Connie Price and the Keystones Tell Me Something

With its sophomore effort, L.A.’s Connie Price and the Keystones have become the latest funk/soul act to enlist MCs to compliment its sound. And on almost all accounts, the cast of top-notch, mostly West Coast guests thrives, rhyming atop the rich, cinematic productions of CPK’s Dan Ubick and Co. No doubt, these beats can be enjoyed vocal-free on the accompanying instrumental version of this album. But it’s hard to pass up Project Blowed’s Mykah 9 unleashing his melodious flow on the uptempo soul track “Highlife,” or Blood of Abraham getting globally conscious on the chill dub track “Pirates.” Tell Me Something is the rare live hip-hop project where neither the MCs nor the band gets outshone. Max Herman

Dntel, Panda Bear, Spank Rock Participate in Visionaire Issue 53

When I tried explaining the ultra-fancy art and culture magazine Visionaire to my boyfriend, his response was “Does it come with a blowjob and a French press and a gift certificate to a fine haberdashery?” Well… almost.

The hip Visonaire, based in New York, has come out three times a year since 1991, with each issue focusing on an esoteric theme. (Past themes have included Faces, Private, and Heaven). The limited-edition tome is delivered in everything from traditional book format to GAP travel bags and Tiffany boxes, and has featured guest editors and contributors including David Bowie, Kehinde Wiley, and Spike Jonze. In short, Visionaire ain’t playin’.

For the 53rd issue, called SOUND, Visionaire takes concept further than ever before. Teaming up with car company MINI Cooper, they’ve created a five-tiered tower of 12-inch vinyl records, each of which can be played by placing a special toy MINI car on the surface. The records contain over 100 original sound pieces from the likes of Dntel, Miranda July, Spank Rock, Fischerspooner, Miss Kittin and Panda Bear–essentially, a high-design mixtape. To up the ante even more, artists like Cindy Sherman and Ryan McGinley lend images to the records’ facades.

At $250 a pop, SOUND is not for the weak of wallet, but if you dig the pomp and circumstance, flick your plastic at visionaireworld.com.

KIM’s “Fistogram” Out Today

KIM (otherwise known as Aussie producer/programmer Kimberley Issac Moyes) has taken some time away from The Presets to prep a few singles, the second of which hits stores today. “Fistogram” is best described in the words of those who wrote its press kit, “a lurching, German-flavored bomb of devastating techno tailor-made for dancefloor fury.” Hard to beat that. On the flip side, the German master of dark disco, D.I.M., provides a sharp-as-nails remix.

The physical and digital releases of the single are available today, but if you want to save some pennies and test how your luck runs in 2008, enter to win a vinyl copy here.

Keep your eyes out for news on a new full-length from The Presets, scheduled for release in May.

“Fistogram” Tracklisting
A1. K.I.M “Fistogram”
B1. K.I.M “Fistogram (D.I.M Remix)”

Are you ready for Planningtorock?

Berlin-based Brit Janine Rostron is the one-woman performer and video artist behind Planningtorock. She has toured extensively with LCD Soundsystem, The Knife, and Peaches, and is known for her baroque live performances. Janine’s aesthetic–elaborate helmets, Elizabethan collars and white jeans–and her complex compositions are compelling, to say the least. She’s currently in San Francisco working on her second album and is poised to take over America in 2008.

Coming Soon
XLR8R TV catches up with the ever-touring White Williams.

Floriana vs. Màcro Heleylah Sunset

Joerg Schuster’s 2007-launched Dalaki label looks to elevate deep electronic and electro-acoustic sounds with visual elements, beyond MP3 files and humdrum jewel cases. For its first release, Heleylah Sunset, Floriana (Schuster) and Màcro (credited only as a “very nice guy from Madrid”) team up for a downtempo offering that comes with stickers, stencils, and elegant extraneous packaging. Luckily the tunes measure up to its design elements. Like with most respectable ambient work, here, several genre components are processed almost seamlessly into one gentle hum. Most notably, Schuster uses softened deep techno and glitchy electro alongside dub to create organic, pleasant soundscapes. With track titles like “Stream,” “Sunset,” and “Easy,” what you see is what you get.

Dub Trio Another Sound Is Dying

With each new release, Dub Trio squelches dub closer to the vanishing point. Their 2004 live debut showcased the band’s ability to meld dub elements into hardcore punk and nu-metal; last year’s studio disc, New Heavy, saw them charging away from King Tubby, reaching obliquely for Bad Brains’ and Killing Joke’s power chords. Although Another Sound Is Dying continues to head largely in the same direction, the trio’s ability to chop and paste various musical forms see a resultant hybrid ultimately transcending category. Indeed, they manage to reference Black Flag and the Butthole Surfers whilst injecting the proceedings with healthy doses of moody bass and the occasional echoing skank interlude, making the album equally challenging and tantalizing.

Hot Chip “Made in the Dark”

After the success of 2004’s Coming on Strong and 2006’s The Warming, the five members of Hot Chip gear up for the release of their third full-length, Made in the Dark. The album’s title track finds the band–previously known for its jumpy, soul-infused electro-pop–pushing emotional lyrics and chilling harmonies over minor chords and mournful pianos. Gorgeous.

Hot Chip – Made In The Dark

Mike Ladd Nostalgialator

This Boston-bred, Parisian-based rapper has an intellectual streak that can only be matched by DJ Spooky, but his buckshot approach is more like Public Enemy–where scathing critiques take out all suckers and provide the proverbial time-check. While Nostalgialator made its European debut in 2004, its U.S. release proves it’s got staying power. “Trouble Shot” offers a hook that’s as catchy as Diddy’s “Bad Boy for Life,” but without succumbing to ego and narcissism. And “Housewife at Play” reveals that the MC can still have fun, rocking out like Hendrix and the Beasties.

What Is It? Jumpstyle

Dutch gabber’s nosebleed drum blur was never supposed to be subtle, but the genre’s latest offshoot, jumpstyle, sure makes it seem that way. Taking cues from the cheesiest moments of rave’s 15-plus years, jumpstyle mixes Euro-trance’s marching melodies with gabber’s bouncy kick drums, then adds liberal doses of stolen rave hooks and time-honored dancefloor gimmickry. At best, this ecstatic clobber is a guilty pleasure; at worst, it’s a barely updated soundtrack for the rushing pill head.

“Otto Von Schirach played jumpstyle for me, and I thought it was some of the shittiest techno I’ve ever heard,” says Dan Doormouse, owner of Addict Records and self-proclaimed “godfather” of Midwest hardcore. His short version of the sound? “Imagine a million racquet balls bouncing in sync, running through a distortion pedal. Add some cheap electronic claps and snare drums, the worst-possible synth from an ’80s song, and a European dude talking about drug use in second-rate English.”

Doormouse’s reaction is typical of American post-ravers introduced to jumpstyle via YouTube, which boasts a growing collection of Dutch “jumping” videos. Resembling the classic Russian Cossack squat-and-kick dance, jumping’s one-legged twist is an integral part of the scene’s identity; crews such as Jumpforce are even advertised on party flyers, and many have adopted the “jump is not a crime” mantra to combat jumpstyle bans at dancehalls.

“Some people say the jumpstyle dance moves come from the Melbourne Shuffle, or from France,” says DJ Coone (a.k.a. Koen Bauweraerts), one of the scene’s leading producers and DJs. “But most people believe the origin lies in Belgium, where the music first caught hold. [With YouTube], people watch each other’s moves and try to improve or invent their own, a bit like breakdancing.”

Although the music and dancing might seem ridiculous to American eyes, jumpstyle is still a quick-growing European phenomenon. The yearly Reverze party in Antwerp draws in upwards of 18,000 people, with a lineup that represents jumpstyle’s biggest acts: Dark-E, DJ Coone, Greg C, and Ruthless, to name a few. Then there’s the club night at Complex, just outside Antwerp, which packs in 2,000 people every Saturday night.

“Jumpstyle has become a lifestyle, like hip-hop or techno,” says DJ Coone. “For me, it’s the best party music around. There’s no other style that makes you go so crazy and forget about all your worries.”

Top 10: Eliot Lipp, Jamie Lidell, Freerange

Various Artists
Freerange 100 Part 2 EP
Freerange
Release Date: March 10, as vinyl or digital download

Behold, the 100th release from Freerange Records! Half of it, anyway. Part 2 of this vinyl series shows off a collection of brand new tracks from some of the label’s most notable names, including a lush, crooning house number by Jimpster, the tech-y, funk-driven “Lose it” by Palm Skin Productions, and a minimal, slow-building remix of Only Freaks’ “Mental Overdrive.” Nice!

Faunts
M4 EP
Friendly Fire Recordings
Release Date: Out Now

This Edmonton, Alberta-based trio makes the prettiest version of shoegaze this side of Ulrich Schnauss, and has bundled several songs originally made for short films into a single release titled M4 EP. And despite the music originating as a soundtrack for low-budget indie film, there’s nothing pretentious here. The mood is epic, the musical textures deep, and the overall feel of the EP is genuinely heartfelt.

The Drift
Memory Drawings
Temporary Residence
Release Date: April 8

Memory Drawings sees the return of The Drift after a three-year hiatus. The break appears to have done the band good, and the new album finds the San Francisco-based four-piece experimenting with musical structures that call to mind ’60s jazz and ’70s dub. Add a robust horn section and plenty of whispering snare drums, and it’s a free-jazz field day that provides the perfect soundtrack for the early morning.

Cassettes Won’t Listen
Small-Time Machine
Self-Released
Release Date: March 11

Jason Drake’s one-man, multi-instrumental Cassettes Won’t Listen project has kept him busy for a few years now, with EPs and remixes that give us a taste of his many talents as a producer. Finally, Drake has prepared this, his debut full-length, and it doesn’t disappoint. His electro-flavored songwriting is complemented by delayed hip-hop beats, complex string arrangements, thick synth lines, and a certain ominousness to the music that unfolds slowly over the course of the album.

Jamie Lidell
Jim
Warp
Release Date: April 29

When Jamie Lidell’s Multiply was released in 2005, strains of his crooning, soul-heavy voice could be heard up and down the corridors of the XLR8R office for weeks on end. Jim finds the Berlin-based artist and his voice fully intact and more diverse than ever, moving from gospel-style numbers to slinky R&B tracks, to some of the most upbeat, disco-laden work we’ve ever heard from this guy. Jim is proof that Lidell is an artist who will grow–not fade–with time.

Jens Lekman
“I’m Leaving You Because I Don’t Love You”
(Spoolwork Remix)
Download

Just in time for Valentine’s Day, Swedish indie-pop romantic Jens Lekman unleashes this downer of a track to the blogosphere. Secretly Canadian artist Dave Fischoff (a.k.a. Spoolwork) remixes the mournful love song, letting the music build slowly before it explodes into the quotable phrase, “I’m leaving you because I don’t love you.” I think I’ll break up with someone just for the excuse to play this track on repeat.

Son Lux
At War with Walls and Mazes
anticon.
Release Date: February 26

There is a certain sophistication found in many classically trained artists’ music, an audible result of spending years playing piano scales and reading notation. In the case of At War with Walls and Mazes, the debut album from anticon.’s latest signee Son Lux, that sophistication is in the way he uses subtly plucked strings, lightly touched synths, bells, and other instruments to work together as an entire statement. Like a well-written story desperate to share every detail, At War takes its time and savors each moment.

These New Puritans
“Navigate, Navigate”
Domino
Release Date: February 5

Speaking of new label signees, here’s Domino’s latest find, a group of four 19-year-olds from Southend, U.K., who have prepped this single to hold fans over until the release of their debut album this spring. This15-minute-plus track is a collage of droning guitars, feedback, shades of ’80s industrial music, and electronics, all executed with the relentless energy you’d expect from a bunch of kids under the age of 21. The DFA’s Tim Goldsworthy chopped up the vocals and added some bouncy basslines for the remix, made under his Loving Hand moniker. Photo by Dean Chalkley.

Various
Triple R: Selection 6
Trapez
Release Date: February 5

Club owner, journalist, DJ, and Trapez co-owner Riley Reinhold delivers the sixth compilation in the label’s Selection series. Here, Reggy van Oers gets minimal, Salvatore Freda and Massimo Steffanelli prove that there are still a few good trance numbers out there, Aquilina and Venturi give us disco for 2008, and Reinhold even throws in a couple brand-new tracks from Trapez’s first Greek artist, Mihalis Safras. All tracks here are 100 percent danceable, made by artists whose names would require a six-week dialect course to pronounce properly.

Eliot Lipp
The Outside
Mush
Release Date: March 4

Eliot Lipp has made a move over to Mush Records for The Outside, and the transition has only made him a stronger producer. We always knew he was capable of exploring many styles and musical tricks in a single track, but this latest full-length has more to get excited about than his last two albums put together, blending heartwarming–and sometimes heartbreaking–melodies with futuristic synth stabs and tightly-arranged, abstract beats covered in feedback.

Pictured above: Eliot Lipp, live in Tokyo.

Last Week’s Top Ten

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