Out This Week

Since we don’t keep enough people here at XLR8R.com to write an announcement about every single release we get word of, the news team gathered some notable new releases and compiled them here. Pick them up at your local record store, even if you’ve already snagged the leaked version online.

The Bug
London Zoo
Ninja Tune
Kevin Martin’s back with a brand new one for Ninja Tune, and this time around he’s gathered MCs Killa P and Flowdan, as well as ragga’s first lady, Warrior Queen, for an all-out dancehall/grime extravaganza.

The Presets
Apocalypto
Modular

I’ve gotten so many press releases about The Presets’ second album I thought it was already out. The much-hyped disc finds the Australian electro duo pushing more club-friendly bangers our way, with perhaps a little more polish than was present on 2006’s Beams.

Nisennenmondai
Neji/Tori
Smalltown Supersound

This trio of Japanese noise rockers makes its U.S. debut with this release, on which they unleash a very loud and very meticulously crafted arsenal of screaming guitar riffs, extended drum solos, and plenty of feedback.

K-Salaam and Beatnik
Whose World is This
VP

More rhythms courtesy of Iranian-American producer K-Salaam and his production sidekick Beatnik. This one’s essentially a who’s-who of reggae and hip-hop, with guest spots by Talib Kweli, Papoose, Dead Prez, Buju Banton, Sizzla, Capleton, Anthony B, Luciano, Richie Spice, and more. Geez.

Various
Delicious Vinyl All Stars: RMXXOLOGY
Delicious Vinyl

Now, screwing around with a track like The Pharcyde’s 1995 classic “Runnin'” is a risky thing to do, but Peaches and Delicious Vinyl founder Rick Ross have pulled it off with this compilation, on which they put contemporary indie dance stars to work remixing hip-hop giants like Masta Ace, Fatlip, and the aforementioned Pharcyde. Eminem is on this one, too, for some reason.

Pole
Pole 1
Pole 2
Pole 3
~scape

~scape co-founder Stefan Betke must be experiencing one hell of a nostalgia trip, because he’s gone and re-issued his famous first three albums that were known in the late ’90s for their crackly, experimental compositions and single-colored cover artwork. Bonus tracks on this one, too.

CSS
Donkey
Sub Pop

The Brazilian six-piece outfit shrugged off its electro-rock sound for this one and replaced it with post-punk guitar riffs and slightly more decipherable lyrics. We said this one sounds “like a child trapped in Kim Gordon’s body,” recently. You be the judge.

Pictured: Kevin Martin a.k.a. The Bug with MC Ras B and Warrior Queen. Photo By Sheikh Amhed.

Review Chromeo’s “Momma’s Boy”

Since everyone’s a blogger now, they’ve all got informed opinions on the state of music, right? Okay, perhaps not, but Chromeo and MTV are giving fans a chance to spout off anyway. The duo recently sent the video for their track “Momma’s Boy” over to mtv.com, and fans can watch it, then play critic.

Here’s the gist:

After watching the video, choose from it or any other one from that week’s selection and give it an eloquent review. Rules are loose here. You can sing, dance, or rap along, wear a mask, air guitar, and the company only wishes that you be clothed while doing so. Upload your review and you’ll find yourself on MTV. Neat-o.

Chromeo is meanwhile busy preparing to jam with Daryl Hall (yes, of Hall & Oates) on his Live from Daryl’s House online music show. The episode will premiere August 15 at 8 p.m.

Photo By Martin Laporte.

Does It Offend You, Yeah? Adds Dates

Their name is still ridiculous, but U.K.-based trio Does It Offend You, Yeah? is moving steadily towards the center of the indie dance-rock scene, with a much jabbered-about Jimmy Kimmel Live appearance last week and a fresh batch of tour dates just announced. The band will first hit the road with Bloc Party for a previously mentioned set of dates before hopping the pond to tour with Nine Inch Nails. Catch the boys and Mr. Reznor in one of these cities:

08/27 East Rutherford, NJ: Izod Center
08/29 Philadelphia, PA: The Wachovia Center
08/30 NYC, NY: Bowery
08/31 Boston, MA: Great Scott
09/02 Montreal, QC: Les Saints
09/03 Hoboken, NJ: Maxwell’s
09/04 Brooklyn, NY: Studio B
09/05 Washington DC: DC9
09/06 Chapel Hill, NC: Local 506
09/07 Atlanta, GA: MJQ
09/08 Nashville, TN: 12th & Porter
09/10 Chicago, IL: Subterranean
09/11 Minneapolis, MN: 7th Street Entry
09/13 Boston, MA: Bank of America Pavilion
09/14 Morrison, CO Monolith Festival
09/16 Portland, OR: Doug Fir
09/17 Seattle, WA: Chop Suey
09/19 San Francisco, CA: Bottom of the Hill
09/20 San Diego, CA: Street Scene
09/22 Los Angeles, CA: Troubadour
09/23 Orange County, CA: Detroit Bar

More on Does It Offend You, Yeah?
Feature: Don’t Stop The Rock Part 2

Vyle “Drop Down (So Chi. 1995 Mix)”

Vyle will describe his own work as “sort of like an American stuck in a coin-operated Pachinko Hall in Tokyo.” Which is to say, he pulls from a fairly diverse range of genres when making music, arranging layers of hip-hop, pop, Miami bass, and ghetto-house alongside one another. For this track, the Chicago-based rapper and producer went crazy with the synths and laptop-generated noise for the So Chi 1995 Mix, which didn’t initially sound like a good combo to pair with rap verses. But we gave it a listen and now it’s on full-blast at the XLR8R office.

Vyle – Drop Down (So Chi. 1995 Mix)

Serena-Maneesh Announce Double Album

Serena-Maneesh lead singer Emil Nikolaisen was once quoted in XLR8R as saying, “every song should have a personality and an upbringing. They’re like kids.”

He and his bandmates must have had their hands full over the last several months then, because the Norway-based indie rockers just announced not one but two albums to drop on September 23 via Smalltown Supersound.

The entire package is titled S-M Backwards, and it’s two discs of re-mastered tracks that originally appeared on 2002’s EP Fixxations and the Zur†ck EP. This is the first time these tunes will hit Stateside, thanks to some old-fashioned distribution methods that kept them confined to Norway all these years. Labelmate and erstwhile graphic designer Kim Hiorthøy stepped up to do the artwork.

S-M Backwards
Fixxations
01 Drive Me Home The Lonely Nights (Noise Miami mix)
02 Hear Bleed Phil Harmonic (NJ Recreation Room mix)
03 Blues Like Beehive II (L.A. Observatory mix)
04 Oxygen, Please! (Grandsport Mix)
05 Drive Me Home The Lonely Nights
06 Blues Like Beehive
07 Ballad Of Jezebel
08 Hear/Bleed Phil Harmonic
09 Oxygen, Please!
Video: Drive Me Home The Lonely Nights

Zur†ck
01 Sehnsucht/Drag Me Upstairs (NJ Recreation Room mix)
02 Death Parade, Slow
03 Leipziger Love Life (ancient mix)
04 Introspection
05 Leipziger Love
06 Degenerate
07 Sehnsucht/Drag Me Upstairs
08 Never
Video: Degenerate

Photo By Lars Petter Pettersen.

Eliot Lipp Sometimes Goes Outside

Brooklyn-based electro-hip-hop specialist Eliot Lipp has lots of reasons to stay inside, his amazing collection of analog gear being one. In this episode, we pry him out of his studio and get him to talk about his new album, The Outside, as well as indulge in some bottom-of-the-barrel crate-digging and ice cream—but not without a good, old-fashioned in-studio synth nerd-out first.

In The Studio: Daseca

Three young Jamaican dancehall producers storm international charts with a fresh roster and new-school riddims.

Brothers David and Craig Harrisingh and their friend and musical partner Craig “Serani” Marsh combined letters from their respective names and dubbed their dancehall production studio Daseca (for David-Serani-Craig). Located on Red Hills Road in Kingston, Jamaica, Daseca has quickly established a radio, club, and chart presence by producing hits for Mavado (“Dying”), Busy Signal (“These Are the Days”), and their signature artist Bugle (“Doh”). But the trio has resisted categorization, adding hip-hop, R&B, and even techno influences to their original Jamaican sound. Now, as Serani and Bugle tunes rule the international charts and bigger deals loom with American major labels, the crew says they’re not in a rush to bust out big, but instead seek to organically build their brand. Oh, and they want to make another thing clear: They don’t use AutoTune or samples! XLR8R caught up with Craig Harrisingh to get the lowdown on Daseca’s methodology.

XLR8R: Where is your studio located?

Craig Harrisingh: It’s in a plaza, with lots of shops in there. We share a vocal booth with another studio in the same building run by Razz and Biggie from Bembe Squad.

What are the crew members’ different roles?

Everybody does everything, basically. We share the work. Even if just one or two of us builds a beat or a riddim, everyone gets credit as Daseca.

How did you come up with the Airwaves riddim?

We build most of [soundsystem owner and producer] Fire Links’ riddims, [including] Chaka Chaka, Clear, Drumlane, and others. We and Links have a good vibe and a good chemistry. Serani was in the studio and [Airwaves] just happened, it was a natural vibe. We were just playing the keyboards and played a lead riff and Links just say, “I need that!” But we’re not really juggling riddims anymore; we’re concentrating on producing individual singles.

Do you consider your output to be strictly dancehall?

We’re doing music for the whole world. It’s still dancehall music ‘cause it’s coming from Jamaica. Some people say there’s hip-hop in [what we do], but we’re not trying to build hip-hop, it’s just the vibe that we’re working from. And it is excellent that dancehall is embracing different beats and tempos. We need that. We’re listening to producers like Neptunes, Swizz Beats, and Dr. Dre, but at the same time we’re listening to dancehall producers like Dave Kelly, Jeremy Harding, Sly & Robbie, and all that–those are people we look up to.

What’s the vibe in the studio?

From day one it’s a good vibe ’cause [Daseca] is based on a friendship. We enjoy what we’re doing. All of us have the same goal and vision. There’s no individual goals. So when Serani break through, it’s Daseca; when Bugle do well, it’s Daseca.

What are your essential pieces of studio equipment?

Definitely Nuendo running on a PC. We use keyboards to build all the beats including the Korg Triton workstation, Roland Fantom, Yamaha Motif, and we just started using Propellerheads Reason 3. Sometimes we bring in live instruments to add to tracks, but most times it’s just the keyboards. We’ve been doing good with Nuendo, but we’re going to eventually get Pro Tools because it’s the industry standard. If we ever cross over and Jay-Z sends us vocals, it’s gonna be a Pro Tools file.

How do you feel about being a mostly computer-based studio?

That’s how most, if not all, studios are right now. But we don’t do any sampling. We don’t use AutoTune. The only time we used it was when Serani did the hook for “Dying” with Mavado. We wanted his voice to sound like a sample. But Serani as an artist and us as producers, we’re not into using AutoTune. Recently we did a producer contest with the Jamaican Star newspaper where we picked the winner. And there were some good songs in there but, like, every track had AutoTune. It’s an excellent effect, y’know, but it’s overdone.

What are Daseca’s future goals?

The main focus is Serani and Bugle as artists, and Daseca as a production team. But we’re just taking our time, trying to make good music. We want to cross over and do American music, soca, Jamaican music–we even have some alternative rock beats, techno. We have everything. We just did a track with Mavado called “Don’t Worry,” and [one with] Bugle and Mavado called “Set Me Free” and a whole heap of stuff with Bugle.

How do you keep the equipment cool?

The studio is definitely air-conditioned. Every studio should be.

Chairlift “Evident Utensil”

Fine arts, film, jazz, and faux gothic architecture inform the work of Chairlift on its forthcoming debut full-length, Does You Inspire You. Oh, and the ’80s. The three-piece Brooklyn-based outfit pays homage to that particular decade with high-pitched synth melodies and poppy vocals that don’t sound as though they were made by a group of unassuming kids originally from Colorado. They’re currently hashing tunes off the album out in the live setting, on a tour with weirdo-rock master Ariel Pink. Does You Inspire You will be available on October 28.

Chairlift – Evident Utensil

Leila Blood Looms and Blooms

It‘s been a decade since Leila Arab‘s mystifying and beautiful Like Weather popped up on Rephlex, with only one other record (and occasional sightings as a Björk sidekick) giving clues to here whereabouts. Now there‘s Blood Looms and Blooms, as confusing, noisy, and wondrous as its predecessor. “Daisies, Cats and Spacemen” and “Mettle” provide the boundaries: On “Daisies,” Leila‘s sister Roya delicately traces Portishead-ish vocals between Leila‘s simple plinks, lonely strings, and negative space; on “Mettle,” ferocious guitars dive in and out while water drips incessantly. Terry Hall joins Martina Topley-Bird in a haunted, electronic Tin Pan Alley ditty called “Why Should I?” before Leila pops out of our universe again, wonderfully inscrutable.

Various Greg Wilson’s 2020 Vision

Carrying around a title like “the godfather of electro-funk” is no easy feat. Add to that a return to DJing after a 20-year hiatus and you’re risking a serious case of self-parody. But Greg Wilson has proven himself with this mix, and it feels like another victory lap for the Manchester edit master. Culling tracks primarily from the 2020 roster (from Fred Everything, Random Factor, et al.), Wilson rotates through electro, house, disco, and funk with reel-to-reel overdubs and a fine ear for pacing. However, the triumph here equally belongs to 2020 Vision. Tracks like Nick Chacona’s ambitious “Through the Door” and Spirit Catcher’s gleaming “Sweet Deal” are flooring. 2020 would have been right at home the Haçienda.

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