UK’s own Stanton Warriors—Dominic Butler & Mark Yardley—got the invite from the Fabric folks to not only play the club, but to record the 30th installment of FabricLive for the series. You can say that’s quite an honor, but you can also say that the duo deserves the hell out of it. For the past 8 years, Stanton Warriors have been twisting and crafting beats to get people to dance hard and have a blast doing it. This mix might...
Song for song covers of albums tend to be a pretty lame affair. Every once in a while, someone knocks out an all star Beatles re-enactment and effectively flattens it of any spirit. Which is why it is practically startling just how good this track-for-track version of Harry Nilsson’s Pussycats is. Why does it work? Because this notorious album, (originally half sung in drunk-speak with John Lennon), was never very good to begin with. What people expected to be a...
After making the leap from indie to major, the Atlanta-based metal band Mastodon release their long-awaited third album Blood Mountain. Not many bands have the skill to evolve and encapsulate an entire ideology of metal from one album to the next. The first two Mastodon records—2002’s Remission and 2004’s Leviathan—were thunderous and venomous, while Blood Mountain seems to have a little more groove. It’s still heavy enough to rip paint from the walls, but it’s just not as ominous. It’s...
Enlisting the who’s who of hip-hop, such as Common, Guilty Simpson, Black Thought and more, Dilla drops the beats and the flow comes natural. As far today’s hip-hop goes, The Shining does exactly that—shine—like a bright star guiding you through the crunk-filled crap clogging the airwaves. This is as real as it gets. And as the sample on “Baby” expresses, “How do I feel about radio hip-hop? I think it’s whack. Most of the shit they play is straight garbage.”...
The Long Winters aren’t necessarily my cup of tea but that won’t stop me from acknowledging that their new album Putting The Days To Bed is pretty good. After going through nearly a dozen crappy press kits, hearing a CD with actual songs and coherent lyrics and good musicianship felt like a gift. The songs themselves are like a nouveaux Americana sound, more filled out instrumentation-wise than folk but as conversational and personable as it. At times, the album definitely...
The only bummer about this record is having to type the word “Mistake” four times in a row when you want to reference the title, otherwise this electropop disc is a lighthearted bit of magic. It’s the kind of album that lures you in with its whimsical songs then you check the notes and see collaborators like John Tejada, Jenny Lewis and artist Geoffrey McFettridge Then you read a little further and go, “Oh, it’s Jimmy Tamborello…” who most people...
Back in 2003, the Cheebacabra burst onto the scene with funkified jams that earned praise from KCRW to Filter Mag’s top albums of the year. Now Cheeba is back with another grooving, laid back album and his very own label, Macrosoft. Exile in the Woods is a snythed out version of a funk album that features collaborators/ producers ranging from Money Mark to Peter Scherr of the Hong Kong Philharmonic. All the synths on Exile definitely conjure up references to...
For longtime fans of Placebo, Meds seems to be another solid album with a few extra perks. As usual, the band displays a range between high energy anthems and more heartfelt ballads. On the delicate “Song To Say Goodbye,” Molko laments the drug use and destructive lifestyle of a fellow musician who is left unnamed. The catchier-than-hell tune “Infrared” sees the boys using their usual arsenal of hard hitting drums, a wall of guitars, electronic embellishments and coy lyrics. However what differentiates this...
For those who need consistency in an album, Beams isn’t for you. For listeners who appreciate a sonic journey that weaves you through upbeat dance electro (accompanied by oh so many handclap sound effects) to more spaced out jams, then Beams is for you. While the Presets cite electropop acts like Pet Shop Boys and New Order as influences, the album only hits hints of these greats a few times. In a lot of ways, Beams would seem to fit...
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