Some new Records

Its been a really big week on releases. I had almost all of these on mp3 but now the vinyls are out. Or at least out here in argentina.


GO!


LCD SOUNDSYSTEM - North American Scum


LCD SOUNDSYSTEM, NORTH AMERICAN SCUM, DFA/EMI RECORDS, 5th March 2007

James Murphy aka LCD Soundsystem returns with a new single ‘North American Scum’ on DFA/EMI Records on March 5th, the furious and electric first single to be taken from the highly anticipated new album ‘Sound Of Silver’ which follows on March 12th on DFA/EMI Records.

The crushing barrage of ‘North American Scum’, the last track recorded for the album sets the tone for what will surely become one of the pinnacle albums of 2007. In keeping with the fine tradition of LCD Soundsystem & DFA on the dancefloor, ‘North American Scum’, is backed by two amazing extended mixes courtesy of Kris Menace and an ‘Onastic Dub’ from Murphy himself & Eric Broucek; this along with the original will be lighting up parties for months to come.

‘Sound Of Silver’ is the follow up to the massively acclaimed and eponymous debut, and was recorded behind silver foil covered walls over the summer of 2006 in a farm in upstate New York and takes the LCD Soundsystem we know and love, and shows their rebirth as a great ‘pop’ band.

James Murphy is at least three people, maybe even four: Head of the multi Grammy nominated LCD Soundsystem, travelling DJ, Producer/Remixer and one half of the mighty DFA, label head, etc. Aside from making ‘Sound Of Silver’, 2006 saw Murphy create '45:33' a special project for Nike that has wowed purchasers and joggers the world over – ending the year in several key best of lists, remixing Justin Timberlake, DJing around the globe, getting a dog and planning general mayhem.

Label: DFA UK
Cat No: DFAEMI 2165
Format: 12"

Side 1
1."North American Scum"
2."North American Scum" (Kris Menace remix)
Side 2
1."North American Scum" (Onastic dub)

BUY IT
http://www.myspace.com/lcdsoundsystem
http://www.lcdsoundsystem.com/


ACID JACKS - AWAKE SINCE 78



Not much info on the web about this one but I assume u all heard the MSTRKRFT mix (in my opinion the best remix of all. I included the tacteel remix considering that its the best besides masterkraft. Enjoy!

Label: xjR EU
Catalog No:XJREU004
Format: WEB


1: Awake Since 78 (Boy 8 Bit Remix)
2: Awake Since 78 (Mstrkrft Remix)
3: Awake Since 78 (Original Mix)
4: Awake Since 78 (Tacteel Remix)

http://www.myspace.com/acidjacks
http://myspace.com/tacteel
http://www.myspace.com/MSTRKRFT
http://www.myspace.com/boy8bit

The Emperor Machine - Vertical Tones & Horizontal Noise Part 6




There are just so many ways one can enjoy music. You can, for example, enjoy the sound. You can enjoy the colour of the sound: you can taste it, feel it and see it. Electronic sounds may take you far away - to the future, or perhaps to space. Guitars may take you home. Another layer would be enjoying the vitality of music: music lets us connect, it stimulates us to feel people's passion for life, to feel their creativity and strength translated into playing instruments, into movement.

Furthermore, the human mind has something similar to the anti-shock mechanism you see in portable music players - the mechanism which remembers the next couple of minutes of the song in advance. The human mind doesn't skip of course, but it enables us to enjoy the music as a whole, intelligent piece. You can enjoy your memory of it, the previous couple of seconds and the seconds about to arrive. That's why, I guess, mash-ups and remixes sometimes work so well. The vocals remind us of the original song, and then we make most of the music up in our imagination. Take, for example, Villalobos' remix of Depeche Mode's 'The Sinner In Me': it’s an extremely delicate minimal work built mainly around puny signs that we automatically associate with the original.

The Emperor Machine put to use an amazing number of those options. Andy Meecham has been around for a while, as a part of electro-bass outfit Chicken Lips, putting out Italo-Disco records as Sir Drew, and now comes his full second LP as TEM. ‘Vertical Tones’ arrives after a long series of twelve-inches (apparently released to conserve real-time dynamics and please the vinyl worshippers), taking a swift turn to what's fashionably designated today as Kosmische, AKA what Daniele Baldelli et al would call Cosmic Disco. It’s a style that’s revitalizing great cuts from the seventies, possibly in reaction to minimal techno's mathematical saturninity.

Minimal might be great for the Berlin School, its strict form taking melody and rhythm one step forwards, or backwards (depends on your perspective). The Emperor Machine does the opposite: the melody is all over the place and the instrumentation is live in an almost sneeringly blatant manner. Multilayered as its name, 'Vertical Tones & Horizontal Noise' coats electronic pulses vertically while congas, cowbells and other rhythm instruments gush horizontally. It’s a fun record that would be fierce enough for the psych-punk-funk crowd, and it’s a true demonstration of the capabilities of the London-based DC Recordings label, home of Padded Cell, The Emperor Machine and other Chicken Lips members and acquaintances.

The influences are clear: anything analogue, anything counter-technological. Meecham tries to give this record - to paraphrase a great poet – 'a borrowed nostalgia for the unremembered seventies' and he succeeds: The sound is warm and vinyl. Krautrock and no-wave live in harmony here, more evidence that this is a reaction to the often somber minimal sound. Let's go back, let's not go digital, but let's stay relevant. Most of the cuts are excellent, from the western movie stylings of 'Yes No Egg' to the clever palindromic beauty of 'Rimramramrim'. Although at times tracks lose some solidity, perhaps the result of Meecham listening to too many different muses.

All in all, if you were looking for another electrohouse stomper that would make you dance and sweat but feel a bit lonely afterwards, don't look over here. If you loved Rephlex's reissue of Black Devil, you're a sucker for vintage sounds and even in 2007, you still understand how music should be listened to, you have just found what you were looking for all this time.


Label: DC Recordings
Cat No: DCR 78
Format: 12"

Side 1
1."Monkey Overbite" (extended version)
2."Labocatocs" (Vincent Markowski's Polski re-rub)
Side 2
1."Who You?" (full length version)

BUY IT
http://www.myspace.com/emperormachine



KLAXONS - Golden Skans



What will 2007 bring for New X's most neon sons? That I couldn't say. What I can say is that if you claim any interest at all in Klaxons then you probably have some idea about New Year release dates by now. This, the band's fourth single, is presumably charged with acting as the album's buzz magnet.

The good news, then, is that 'Golden Skans' is desperately attractive. Undoubtedly more refined and 'pop' than its predecessors, it adopts affectations that are at once stately and addled; tapering up into the glittering stratosphere like a famous Donna Summer song or a dumb firework.

This aspiration is what separates the band's most accessible effort to date from unwelcome company. It is an obvious source of comfort as some point out numbing, crashing similarities to Hard-Fi, (and they are there, most obviously in the verse's propulsive, weebling bassline), to know that this band are aiming above the everyday, and the easy empathy that other band relies on as they aspire to modern relevance.

Unalloyed from the mundane, what does 'Golden Skans' align itself with? Lyrics paraphrase JG Ballard's Myths of the Near Future, the short story from which the name of their forthcoming debut album was taken.

"Light touch my hands, in a dream of Golden Skans, from now on, you can forget all future plans," goes the chorus line, in reference to the rays that Ballard sees pouring through an ozone layer ruptured by decades of gas to come, distorting and eventually destroying the dimension of time in trailing sheets of iridescence.

In the hectic pace of singles past these touches of literacy have done well just to cling onto the fizzing bundles of sonic energy they ride out on; in fact, at times they have barely been noticeable. But when the pace is slowed and the charts staked, it is the presence of their aesthetic which shapes and refocuses the Klaxons of 'Golden Skans' into something worthy of stardom, like the Shangri-Las in space helmets.

Course none of this would mean anything if the tune itself wasn't so ridiculously catchy. Opening with the same chord change as Baby D's monumental 'Let Me Be Your Fantasy', strips of melodies begin to unfurl, melodies that will later wrap each other in layers of cool silk. Wavering guitars reflect the ideas which the band sing in shimmering ink. Taken alone, there are drawbacks - this is nowhere near as mashup as 'Atlantis...' and live it can slow momentum. And it does sound naggingly like Hard-Fi at times. But this should be taken for what it is, first and foremost - a classy slice of pop from a band that are, hopefully, yet to reach their prime.

That I could never even have envisaged reviewing one of the year's biggest singles with the words 'Baby D' and 'Ballard' a year ago amuses me, and the fact that it works so well simply confirms Klaxons' right to revel in the limelight they currently shine in.

Label: Because Music France
Cat No: BEC 5772075
Format: 12"

Side 1
1."Golden Skans" (Sebastian remix)
2."Golden Skans" (Surkin remix)
Side 2
1."Golden Skans" (Erol Elkan Extra Special remix)

BUY IT
http://www.myspace.com/klaxons
http://www.myspace.com/surkin
http://www.myspace.com/0sebastian0
http://www.myspace.com/erolalkan