Young, Fresh & New

Der Jugend is zurück: De Jeugd van tegenwoordig – Hollereer (mp3)

Post-Postal Service-before-there-was-a-Postal Service: The Notwist – Good Lies (mp3)

80's synths and Miami Vice drums, isn't that really all you need? M83 – Kim & Jessie (mp3)

Zoot alors: Zoot Woman – live in my Head (mp3)

Hmmm, maybe there's still hope for Chinese Democracy too: Portishead – Machine Gun (mp3)

They only want you when you’re seventeen part II

For some mysterious reason 'youth' seems to be a theme these days. Check MGMT's 'Kids' and 'The Youth', seventeen year-old Laura Marling who sings on Mystery Jets' 'Young Love' or M83's new album 'Saturdays=Youth'. And now Ladytron (best known for their hit 'Seventeen') have released a new single as well as Dutch electro hip-hoppers De Jeugd van Tegenwoordig ('Today's Youth').

Hollerate: De Jeugd van Tegenwoordig - Hollereer (stream)

Ladytron - Black Cat (mp3)

Ladytron - Seventeen (mp3)

They only want you when you’re seventeen

Laura Marling, you know, the ultra-talented seventeen year old girl with the amazing voice and the catchy folk-pop songs? She played in Paradiso in Amsterdam yesterday. Dressed in one of her bear-sized grandpa’s shirts and fresh from the blind lady next door who cut her hair she awkwardly played some songs. And she must have practiced a lot, since they sounded exactly as they sound on her (quite excellent) debut album. I guess she had to concentrate real hard to reproduce those songs so well because she kept looking at her shoes or her microphone. Well done, Laura!

Afterwards I had a couple of drinks with some seventeen-something girls (and no it wasn’t like that at all) who knew what being seventeen is all about. Hot fashion, juicy gossip (‘you know Chris and Janine…well, they totally did it!’), bitchfights (“bitter is not a good color on you honey”) and even throwing drinks in someone's face (I thought that only happened on tv). Suffice it to say; I prefer my seventeen year-old girls that way.

Laura Marling – Ghosts (mp3)

Mystery Jets – Young Love (featuring Laura Marling) (mp3)

Be Your Own Pet is Still Rock'n'Roll

...Although they've grown past majority now.

Or should that be: even though they've grown up, they're still rock'n'roll?

After this, rather gothy, video you could expect the worst. Teenage girls in nurse uniforms, how emo can you get (the background in the pic doesn't count, that's just a club in Austin)? Well, cousin Jemina (not Aunt, although she's from Tennessee) still has got a voice like you wouldn't believe - raw, guttural, sexy - and the band serves her really well. On stage, she's a raging vixen, shaking her stuff like Iggy has reincarnated even if he has not died yet. (He Should, BTW)

I was overjoyed to see that BYOP had a new album out (source of the first video) and I like it even better than their previous effort. I guess you get better when you get older, up to a certain age. One song hypemachine/youtube has not picked up on yet, but which to me really exemplifies the raw strength of BYOP can be found here. 100 downloads only!

This one is rather funny as well.

Red

Today, on the fifth day of spring, Guillemots are finally releasing their long-awaited follow-up album Red. I will not bore you with another exhausting allegorial representation of the album - I trust a short yet indisputable must-buy recommendation will do.

Eclectic, sophisticated, stupefying, sometimes bombastic, but with every element deliberately chosen.

Asthmatic Kitty Releases Free Video Game Compilation!

The label of a.o. Sufjan Stevens, My Brightest Diamond and Castanets releases a compilation of songs to play during the independant videogame 'AutoSurf'. The music is influencing the speed of the game, so it's really interactive. The fine eclectro is made by some artists of the label and a lot of friends. Some songs are exclusively released on this compilation. Also when you're not playing videogames, the music is nice to listen and free to download!

Asthmatic Kitty - Music for videogames v.1 [album]

PC, Hi-IQ Niggers and Teenage Pregnancy

If you haven't seen Juno yet, go do so. Now. Not only is the movie nice (nice enough to make me cry, 2 out of two times I've seen it - whereas Contact only managed 66.65% :)

But the soundtrack... Man that snipped my bellbottows off with a boxcutter (*)! The indie tracks are very high quality - two Belle&Sebastian tracks! Sonic Youth/The Carpenters actually featuring - as in being talked about - in a movie! Cat Power! - The Kinks (selling point for your parents (unless you're preggers I guess)). Best thing, the original tracks are really catchy too, I kept whistling them walking home for days. Why didn't they get an Oscar?

Connecting nicely into the (major spoiler! ?) upper class babies, here's a very good track by Cadence Weapon: "Tattoos and What They Really Feel Like". Sounds gangsta, but it's not!

His new record "Afterparty Babies" is out now on Canada's upperclass records. I'm listening to it right now and it's very, very good. Cool beats and very cool rhymes without the "Look at me I'm a white guy from Nova Scotia" Buck 65 routine :) To be sure, they both suffer from excessive name-drop-ism but when you're namedropping Ian Curtis/Frida Kahlo I guess you are allowed some leeway.

Here's another nice Cadence Weapon video on YouTube: "Sharks". That one's a bit older, though.
Finally, here's a really booming track: House Music

Full disclosure: I am a big fan of CWs labelmate The Russian Futurists. I read their promotional emails. I really look forward to TRF's next album ;-) Finally: I downloaded CW's latest from bitTorrent, but will go see him as the pre/post-show of The Russian Futurists!

(*) = I stole that too from Cadence Weapon. He's just got too many good lines!

Go pique yourself

dEUS will release a new album in april. And if that fact alone isn't enough to pique your curiousity how about the guest vocals from Lies Lorquet from Mitzkov, Guy Garvey from Elbow and Karin Dreijer Andersson from The Knife? Still not piqued enoug? There are not one but two singles. 'The Architect' for Belgium and 'Slow' (featuring Karin Dreijer Andersson) for the UK, Scandinavia and The Netherlands. Need some more Piqueing? How about the video for Slow? If you still need more you can just go...

dEUS - The Architekt (mp3)

dEUS - Slow (featuring Karin Dreijer Andersson from The Knife) (video)

Three String Transpose

Canada! Whooo! (Yeah!)

Now that we've got that out of the way, let me tell you what I thought about last Monday's concert by Islands and We are Wolves.

I'd seen both of them before, both at Dour 2006. The difference was that I saw Islands from the back of a chock-filled tent and WaW pretty close-up. That time, Islands was all dressed in white and you couldn't really hear the songs. But - they must have been pretty good otherwise the tent collectively would have buggered off to get french fries or beer. They didn't bring the pretty violin girl along this time, but they had two Japanese guys (I guess they had them 2 years ago, but I didn't notice) so that was about even. Musically, they were interesting enough to listen to, a great way to spend a pre-show, but nothing more. Come on, a 6-piece band should be able to give a nice show!

Less is better.

It was turning kind of late on a regular Monday night, but who needs to go to sleep on a regular Monday night when you've got three guys - one with a bass, one with a drum kit and one with a synth & drumcomputer? Everybody who has got a job, that's who!

They started off with "Walk Away" but then the main bass string broke. That was a good thing, because they were just about loud in a good way. The roadie tried to repair it, didn't work, so then Alexander (if wikipedia is correct) transposed the songs down into three strings. That, on the other hand did work! The show was not as gut-wrenching deep down as you'd want, but my hearing aid will thank you for it later on.

I will not moan about the songs I like that I think that they should have played (I Wrote Your Name On My Kite), but here's a new We Are Wolves song I reallly like (and the video is great too!), Psychic Kids: http://youtube.com/watch?v=8fE4XMxz-NY

It has also got stop-motion IKEA furniture, Britney could use more of that!

Ah yeah, one more thing to mention: they didn't only play the new album but also the oldies - as far as you can speak of that! And yes, that includes Little Romeo and Little Birds!

As I am writing this, The Russian Futurists has posted completion of his next album, so I can obsess over a new Canadian band for the next two months!! :-)

MGMT live = barren

Kylie Minogue without 'Can't Get You Out Of My Head'. Hot Chip without 'Over and Over'. Justin Timberlake without 'Rock Your Body'. Feist without 'Mushaboom'. Whitney Houston without 'I Will Always Love You'. The Postal Service without 'Such Great Heights'. Sinead O'Connor without 'Nothing Compares 2 U'. The White Stripes without 'Seven Nation Army'. Fischerspooner without 'Emerge'. New Order without 'Blue Monday'...no wait, Joy Division without 'Love Will Tear Us Apart'. Nirvana without 'Smells Like Teen Spirit'. The Knife without 'Heartbeats'. Annie without 'Heartbeat'. MGMT without 'Kids'.

Jens Lekman And The Kalimba

Last week Jens Lekman played two shows in Holland and they were fantastic! Though some horns, keys and guitars came out of a laptop, it was really enchanting. In his band there was a cello player and Marla Hansen played the violin and she did it wonderfully (check here some vids of her with Inlets). Still the most intimate moments were the most impressing to me. Jens solo with his guitar or with a Kalimba. That is an african instrument and in the hands of Jens it sounds really cool. It has a bell-like tone with beautiful overtones en limited possibilities. Someone somewhere posted an album with Jens' live Kalimba songs. You can download it here to check it yourself!

Download: Jens Lekman - Songs On The Kalimba (album)

Volkoren Exists 5 Years!

Some recordlabels are a sign for good music. The dutch label "Volkoren" (named after a very Dutch kind of bread), is such a label. Under their hood they have beautiful alt.country/quiet pop/folktronica bands like 'At The Close Of Every Day', 'Brown Feather Sparrow', 'Ponoka' and 'Anderson'. Internationally they have good distribution deals, making their music available in the United States, Spain, Japan and other cool places. The label exists 5 years, which means an anniversary party in Hedon, Zwolle, the Netherlands...