Menahan Street Band Make the Road by Walking

With Make the Road by Walking, Daptone’s extended family chalks up yet another impressive retro-coated long-player–where do they find the time for all these side-projects? As with previous releases by the collective, the fidelity is high. Most of the all-instrumental tracks waver between Motownish and Stax/Volt-esque flavor; the mood is very “Soulsville”-era Isaac Hayes-meets-The Funk Brothers. Crisp, tight ensemble playing defines tracks like “Tired of Fighting” and “The Contender.” It’s enough to make you pull out the hip-huggers and do the watusi. If you’re a groovy guy or gal, or a fan of all things Dap, this is a must-have.

The Juan Maclean Remixes Matthew Dear

For the 10″ release of his track “Pom Pom,” the latest single off Asa Breed, Matthew Dear passed the poppy electro number over to DFA’s Juan Maclean, who’s given it a couple of remixes.

Juan went straight to the heart of the track, spotlighting Dear’s cry, “I’ve got to figure out love,” and the subsequent remixes showcase the many ways in which that particular clip can be manipulated. The single may or may not provide answers to your questions regarding romance, but by the end of the five-track progression, you’ll probably be thinking along those lines.

“Pom Pom”
01 “Pom Pom (The Juan Maclean Mix)”
02 “Pom Pom (the Juan Maclean Mix – Instrumental)”
03 “Pom Pom (The Juan Maclean Backup Vox Mix)”
04 “Pom Pom (The Juan Maclean Acid Overhaul)”
05 “Pom Pom”

Photo By Doug Coombe.

Home Video “I Can Make You Feel It”

Remember Home Video? Warp Records is responsible for discovering the duo of David Gross and Collin Ruffino, who later released 2006’s No Certain Night or Morning on Defend Music. It’s been a minute since we’ve heard a peep from these guys, but amid all the CMJ madness happening this week, word came through that a new EP is due out next month. This will be the first release from the band since 2006, and we’re liking the new musical direction, which is starkly different from the band’s earlier, more minimalist work. “I Can Make You Feel It” lives up to its name, given that we’ve been sitting here all morning with the track on repeat, pondering the complex combination of electro rhythms and mournful lyrics about loneliness and self-medication via alcohol. It’s all weirdly depressing and stimulating at the same time. Jennifer Marston. Photo by Sarah Wilmer.

Home Video – I Can Make You Feel It 1

Fennesz Announces New Album

It’s been almost five years since Christian Fennesz unleashed a full-length, but in November, he’ll break the silence with Black Sea. The new album will arrive in two formats. On November 25, he’ll release an LP version will arrive containing six new tracks that find him dabbling in his usual blend of electronic and acoustic instrumentation, while the CD copy of the album is slated for a December 9 release and will contain two additional tracks.

If you’re on the edge of your seat and can’t wait another month to hear what the Austrian sound master has up his sleeve, head over to the Touch website to download “Saffron Revolution,” off the new album.

Black Sea
CD
01 Black Sea
02 The Colour of Three
03 Perfume for Winter
04 Grey Scale
05 Glide
06 Glass Ceiling
07 Vacuum
08 Saffron Revolution

LP
A1 Black Sea
A2 Perfume For Winter
A3 Grey Scale
B1 Glide
B2 Glass Ceiling
B3 Saffron Revolution

Lucky 13: Roots Manuva, Kraak & Smaak

Each month our resident cycling fiend and S.F. DJ legend Toph One drops 13 bombs for your listening, watching, and wearing pleasure.

There was a time in my gloriously misspent youth when I would have lived and died by the presidential election. Now, even though I sport my Obama button with pride, I know the real work gets done on the local level. Our neighborhoods are what really matter–growing native plants, visiting with the older folks, and trying to live simpler, greener lives. Only on the grassroots level can we really hope to root out the douchebags who use terms like “ultra-lounge” and post things on Yelp and consider themselves experts on everything. Help us, dear reader–you’re our only hope.

1. Midnight Lab Band
“The Forgotten Chant”
NYC Trust/US/12

The third-best thing about my stay in Brooklyn last summer (after the hot Albanian gals and A&L Pizza on Caton) was meeting the Names You Can Trust cats over wine late one night in a room full of records and weed smoke. This midtempo instrumental has gotta be one of the year’s best.

2. V/A
Funky L.A.
white/US/LP

Raw, rare funk 45s dug up from the depths of Los Angeles, including Charles Miller’s “Black Nursery,” Bill Spencer’s “The Jacksons Pt. 1,” and “Can’t Resist Pt. 1” by the Soul Primers. Hotness via my man Orb.

3. J.Boogie’s Dubtronic Science
Soul Vibrations
Om Hip-Hop/US/CD

Boogie does not let us down with his highly anticipated disc of sultry midnight soul and outernational vibes. Stand-outs are “Dirty” featuring Tim’m West of Deep Dickollective, “Together” featuring Jennifer Johns, and the party rocker and first video, “Inferno,” with Lunar Heights. Cheers, brother!

4. Deflon Sallahr
Sttuationz
Cold Press/US/CD

It was a grimy, whiskey-soaked night with Theo G. at King’s County in Brooklyn (tell him I sent you) when the hardest and realest song I’d ever heard came on, quickly followed by the man himself–and that’s about all I remember.

5. Lucky Brown
“Potato Cakes”
Tramp/GER/7

Dirty, lo-fi jams recorded on two-track in Washington state and released on Bavaria’s Tramp Records. Long live the funk and long live vinyl!

6. DJ DRM
The Bhunabeats EP
Bastard Jazz/US/12EP
True Grooves/ US/ CD

You could rock the party for a while just by mixing back and forth between this and Tiny Violin’s “Este Mundo.” Skanky breaks and heavy 2-step–this is necessary eclecticism.

7. Free Blood
The Singles
Rong-DFA/US/CD

Remixes by some of my favorite dirtbags (Barfly, Scotty Coats & Wes the Mes, and Tim “Love” Lee) punch you in the gut like a seven-foot bunny and only add to this duo’s big, burly warehouse sound. Fucking awesome.

8. Tha Giantz
City Officials
Y Projects-Hella/US/CD

Young bucks holding it down nice and crispy for the SFC on this project made possible through a collabo between the Tenderloin YMCA and TD Camp’s Hella Records (home to Bored Stiff and others). Some folks talk and other folks do: Props!

9. Kraak & Smaak
Plastic People
Ultra-Jalapeno/US/CD

Supreme Dutch masters K&S take a surprising turn towards the dancefloor with cuts like “Ain’t Gonna Take It No More” and “Ready for Life,” but they keep the heads happy with “Squeeze Me” and the Beck-esque “Bobby & Whitney.”

10. Pleasuremaker
What We Came For
El Buen Sabor/US/CD

These Midwest brothers have made big noise since relocating to S.F. a couple years back, and now we finally have some of their Afro-funk grooves for the mix. Beats and loops and horns and drums and vocals all come together right, whether for their weekly Afrolicious night or that jam session at the seawall.

11. The Bamboos
“King of the Rodeo feat. Megan Washington”
Tru Thoughts/UK/7

Just the tip of the ole iceberg of what we can expect when the full-length, Side Stepper, drops soon. Yeehaw!

12. Roots Manuva
Slime & Reason
Big Dada/UK/CD

The legend comes through in a big way. Check “Again & Again.”

LUCKY 13) Gama-Go
US/clothing line

This fall, the discerning Team Wino rider is wearing a hunter-green, monster-print hoodie to keep out the fog and frighten away bad drivers. You should too.

Pictured: Roots Manuva.

The Matthew Herbert Big Band “The Story”

Matthew Herbert‘s latest offering isn’t made entirely from sampled food sounds, but as with that record, the musical innovator has a bone to pick on his latest album. Besides being a dense palate of avant-jazz, There’s Me and There’s You is, at its heart, a collection of protest songs whose subjects span the Iraq war, climate change, religion, monarchy… pretty much everything that shows up on the front page of BBC news every morning.

“The Story,” which aims its pointer at economic inequality, was created from a collection of mainstream media products, including The Sun newspaper, gossip magazines, and a Madonna album. “This track is about the absence of anything of consequence in so much of our media,” Herbert says. “It’s part of a collective failure of the imagination, and a determined and considered plan by corporate media companies for it to remain that way. That’s part of my responsibility as an artist, to try and reconnect those dots.”

As usual, Herbert is backed by his inimitable Big Band, featuring some of Britain’s best musicians.

The Matthew Herbet Big Band – The Story

Stream Silverclub’s First Single

It took the members of Silverclub a few short months to progress from their first gig to being one of the U.K.’s most-watched up-and-coming acts. The release of their first single, “Crash This Car,” won’t hurt the Manchester/London-based trio’s reputation either. Set to drop November 3 on Leftroom Records, the track’s a dizzying trip through heavy synth territory. Think big noise for a big dancefloor.

Naturally, a couple remixes were bound to appear with the original cut. The first comes in-house, courtesy of Leftroom’s Matt Tolfrey and Marc Ashken. It’s considerably darker than the original, but not so dark as doom-techno master Jimmy Edgar’s version, also packaged with the single. Take a listen to the original below.

“Crash This Car”
“Crash This Car”
“Crash This Car (T.A.S.H. Remix)”
“Crash This Car (Jimmy Edgar Remix)”

Stream: “Crash This Car”

crashcar

El Remolón “La Bonita”

The members of the Zizek collective sure know how to keep themselves busy. Besides running a weekly party in Buenos Aires, Argentina, touring North America (twice), and releasing a steady stream of free mixtapes (including a top-shelf podcast for XLR8R), the crew has also started its own record label, ZZK Records. Only a handful of releases have seen the light of day so far, the latest being Pibe Cosmo, the debut album from El Remolón.

After honing his microsampling skills for years as an IDM and minimal techno artist, El Remolón decided to tackle Latin rhythms, like cumbia and reggaeton. “La Bonita” is a perfect example of the results, as the song’s delicate melodies and childlike vocal samples eventually give way to a lazy cumbia beat.

Next week El Remolón will be heading across the Atlantic as part of Zizek’s first-ever European tour. He’ll be joined by compatriots Villa Diamante and El G.

Dates
10/29-11/2 Seville, Spain – World Music Exposition (WOMEX)
11/07 Oslo, Noway – Oslo World Music Festival
11/13 Amsterdam, Netherlands – OCII
11/14 Rotterdam, Netherlands – WORM
11/21 Barcelona, Spain – Club Nitsa
11/27 Zaragoza, Spain – Zaragoza Latin Festival
11/29 Malmo, Sweden – The Rumble
12/04 London, England – Movimientos
12/05 London, England – Secousse w/Radioclit

La Bonita

Style of Eye Duck, Cover & Hold

Though actively releasing singles for half a decade, Swede Linus Eklöw made major headway with last year’s “The Big Kazoo.” Its pinched switchback filters perfectly complemented its label, Claude VonStroke’s dirtybird Records. The associations are still especially obvious on “Girls” and this disc’s title track, drawing together a brassy, jackin’, choppy tech-funk and intoxicated melodies. “Girls” twitters unabatingly but pleasurably, while “Pad Problems” navigates a surprisingly less frothy tract, placing gravity on the kick, but heft on sonorous chords. Most unexpected are the Italo-meets-trance tropes populating “Number Two,” which begins as if a conversation spoken in binary and ends up pure blow-up U41A. There’s variety, built using synth trills as an accellerant, or a slathering of portamento–anything to remain animated.

Thievery Corporation Radio Retaliation

On the duo’s fifth album, Thievery Corporation would have you believe they’re not just dub-influenced lounge lizards, but revolutionary propagandists. Taking cues from Fela’s slogan “music is the weapon,” they offer up a sonic jihad for the dancefloor. Radio Retaliation is their most thematically conceptual and far-reaching album yet, one that draws inspiration equally from Jamaican soundsystems, Mexican Zapatistas, Peruvian Communism, Hindu sacred music, Slovakian folk, DC go-go, and Brazilian favelas. Guests include Sleepy Wonder, Femi Kuti, Chuck Brown, and Seu Jorge, who lend the album a truly outernational feel. The end result is a tour de force of dreamy downtempo with sociopolitical substance, not just empty-headed fluff.

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