alright...

so after two months of battling bell fucking canada, it seems that they have promised (for the fourth time) that we will have the internet in our apartment by thursday or friday. this probably means by monday or tuesday. so in one week, i will be up and running again, feeding my addiction, and winning my edge back. which means you guys will get some new tunes to listen to on a new web addy. wooooooooooooooooooooo.

cross your fingers.

yo

re-entering the blogosphere next week...
new blog name? new html?

berlinette; hiatus

as some of you might have already realized, le blog has taken a hiatus for a little while, and will continue to do so for the next two months. i'm on a bit of an expedition right now, a journey if you will, and i do not have access to the drug that fed me, i.e. internet. i've taken this to be a good thing, im actually quite happy to be, uh, losing my edge for 3 months, because if not anything else, at least its a change.

right now i'm in berlin. berlin has been a bit of a mecca for me for quite some time, and its throughly satisfying to be here. saw devendra banhart the other night at Postbanhof, an old train station turned venue. it was a swell show, indeed. i think i can solidly say that sir banhart is a visionary. what else can you call a man who played, as an encore, some fucked up tropicalista styled 'mash-up' of Lauren Hill's ''that thing'' and a Charles Manson song? not really sure what else. got the pleasure of meeting the man after the show, which was a great thing: i kind of felt like i had known the guy for 20 years, i guess hes an old soul or something because i felt like we were already good friends. super nice guy, practically begging kids after the show that talked to him to give him CDs of their music, or telling them to make some prayers and record it, even if they didnt know how, and send it to him ''I have an address, i think, i think i do, im gonna go upstairs and find out and get it'' because he really wanted to hear it. anyways, he drew my friend a picture of an owl with her breasts a milking, and i was a happy man.

afterwards we went to w.e.e.k.e.n.d., a club on the 12th floor with insane views, danced to some great beats provided by Ben Rymer... cant believe im fucking leaving this town before next weekend when Tiefschwarz, Richie Hawtin, and Tim fucking Sweeney, are all playing there on the same weekend.

take care guys, and i'll be back in Montreal on August 26th, ready to jam out with my clam out, rest and recuperate, and get back on the blog train (or was that off the train?)

wolf cubs + horse ponies

If Horses (Band of Horses, They Shoot Horses, Don't They etc.) are the new Wolves, then New Young Pony Club is the cute young pawing cub offspring trying to learn mom and pops' dancefloor moves to try and survive the biting cold of winter.

New Young Pony Club are some boys and girls from the united kingdom. They're the best band around doing the Talking Heads thing. Unabashed and unashamed to state their influences with conviction, right out there for the world to see on their myspace page, NYPC will be storming a green room near you when their record is released later this year. I've said it before and I'll say it again - the remix potential is HUGE here, so anyone who fashions themselves a bedroom dj should get on top of this shit.

New Young Pony Club - Ice Cream
New Young Pony Club - Gotta Get Into You
New Young Pony Club - Get Dancey (some sort of remix but by who i don't know)




***Oh Yeah, I saw radiohead last night. I will post about it soon enough. But to make everyone extremely jealous, here is last nights setlist:

Everthing In It's Right Place
National Anthem
15 Step
Exit Music
2+2=5
Bangers & Mash
Nude
How to Disappear
I Might Be Wrong
Black Star
Morning Bell
Arpeggi
Fake Plastic Trees
Spooks
Idiotheque
Bodysnatchers
There There

Encore 1:
House of Cards
Let Down
Planet Telex
Karma Police

Encore 2:
The Bends

THE BENDS AS THE FUCKING LAST ENCORE SONG, yah. er... sorry about that. oh ya, and i was part of the second audience in the history of the universe to hear the new songs.

took a piss on a wall, in the back of a mall // you drank the last of the sherry.

New Rapture track. two weeks late, i'm losing my edge.
The Rapture - W.A.Y.U.H.

I saw Jason Collett and the New Pornographers last night at KB. Marvellous time. I really think jason's band Paso Mino are some really talented (if infinetly awkward) dudes. collett had some new tunes, and some new tricks, including a wilconian breakdown at the end of brownie hawkeye. and the NPs rocked it. tighest fucking pop songs on the planet i swear. so nice, to have a piece of home brought to me in Sweden. got me a setlist too, silly fanboy that I am. too bad that neko and dan bejar weren't there, but they've got their own amazing albums to tour.

Sunday, I see Radiohead, in their second appearance in two years. Needless to say, I am pumped to the max. those of you in MTL, you lucky souls get to see them at Salle Wilfred-Pelletier, if you can afford it, that is. and i'm sure it's sold out by now, sorry for the late warning. anyhoo, i'm insanely excited, as they are 'testing' out their new material on us. in other radiohead news, thom yorke just recently gave his stamp of approval to liars' new record. at least i think he did. ahaha. there you will also find some pics of rehearsel week for radiohead, complete with yorke drumming (huh?) and wearing hipster-trend of the moment here in sweden, a black and white striped shirt! wow. i love the internet.

other shows coming up: belle and sebastian, handsome furs (dan boeckner) with malajube (hurray quebec), and maybe final fantasy. and maybe casiotone for the painfully alone. woot.

If there is anyone out there who actually reads this blog, my sincere apologies for my unannounced hiatus. I was actually off galavanting in Moscow and St. Petersburg for a week. The trip was incredible, surreal, and exhausting to say the least. Unfortunately in Russia, my ears did not come across anything phenomenal and sadly i have no new hot T.A.T.U. tracks to give you today (however, if you want to catch them, they will be opening for 50 Cent in Moscow in a couple weeks... WTF?) Other Russian musical anecdotes include the fact that Boy George was spinning records at the hotel I stayed at in St. Petersburg.... the night I left!! WTF? fuck that, i wanted to go just for the novelty factor. And that time that we stuck out our hand for a gypsy cab (in Russia every car is a potential taxi, just stick out your hand, argue out a price in rubles, and you're good to go!) and he had no fucking clue where he was going, so we got a 45 minute inebriated grand tour of St. Petersburg, where I couldn't even hear my thoughts because he was blasting Creedence on repeat the whole time uber loud.


Keeping with the theme of stuff from this side of the pond, what I have up for offering today is the Figurines, a lovely band from Denmark. still buzzing from the buzz of SXSW, and about to start a tour with pfork obsession Tapes N Tapes, these guys create melodic indie rock/pop that would sound like what the pixies having babies with every band ever influenced by the pixies, unicorns as their pedophilic uncle, and weezer as their doting auntie would sound like, if they were babysit by Isaac Brock as a wee youngun. I don't know where the fuck that all came from, just download i don't feel like explaining.

The Figurines - I Remember
The Figurines - The Wonder
The Figurines - Rivalry

*P.S. these links are now with Sendspace... you will find the file just under the fat google ad thingy. right click save as you know the drills.


OK so as I was sipping my double espresso at Mondo coffeeshop in Lund today, I heard some sort of wack remix on the radio. I was trying to pin the song for a full two minutes, and then I realized that the only other time I had heard this song was when Antony, and his Johnsons, swooned the audience at their popmontreal show last October. Only Antony changed the original Whitney Houston lyrics from "I wanna dance with somebody, I wanna feel the heat from somebody" and sung in his best Nina Simone croon "I wanna dance with you Shania, I feel so much heat for you Shania". He turned the classic Whitney Houston dud into a full blown dedication to Canada's number one country/pop crossover sensation Ms. Shania Twain. And this whole time I thought it was an improvised ode to the woman who 'hates mayo' (10 points to the person who gets that reference). Anyways, Whitney's vocals were sampled in some terrible blingpop song.... anyone know what it is?

In other news, jo alerted me to the fact that unbeknownst to me, I had fascist control over comments on my blog... so now I have turned that feature off, and if you actually read it then feel free to comment yos.

laughing gas, these hazmats

Apologies for the lack of MP3 posts; parents, food poisoning and subsequent exhaustion are to blame. Without further ado, today i've got some b-side-ish Editors stuff for you. I am personally not a huge fan of their debut album, it's not a particularly tight echo and the bunnymen/joy division/gang of four imitation. However there are a few stand out tracks, and one remix and a cover that have impressed me recently.

First off is this remix of "All Sparks" by Cicada...the producer team Cicada, not those huge-ass bugs that emerge every seventeen years and engulfed most of the United States' asphalt back in the sweaty summer of 2004. Cicada does a bit of a Jacques Lu Cont disco thing here, and it's fantastic.

Second we have an acoustic cover of Gorillaz "Feel Good Inc." that Editors performed recently live on the BBC. Playing off the Munich lyric "I'm so glad, I found this," lead singer Tom Smith's unsettling crooning is top notch here. never thought the words 'feel good' could sound so creepy. i also never thought i'd use the word beautiful to describe Editors, but the minimal acoustic glee-tars here truly are.


Editors - All Sparks (Cicada Remix)

Editors - Feel Good Inc. (Gorillaz Cover live on the BBC)

Editors - Munich

*bonus: Gorillaz - Feel Good Inc. (Stanton Warriors unreleased breaks remix, white label?)

Man this remix appeals to my grade 10 breaks room at the plaza of nations raves days. Stanton Warriors put Damon Albarns's vocals on second tier, rather they choose to use Del's vocals to structure this track ("we gonna ghost-town this motown"). Oh man, that bassline is unconquerable, it would sound amazing dropped in the middle of someone's breaks set, as it does in Krafty Kuts October 2005 mix which you can find on Soulseek.

DJ B-rock

Hey y'all, sorry for the lack of posts, but i've been spending some quality time with mes parents, and I'm currently in Copenhagen. Alas, i'm without my computer, and my portable hard drive chock full of goodness, so no MP3s to post. But, if anyone is in need of an exam break or pick-me-up of any sorts, tune in tonight to my main man Brian's show tonight on techno.fm . i haven't spoken to him today, but if all goes as normal, he'll be spinning some version of electro-house in the first hour, and moving onto drum and bass in the second hour. It's most definetly worth checking out, just go to the link and click on 'live stream' and you are good to go.

Show is on at 5:00-7:00PM Eastern Standard Time, so that works out to 23:00 for those of you in Sverige. take care, adios

worst band name ever,

but really great track.
deserves a MSTRKRFT remix, or a jacques lu cont remix or something.

I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness - When You Go Out

Sunset Rubdown

Spencer Krug, the man to the left, photoshopped rather crapilly (are those geese in the background?) is probably best known for his band Wolf Parade. But he's got two others - Frog Eyes, and Sunset Rubdown. This track off the unreleased Shut Up I Am Dreaming proves that the man is not spreading himself too thin.

Erratic and profoundly intimate, "Shut Up I am Dreaming of Places Where Lovers Have Wings" will haunt and dwell in your dreams tonight.

Sunset Rubdown - Shut Up I Am Dreaming of Places Where Lovers Have Wings

Record's not out yet guys, so if you live in Vancity, please support the band i just, er... stole, music from on May 7th at Richards on Richards, and those of you that are of the eastern persuasion can check out the band May 20th at Montreal's worst venue El Salon. ok not as bad as CEPSUM.

Bonus Round

even more fun:
The Cure - Fire in Cairo (Digitalism re-edit)

Hollertronix

Suffering from a severe hangover today. Played these two tracks in last night's tour des chambres. the night ended with chants of 'fuck you, sofa' and 'sofa fucking deserves it!' which obviously led to the chucking of said sofa off the kitchen balcony, and the subsequent burning of the sofa, and the predictable swedish fire brigade arriving and us running away from the bonfire. good times.

just for fun:

Diplo - Mike Jones vs. Britney

Low Budget - Snoop vs. The Cure

if you need some more crunk in your life (ben walsh i am looking at you) then i suggest you to point your browser here for an old low budget mix. holla.

technical difficulties

the fact that yousendit's website is down right now is halting a really great musical update. sorry folks.

p.s. i was totally right about those sugababes! i swear to goodness that i had never seen a picture of them before! and there is definetly a white one, a black one, and quite possibly, although i am not sure, an asian one. she might be a white girl who tries to look like an asian girl. i am not sure. okay, now that i've gone to their website i'm pretty embarrased that i promoted their music. haha.

no i'm not headed down a highway to hell...

this man, jesu...er, uh, stephen mcbean, is the vancouverite (hometown hero! he lives on the drive) mastermind behind two great records in the past year or so. black mountain's self titled was on heavey rotation in my living room last year, and it looks like pink mountaintops axis of evol will be as well. brighter, sexier, and perhaps catchier than the black mountain outfit, axis of evol is a short but sweet offering from the psych influenced vansterdam crew. the black mountain army is conquering scandinavia in april, and you can bet i'll be there with my beer goggles on.

Pink Mountaintops - Lord, Let Us Shine

Pink Mountaintops - Plastic Man, You're the Devil

Pink Mountaintops - Cold Criminals

namesake

alright, i'm lazy today. actually, not lazy, just tired, and real busy... 3 essays due by next week, and obviously didn't start til today. excuses, excuses, don't worry, i've still got blog-novelty- euphoria and have lots of stuff to post.

I thought I would post the track that is the namesake of the blog. but the thing is that i don't even particularly think that this song is amazing, and i don't really like the arctic monkeys either. so why, you might ask, did you decide to name your blog after it? answer: i dunno... i didn't really name it after this track, i just liked the name is all.

sure this track is decent, it's catchy, short and to the point, which is commendable... but man, i was in the U.K. the week that the arctic monkeys broke out. jesus murphy, the hype! the hype was unbelievable! every single magazine, trashy newspapers (i seriously don't think that they read legit papers in the U.K., feel free to contest that), t.v. show, endless NME's in store windows, advertisements in the tube. my god, they british press junket is a force to be reckoned with. the album is decent, but nothing special. it's also something to be wary about. they can hype almost anything (case in point: Tom Vek... WTF? 'look, he's awesome, because he can't actually play any of the thirty instruments, he tries too, and it's totally DIY, wowee') and it can be dangerous. i think that the celebrity culture in the U.K. is more intense than america if you can believe it, but that's an entire other subject...

the sugababes cover is pretty sweet. or maybe just sweet as a novelty. i don't know anything, at all, about the sugababes, and i fear to google them... i just assume they are a cheap destiny's child outfit, and my guess is that there is a black one, a white one, and an asian one... i think i will check this out after to see if my multicultural prediction is correct... anyways, the cover is fun, so check it out. i'm lazy and that's all you're getting for analysis tonight.

Arctic Monkeys - I Bet That You Look Good On The Dancefloor

Sugababes - I bet that you look good on the dancefloor


addendum: after YSIing those two tracks, i found out that the actual name of the tracks is 'i bet you look good on the dancefloor', i.e. drop the 'that' from what i called my blog... looks like i should have done some fact checking! and that whole post now seems kind of obselete... oh wells.

make you work hard

And over in the WTF department... Nelly Furtado comes out with the two best Prince songs of the year!!? Seriously, whodduh thunk? Straight out of left field is Canadian-Portuguese (supposed?) one hit wonder, backed by get-your-grind-on Timbaland production. Looks like Missy made a big mistake dropping timba for The Cookbook - his fingers are on the right dials on these two tracks.

Promiscuous Girl has these back-and-forth boy/girl vocals, with Nelly playing hard to get ("chivalry's dead but you're still kind of cute") with the chorus set on these purple rain hijacked synth lines. Timba's on the money with his 'tchikee' vocal record scratches - i think if someone else tried to pull that off it would just sound utterly lame. Casio keyboard choir freakouts back the vocals, and you know just know this is gonna get overplayed on the highschool dancefloor.

Maneater is the best of two tracks here. The chorus is the shining star here - sounds like something from an eighties workout shoved on top of these clunky snare drums that scream Timba. Nelly's voice just works so well here, I think normally she has the type of voice that'd annoy the shit out of me - a whiny blaise kinda thing, the so called 'fran drescher of pop music' but it just matches the production so well on these two tracks. Her vocals, and the backups' 'ahhhhhhh' with the synthy basslines are gonna be in your head long after you press stop.

There might be alot alot of haters (er... yeah, she did mention in an interview that there is gonna be a cut on the album featuring Chris Martin...uh oh) out there for these tracks... but I think it's the most interesting thing top 40 radio is probably going to hear this year. Plus it's a freakin catchy pop tune... i hit replay like 18 times the first day i got maneater, and i told y'all i'm on a huge pop binge right now, so see for yourself.


Nelly Furtado feat. Timbaland - Maneater

Nelly Furtado - Promiscuous Girl

only one man on this entire planet could get away with this...

in case you can't read the poster, montreal's very own rufus wainwright will be "performing the entire classic album of Judy Garland's famous 1961 concert," TWICE, yeah that's right, twice, at NYC's Carnegie hall. with a full 40-piece orchestra. seriously only someone with the diva status of rufus could pull this off, so kudos to him.

how amazing/ridiculous/overwhelmingly gay would this be?
(not that there's anything wrong with that)

Rufus Wainwright - The Art Teacher

hearts and minds.

alright children, today's class features hot chip and the yeah yeah yeah's.


alright, so it is kind of a dangerous forewarning when i like the remix of a song better than the original. it's also an interesting omen that the yeah yeah yeah's decided to release both the single and the diplo remix at the same time... apparently the remix is getting way more airtime and dancefloor exposure, for pretty obvious reasons. don't know exactly how i feel yet about their record... it needs a few more listens, but as of now it's pretty average in my mind. might be growing on me though.

DIPLO has done a number on this one. i'm quite obsessed with ms. maya Arulpragasam's better half's production, but lately i feel as if he has been spreading himself a little thin. this makes up for it. love the mario bros. gold coin synth ring on the karen o's 'ooh ooohs', and the minimalistic baltimore backbeat. i think karen O's voice sounds super funky sped up, and it made me think, wtf has no one remixed YYY before? anyways, the orig version is growing on me, as well as the album which is a departure from their first record, with lots of acoustic instruments, and less trying so hard. see for yourself.

Yeah Yeah Yeah's - Gold Lion (Diplo's Optimo Remix)

Yeah Yeah Yeah's - Gold Lion

second on the menu, is the addictive hot chip. latest signing to the impeccable DFA records, british dancefloor post-dance-punk band has been on my eardrums for weeks now. the first single is 'over and over' and has been on heavy rotation here on MTV europe, so it's good to see this kind of music infiltrate the mainstream. i think it plays just as often as pink's stupid girls. for serious. the video is really cool too, point your browsers here, and scroll to the bottom for a stream.

the DFA remix of Just Like We (Breakdown) sees a spaced-out afterparty re-dub, kind of a differnet platter altogether for the DFA, which is a good thing, to see some change from them. its got this eerie ecstacy-afterglow synth line, the original is more downbeat and chilled out, with a kind of kiddie-xylophone keyboard line thing going on. i would really like to see these guys play live, i'm super curious to see if they can translate their sound into the live setting... who was at the club lambi show? anyone?

Hot Chip - Over and Over

Hot Chip - Just Like We (Breakdown) - (DFA remix)

Hot Chip - Just Like We (Breakdown)

here goes...

so lately i have been on a huge pop tip. for those of you who know me (wait you all know me, what am i talking about) this is a bit of a stretch. well not a major one, but for some reason, since the new year, it's been the catchiest dancefloor rythyms that have caught my ear's attention... can't explain it. Anyways, one of my favourite albums so far is Matthew Herbert's Scales. The first two tracks off this record are fucking unbelievable. the production is insane. i have a feeling this guy is a bit of a perfectionist. the vocals, the basslines, the horns, are all perfect perfect perfect. i couldn't tell you how many times i have played this on repeat. everything just fits perfect together to create the best house big-band flamboyant dance tunes i've heard recently.

Herbert - Something Isn't Right.

Herbert - The Movers and the Shakers

This is a big departure from Herbert's last bizarro electro experimental record, but the collabo with Dani Siciliano (female vocals on the tracks), Herbert's apparent muse and wife, I think are his best work (at least from what I've heard). enjoy.

premiere

heya folks
alright well i figured since the whole world has already gotten on top of this blog thing, i might as well too, because i'm a big bandwagoner. don't y'all worry, this isn't going to be some sort of emo bullshit diary about things that occur in my life. the focus here will be on the tunes. i'm not trying to put myself out there as blogger-extraordinaire, always on top of the latest craziest shit, getting torrents and oinks 4 seconds after they have leaked 5 months before the release date... i'm not so into that. this will just be a venue for posting my latest discoveries, obsessions, jams, dance-a-thons, remixes, re-edits, and what-have-yous.

right now i have no better method of posting tunes than through you send it. although convenient and (normally) speedy, the tunes have a max of 25 downloads, or 7 days, whichever comes first, so grab em while theys hot!

aight, let's see if this works...