WE MOVED!!

We moved our blog to: http://www.songkick.com/blog/

Y'know, so we're not cheap anymore and actually have a blog on our own domain. Don't worry, you many, many subscribers. The RSS feed automatically points to the new URL, because we're techy like that. It's a bittersweet good-bye to our Blogspot beginnings.

Cover your laptops, it's a Girl Talk show.

(credit Illya on Girl Talk's MySpace)

Last night we hit the Girl Talk show up in Dalston.

All the gigs I'd normally describe as intimate are the Unplugged in NY type - up close and personal with a band. Last night I got introduced to Girl Talk's own brand of intimacy.

If you haven't heard Nightripper yet, get it now. The thing that makes him so special is his ability to identify which 20 second section of a tune moves the dancefloor the hardest, and then find a place for it in an hour long mashup of other such samples.

The idea of finding the best section of a track and looping it is how hip hop started with DJs isolating the break in an old funk track and reloading it repeatedly. 2 turn tables. Given that at least 50% of Girl Talk's samples are hip hop or funk it's like some sort of funk and soul 2nd derrivative - the best bits of tracks built on the best bits of tracks. But it's not just his ability to find the killer hooks - it's how naturally he uses that filter for quality to effortlessly cross genres - from The Boredoms to Elton John to Biggie to The Pixies, all in the space of a few minutes.

2 tracks here to get you ready for the hype i'm about to drop:

Girl Talk - Once Again (mp3)

Girl Talk - Overtime (mp3)

Girl Talk is the best DJ in the world. I said it, and I challenge you to name one better. I've seen some good ones - Diplo, Marky, MK, Scratch Perverts, Get Down Crew (ha!). Nobody smashes a dancefloor like Girl Talk did last night.

The stage was invaded within the first 5 seconds and 200 people climbed all over each other to surround Girl Talk and his laptop - which was covered with plastic to catch the neverending stream of sweat dripping off his brow and bouncing off the keypad.

The table he was DJing off literally rotated 90 degrees as the crowd swayed back and forth around him. Calmly smiling in the middle of it all Greg just kept mixing sample after sample with a crowd literally surrounding him in a circle packed 20 deep - eye of the storm mixing.

So fucking inspiring. Bring that Get Down Crew reunion.

Respect to Bardens Boudoir for allowing that shit. That's how a real jam should be - so intimate you're watching the DJ's sweat bounce of his laptop.

Driven barmy...

The Fall is one of those bands I know are important, I read about all the time, have been told are amazing, but for whatever reason I never made the effort to explore it for myself. I wish I could be as musically on top of everything as all the bloggers and critics I admire, but it's just so draining. I don't have enough heart to pass around for every amazing band of the moment, plus catch up on all the musical edumakation I'm desperately behind on. (I always feel like I'm behind.) It's so tiring sometimes! I wonder whether the fact that technology increases the availability of music (how much gets put out and how frequently) doesn't lessen our engagement with it.

I'm not making any shrill claims, and I certainly wouldn't repeat David Brooks' sentimental "it was better back in the day" chorus, but my relationship with music has changed significantly in the past 5 years. That may just be age and losing that passionate naivete. I'm grateful to technology for facilitating music discovery to an unheard of degree. I can read a wealth of interviews and reviews a click away. I can hear the music immediately, rather than hunting it down weeks later at a record store, if I remember. But in a strange way, the ease of technology creates an albatross-like imperative: because the music is there for the hearing, I feel the weight of duty to hear it. It's no longer so innocent or left to chance. Fewer and fewer are the memorable personal stories of discovery: "I heard it while getting my haircut, wrote down the lyrics, and hunted it down" or "My first boyfriend introduced me to the Stooges," as they are replaced by "Oh, I heard it on the internetz. Hype Machine? The Music Slut? I don't remember." And the music I do discover seems to last for a shorter and shorter period of time. It is probably the case that I fall in "real" love with the same number of albums per year as before, it's just that these albums are accompanied by many, many more albums that pass into my range of hearing, clamoring for my attention. Is there such a thing as music fatigue? I know I sound like an ignorant luddite, and I'm fully aware of the bulletproof arguments against this line of thought, but I'm airing it anyway.

That said, I took it upon myself to listen to The Fall yesterday because I was reading Ann Powers' list of Alt-Punk Essentials on eMusic. (She's a critic for the LA Times. I <3 her.) I now understand the magnitude of their reputation. I cherish these belated discoveries, because they seem more personal, as though it took the right moment in my life to hatch, despite its greatness being there for the discovering all along. So, yes, thanks technology, I just need to figure out how to tame you.

The Fall - Barmy

Amanda Blank and Yo Majesty will step pon u.

I've been reloading Amanda Blank and Yo Majesty tracks hard since we caught them at the Spank Rock show during CMJ. Here's a pic from the show. I love the way Jwl. B is fixing her cap so nonchalantly:



Amanda Blank is straight buffness. For the uninitiated her verse on Bump by Spank Rock should be all you need for convincing. But she's got wicked variety - I'm currently loving her track on MySpace For the Unloved (Diplo Production). She sometimes posts pretty amusing stuff on Fuck Your Blog, Son. The story about her literally stepping on some dude in a bar cracked me up.

Spank Rock feat. Amanda Blank - Bump.

Yo Majesty are fucking sick but Jwl. B is on another fucking level! I just watched a interview where Beth Ditto asked them pretty lame questions. Transcript:

Beth Ditto: do you feel like you have to work harder because you are a black female in the music industry?
Jwl B (interrupting): hellll no i don't give a damn
Beth Ditto: but do you think that other people give a damn, has it been hard?
Jwl B: well i'm gonna make it easy

She goes on to warn men not to fuck with Yo Majesty at their shows by telling a story about some guy she had to slap so hard he ricocheted on his seat.

Here's my favourite track of theirs so far:

Yo Majesty - Kryptonite Pussy (UMYO remix)

Pure genius!

We've been neck-deep in charts over here for an exciting new feature that's in the works. Charts can be incredible in displaying certain facts. And, so, I thank my friend Fred for pointing out some charts of pure genius. (Don't get a PhD! It's a playa-hating degree.) I will give my annotated shortlist.

Rap represented in mathematical charts and graphs. Be sure to click on the images to listen to the song via YouTube. The best thing about this is it's mostly from the 90s!

Can I Get It in the Morning? Jay-Z would be proud of this flow chart. No? FUCK YOU!

Places You Are Most Likely to Find Mase's Money Hanging Out Of. As explained by "Can't Nobody Hold Me Down."

Fig 4A. Unified Bitch Theory, Drs. Dre and Dogg. Shit does not include bitches.

Time Spent High. Ah, the beauty of simplicity.

Wishlist. Poor Skee-lo.

A love song for when you love despite.

This Yo La Tengo track is a perfect moody Sunday song. A delicate tribute to the much-ignored part of being in a relationship: the messy, difficult, undefinable in-between times when you're so far in, you don't know who's right or wrong anymore, and what it is you're fighting about. And yet there you are anyway because, well, is it habit, fear, or is it real?

I want to quote the lyrics so badly because they are evocative of a pulsing, familiar thing. But I won't because I always find that lyrics read sad and bare--even cliched--when the words are unaccompanied. So just listen to the song.

Yo La Tengo - The Crying of Lot G

Ladies and gentlemen we are floating on the N3 bus

I've never really associated a particular sound with London night buses. I've taken them thousands of times back from whatever club down to Trafalgar Square, then deep into South London, often hood up, often walkman on, settling in for the 2 hour trek home. But there is a sound, it's the tenor of the music you pick for that journey. It's melancholy for sure, the echo after the rave. It's comforting, full of synths in time with the wheels of the bus, staring out into lonely night time London.

It's the London I love, the London of Mass, of the End, of bashy warehouse parties, of groundbreaking music: my history of pilgrimages to hear that new bass thud. But I've never found a sound for the afterglow, the hours after the club, the last hours before dawn.

Burial's second album is just that. It's a simply amazing tribute to characterless backstreets, the sheer size of London and the distance of dark you have to return through. The sound of lonely voices curling out of alleyways, the quiet melancholy joining a night out and a warm bed. Nothing left, just an afterglow. If Spiritualized's Ladies and Gentlemen was the greatest post break up album, this is the greatest post club record. It makes me feel good about the hours I've spent sat on night buses, makes it suddenly feel inseparable from the reasons I love London.

His first album hinted at this but in Untrue he's taken the melancholy tone of tracks like Distant Lights and Forgive and created an entire album full of the sounds of a cold walk, a rattling bus, agro at the bus stop, rainy streets, a club door swinging shut behind you and filled it with the heartbeat of one person, making their way home. It's incredible, the best record I've heard all year.

2 from his debut:
Burial - Forgive
Burial - Distant Lights

And 2 from Untrue.
Burial - Archangel
Burial - Raver

King of dubstep commentary Blackdown has a great interview with burial here, I also like K-dub's comparison of Burial to Joy Division. I've just discovered his blog and will be reading it a lot more from now on.