Rural Alberta Advantage New Song!

Yay!

Aww shucks. One of my absolute favourites ever The Rural Alberta Advantage are releasing album #2 in March 2011 and to celebrate that fact they've released a new song called Stamp.

It's a free download right about here



Welcome back guys and gal! Not much seems to have changed from back in day (all of a year ago) but then again that IS just the way I've always loved you (Especially you Amy).



Take a bow, I've missed you.

Season's Greetings

Hello. Hope you had as good a Christmas as me and hopefully even better.

I got loads of underpants. Underpants and socks. So when you catch me walking the mean, lean streets of Turku, Finland in flashy new undergarments you'll now know why. Showing off your underwear in -fuckoff°C might not be seen as cool but, damn it, with all my new clobber I'm gonna make it cool.

For the time being I'm still in England and we've got something (hopefully) special lined up for me for new years eve. As somewhat of a tourist in London and even here in Brighton I mostly rely on other people to tell me what to do. Kind of like a cultural sheep. But obviously a really, really good-looking one.

So this year what we're (planning on) doing is going up to this. Should be a party. Should probably try not to pass out before most people have even realised it's new years eve.
Should have a great time dancing/nodding to Pariah. Especially in the wake of all this James Blake/Mount Kimbie megahype.



And as if that wasn't enough to get my (brand new, possibly primark) pants wet then we'll also get some Girl Unit in our ears to get potential bragging right back in Finland. Who according to Mira gave us THE best dubstep anthem of the year. I've agreed to disagree but, whatever, it's still good.

T-Bone's Top Picks of 2010

It's time again. Time to do the annual listing of what's tickled everyone's fancy and what hasn't. What's made me slaver and what's made me go "OMG WTF ROFL". What's hot and what's not, as they say.

But as I'm sat here writing this thinking that everyone's already done this already, I think I'll just keep it easy and list a few albums that aren't on EVERBODY'S list. If you are however looking for some kind of "definitive" list then try this one.

Starting off with Baths' Cerulean.



Baths kind of hit me out of nowhere with the unbelievably good track Hall. So I went on and preordered the LP without even listening to any other tunes from it. Hell, I didn't even care if Baths was a "one-hit wonder" kind of in the mould of a certain DOM, because Halls was so good.
Cerulean didn't disappoint. It is a special album. Special as in it's my #1 of the year.
If you haven't yet heard Baths then please do so now.




Forest Swords' Dagger Paths is taking it down a notch from Baths but this (touted as an EP but who cares as its running time's probably longer than say Male Bondings LP) album is one atmospheric son of bitch. Dabbling in similar soundscapes as Burial, Forest Swords made the perfect dark, brooding soundtrack to what it looks like out my window right now.




Actress came as a last fm recommendation. Thankfully as his album Splazsh is some of the best what-you-ma-call-it "post-dubstep" you'll get. The hype and acclaim for Mount Kimbie is there for a reason, but people tend to forget this little gem.





Games are part Oneohtrix Point Never and even though Dan Lopatin's work under OPN was a highlight of the year, it's still his work with Joel Ford as Games which tops it. That We Play is such a nostalgia-fest that it's hard not to get worked up over this. Any tune that starts with the Playstation 1's opening theme has a place in my heart. Easily.


My apologies for not doing a proper list with numbers and shit, but this is the way it's going to be. Maybe I'll do one next year or something. Oh and also my apologies for everything on here being all electronic and shit. Maybe next year people will stop making electro-mumbo-jumbo that I'm fond of.

I'm feeling quite bad now for not making a real list, so I'll do a quick sped-up version before I go. In no particular order these have been good:

Beach House - Teen Dream, Forest Swords - Dagger Paths, Caribou - Swim, Four Tet - There Is Love In You, Tunng - And Then We Saw Land, Micah P. Hinson - The Pioneer Saboteurs, Gayngs - Related, Eels - Tomorrow Morning, Black Keys - Brothers, Mount Kimbie - Crook & Lovers, Baths - Cerulean, Besnard Lakes - Are The Roaring Night, Laura Veirs - July Flame, Ariel Pinks Haunted Graffitti - Before Today, Pantha Du Prince - Black Noise, Everything Everything - Man Alive, Broken Bells - S/t, White Denim - Last Days of Summer, Flying Lotus - Cosmogramma, Darkstar - North, School of Seven Bells - Disconnect From Desire, Warpaint - The Fool, Effi Briest - Rhizomes, Emeralds - Does It Look Like I'm Here, Glasser - Ring, Gold Panda - Lucky Shiner, Owen Pallett - Heartlands, Delphic - Acolyte, Toro Y Moi - Causers of This, Harlem - Hippies, Sleigh Bells - Treats, Anna von Hausswolff - Singing from the Grave, Gil Scott-Heron - I'm New Here, Zola Jesus - Stridulum, The Album Leaf - A Chorus Of Storytellers, Male Bonding - Nothing Hurts, Dum Dum Girls - I Will Be, Tobacco - Maniac Meat, Star Slinger - Volume 1, 65daysofstatic - We Were Exploding Anyway, Vampire Weekend - Contra, How To Dress Well - Love Remains, Javelin - No Mas, Holy Fuck - Latin, Delorean - Subiza, Gorillaz - Plastic Beach, Liars - Sisterworld, Alberta Cross - Broken Side of Time, These New Puritans - Hidden, Holly Miranda - The Magicians Private Libarary.

Ha now get your head around that.

Peace out. I'm going to England. I might have time to blog from there, but if not then Merry Christmas everyone and a happy new year!

xoxoxoxo

Food Pyramid

Say hello to my new little friend. My new little friend's called Food Pyramid and Food Pyramid make THE MOST hypnotic and wonderfully repetetive progelectro (or maybe krautrock, who knows with all these genre names flying around).



Their debut album I starts off with the epic 18 minute long Sundance kid which maintains the same pulasting arp all throughout and brings in more and more until a vocal sample is brought into the midst (rare in Food Pyramid's case). The sample being Robert Wilson and Christopher Knowles' Sundance Kid is Beautiful.

In addition to the sometimes even lifeless pounding, Food Pyramid have found a striking balance by adding live elements such as saxophone, like on Speedboat Exit Miami Sunset. I was such a warm, thoroughly enjoyable affair that I can't wait to get my ears on their new record II, both released on Moon Glyph records

Speedboat Exit Miami Sunset from Allen Killian-Moore on Vimeo.

Here's another song called Southside Blacktop Beat:

Keep Shelly In Athens

Keep Shelly In Athens is a band/artist I've purposefully not learned anything about. I've wanted to keep it pure. Just me, Shelly and the music.

The first song of theirs I listened to was Running Out of You and it hit my ears like a chillwave version of Portishead made by Chase & Status. A Wierd kind of hybrid yes, but an interesting one.



Cremona Memories wouldn't have surprised me if someone had told me it was something by Mylo. (good thing)
Keep Shelly in Athens have blatantly got a penchance towards the "great" sounds of the 90's, and Cremona Memories' vocal snippets have got M-People written all over them.



The In Love With Dusk is a smashing little EP for those who want to revere the the days when everything was better ie. The Spice Girls were still alive. Its out on Forest Fire Records. (Well it was. Now it's sold out)

ANR

ANR (short for Awesome New Republic) are this like totally awesome hot new music group from Miami. Maybe the hottest thing from Miami since its weather. Maybe.

Awash in fancy new-retro soundscapes and simultaneously theatrical and just plain chill. ANR are a hotpot of ideas just bubbling under the lid.

Bubble bubble. Bubble bubble. Bubble bubble

The band have got a new record out called Stay Kids and it's got a crazy acid-horse on the cover. That people, is how you can tell a good album.
They say never judge a book by its cover, but if it's got a motherfucking crazy acid-horse on it then you're allowed to. Nay you MUST.
Besides, it's not even a book.


You can listen to the single Endless Fields of Mercury via the video below and if you "dig" then head off to their website to download said track.



Luckily for us well-off people with spotify, the whole album's already on it.
ANR - Stay Kids on Spotify

Sinéad O'Connor

I grew up in a world where the name Sinéad O'Connor was automatically associated with Nothing Compares 2 U. As I've gotten older that same association has always stuck and I've never felt any interest or compulsion to find out if there is more to the Irish songstress.
No matter how beautiful a song Nothing Compares is, there is always the cringe-factor whenever you or someone else plays that song.
In fact I'm having a really hard time trying to think of a moment where it might be socially acceptable to play Nothing Compares. Definitely not a wedding.

What happened to Sinéad to give her this kind of "cult" status? Or has she even got this kind of status and that I'm just generalising my own thoughts?

Through a random series of events I've broken down the lifelong boundaries separating me and Sinéad. Starting with her debut album Lion and the Cobra.
Parts of Lion and the Cobra sound as though, if made today, would automatically sign to Matador Records and get called Glasser's Ring.
The same ethereal, haunting textures are there but only 23 years earlier. Obviously it has dated slightly and sounds irreparably 80's but if I've learned something from this year in music is that the 80's has come back to haunt us.



I should have some final, grand, concluding paragraph, but all I have is one destroyed prejudice and this video:

OMG I've been pigeonholed

Today I have mainly been listening to Kanye West, Lady Gaga, various remixes of said artists and a lot of dubstep.

The Duke Spirit

So The Duke Spirit are back with their new Kusama EP joining the (not so long yet) list of female vocal bands I'm glad to see make a return
-See earlier Those Dancing Days post-



They've been steadily giving away free mp3 tasters of their new release. A while back it was Everybody's Under Your Spell's turn to get shamelessly thrown into the midst of the internet wilderness but now if you head over to http://www.thedukespirit.com you'll get a free download of Villains which is so effing new that it hasn't even got a video yet.
Head on over and join the party. Tis a good one!



Oh yeah and The Duke Spirit are NOT to be mixed with The Delta Spirit. I know it's an easy mistake as both bands are proper good and all that.

I just off the top of my head made up a little rule to differentiate the bands and remember which one is which:

Duke Spirit: Dukes are usually dudes. Posh stuck-up dudes. Obviously The Duke Spirit has a bird (female) singing. They've done the old switch-a-rooney

Delta Spirit: Δ Delta's like a triangle right? Something witch-housers love using. Something that if turned upside down becomes ▽. Right? Now correct me if I'm wrong but I once saw Tom Hanks show me what the mother of Jesus' child looks like and she looked a bit like ▽.
Obviously The Delta Spirit aren't the mothers of Jesus' babies so they've done the whole switch-a-rooney too.

Easy.

Chrome Sparks

Sorry to keep anyone waiting for a new post, but I was on a boat. Enough said.

Today is independence day in Finland and pretty much the whole country'll be busy watching the president shake hands with a lot of Finns that I've never even heard of/seen before. And after 4 hours of hand-shaking they'll indulge in some rather un-cheeky dancing shenanigans.

I won't be watching that as:

A) I haven't got a TV
B) I don't really give a fuck

What I'll be doing instead is letting you know about Chrome Sparks and his single Wait For Hearbeats. Mainly what I'll let you know is that it is bloomin' "off the hook"



The two tracks on Wait For Hearbeats are two genuine electro heartthrobs that are really making my studying for exams hard.

The track called Our Love is Heartbeats, Our Love is Hot Beats already tells us what to expect from its title. And hot beats it duly delivers. Unfortunately there isn't a video to embed for hot beats so you're gonna get the chilled beauty of I'll Be Wait For Sadness Comes Along instead (I'm still trying to understand how that song title makes any sense)



It's available for "name your own price" on his (Jeremy Malvin) Bandcamp:
http://chromesparks.bandcamp.com/

Minks

Minks are dangerous animals. Here in Finland they're very brutally killed by mink hunters who live for no other reason then to bathe in mink-blood. Usually they're hung-drawn and quartered, I think because Braveheart had just come out on VHS when the mink epidemy started. Not even girls who dress as foxes can/want to save the minks. Because if the minks are saved, then who knows what kind of disgusting acts of violence they would cause to our ecosystem. And our babies. Mostly our babies.

No don't be a mink activist. That is if you want your babies to live in a safe environment. Safe from the colossal and razor-sharp gnashers of evil mink bastards.
Fuck.
Minks terrify me. Fuck.

Why anyone would want to name their band 'Minks' is completely beyond me.
Unless it's a kind of subversive "fuck you" to governments (Australia) who won't act upon animals eating babies. Dingo to mink is only a short step in the grand scheme of what Darwin calls "his theory" and God calls "bullshit".

Minks the band however aren't really that dangerous at all. Unless you count listening to them a little too much dangerous (ha ha ha)
They released their first single Ophelia earlier this year and it proved to be pretty much awesome.



Now they've got a new single out called Cemetery Rain before they release the full length By The Hedge some time come January.

MINKS - Cemetary Rain by forcefieldpr

realised how easy it is to write a horribly prejudiced text and it scares me. I do apologise to all the minks whom this text offended.

KXP tonight

Your boy's off to Dynamo tonight to catch a glimpse of the almighty KXP who released one of my favourite "home-grown" albums of the year.

T-Bone prepare to get hypnotized.



It's like having our very own Holy Fuck.
So excited, but first I've got a pub quiz to win.

Laterz