Check out this rad BBC documentary which surveys the London Hip-Hop scene in 1987.

(via Dangerous Minds)

As you can see I am really into The Big Pink, especially this song. The video features the band performing, a hot girl made of glass shattering in slo-mo, and NO SIGN OF ANY DOMINOS ANYWHERE. Metaphors, like WHOA!

Download the MP3 here.

The debut album, Brief History of Love, drops 9/14 on 4AD.

Click here for tour dates.

My favorite thing about Micachu and the Shapes‘ has to be their rhythms and this new remix of the tropical “Surprise Hotel” (link to original version) has a glitchy, stomping beat that instantly makes my head nod.

{MP3} Fool’s Gold – “Surprise Hotel” (Micachu & The Shapes Remix)

“Surprise Hotel” is Fool’s Gold’s (Foreign Born/Glasser) first single from the upcoming s/t album on IAMSOUND.

The Big Pink are making a big stink..and for good reason. Here’s another great tune from the band and it’s their first official single from the forthcoming 4AD release A Brief History of Love. Classic hook. Thunderous beat. You’re SOLD.

{MP3} The Big Pink – “Dominos”

The LP is out on 9/22 on 4AD.

Grab another kick-ass MP3 from the band HERE.

Here’s a really awesome video from the UK’s We Have Band. The song is a fun disco track and the video mixes hand-applied make-up with frame by frame animation.

Check out the making of the video as well:

(via BigStereo)

You can purchase the bands music from Kitsune.

As I pointed out in a previous post, I am loving Micachu and the Shapes lately. Check out this new video for the Hot Chip-y “Golden Phone”. My guess is that you’ll be hearing much more about this band in the coming months.

(via MOKB)

Micachu’s new album Jewellery is out now on Rough Trade.

I am quickly becoming obsessed with the new Micachu and the Shapes album Jewellery.

Micachu aka Mica Levi is a London based musician, and former protege of Mathew Herbert, who creates experimental pop music consisting of her self-made instruments, household objects and a variety of influences ranging from grime to folk to electronic. Think of it as Hot Chip meets Elephant 6. Great stuff!

{MP3} Micachu and the Shapes – “Just in Case”

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Jewellery is available now from Rough Trade. Get it!

“Version” from new UK band Patten is a looped-out, sexed-up electronic trance that builds momentum like the best LCD Soundsytem tracks, except with more fucked up sounding vocals. Dark and deadpan just how you like it.

More madness to be found here.

Patten – Version (Test Mixxx)

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Oi Va Voi’s new video for the single “Everytime” was directed by Katarzyna Kijek & Przemyslaw Adamski using a paper shredding machine. Every third frame of the footage was printed, shredded and shot three times blended with adjacent frames by different stripes configuration. Beautiful!

The song can be found on the band’s new album Travelling the Face of the Globe available 5/11 from Amazon UK.

A great literary mind passed away over the weekend. The twisted, dystopian writings of JG Ballard influenced countless bands throughout the history of post-punk/new-wave/electro music. His tone and even references to his work can be heard in the music of Joy Division, Gary Numan, Cabaret Voltaire, Chrome, Empire of the Sun and one of my favorite electronic songs of all time, The Normal’s “Warm Leatherette”.

The chilling song was written and recorded by Mute Records founder Daniel Miller in 1978 as The Normal (it was his one and only 7″ b/w “TVOD”–a great song as well) and is often cited as the earliest example of minimal electro. The lyrics, spoken in haunting dead-pan by Miller, reference JG Ballard’s disturbing 1973 novel Crash. This is the description that Wikipedia offers:

“The book explores themes such as the transformation of human psychology by modern technology, and consumer culture’s fascination with celebrities and technological commodities. The human characters in the novel are cold and passionless, unable to become sexually excited unless some kind of technology is involved (typically architecture and cars). The gruesome damage inflicted on car-crash victims is not seen as shocking, but as the liberation of new sexual possibilities, that have yet to be explored, such as in one scene where a man and a woman have sex in a car that was involved in an accident, but rather than have vaginal sex, he penetrates a wound on her thigh that she received in a crash.”

(The book was adapted into into a film in 1996 which was directed by David Cronenberg and starred James Spader)

Read more about the legacy of JG Ballard on The Guardian.

The Normal – Warm Leatherette

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I wasn’t a fan of The Horrors previously, but I’m definitely liking their new direction, which trades in the manic spazz-punk of earlier songs like “Sheena is a Parasite”, in favor of a more spaced-out, hypnotic sound. The video for the opus “Sea Within a Sea” says goodbye to Chris Cunningham and hello to Andy Warhol’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable:

Visit their site to get the track for free and pick up their highly recommended new album Primary Colours on May 4th from XL Recordings.

UK’s Stegosaurus Trap, who emailed me the other day with a link to his free album Miniature Maze, makes music for one very good reason–the sheer fun of it. Indeed it is fun…and brilliant. This perfect collection of hazy vignettes with colorful, lo-fi production and pleasantly folked-out arrangements will suit you well on lazy days, whether rain or shine.

Download Miniature Maze for FREE.

Preview two of my favorite tracks below:

Stegosaurus Trap – Broken Castles

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Stegosaurus Trap – Dopework

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