Kode 9 Announces Summer Tour Dates

Scottish-born Londoner Steve Goodman is a writer, PhD candidate, and musical exporter of the Hyperdub virus. As Kode 9, he has released intricate and bass-driven dubstep singles for labels like Tempa, Soul Jazz, Ghostly, and Voltage and introduced cutting-edge dubstep/grime acts like Burial, Ikonka, Zomby, SpaceApe, and Daddy Gee to the world via his Hyperdub imprint. His 2002 “Fat Larry’s Skank” is considered a pioneering single for the genre and his ’06 album, Memories of the Future, showcased his gritty, minimal South London bass sounds and appeared on many critics’ best album lists.

Americans will get a chance to catch the Hyperdub virus when Kode 9 infects North America while on tour this July.

As a preview for what you’ll see and hear, watch Kode 9 and SpaceApe’s new video, “Time Patrol,” which provides a chilling, Orwellian future vision where wasted moments are credited and debited to our lives by a sinister band of chain-smoking timekeepers. Creepy!

Tour Dates
07/01 New York, NY: W.F.C. Winter Garden
07/03 Detroit, MI: Eagle Theatre
07/05 Chicago, IL: Sonotheque
07/07 Vancouver, BC: Richards on Richards
07/08 Seattle, WA: Chop Suey
07/09 Portland, OR: Rotture
07/10 San Francisco, CA: Mezzanine
07/11 Los Angeles, CA: The Roxy
07/18 New York, NY: Love

Photo by Georgina Cook.

Os Gemeos Ready New York Exhibition

Sao Paulo, Brazil-based artist team Os Gemeos will hit New York later this month with a new exhibition in which they will turn Deitch Projects into a fantastical cityscape.

For Too Far Too Close, brothers Gustavo and Otavio Pandolfo–who have exhibited in art galleries around the world–will transform Deitch by creating passageways, houses, doors, and other aspects of urban life using their trademark graff-inspired imagery full of strange, cartoon-like characters. How exactly they are going to create a city within an art gallery remains to be seen, but expect it to happen in the form of new paintings, sculptures, and installations. Peek the Pandolfo’s artist page at the Deitch site to view selected work. Too Far Too Close runs from June 28 – August 9. Deitch Projects is located at 18 Wooster Street in New York.

Feature: Os Gemeos – Favela Walls and Fine Art

James Pants’ Golden Oldies

James Pants is a thrift store-scouring, music obsessive from Spokane, Washington, and when we say his music sounds exactly like that description, we mean it as a profound compliment. His newest album, Welcome, is full of spot-on grooves that trip sensors last toggled in 1984. Here, Pants tells us how he went from being a teenage Peanut Butter Wolf fan to a key player on Wolf’s label. He also gives us a taste of the “Golden Oldies” act he’s warming up crowds with while on tour with Jamie Lidell.

The Herbaliser Same As It Never Was

Hopscotching across downtempo and hip-hop to jazz and soul, The Herbaliser has stayed fresh. But Jake Wherry and Ollie Teeba have gone back to the ‘60s in this rousing paean, with mixed results but always with masterful grooves. The ever-reliable Jean Grae shows up to spin some patented wake-ups on “Street Karma (A Cautionary Tale).” The newcomers are solid as well: U.K.’s MC Yungun’s carbonated flow keeps the bounce of “Just Won’t Stop” in a healthy gallop, and Jessica Darling’s funky pipes on “On Your Knees” and “You’re Not All That” manage to hover somewhere between Sharon Jones and Joss Stone without getting in the way of the grooves. Herbaliser’s usual gifts lie in their potent instrumentals, like the revelatory “Same as It Never Was” or the swampy tropicalia of “Amores Bongo.” But on a team or on their own, Herbaliser still packs punch. Inhale with confidence.

Tilly and The Wall “Pot Kettle Black”

Tilly & the Wall is adept at being simultaneously aggressive and fun-loving, something likely due to the fact that each member of the five-person songwriting collective from Omaha, NE brings their own particular style to the table when making music. On their third, nameless album that’s simply being referred to as “O,” the group blends fierce attitude with party-friendly antics in the form of chugging guitars and in-your-face vocals. Bright Eyes member and engineering maestro Mike Mogis produced the album, giving songs that slick edge he’s become so noted for in his work. Fans of gossip should heed the lyrics of this song, “Pot Kettle Black,” as it wisely points out how talking smack will eventually catch up with you.

Tilly and The Wall – Pot Kettle Black

Various My Favorite Things

On a sub-label of Tokyo’s Mule Musiq, but embodying a very European aesthetic, My Favorite Things–which offers tracks by Adolf Noise (a.k.a. DJ Koze), Lawrence, Tony Lionni, Minilogue, Loco Dice, and more–begs the question du jour, “What is minimal?” In the strictest sense, minimal is arrangements without distractions, free of stray tones, and that is not always the case here. Some of these 11 heavily atmospheric cuts–most previously unreleased, or at least unreleased on CD–favor tribal underpinnings, while others are streaked with spectral imaging. These tracks teem with micro detailing.

Odd Nosdam Pretty Swell Explode

David “Odd Nosdam” Madson’s hip-hop-laced productions often resemble a doll whose head has been replaced by a Bratz’s and has legs made of Lincoln Logs, and Pretty Swell Explode amasses the longtime Anticon producer’s remixes, b-sides, and table scraps. “Cut” and “Perfectly Pink Path” are lo-fi shoegaze masterworks, while “Bear Hug”’s loops sound like undead My Bloody Valentine guitar riffs. Madson reaches his peak in his cover of Black Moth Super Rainbow’s “Forever Heavy,” where he buries Jessica Bailiff’s nectarine-juiced vocals beneath gaseous distortion and red-eyed, hip-hop beats. Not everything clicks, namely his aimless remix of Boards of Canada’s “Dayvan Cowboy,” but as long as Madson is kept awake by too many ideas, his future looks healthy.

The Italians are Coming

France has distorted house, Brazil has baile funk, England has dubstep, and Baltimore has club. Italy has all of these things smashed together, chopped, rewound, sped up, and run through a washing machine–with some Pecorino Romano sprinkled on top. A growing number of Italian DJs and producers are putting their home turf on the international dance map, so we checked in with six of the country’s top party rockers to see what’s cooking.

The Bloody Beetroots
Echoing forth from their studio in Venice’s Bassano del Grappa, home of the namesake 160-proof alcohol, comes these ex-punks’ self-professed “schizoid sound,” which seems to be made by running beats through scanners and fax machines. Their gritty, nasty, electro-tinged jams have appeared on the holy hipster trinity–Dim Mak, Iheartcomix, Kitsuné–but the real fun is seeing members Bob Rifo and Tommy Tee DJ wearing Marvel comics-inspired masks.

Favorite Italian dish:
Beetroots, preferably bloody.

3 Is a Crowd
The fun-loving trio of Albi, Froz, and Giga–whose name is often abbreviated 3IAC–describes their sound as “Hiphopglitchyuptempogroovy house for party harders!” In other words, they make bombastic, pounding numbers that borrow heavy kicks from hard house and snare hits from Baltimore club. The Milan-based outfit has unleashed EPs for homegrown labels Mozzarella and Snake Beat but the blogs are really buzzing about their remixes of Sinden, Yelle, Fagget Fairys, and Bryan Cox.

Favorite Italian dish:
Pasta with bagna cauda sauce (Albi). Any kind of pizza when I’m junkin’ with Albi (Froz). I love all the Italian cheese (Giga).

Mowgli
Bad boy Mowgli grew up in Belluno, a small, mountainous town in the Northeast, but has since decamped to London (by way of Bologna), where he’s proving himself to be a groovy house-smith with remixes of Benny Benassi and Mr. Elastic. He’s also got a minimal-techno side-project (as MINIMOW), and is developing his own label, Deadfish Audio.

Favorite Italian dish:
Pizza.

Blatta & Inesha
Blatta, a trained jazz musician, and Inesha, a two-time Italian DMC champion, started off making nu-skool breaks tracks for Mantra Vibes and U.K. label Fat, but these days they’re crafting bass-driven house that’s bouncy enough to wreck any pool party. The duo hails from Catania, in the eastern part of Sicily.

Favorite Italian dish:
We don’t eat. We are watching our figures in case our music career goes bad. Then we can continue our modeling career.

Congorock
Taking cues from Euro hard house, ghettotech, and videogames, the effervescent Congorock has just unleashed his first EP for Fools Gold, featuring the dirty 8-bit banger “Runark.” Though he now lives in Milan, Congo grew up in Lecce in the bottom of the boot-heel, not far from mother Africa. “Living in Lecce is like being in Jamaica because of the big reggae-dancehall scene,” he says–inspiration for his big, deep basslines perhaps?

Favorite Italian dish:
Purpette (meatballs).

Crookers
Milan’s Crookers (made up of DJ/producers Bot and Phra) have created an army of synth-infested electro-club bangers whose breakdowns evoke warm fuzzies from raver days of yore. Having remixed the likes of Bonde do Role, Kid Cudi, and Chemical Brothers and recorded for Southern Fried, Man Recordings, and Mad Decent, their unique and jumpy sound is proving Italians do do it better.

Favorite Italian dish:
Discover it on Cookin’ with Crookers, soon on YouTube!

MP3: “Take it Back” by 3 is a Crowd

Junk Science Announces Tour Dates

The Vans Warped Tour is often referred to as “punk rock summer camp,” but MC/DJ duo Junk Science is here to ensure a little hip-hop is present in this year’s set of dates. Baje One and Snafu only just wrapped a tour with Del the Funky Homospaien, but the two will head back to the road at the end of this week and somehow find a way to fit in among acts like Against Me! and Reel Big Fish. Also joining the tour’s hip-hop contingent are indie hero Dante.

Dates
06/20 Pomona, CA: Fairplex Park
06/21 San Francisco, CA: Pier 30/32
06/22 Ventura, CA: Seaside Park
06/25 Phoenix, AZ: Cricket Wireless Pavilion
06/26 Las Cruces, NM: New Mexico State University-Intramural Field
06/28 Salt Lake City, UT: Utah State Fair
06/29 Denver, CO: Invesco Field At Mile High
07/01 Maryland Heights, MO: Verizon Wireless Amphitheater St. Louis
07/02 Bonner Springs, KS: Verizon Wireless Amphitheater
07/03 Dallas, TX: Superpages.com Center (form. Smirnoff Music Center)
07/05 Selma, TX: Verizon Wireless Amphitheater
07/06 Houston, TX: Sam Houston Race Park
07/09 Atlanta, GA: Lakewood Exhibition Center
07/10 Orlando, FL: Central Florida Fairgrounds
07/11 Petersburg, FL: Vinoy Park
07/12 Miami, FL: Bicentennial Park
07/13 Elkton, FL: St Johns County Fairgrounds
07/14 Charlotte, NC: Verizon Wireless Amphitheater
07/15 Virginia Beach, VA: Verizon Wireless Amphitheater
07/16 Columbia, MD: Merriweather Post Pavilion
07/17 Cleveland, OH: Time Warner Cable Amphitheater at Tower City

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