Well, it’s that day again, the day to gather around with family and rub a long fork like utensil and a knife over a very dead piece of poultry. Pass the cranberry sauce ’cause Grandpa is going to tell you about the weather and the news. It might be time to start bracing yourself for an extended amount of time with your nuclear family. Time to find your zen, get in your happy place and endure the hot coals of superficial niceties.If you find all this togetherness a little awkward (Like Me), it’s also the day to trace your hand and turn it into a poorly rendered turkey! Check out this tom to the left! Pretty handsome eh? Anyway, I’ve composed a mix of entertaining Turkey-Day tunes. Enjoy!
November 27, 2008
Have a Very AZLTRON Thanksgiving!
August 30, 2008
White Williams @ The Knight Club
Yesterday, I was “In the Club” with White Williams. Alfred University’s Knight Club to be exact. After enduring a pretty generic rock band playing pretty generic rock songs and freshmen who had a bit too much energy and a bit too much inclination to mosh to absolutely anything, White Williams arrived. With very few lights on the small Knight Club stage, it was hard to see, but he looked particularly elfish with his button up shirt and rolled up dress pants. He and his two cohorts began what seemed like a sound check at first before launching into a sonic assault of electronic noise and bass explosions. White Williams was armed with what looked like a suitcase with a keyboard, lap top and some mean electronics, while one of his cohorts wielded a guitar with ample effects pedals and the other wielded a high hat, a snare and a sweet looking drum trigger pad.
Whether it was due to the Knight Club’s muddy sound, or the stripped down nature of White William’s live performance, each song off of his debut LP “Smoke”, was transformed into sublime noise rather than sublime electro-pop. His relatively well known singles “New Violence” (The version he played featured samples of Alfred’s Bell Tower) and “Violator” were transformed into throbbing kick drum and snare affairs with a synth loop squiggle here and a guitar lick there. Even though the tight, clear sounding, grooves of his album were pretty indisquishable, the songs were still enjoyable, transformed into noise band type remixes. It wasn’t quite what I expected, but you have to have to commend an artist who surprises his audience, even if it is to mixed results.
August 24, 2008
Walter Meego
Chicago based electro pop-group Walter Meego is comprised of Guitarist/singer Colin Yark and Keyboardist Justin Sconza. Imagine a quirky singer songwriter fuzed at the hip to a keyboard and drum machine; that comes pretty close to what Walter Meego sounds like. Just add in some sweet guitar riffs, some vocoder, and it becomes pretty clear that Walter Meego is a winner.
Walter Meego – So You Wanna Be A Star
May 21, 2008
Tin Can Telephone
Tin Can Telephone is a band/project out of London, UK they create catchy little guitar tunes with plenty of hand percussion. You can download more songs at their Myspace.
March 14, 2008
Wesley the Robot
Wesley is one suave automaton. Here are some songs that I’ve been enjoying lately.
The Raveonettes – Hallucinations
Feist – I Feel It All (Britt from Spoon Remix)
The Secret Machines – Lights On
Dandy Warhols – Horse Pills
Hot Chip – Shake a Fist
The Flaming Lips – Pilot Can at the Queer of God
Chairs in the Arno – I Never Loved You Anyways
The Somnambulants – Burning Daylight
(We Are) Performance – Live a Little
Spoon – Bring it on home to me (Sam Cooke Cover)
The Wombats – Kill the Director (CSS Remix)
Talking Heads – Once in a Lifetime
February 23, 2008
Wesley The Robot
I’ve started doing a weekly cartoon entitled “Wesley the Robot”. If you’re not familiar with the character simply look to the right of my header logo and there you’ll find the distinguished automaton.
Nouvelle Vague – Ever Fallen in Love (Buzzcocks Cover)
Findlay Brown – But You Love Me
Echo & The Bunnymen – Never Stop
The Shocking Pinks – Emily
String Tribute to Joy Division/New Order – Love Will Tear Us Apart
Daft Punk – Short Circuit / Face to Face
Nine Inch Nails – God Given (Stephen Morris and Gillian Gilbert Remix)
February 11, 2008
Hot Chip are Ready for the Floor
The opening track “Out at the Pictures”, on Hot Chip’s third studio release, starts off with some computerized feedback and a gentle synthesizer melody that gains momentum until it breaks down into a full on electro soul-funk jam. It’s the aural equivalent of 20 luminescent go-go dancers shaking it in your ear drums. That’s the kind of wild auditory imagination that the
The story of Hot Chip’s synthesized origin is surprisingly organic. The songwriting core of the band is composed of Alexis Taylor and Joe Goddard. They met during their sixth form at the
With the backing of notable indie/dance record labels, Hot Chip pressed on, recording their next album entitled The Warning, entirely in their home recording studio despite offers to work in a professional studio from DFA records. The difference between Coming on Strong and The Warning is as much as night is to day. It’s definitely the same group with the same kinds of sounds but everything has been amped up. The rhythms are manic and heavy, sound sampling is all over the place, the songwriting takes on more twists and turns while the lyrics and vocals simultaneously became more open and accessible. Alexis Taylor even acknowledges the press regarding the first album in the lyrics on the lead single “Over and Over” by singing “Laid back? I’ll give you laid back!” The album was a commercial and critical success with two songs from the album, “Over and Over” and “Boy from School”, emerging as top ten UK singles and the band was recognized in 2006 by being nominated for the Mercury Prize, they were beaten out by Sheffield rockers The Arctic Monkeys, but that didn’t stop them from becoming a wildly popular touring juggernaut. Because of their intense touring, the band converted part time members Al Doyle and Felix Martin into full time members.
After a string of tour dates, remixes, and a DJ Kicks album (Featuring the original song “My Piano”) released in 2007, Hot Chip released their anticipated new album “Made in the Dark” on Feb 4th 2008. From the start the album sounds more precise and more focused, that’s not to say that it’s predictable in any way, each song is distinctly its own, whether it’s a forward thinking floor filler or a heart felt ballad. The obvious lead single is the straight ahead impulsive pop number “Ready for the Floor”, which was actually written for Kylie Minogue, but for whatever reason she didn’t perform it, so the band took it right back and filled it with their trademarked ticks and clicks and guitar licks. Another standout song is “Shake a Fist”, that starts off as an ominous dance number about drugs before pausing and unleashing a bassline that’s got a fair shake at world domination.
Hot Chip has crafted an album that travels to all corners of the popular music paradigm while retaining their unique approach and sound. If you fancy dance floor throbs, sensitive slow jams and everywhere in between give Made in the Dark a spin. I dare you not to dance, and yes, head bobbing and toe tapping count as dancing.
Hot Chip – Ready for the Floor
Hot Chip’s Fantastic Video For Ready for the Floor:
Hot Chip Discusses Made in the Dark
September 1, 2007
Back to School
This is going to be a bit of a random update, I started school this week at yet another fine institution and things are going pretty well thus far. Classes are going to be actual classes now, like “Hey, read the book, write a paper, take a test, get a grade!” kind of classes versus connecting sticks together in a meaningful pattern or taking bad photographs of dogs or fat girls stripping. I’ll actually be taking real classes and learning things that I did not know previously, like Renaissance Europe, Modern Japan, Historiography, Western Theater, so I’m pretty psyched to be relevant again and not an impotent hippie. It’s going to be a bright future, with regards to expanding my resume. Although being the new guy again is kind of rough, but I’ll manage.
Anyway, back to music, I received 4 albums in the mail the other day and none of them are duds, which is rare and makes me happy. So in the meantime I’ll put up a couple songs having to do with school. Oh yeah, and I’ll have a radio show again. So I’ll try and capture that and post it as a podcast. I declare good times are in the pipeline.
MP3 – Boy From School – Hot Chip
MP3 – Metal School – Spoon
MP3 – Night at the Knight School – Thee More Shallows
MP3 – Me and Giuliani Down by the Schoolyard (A True Story) – !!!
MP3 – Nothing Precious at All – Stereophonics (There’s a cute girl on campus with Lime Green Shoes)
MP3 – School Books – Fields (They cost waaay too much.)
MP3 – The Cradle, The Brother and the Bible School – The Flesh
April 11, 2007
You can’t beat a dead horse… wait…
This remix EP features contributions from contemporary electronic band Hot Chip, old school techno producer Carl Craig, and various other distinct talents. The songs are definitely expanded upon as some of them exceed nine minutes, but each one has something different to bring to the table. Hot Chip brings their attention to expanding the vocal sound of “In the Morning” (1) while adding subtle bleeps blips and whines. Ten Snake beefs up the rhythm section of “FM” (2) with echo claps and and cow bell. Although perhaps the biggest departure is the Kode 9 Remix of “Double Shadow” (4) which turns the clink clank of the original into a dub beat with new vocals. I’m still a little woozy from all of the trippy editing on the later tracks but the first few are some wonderfully funkadelic mixes for getting down on the town.
