clearly some kind of influence, as Tetris vocalist Arvid Kriger has a long-faced Andrew Eldritch crow. They’ve also got that perfect goth forlorn futility steez whilst singing an apocalyptic tale that may or may not have anything to do with their hometown of Moscow. Yes it is that serious. And just for kicks, watch the awesome video for Sisters of Mercy’s “Lucretia, My Reflection” after the jump.
Download: Human Tetris, “People” (via Weekly Tapedeck)
-
posted on Nov 19, 2009 in MP3 / STREAMS tags Crash Worship, goth, Human Tetris, rock, Sisters of Mercy
Kevin Greenspon, “Softened” + Two More MP3s
- story Sam Hockley-Smith
Since we sent Dee Dee of Mayfair Set/Dum Dum Girls to talk to bands all over the California coast for a story in FADER 62, you’ve probably been wondering what’s up with the dudes at Family Time Records. If your initial thought was, not much is up with the dudes at Family Time Records, you’d be wrong but forgiven because they’ve been steadily cranking out releases to little fanfare. And surprise, surprise! In the midst of all our sleeping on Family Time, they’ve released some jams from Kevin Greenspon, head of Bridgetown Records, who is releasing a Cloud Nothings CD-R. Should we be making a map of this? We’re already getting confused. Although we’re posting them on Thursday, the best look would be to save these pieces of pillowy guitar washed bedroom pop for a lazy Sunday afternoon.
Download: Kevin Greenspon, “Softened”
Download: Kevin Greenspon, “Sundowner Lane”
Download: Kevin Greenspon, “Reveille” (all three via Get Off the Coast)
