Fever Ray - Dry ad Dusty

Prepare yourself for the self titled album by Fever Ray, the impressive new project from Swedish songstress Karin Dreijer Andersson. Karin has taken time off from her other band, 'The Knife' to introduce us to 'Fever Ray'. It's dark and brooding and effortlessly emotive. Available now digitally and in hard copy March 21.

MP3 - Fever Ray - Dry and Dusty
Click her to buy the album on Itunes

Oh My Blast from the past! Q-Feel - Dancing in Heaven.

This is for Paolo and Mel!

Q-Feel was a British techno group. They released their self-titled album in 1983, which included their only hit single, "Dancing in Heaven (Orbital Be-Bop)". Group member Martin Pagewent on to achieve success as a songwriter and solo artist.

"Dancing in Heaven (Orbital Be-Bop)" was an entry in the 1982 A Song For Europe, the UK's pre-selection for the Eurovision Song Contest. It finished sixth (out of eight) behind eventual winners, Bardo.

The song was also featured in the 1985 dance film, Girls Just Want to Have Fun, and the opening sequence of the 2007 retro comedy, Kickin' It Old Skool.

The outfit remain a one-hit wonder.

MP3 - Q-Feel - Dancing In Heaven (Orbital Be Bop)

Stina Nordenstam

I understand that I went searching through my back catalog for the right song to fit my mood, and so I came across Stina Nordenstams' "Murder in Mairyland Park. Stina's peculiar and childish voice applied to an arrangement of violins and piano makes for a track that tickles your spine. - Johnnie

Stina Nordenstam - Murder in Mairyland Park

Hope Diamond - Costume Drama

The northern hemisphere, summer of '07... Long time friends and musical collaborators Jed Palmer, Zoë Barry and Steve Griffiths are sitting on Pismo beach, California, drinking Coronas and gazing at the hotel where James Dean spent one of his last nights on earth... It was here Hope Diamond began, inspired by the the great American landscape they were experiencing, and a desire to write simple yet rich, haunting, beautiful and slightly unsettling music. They returned to a Melbourne Spring and began in earnest to write and record, Jed and Zoë sharing the melodic and lyrical duties, and practising their harmonies. They began to find their sound, with intricate, delicate yet strongly rhythmic guitar parts, the creation of layers of sampled keyboard parts and loops, Steve's trademark inspired drum patterns and Jed and Zoë sharing vocal duties.

Hope Diamond have been gigging in Melbourne for 6 months, and recorded their debut ep "Costume Drama" over a long, cold Melbourne winter. Costume Drama is inspired by America's Great Lakes, Death Valley and the rolling fog of San Francisco. It features beautiful evening hour harmonies, shoe gazing reveries and the multi-instrumental talents of Jed, Steve and Zoë.

Hope Diamond - Costume Drama
Hope Diamond - Colliding Ships



Myspace
www.thehopediamond.com.au

New Animal Collective - Your Love, My Girls (Frankie Knuckles Mashup/Remix)

Now that we have our Merriweather Post Pavilion review out of the way, it’s time to post this mashup/remix. XXXChange shared this first on his blog:

Animal Collective kicked off the new year with a great album and also leg brought this to my attention:

It’s a mashup of their song “My girls” with Frankie Knuckles “your love” since they both kind of have the same synth melody.

Now, “My Girls” is my (and everyone else’s) favorite track off MPP, and I’d usually detest a remix of a track that is this amazing solo — but Frankie Knuckles’ “Your Love” (which is also amazing solo) is a fantastic mash-up partner for “My Girls.”

MP3 - Animal Collective - Your Love, My Girls (Frankie Knuckles Mashup/Remix)

MP3 - Animal Collective - My Girls

Buy it on Itunes

Tricky - Council Estate

  

Who's not glad to have Tricky around? In 1995, he helped conjure trip-hop into existence with his classic debut, Maxinquaye. Ever since, his complex, wary cynicism has been a unique voice in black music, mutating and diversifying its way out of easy categorization. Knowle West Boy is a survey of Tricky’s sonic versatility — straightforward rock and oppressive, moody atmospherics all have a home here — and it is frequently gorgeous. “Coalition” illuminates a particular sort of 21st-century isolation like little else I’ve heard. As the beat marches ominously, a cello, played in light touches, floats in and out of the foreground, urging Tricky’s fevered rhymes on before leaving the scene. Gender, politics, religion, class, and race all speak across one another throughout the album, but Tricky refuses to settle, refuses to inhabit one identity rather than another.

MP3 - Tricky - Council Estate

Buy it on Itunes

MIXTAPE

My Brightest Diamond - Inside A Boy (Son Lux Remix)

Sia - Breathe Me (Four Tet Remix) - Oldie But a GOODIE

M83 - We Own the Sky (Maps Remix)

Glass Candy - Geto Boys (Demo)

Glass Candy - Sugar and White Bread

Beach House - Home Again

Chairlift - Earwig Town

Gang Gang Dance Remix

MP3 - Gang Gang Dance - House Jam (XXXchange Remix)
MP3 - Gang Gang Dance - House Jam (Hot Chip Remix)

Don’t hurt yourself trying to explain to someone what Gang Gang Dance sounds like. However, you can safely say that their latest album, Saint Dymphna, is probably one of the most highly praised records of 2008. Gang Gang Dance is that kind of band you’d expect from the NYC experimental dance scene; futuristic, vibrant, chaotic, tribal, and totally fun. It’s no surprise that they’ve been getting all this critical acclaim for Saint Dymphna, which is as bizarre as it is danceable. The band is will be playing at Santos Party House in downtown Manhattan on New Years Eve, then they’ll be off to Europe in February.

Gang Gang Dance - Saint Dymphna

MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/ganggangdance

MP3 - Gang Gang Dance - House Jam MP3 - Gang Gang Dance - First Communion

Buy the album on Itunes



Gang Gang Dance's third album, God's Money, remains a revelation three years after its release. Pouring the muffled art-beats of 2004's Revival of the Shittest and the extended space-jams of 2004's Gang Gang Dance into structured songs, the record was starry and dreamy, yet also taut and focused. It made evident what was implicit from the start-- that these four hyperactive talents with underground pedigrees (see the Cranium, SSAB Songs, Angelblood, et. al.) could funnel their ideas into melodic pop without diluting them.

It also suggested that Gang Gang Dance might become an all-out pop band. But three EPs since God's Money have defied such expectations. Though gems like "Nicoman" did surface, Hillulah, Retina Riddim, and RAWWAR were mostly mysterious experiments akin to the band's earlier releases. Not that any of them were anything less than good-- but none were the pop epiphany the band on God's Money seemed poised for.

It turns out they had been working on that all along, and with Saint Dymphna their patience pays off. So clear and shiny it makes God's Money seem murky by comparison, this is predominantly a relative dance-pop album. But it still sounds completely like Gang Gang Dance, preserving their core of new-wave synths, tribal beats, otherworldly singing, and Residents-style loops. The biggest difference this time around is a lack of cavernous atmospheres. Here every sound and beat is laid bare, with no heavy reverb blanketing the songs like fog. The newfound clarity produces neither thinness nor tedium, but simply a direct, unadulterated power.

That power is clear immediately, when opening instrumental "Bebey" melts into the rhapsodic "First Communion". Here Lizzi Bougatsos' dreamy poetry ("Prisms have kissed my lids/ Sea salt has rubbed on my hips") and the band's coiled rhythms (particularly the beat-and-synth workouts of band MVP Brian DeGraw) hit on a momentum that could easily be the album's climax. But so many peaks pop up along Saint Dymphna's continuous stream that it's tough to catalogue them all.

Two moments in particular show that the more Gang Gang Dance change, the more they stay the same. After a lengthy synth opening, "Princes" becomes an actual hip-hop song featuring a rap from Tinchy Stryder. Sure, it's slightly jarring to hear his pulsing cadence paired with Bougatsos' ethereal howls, but the band's familiar elements-- especially Josh Diamond's wiry guitar line-- fit snugly around him. Even more surprising is "House Jam", a gleeful rip-off of Madonna circa "Holiday". But put the track on repeat and you might be more surprised that you never realized how well Gang Gang Dance's sound could work as 80s disco-pop.

Saint Dymphna ends with "Dust", a beatific instrumental that carries the band away like a magic carpet. Often when a group with avant-garde leanings flies close to the pop sun, the results can sound forced or off-key. But since accessible melodies have always bubbled beneath their music's surface, Gang Gang Dance's evolution sounds supremely logical. And anyone who thought that the cloudy sound of previous albums was a smokescreen should think again-- it turns out the band behind that curtain really is made up of wizards.

Happy New Year!!!

HAPPY NEW YEAR

This is the song to be playing on your Ipod, or in your car on New Years Day. Driving by the nearest beach or pool or puddle... 

It's weird but I try and play the best music in areas where I can get a smell to enhance the song. 

MP3 - Air France - Karibien (Johnnies' Nose says - Listen to this by the ocean)

Buy on Itunes

Also thought I'd add this video clip which really reminds me of a Nordic Version of Picnic at the Hanging Rock. The Music in it is by Air France called "Windmill Wedding".