Greetings music lovers... Ireland based music blog
Nialler9 guest Mike here again to take you crazy kidz on a magical trip down memory lane. A massive urge to look at cheesy 90’s pop dance tunes gripped me in my hungover state this saturday afternoon, the brief fruits of which I shall now share with you lucky music fans.
First off we have what can only be described in lame clichéd terms as a “classic”: a sterling performance by German eurotechno mainstays Scooter, in the maddeningly likeable Friends. Notice how the tale of the friendship-loving girl seeking to elude the stifling repression of her straight-laced parents gracefully unravels over 3 and a half minutes to the glorious refrain of uber-commercial German eurotechno. Impressive stuff. H.P. Baxxter and the boys are still around apparently, their last album being “Who’s Got The Last Laugh Now?” in 2005. Check them out in the ISS Dome in Dusseldorf on the 1st of December, or in Chicago at the Congress Theatre November 26th. They are also on the interweb and myspace .
Next up we have a peculiar, but similarly excellent offering in Sash!’s Ecuador. “Vamos en un viaje a buscar sonidos magicos - Let’s go on a journey to look for magic sounds” says the dodgy looking mock-hispanic dude to young Sash as he passes by an interactive ad for the tourism board of Ecuador. In he goes with our swarthy weirdo on a magical journey through three and a half minutes of breathtaking landscapes, a nice chick trying to dance retardedly like a bald eagle, and himself roaring Spanish in his ear. Another German eurodance master that’s still going strong, Sash! will be playing in Coventry on 6th of December and he actually has a U.K tour coming up in early 2007. Check out sashworld or his myspace for more details!
Last but definitely not least, we have bangin anthem for ye: The Key, The Secret by Urban Cookie collective. In the video are the usual shots of the extremely attractive dancing lady interspersed by yer one singin away like mad, and some goofy mugshots of the duller, more male members of the band. Not as revolutionary as the previous visual delights then. But the tune really is something - ah the memories! Sadly, Urban Cookie Collective no longer exist - Rohan Heath (former associate of A Guy Called) seems to have hung up his headphones and drifted off into obscurity. If anyone has any leads, feel free to comment! Their myspace seems to be a fansite - worth a gander if your that way inclined anyways. Enjoy!
Annuals, the band that have released one of my favourite albums of this year are supporting Flaming Lips in Vicar Street Saturday and Sunday this weekend. If anybody has got a spare please let me know, I’d love to see them!
A brief interview from Squarepusher on the BBC’s Culture Show aired last month. As well as an introduction from André 3000 who makes a plea to Squarepusher to collaborate with him (Imagine what that would sound like - some kind of trippy jazz-bass-heavy space-funk electronic drum and bass hip hop album), there’s also a solo bass performance where Tom reinforces any avant-garde stereotype people might apply to him. It doesn’t matter, he’s an amazing bassist.
The site was out of action over the weekend. The database is acting up so we’re operating from a backup. Anyhow in the grand blogger tradition of laziness and brevity, time for a recap.
Eglantine Gouzy - Cowboy
Eglantine Gouzy - 2h12
[ Eglantine Gouzy - Myspace | cd - Osaka | mp3s - Kompakt MP3 | Finetunes ]
Kama Aina - Wedding Song
[ Kama Aina - Buy from Rumraket ]
And so, another member of the musical juggernaut known as Broken Social Scene came to town last night. Emily Haines and her band Metric were present for an early show in Spirit. From the moment they stepped out on stage, it was very clear the audience were there to see Ms Haines. And why not? The woman is a sprightly performer and likes to ROCK out. Case in point, the refrain of set-opener “Empty” with the lyrics “Shake your head it’s empty” she puts her hands to her hips and does exactly that, writhing to the crunch of the guitar.
They played a lot of songs from Live it Out as well as some older unreleased stuff. There was no airing of material from her debut solo album (it was hardly the right atmosphere for such dark elegies), “Monster Hospital”, “Poster of a Girl” and “The Police And The Private” were obvious highlights but it was Emily’s voice that was the real draw. She has a striking ambience to her voice that can just floor you and it is utterly captivating. If she ever comes back to tour her solo record, I’ll be there.
Photos on Flickr
Videos:
Metric - Monster Hospital
Emily Haines Stagediving
MP3s
Metric - Empty
Metric - The Police and the Private
[ Buy: Amazon ]
CSS rocked the stage in the Village last night and wouldn’t let go until the crowd were a sweaty shadow of their former selves. It was a hectic and energetic show starting with “CSS Suxxx” and running through most of the songs on the album as well as a couple of older tunes near the end of the set. Cansei de ser Sexy like their Brazilian counterparts Bonde do Role a few weeks ago, are all about fun and lead singer, Lovefoxxx is the singing embodiment of it. Climbing onto speaker stacks, stage diving numerous times, leading crowd hand-dances and generally behaving like a lunatic. She also dropped a Missy Elliot verse into one of the songs. The crowd at the front was the closest I’ve seen to a mosh in a good while and everyone went wild when “Let’s make Love and Listen to Death from Above” was played. Here’s a shakey video of the gig. CSS - Music is my hot hot sex live Roll on TV on the Radio tonight! P.S - Has anyone who applied to the Bud Rising Storehouse gig got tickets? I haven’t heard anything yet. C’mon I want to see Diplo! |
Some photos and videos of last night’s LFO show, his first ever in Ireland. The atmosphere was amazing at it (that may just have been the majority of people off their mash on ecstasy pipes) with a noticeable amount of old skool ravers there to relive their former glories. Props to the guy in the LFO boilersuit giving it loads and thumbs down to the guy in the condom hat clinging to my leg pleading for Daft Punk to be played because it was his last night of freedom.
Despite the atmosphere, LFO’s set wasn’t the release a lot of people were waiting for. Bell looked a little bored at times and could have engaged with the crowd more. I had a great time but a lot of people expressed their disappointment with the set. Maybe waiting 10 years to see him live brought high expectations that he just couldn’t live up to.
LFO - Freak live
LFO - LFO live
I was present at the above show in the Olympia on Thursday night thanks to Ben from The Leaf label. Unfortunately I only caught the last 30 seconds of A Hawk and a Hacksaw (what I heard sounded great) but at least they re-appeared later as a part of Beirut’s set.
So what I think of the music blogpshere’s find of the year? In short, Beirut were excellent and showed up Calexico’s tired and frankly boring set. It was a delight to see Zack Condon’s young troubadours give it plenty with their array of ukeleles, trumpets, percussive instruments, keyboard, cello, violin and accordion. Considering that 20 year old Zack played all of the instruments on the album himself (which is an amazing feat) and the band’s first show was by all accounts shambolic, it’s great to see how they’ve grown into a tighter unit.
If I’m honest, none of the songs I’d heard from him grabbed me in the last six months until I heard “Postcards from Italy” and seeing them live also helped make more sense of the band. Their Balkan influenced songs sounded great in majestic decor of the Olympia. Zack was also clearly revelling in the ability to legally drink outside the States. They played a lot of the properly-released-this-week album Gulag Orkestar and ended their set with a rousing cover of the theme song from Terry Gilliam’s film Brazil with the band member with the self-confessed Jeffrey Dahmer glasses banging his gypsy tambourine in the audience. An excellent set.
Beirut - Postcards from Italy live
A few words about Calexico. I love the album Feast of Wire but anything new from the band seems to be a lot less distinctive. I got quickly bored of the new songs they played but when they did play a tune I knew, I thought singer Joey was over-stressing the lyrics to the point of annoyance. I spent the rest of the night in the bar after that. Their visuals were pretty good though!
Digging deeper into dubstep over the last few weeks, I found Skream, currently man of the moment on the London scene, with perhaps the most prolific output for a dubstep artist. And, he’s only 19.
This track featuring Warrior Queen starts off on a nice dancehall / ragga tip and then gets dirty 55 seconds in with that shuddering dubstep bass kicking in which I can’t get enough of. I’ve been waiting to get my hands on this track properly since I heard it a few weeks ago and as far as I can tell there is only an instrumental version of it on the new album so this version is hard to get hold of.
Get it.
Skream - Check it (feat Warrior Queen)
[ Buy Skream’s debut from Boomkat ]
Over the last few months, a barrage of posts on music blogs that I frequent have thrown up some great new music. These artists have been covered so much elsewhere that I hesitated to even mention them, but I realise that not everybody scours blogs as frequently as I do so it’s probably worth adding to the pile if it means one of you out there finding one of your new favourite artists. So here’s two very different male solo artists I’ve discovered this way.
Singer-songwriter in the best meaning of the word. A ti