Shut Up and Play the Hits

I miss LCD Soundsystem. Everyday.

Shut Up and Play the Hits
Directors Q&A here

Wooden Shjips

After getting hooked on these guys a few years ago, I currently have Wooden Shjips album new ‘West’ on constant repeat. Anyone who can record ten minute long tracks of drone-noise that never significantly change – all the way through – are fine by me. But what’s this? Melody? Structure? Just a hint fortunately but goes to show anyone can change. Just a side note but is it a San Fran' thing that while all the band members look different, they all look like Jesus? Exactly like Jesus?

Battles – Ice Cream

Great to hear some new craziness from Battles. Great video too, so many ideas; and that end sequence? I think I’ll go get myself some ice-cream…

Alt//Language

Our recent London show...

"Come in and shelter from a virtual thunderstorm, fight samurais in the dark, make music with paint and play in a Wiimote band, all in the atmospheric seting of Shoreditch Town Hall Basement. Expect screens, projectors and speakers, immersive environments and games, audio and visual installations, sonic experiences and performance."

altlanguage.com

Synaesthesia

Synaesthesia from We're So Digital on Vimeo.

This is our second installation which has been a real hit with the public.

"Synaesthesia is an interactive performance/installation exploring alternative digital music interfaces and the relationship between colour and sound, creating a relational experience between the artists, users and the audience. The project utilises video colour tracking, sequencing, softsynths and sample modulation to generate audio loops via Processing and MaxMSP."

2000 hits on Vimeo in one week and soooo many blog postings can't be wrong!

Lovebox Festival Annual

Lovebox are producing a 300 page book full of pictures of all the beautiful freaks at this year's summer festivals. You can look for yourself on their myspace site and add your own pics of you and all your crazy mates dressed in drag/spacesuits/naked etc which may or may not end up being included...
myspace.com/FestivalAnnual

Loop Festival Brighton

Superb festival of leftfield recording artists, DJs and audio-visual instalations and performance including The Light Surgeons, Fever Ray, Squarepusher, a rare Mùm DJ set and the excellent Telepathe from Brooklyn. You missed it? No way! Hopefully they'll do it again next year...
loopbrighton.com

The Heritage Orchestra plays the music of The Clangers

'On the 40th Anniversary of the first moonwalk Southbank Centre and the Heritage Orchestra celebrate by bringing you an evening of the music and visuals of the Clangers...'
I'm there!!
Southbank
The Heritage Orchestra
Oliver Postgate, gone but not forgotten x

Thriller

Surely the best homage.

I usually hate post-celebrity-death bad taste jokes, but this from Popbitch is actually very good:

There will be a post-mortem today to determine which was the cause of death:
A) Sunshine B) Moonlight C) Good Times D) Boogie

I'm blaming the boogie.

The Old Ones Are The Best...

What goes around comes around, right? Duran Duran are headlining Lovebox, Kraftwerk are headlining Bestival. Do the kids know who Duran Duran and Kraftwerk are? They should, and buy the end of summer I guess they will. But who cares? it gives me an excuse to post the video for Rio and the amazing live version of Man Machine– Kraftwerk sind supergeil, ya!

The Noise of Art: Deep Space Disco

Audio-visual/performance extravaganza at Ether 09 included Chateau Flight's new score for the 1915 film Les Vampires, Orca from the Faroe Isles playing homemade instruments and featuring recordings by Yann Tiersen, DJ T and Thomas Schumacher from Berlin minimal techno label Get Physical and Severino from Horse Meat Disco. The highlight of the show was DFA's The Juan Maclean playing live and some pretty out-there performance art from Immaculate Extremists.
Pictures by Christian Smith.
Noise of Art

Offf Festival

Say Hello are heading to Lisbon for Offf 2009, the 'international festival for the post-digital creation culture', to rub shoulders with the cream of the world's digital designers, film makers and musicians, including Universal Everything (featured), Neville Brody and many many more. We'll report back in May.
Offf

Land of Kings?

Dalston never used to be cool. When I lived opposite Barden's Boudoir I'm sure it was in Stoke Newington. Now my old fashionista flatmates call it Dalston, as does everyone else in the area. All the cool kids live in Dalston now so it's about time they had their own music festival and it's called the Land of Kings. (Kingsland Road - get it? Clever.)

Held over two days at 10 venues including Barden's, The Haggerston and Vortex and with dozens of bands and DJs including An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump, Sportsday Megaphone, Allez Allez and Greco Roman Soundsystem, it looks like Dalston's gonna stay cool for a while.
Land of Kings

Fever Ray at Ether 09

Fever Ray supported Röyksopp at this year's always excellent Ether festival at London's Royal Festival Hall. Fever Ray is the dark and haunting side-project of Karin Dreijer Andersson, singer with brother/sister elecro weirdists The Knife. The eerie and atmospheric set is performed in almost pitch darkness illuminated with just a few standard lamps and two lasers, while Karin's bizarre costume changes add to the wonderful strangeness of the performance.

She is also performing with long time collaborators Röyksopp along with Robyn and Lykke Li. For this she is dressed as an owl. Naturally. Röyksopp were great, but for me they just can't compete with the the haunting weirdness of Fever Ray's performance. There are a lot of great Scandinavian singers around at the moment, and three of them are here tonight but Karin Dreijer Andersson has got to be the best of them. And by far the strangest.
Ether 09

So what's going on with London clubbing??

The End is well and truly gone. Can't say I miss it too badly, I've spent more than enough time there. Now many of the nights have found new homes, with James Holden’s Border Community moving to The Arches in London Bridge and the always good Bugged Out! relocating to Matter at the dome, the venue that is to clubbing what corporate hospitality is to grass-roots football.

We checked out the opening night of Ghost, a converted paper mill in Farringdon. Run by the former manager of AKA, it's not unlike AKA and The End (Jaded has relocated there) – good sound system, nice size, but with the addition of some quite chic interiors by designer Robbie Clydesdale and a team of street artists, which is a big improvement.

But the fact of the matter (no pun intended) is that London's mid-size clubs seem to be rapidly disappearing. The Key, The Cross and Canvas are now a distant memory, Turnmills has gone and T Bar has been evicted from the Tea building, although apparently there's a new project in the pipeline.

So what's the score? Seriously, if you know please tell us! In the meantime, we'll no-doubt see you in a Dalston basement or some revamped old-man's-pub in Hackney...

[Image: limited edition T-shirt dress by Eio for The End]

***NEWSFLASH***
OK, we have some answers...
beatportal.com
burlingtonproject.co.uk
timeout.com/london/clubs/

Bubblicious

Superb video for the new Rex the Dog single by Geoffroy De Crecy, Etienne's bro.

Fan Death

Check out the interview on Dazed Digital

(Some of) The Best of 2008

Ok, this is a non-definitive, non-binding list of what I've been listening to during the last year, in no particular order. Sure there's stuff missing, sure it's a little heavy on disco and sure you can disagree – but do it on your own blog, this is my list, OK?

10 Great Tracks
Holy Ghost! - Hold on
Friendly Fires - Paris
Cut Copy - Hearts on Fire
Hercules and Love Affair - Blind
Midnight Juggernauts - Out into the Galaxy
Ladyhawk - Paris is Burning
The Feeling - Toby Tobias
Santogold - L.E.S. Artistes
MGMT - Electric Feel
The Kills - Cheep and Cheerful

10 Great Albums
Midnight Juggernauts - Dystopia
Beyond the Wizard's Sleve - Ark1
Zombie Zombie - A Land for Renagades
Portishead - Third
Foals - Antidote
Herculese and Love Affair - Herculese and Love Affair
Kills - Midnight Boom
Santogold - Santogold
Padded Cell - Night Must Fall
Glass Candy - B/E/A/T/B/O/X

5 Great Mixes and Compilations
Nu Balearica - Mixed by Fred Deakin
Death Before Distemper 2: Revenge Of The Iron Ferret - DC Recordings
Kitsune Tabloid - Mixed by Digitalism
Nobody Knows Anything - DFA presents Supersoul Recordings
Cosmic Disco?! Cosmic Rock!! - Mixed by Daniele Baldelli

1 Great Podcast
Beats in Space

1 Label of the Year
Italians Do It Better

Special Award for Services to Pop
The Ting Tings (I know, but like I said, disagree on your own blog...)

Life Before Daft Punk

Was there? Yeah, there was, it's just that long ago that you've forgotten. And it was pretty cosmic...