It's the last day of september, and god dammit XLR8R is officially the best website in the world. Seriously, they cover the best music, and give tons of it away for free. Like this goddamn song:
Wow. Super subby bass meets a skittering breakbeat that switches off with a housey groove, all doused in some baller synths...the result is two of the neatest drops I've heard in a long time. I'm starting to like this Canblaster fellow. A really eclectic, refreshing sound. Patkins recently posted another jam of his, the epic/hyphy house jam "Chicken Run." Maybe I can get him to do some homework and put together a post on the man...
this is kind of how i feel. i just finished 80 pages of Jane Eyre, its grey and wet outside and im hungry. so naturally i decided i should do a blog post before dinner. ANYWAY here's another random batch of tracks i've found.
Two, however, are of serious note: Glasser has been floating around on the blogosphere for a while, but her debut album Ring comes out tomorrow and i felt i should warn you before i get too obsessed. Her music balances the sparse and the lush with creative percussion and really pretty vocals. She's playing in Boston on October 2 (!) and i fully INtend to ATtend. Besides those two the tracks have notes.
Listen, BUY (GLASSER!), and enjoy
Plane Temp - Glasser (REMOVED)
Home - Glasser (REMOVED, BUT BUY IT ANYWAY)
You've Got The Love (xx Remix) - Florence + The Machine
Very very xx-y, sparse but very interesting and fun/relaxing/good. creative sampling of the original, but redone harmony in marimba... I LOVE THIS
Hello (Original Mix) - Martin Solveig ft Dragonette
Pretty much straight up house from Martin Solveig. I love Martin Solveig and this song... happy house!
Beat Boy - Die Antwoord
I don't really know how to describe this. It would be awesome in a live mix, sweet bass. Essentially rap but... but still. Its just too obnoxious. Check it out.
happy hunting
///patkins///
***LANGOSTA EDIT: all links removed but it's all good music...and at least you get this nifty patch!***
bonus: patch i made while procrastinating. fun stuff Patch - DJmus*
Hallo there! this came out today from WEDIDIT contributor Juj. Its an interesting, eclectic collection of free beats. You should check it out, especially Mbira Spirit below. Nothing groundbreaking, but some solid shit with great samples throughout. Cop it belowwwww
This came out a couple months ago with the release of Rubber. Classic FlyLo, but I haven't seen it posted anywhere. Anyway. A lot of playing with downbeats. Very Cosmogramma-y
So while we're talking about live music, I got to see Owen Pallett the other night at the Horn Gallery, which is undeniably the most happenin' musical venue out here in middle-of-nowhere Gambier, Ohio (COLLEGE). It's this intimate little room, I think the performer's setup takes up about a third of the room while the audience occupies the other two thirds. Which was perfect for this show, and here's why:
Owen Pallett, formerly known as Final Fantasy, is a whiz kid violinist, composer (with a degree from the University of Toronto), and arranger, and his live show is just him, his violin, a bunch of loop pedals, and sometimes a keyboard and/or a backup guitarist/drummer. And as you can tell from the video, it's AWESOME to be able to watch from seven feet away. I didn't get to stay for the whole show (goddamn acapella rehearsal) but I caught 45 minutes, and they were BEAUTIFUL. His voice is AWESOME live; on the records it can be a bit frail or underproduced, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but live it's so much more HIS show.
He's probably known most for the string orchestrations he did for Arcade Fire's first two albums, Funeral and Neon Bible. But since I just got Funeral today (having never put any effort into listening to Arcade Fire for some reason), I always just knew this guy as the dude with the violin and the loop pedal with serious indie cred.
Then last week I got his most recent album, Heartland, which is this brilliantly orchestrated, lyrically deep indie/chamber-pop record about a farmer named Lewis, residing in the fictional land of Spectrum, which is ruled over by a deity named Owen Pallett. Awesome. Lewis starts out doing Owen's bidding, then rebels against him and kills him. Which I think is fucking awesome. Here's the song where he plays the upstart, probably the most accessible on the album:
It's really not the kind of record you really "get" on the first listen, or at least that's not how it went for me. But after trial 1, give it another go with the lyrics in hand, it really pays off. There's a bit of mythological context that his 2008 Spectrum, 14th Century EP helps to establish, but it's not impossibly dense. That said, the dude is a master of detail both lyrically and musically, and thus the record took me a couple tries before I really fell in love with it. MORE MUSIC:
From the first Final Fantasy album, Has A Good Home. Much less well-produced than the stuff on Heartland, but still a fantastic song. It's what he's playing in the video above.
From Final Fantasy's second album, the exceptionally-titled He Poos Clouds. Apparently it's a concept album about the eight schools of magic in Dungeons & Dragons, which gains him instant points in my book. This song is supposedly about the school of evocation, hence lyrics like "fill my stomach with your singing." Also it's awesome.
SUPPORT THIS MOTHAFUCKA. It's all on iTunes, I know you all know what that is.. If you hear something you like, buy the album it's from! Or go see him live, that's not an act to be missed!! The dude deserves money, don't be a dick and just go pirate all the albums after being teased by these free samples. Just because a party host serves nifty hors d'ourves doesn't mean you should go rob the restaurant that made them. Or some other fitting metaphor telling you to be conscious about downloading free music.
Lobster out. I like how this last rapport of posts has given patkins a chance to post more beat stuff and let me have a little indie interlude. Refreshing, isn't it? See, we really are two crustaceans of diverse tastes.
Hello anonymous CC readers! seriously, if you read this blog start commenting on our shit. make us feel good.
Last night I went down to Cambridge [I live in Boston now... COLLEGE] to see Baths open for Dosh and El Ten Eleven as part of an Anticon tour. Now, Dosh and El Ten Eleven were two groups I had never heard of... I was pretty much lured by my love for Will Wisenfeld (previous posts) and hoped to see him play. Even though I actually MISSED Baths' set (no one I was with knew they needed ID.. we had to go BACK to school and then return to the club seen above) I made it for the other two acts, which were simply amazing. I'll start with Dosh.
Dosh.
The premise of both Dosh and El Ten Eleven as acts is the use of sampling and effects pedals to complicate their music. Dosh is a one man act, although on stage he pretty much lives in a tightly packed circle that contains a drum set, two keyboards and a large mixer/sampler behind him plus lots of other things to augment his music. The effect is amazing. Dosh samples himself playing and loops whatever he just did using the many many different looping pedals scattered around his setup. In one song, he actually sampled his own voice, making a 'ch' sound with his teeth, and then looping that for the duration of the song while he built upon it with interesting synth lines, live drum beats and various other things. What he essentially creates is a beautiful wave of sound that sits in the room, letting you listen for all the different little loops that he drops in and out. Besides the complexity of the music, its amazing to watch him scramble around his setup jumping from one instrument to the next, watching his feet making calculated decisions about his looping and wondering about exactly what it is that he is doing up there. It truly is a live performance, even though he isn't physically producing all the sounds you can hear at the time you hear him. I highly recommend his album Wolves and Wishes, and he has a new album this year (Tommy) that I haven't listened to yet. Although I don't feel the recordings do justice to the complicated/interesting nature of his live sets, when you listen and remember that its just one guy doing everything, its amazing.
El Ten Eleven
El Ten Eleven were the headliners at the show, and like i said, were based on a similar concept to Dosh's. However El Ten Eleven is a two-man setup, one guitarist (on the left above) alternating between a double-necked guitar and a bass, and a drummer alternating between drum set and electric drum kit. The magic (besides the double-necked guitar) happens with all the pedals they use, for looping and a tremendous amount of effects. They have a fisheye camera set up above the pedals projecting behind them, so you can see what they are doing, and it makes an awesome backdrop. As you can probably guess, they are more rock-bent than Dosh, but they have two things in common: Pedals and Anticon. Anyway, they are very inventive and have excellent stage presence. They have a new album coming out (which they were presaling at the concert.. have yet to listen to it) which is called Its Still Like A Secret. Give 'em a listen below
But in all seriousness, this is a good thing for mankind. He's saying that the Pattern + Grid World EP is more of a return to the beat-oriented side of his music, as opposed to the deeper, more conceptual direction he took on Cosmogramma. Which we love. But after that cosmic journey through the universe, I'm excited to see what those beats are going to sound like. Also, who can argue with these track names??
1. Clay 2. Kill Your Co-Workers 3. PieFace 4. Time Vampires 5. Jurassic Notion/M Theory 6. Camera Day 7. Physics For Everyone!
Love. Here's the leaked song, I like it a lot. Sweet bass riff.
Wait, what's that? He didn't actually post anything? Just a promise that he will eventually post? After he sees some kind of awesome concert?!
..........
I think that sums up my feelings about him as a DJ as well.
but seriously. I kid patkins. He'll put up something worth reading soon. but because I have no life, I will put up this video of beautiful music by Will Weisenfield, aka Baths, or in this case aka [Post-Foetus], which was his first project, much more experimental and intricate and, well, indie than Baths, but still wonderful. I really love this.
As my fellow undersea denizen alluded to below, i've been really busy recently... sorry. that being said im going to see Baths (a Crustacean Cognition favorite) open for Dosh and El Ten Eleven at a club in downtown Cambridge tomorrow night. Be sure i'll have plenty to say about that!
May I reiterate that the dude is seventeen. SEVEN-FUCKIN-TEEN. And he pumps out beat after beat, all original and brilliant...including two of my favorite 0. tracks. Lots of fire on his Soundcloud, as well as a free (and AWESOME) EP at his Bandcamp. We've posted on him before, here, here, and here.
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((P.S. Because patkins is working simultaneously on two college degrees (the overachieving fuck), it looks like the blog is now shamelessly mine. So I'll put up some "real" posts soon, I've been doing these mini ones as sort of a courtesy to my fellow sea creature, but he's all BUSY and shit, so WHATEVER.))
Dunno who Doshy is, save that he's German and GODDAMN THIS TRACK IS GOOD. Nabbed it from XLR8R, the dudes have their finger on a really fuckin' cool pulse in music today. Bookmark that site, seriously. They give away SO much free music, most of it awesome; I discover like a new favorite artist a month through those guys.
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And while I was on this particular wavelength, I was vibin' to this here joint: the monthly Low End Theory Podcast, this time featuring Low End Theory/Alpha Pup Records founder Daddy Kev, slamming you in the face with bass and beats. Similar vibe to the Doshy track. Also on this podcast that makes it the best thing ever: Baths, brilliantly mixing his already-released material with some new shit...THAT I LOVE. As expected. Seriously, get this fuckin mix, you will not regret it.
I think I'm gonna start a series of short posts where I just post an example of whatever musical wavelength I'm really vibing to at the moment. No long reviews or analysis or over-intellectualizations, I'm just gonna let the music speak for itself. Here goes!
I'm currently loving this mix by the Detroit native/LA-based beat music producer known as Dak (aka Dakim). Cop this shit:
Alright, let's be straight here. This is a music blog. We share music. Sometimes by giving it away for free. But we try to maintain some sense of ethics while doing so.
Music posted here is for promotional purposes only. If you have any copyright-related objections please comment or report or whatever and we'll take down the offending link.
On music submissions: email links n shit to dr.dr.musics@gmail.com or shnaily@gmail.com
