The FADER Issue 64 Free Download

With domestic issues weighing so heavily on every American’s mind these days, it felt appropriate to focus our sixth annual photo issue inward. We started by selecting two cover stories that represent seemingly opposing factions of this country—the values of small town America via Eau Claire, Wisconsin’s Bon Iver and the hard grind of big city life through South Central Los Angeles’ Dam-Funk—and found more common ground between them than most talking heads and politicians would care to know. For the feature photo story, Peter van Agtmael’s plaintive portraits of widespread citizens and Victoria Sambunaris’ landscapes of geological sites along Interstate 80 create a visual dialogue between man and land and will hopefully leave you asking questions rather than giving answers. And because the future prosperity of the US will depend on the dreams of its newest residents as it always has, we focused our fashion story on first generation Americans and new emigres living in New York’s five boroughs. Not to mention our regular selection of Gen F profiles, including Kris Kristofferson, The XX, Neon Indian, Kurt Vile, Kyle Hall and Warpaint, plus interviews with RZA, Janka Nabay, Andrew Weatherall and tons more. So feel free (because it is literally free) to check it all out, and if you make TheFADER.com your homepage you won’t miss our treasure trove of extras and outtakes from above and beyond the issue.

Get Issue 64 now on iTunes,
subscribe via your favorite RSS reader here,
or download the individual F64 full-issue PDF here.

The XX Takes on Jools Holland

…and transforms it into a veritable bedroom, because as we learned at their debut New York show at Mercury Lounge a couple months ago, these Brits can play a sweaty sweatbox of drunken boozehounds and deeply annoying LA pseudo-hippies and it will still seem intimate. They’re performing “Islands,” the all-up-in-your-earness of their sweet-nothing vocals and minimalism is crushingly close, and the light show Jools’ techs set up for them makes it seem like they’re on a spaceship to eternal love…I am yours now… so I don’t ever have to leave is a perfect lyric, because it is basically how we feel about their music. And that is why we put them in our next issue, coming very soon. (via Theophilus)

Florence & The Machine, “You’ve Got The Love (The XX Remix)” MP3

Florence & The Machine is pretty popular in the UK and virtually unknown here in the States. The XX seems relatively popular in the UK, but everyone we know thinks they are the best band “ever.” We agree mostly with the last appraisal and mostly because the band keeps making songs like this. Florence is totally over-the-top orchestral radio pop, so of course, since The XX isn’t over-the-top anything, they strip it all away and rebuild an intensely quiet 2-step/funky anthem with calypso tumbles and trademark whispers. Check the upcoming issue of The FADER for a story on the The XX, see them when they play another slew of dates all over the world (including the US in November) and make sure to pick up the new album XX on iTunes or wherever else you can find it.



Download: Florence & The Machine, “You’ve Got The Love (The XX Remix)” (via Stereogum)

Advertisement

The XX, “Do You Mind” (Kyla Cover) MP3

Our British coworker just said “I love the way you say ‘lamps.’ LAYMPS! Americans are hilarious!” Over here in the New York homeland, we’ve done our best to observe and participate in the mystic culture of the UK, squinting in the dark, as fascinated by its unknowable ways as much as we are by LA, whose ways we may be able to understand but often try to pretend don’t exist. Though there has always been a bounty of music from the UK, dance music has always been its strongest pull, the cycle of “chavs” partying to some different big beat always tempting from the other side of the screen on the other side of the Atlantic. UK funky has taken a particularly strong hold on our brains. Kyla’s “Do You Mind,” despite its year old status (ten thousand internet years) is still our personal anthem, even if we’ve only ever heard it played in public once. The XX, who you may have noticed we like, have been successful in pulling the weight out of dance music, leaving just its trace in the air. Professed R&B lovers, and Brits, they’re apparently similarly smitten with “Do You Mind” and have covered the song, reducing it with their typical sullen bareness. And, just to be clever British assholes, the band uses live drums for the first time, abandoning their trusty drum machine the one time it would make perfect sense. That’s what British humor is all about, we think. We’re not sure, though, Fawlty Towers only made sense to us like a third of the time.



Download: The xx, “Do You Mind” (via Scott Wright, a British guy)

Video: The XX, “Basic Space” + Album Stream

The XX played 972 shows in NYC this weekend but the one we saw at Mercury Lounge after they played Ronson’s Authentic Shit on EVR was mangled by bad sound until Ronson himself handed singer/guitarist Romy Croft a new guitar and the band played one more song. Their mics worked the whole time though, along with the drum machine for the most part, so aside from some light picking, not much was missed. In fact, their eerie spareness was enhanced, and for the first time in recent memory, the people in the back stopped talking to hear what was going on. Today, The XX have their entire album streaming on NME and the video for “Basic Space,” the mp3 of which we premiered last week, appeared over the weekend. They are both well worth an hour or so of your Monday morning.

Stream: The XX, XX

In semi-related news, our UK columnist Scott Wright just put up his very first internet mixtape on his Pinglewood blog, which includes The XX and many other bands featured in Dollars To Pounds. (via Twitter)

NYC: Win Tickets to See The XX at Monkeytown

Young darlings The XX are over from England for a few shows in New York to preview their upcoming album. A few of these shows have sold out, so they’ve added a small show at Brooklyn’s Monkeytown, which FADER is lucky enough to be presenting. We have two pairs of tickets to give away—send us a note to contests@thefader.com with your name and we’ll holler at two of you Monday morning.

Advertisement

The XX, “Basic Space” (Micachu Remix) MP3

We did not expect Rough Trade post-punk throwback figurehead, tiny Micachu to become such a remix maniac. But if we had anticipated, we would have predicted she’d bring a similar clatter to other people’s songs as her own. We premiered The XX’s “Basic Space” and now, two days later, Micachu (as M.A.T.H.E.S.—Micachu and the Shapes), has mussied up and slightly slowed down the song’s open air. It’s flatter, not duller, but more earthly with a coyote howl and some Mediterranean strings. And with a way bigger kick drum, which is sick.



Download: The XX, “Basic Space” (M.A.T.H.E.S. Remix) (via Pinglewood)

Premiere: The XX, “Basic Space” MP3

The British teenagers in The XX profess a love for all things R&B. Their soul is noticeable mostly in Romy Croft’s woozy vocal, but the rest you have to infer from the buried nods. Many of their songs seem to hint at a past life that exists only as sketches, like the remains of something once booming, or the storyboard outlines of pop songs never finished. That stunted growth ends up sultry and crackling on much of their upcoming debut album on Young Turks, XX, male/female vocals overlay a guitar worming its way through a grim workout or the harsh and lone repetition of a drum machine. “Basic Space,” is among XX’s sassier tracks, blunt dance track drums propelling the tempo before they drop out almost completely to a serenading guitar. The XX are not using simple instruments or patterns unknowingly, instead letting the uncomplicated rhythm of each piece propel. But it’s not that deep: The XX have said some of the sparse sound is a result of recording into Photobooth on their Macs. But some of it’s also because of a more lax attitude to writing and recording, not uncomplicated but very far from messy.



Download: The xx, “Basic Space”

Dollars to Pounds: The xx

Every week our new UK columnist Scott Wright gives you the latest and greatest in music from across the pond. This week he’s sitting down with The xx, as well as offering up an exclusive video and mp3 of their single “Crystalised.”



Download: The xx, “Crystalised”

I haven’t held it up to a mirror yet, but the new video for “Crystalised” by The xx seems to confirm they are a quartet of good looking young people from south west London and not vampires. Oliver, Romy, Baria and Jamie have an awesome new LP out soon, it sounds like The Cure produced by Jam & Lewis and will probably usurp Burial’s Untrue as the album everyone says they listen to on the night bus home (when really they listen to Beyonce, like me). Spookily, The xx went to the same school as Burial (the one whose alumni reads like a wine bar playlist—Hot Chip, Four Tet, Adem, the Maccabees…), and they’ve covered Aaliyah, who everyone knows was queen of the vampires (in a film). I spoke to Oliver and Romy about lots of things, but mainly the undead and R&B.

Read More

POPULAR

RECENT

THE FADER NEWSLETTER

Get weekly highlights and exclusive content from thefader.com delivered via email.