Noisemaker Daedelus is back, this time with an arsenal of guest stars and a new, forthcoming album, Love To Make Music To. The release marks the Los Angeles-based producer’s first full collaboration with Ninja Tune, and, of course, a little remix treatment was necessary to rev fans up for the full album. Here, “Make It So,” which features Holopaw member Michael Johnson, gets warped, tweaked, and turned into a disco-flavored dance number complete with plenty of catchy hooks and vocal loops.
Producer, inventor, and lover of conceptual music and Victorian attire, Daedelus has once again emerged from the studio with a playful, genre-defying album. Love To Make Music To, set for release on July 15, marks his first full collaboration with Ninja Tune, though he’s had several albums and singles on the label in the past (not to mention ones on Mush, Alpha Pup, Plug Research, Hefty, and a bunch of other imprints).
The new album apparently follows the adventures of one Alfred Darlington at the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago, where he is accidentally locked in a morgue and later reemerges as Daedelus and commissioned to build strange electronic instruments. How this tale will play out from track to track on the album remains to be seen, but with Om’mas Keith and Taz of Sa-Ra, Paper Boy, Erika Rose, Laura Darling, and others filling in the guest spots, it should be quite the meeting of creative minds.
The album’s single, “Make it So,” recently got a little reworking and was released online. Click here to download the track.
Tracklisting
1. Fair Weather Friends
2. Make It So featuring Michael Johnson
3. Twist The Kids featuring N’fa
4. Get Off Your HiHats
5. Hrs:Mins:Secs
6. Touchtone featuring Paperboy and Taz
7. I Car(ry) Us
8. I Took two
9. My Beau featuring Erika Rose and Paperboy
10. You’re The One featuring Om’mas Keith
11. Assembly Lines
12. Drummery Jam
13. Only For The Heartstrings
14. Bass In It featuring Taz
15. If We Should featuring Laura Darlington
While we’re always thrilled to spend the mornings sifting through the numerous comments left on XLR8R.com, the web staff is greedy to know more about its readers, and have prepped the XLR8R.com reader survey to find out all the details. Tell us about your favorite genres, sections of the site, social networking habits, how you get your hands on new music, and more, and you’ll be in the running to win a stack of CDs.
Three lucky readers will win Matthew Dear‘s Asa Breed-Black Edition on Ghostly, which includes remixes by Hot Chip and Four Tet, Panther‘s Kill Rock Stars debut, 14KT God, Unit of Resistance from Raz Mesinai’s Badawi on ROIR, and Cryland by Everloving’s postmodern folkster Don Cavalli.
Again, here’s that link.
Morgan Heritage’s new album, Mission In Progress, landed at the number one position on the Billboard Reggae Album Chart last week. The album is buoyed by strong tracks, including the group’s homage to Steel Pulse’s “Raid Rootz Dance,” the biting political tune “Nothing To Smile About” (on Kemar McGregor’s Rub-A-Dub riddim), and romantic fare like “Love You Right.”
Reggae is making the gallery circuit. Bob Marley archivist Roger Stephens and photographer Peter Simon spoke and introduced their new book, Peter Simon and Roger Stephens’ Reggae Scrapbook, at Babylon Falling bookstore/gallery in San Francisco this past Saturday, May 10. Simon is a photographer who has documented reggae music for near 30 years. Stephens, a.k.a. Ras Rojah, is a founder and contributor to The Beat magazine and an accomplished author. Simon and Stephen’s Northern California book tour continues throughout the week.
Meanwhile, at Washington DC’s National Museum of Natural History, Discovering Rastafari! explores Haile Selassie’s legacy and his devotees’ faith. The exhibit, a collection of photos, clothing, and Selassie iconography, occupies a small space near the permanent African cultural exhibit. The NY Times’ Edward Rothstein partially panned the exhibit’s avoidance of discussing Rastafari contradictions, saying “This is pandering and promotion, not scholarship, and it mars what could have been an even more fascinating show.” Discovering Rastafari! runs through November 8 at the Smithsonian.
Anthony B released his twelfth album, Life Over Death, exclusively in digital format. Find out more at anthonyblifeoverdeath.com.
Dancehall clothing designer Lexx Perry, who outfitted dance posse The Ouch Crew, is now bringing his style sensibilities to U.S. artists Ciara and Eve, as well as reportedly touring the U.S. with the Americas Next Top Model television series.
Jamaican music record collectors finally get their due in a recent Gleanerarticle. The article talks to Merritone soundsystem’s Winston Blake, collector and supermarket chain owner Wayne Chen, and even former Labor Party Prime Minister Edward Seaga (former head of Jamaica’s first indigenous record label, WIRL).
At the 2008 Excellence In Music awards show, gravelly crooner Beres Hammond was given the Reggae Role Model award. Jamaicans.com interviewed Hammond. Although known for his many albums, Hammond admits in the piece that the recording studio is his love: “I think it is my true calling. I have a passion for the studio, more so than any other aspect of the business. I love writing songs, whether for Beres or others.”
Speaking of awards shows, the 27th annual International Reggae & World Music Awards (IRAWMA) handed out the following:
Recording Artist of the Year: Beenie Man
Best Male Vocalist: Tarrus Riley
Best Female Vocalist: Etana
Most Outstanding Show Band: Morgan Heritage
Most Consistent Entertainer: Freddie McGregor
Most Improved Entertainer: Junior Reid
Check out the new Oneness Records riddim General Key at United Reggae. The German-produced riddim features Prince Malachi, Ginjah, Tippa Irie, Queen Ifrica, and Junior Kelly. Reggae Rhythm Update features old and new versions of Taxi Gang’s popular Baltimore riddim.
The always interesting grassroots Badgals‘ latest episode takes on the role of guns in dancehall music and culture. Titled “Permit Fi Gun,” the audio cast explores the topic through new and vintage reggae selections.
The Dub Club (1154 Glendale Blvd., Los Angeles) features an impressive show calendar for the next several weeks–definitely worth a trip to L.A. Featured acts at the weekly roots and dub night include:
Wednesday May 21: “Orthodox Showcase” with Richie Spice, Sangie Davis, and Studio One legend Judah Eskender Tafari
Wednesday June 11: Wailing Souls
Wednesday June 18: U.K. selector David Rodigan
Friday June 27: A special Friday edition with The Godfather DJ U-Roy, Pat Kelly, Cornell Campbell, and Stranger Cole
Weekly: The Echodelic Sound DJs Tom Chasteen, Roy Corduroy, Dungeonmaster, and Boss Harmony
Jamaica Top Ten Dancehall Singles
1. Vybz Kartel “Money Fi Spend” (Big Ship)
2. Beenie Man “Wine Gal” (TJ Records)
3. Harry Toddler “Don’t Run In” (Truck Back)
4. Stephen & Damian Marley “The Mission” (Baby G)
5. Mavado “Brown Bottle” (Big Ship)
6. Mykal Rose “Shoot Out” (John John)
7. Demarco “Duppy Know Who Fi Frighten” (John John)
8. Busy Signal “Pon Di Edge” (Star Kutt)
9. Mavado “On The Rock” (Baby G)
10. Erup “Click Mi Finger” (Truck Back)
An escapist fantasy and Internet phenomenon that became an identity, Gnarls Barkley is hip-hop producer Danger Mouse plus soul cipher Cee-Lo Green, and on this sophomore release the potential one-off sparks off. The predominant production is styled after ’60s pop, relatively clean of crackle but chockablock with snap. Handclaps are often a principal currency, freckled across paddleball beats–springy and rounded, often more immediate than far ranging though at times the dusty-meets-digital groove presents its percussive flurries as a Wall of Sound harkening back to Portishead. The balance swings less violently between paranoia-versus-poignancy poles than on 2006’s debut, St. Elsewhere, thus trading a runaway single for uniform intrigue. For all Cee-Lo’s preoccupation with mortality, Gnarls now sounds like his livelihood.
Viennese producer Klaus Waldeck’s new album is an homage to the ballroom era–to the 1920s and jazz halls and smoky-voiced singers backed by wah-wah-wah horns and noodly clarinets. But since it’s Waldeck, better known for making downtempo sounds than assembling a big band, the album knits those influences into something low-key, less about a ballroom full of dancing couples than memories of such (one of the album’s best tracks, in fact, is called “Memories”). Newly recorded musicians rub up against vinyl from gramophones, and spacey knob twiddles complement the lightly swinging jazz percussion. Even the occasional misstep (the bouncy beat on “Midsummer Night Blues” fights against the sultry vocals) doesn’t detract from the evocative whole.
Now that the wall between rock purism and the digital dancefloor has been reduced to mere rubble, a suite of newer, harder, brighter, faster bands are getting down to the business at hand: having a good time. Here, Does It Offend You, Yeah? brings of a steamroller of rum, synth riffs, and screeching punk rhythms.
The first music that Reading, England’s James Rushent and Dan Coop made together was a dangerously caffeinated electro experiment thrown together on an old bedroom computer that made awful beeps. They then released the noise on a humble MySpace page for their mates to enjoy under the name Does It Offend You, Yeah?, a phrase they heard someone say on TV. Not long after, Rushent and Coop had a Sony BMG contract, recruited two more members (drummer Rob Bloomsfield and American Morgan Quaintance, who plays guitar, keyboards, and sings) at a pub, and found themselves performing for thousands at Japan’s Summer Sonic Festival. Bassist/vocalist Rushent compares the entire experience to “walking around in a haze,” saying that he was in disbelief until he found himself in a major label office. “I didn’t really believe it until they played one of our tunes and nodded along to it, smiling,” he recalls. “I was like, ‘Oh my God, they actually do mean us!’”
DIOYY’s electro-rock sound exists in a gray area where a surly and distorted synthesizer matters as much as a Fender coughing up feedback. While they share the hedonism and bombast of French electro (Daft Punk, Justice, the Ed Banger label), their on-stage moxie (fueled by a good bottle of rum) aims to one-up any rock band. This is best encapsulated on their single “We Are Rockstars,” which grinds up asthmatic synth riffs, garbled robotic vocals, and stumbling punk rhythms, and reeks of a hundred party crashers shoved into a living room. “We just want people to have some fun at the shows–drink a load of beers and jump around,” says Coop, who plays keyboards. “We really feed off the audience reaction so we go out there to steamroller people and get them involved.”
One peculiar moment on their aptly titled debut album, You Have No Idea What You Are Getting Yourself Into, is the garage-rock romp “Attack of the 60 Ft Lesbian Octopus.” Rushent admits that the band was fighting off the ghosts of Seattle grunge and The B-52’s when they were writing it. “We started off trying to rip off Nirvana,” Rushent offers, “and then we had to restrain ourselves from playing ‘Rock Lobster.’”
Don’t Stop The Rock Part 1: Cut Copy
Don’t Stop The Rock Part 3: Late of the Pier
Don’t Stop the Rock Part 4: The Teenagers
A full decade into their career, the rotating-member post-rock troupe Unwed Sailor has remained largely undiscovered. Based around the compositions of Johnathon Ford, known for his time spent with avant-hardcore pioneers Roadside Monument, the group abandons the crescendo-based hyperbole of their peers for some nuanced subtlety on Little Wars, their ninth release. Opener “Copper Islands” is guided by upbeat guitars and keys while the title track ebbs and flows with washes of synthesizers. As the album progresses, each song is given enough room to develop without being overshadowed by melodrama.
