I don’t know how long this will last, but top producer Timbaland is now offering his full new album, Shock Value, for free streaming on myspace. The album is due out April 3. Here’s a youtube video of Timbaland in the studio:
The songs on this weekend’s selection have one thing in common: they are all ultra-uplifting, as it’s time to practice your moves for the forthcoming party season.
Ghosts (previously known as Polanski), are a London based Brit-Power-Pop group with a fundamental advantage upon similar sounding acts such as Keane, The Feeling or Morning Runner: a brass section. Their latest single “Stay the Night”, sounds somewhat like a Supergrass attempt to emulate Dexy’s Midnight Runners by playing a funked up version of the Cure’s Love Cats. Check out Ghosts’ Stay the Night:
Switching to some old-school influenced Rap, Britain’s own private DJ Yoda is one of the country’s most admired and original DJs, having built a reputation as the only DJ to single handedly inject some humor into the somber UK hip-hop scene. Taken from his last album, The Amazing Adventures of DJ Yoda, his latest single, “Playin’ Around”, is featuring old-school Rap trio, the Jungle brothers, for good pop-hop with rubbery rhymes over a synth heavy playback. Here’s Playin’ Around by DJ Yoda:
“It’s the Beat” is Simian Mobile Disco’s first single released from their forthcoming new album on Wichita Recordings. This deep synth techno-pop tune brings Technotronic’s early 90s classic hip-house effort “Pump Up The Jam” right into the dark pit of a 2000s computer-electro hijacked UK club’s dance floor. Check out Simian Mobile Disco’s It’s The Beat:
90s sexy sex symbol man, Jarvis Cocker, just announced he is looking for local opening bands at each of his New York, San Francisco, Seattle and Vancouver shows. “Same idea as the Europe shows” writes the former Pulp frontman on his myspace page. “You recommend LOCAL bands that would be good for the job (preferably with a link to somewhere I can hear their music) & I’ll do the rest. It worked a treat before - let’s unleash the magic again!” The relentless Cocker just released a solo album titled Jarvis. Got a band? Log on to jarvspace and hit him up.
It isn’t new, but this White Stripes and Bart Simpson video (off of the Simpson’s of course) remake of The Hardest Button to Button is just genius:
While writing the story about Hypernova, I came across this web site devoted to the Iranian “underground music scene”. There’s a radio station with free streaming, an article about underground versus mainstream music by Hypernova’s lead singer, Raam, and a section called “All Time Classics” that features the Velvet Underground (”Founders of Alternative rock”).
There are videos too. Here’s a link to a creepy video by electro-rock act, NABZ (wmv format).
I also finally found Hypernova’s youtube channel, with a few videos of the band performing live. Here’s one:
New York Times has an interesting story and video of an Iranian rock band called Hypernova, playing New York. These guys, all from Tehran and now in America, all risking trouble with the Iranian government, sound like Interpol-Strokes-NY rock and look like young hipsters. Iranian hipsters. I actually have to admit their songs are pretty good, and they shouldn’t only be considered as a one gimmick group. Oh, yeah, they have a myspace page too.
“It may not seem like much to you, but it’s a dream to be here,” he went on, his fluent, accented English hinting at years spent on and off in the United States. “It took us forever.” He was referring to the lengthy delays in obtaining visas to travel from Tehran, a waiting game spent agonizing over the deteriorating state of United States-Iranian relations. “Every day we’d wake up and say, ‘Please, don’t let Iran be on the front page again.’ ”
This is such a cool story. I wish instead of nuclear wars we could all just have rock’n'roll battles.
Wow, I didn’t see that one coming: Modest Mouse scored the top spot (that’s #1 for you) on the Billboard 200 this week with the band’s hot new release, We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank. Billboard says the album sold 129,000 copies in the US. Cheerios.
Here’s the video for We Were Dead’s single, Dashboard, in which the modest mice take us to a fishing pub:
iguessimfloating has a great music blog scoop: three mp3s by The Real People, Beirut’s frontman, wonder child Zach Condon’s former band. The three tracks are taken from an obscure, never released, never heard of until now album with the wonderful name, The Joys of Losing Weight. The three tracks paint a different musical picture than the Balkan sounds of Beirut. They have something more new wave, synth induced about them. Condon’s voice, though, is as dominant and as rich as ever.
Head on over here to download and listen.
#1 indie music girl, Shirley Braha, producer of the cult NY1 indie music show, New York Noise, just posted some great videos on her youtube channel including this great performance of Australia by the Shins (at the KEXP studio at CMJ). The Shins are wonderful live:
Fall Out Boy, perhaps the busiest punk pop band on the circuit, have just released a new video for Thnks Fr Th Mmrs, the second single (third if you count “The Carpal Tunnel of Love”) off of the chart breaking Infinity on High.
Here’s Thnks Fr Th Mmrs:
And if any of you need another dose of Pete Wentz, Fall Out Boy’s bass player, lyricist and spokesman, who sometimes likes to take cellphone pics of his naked body and send it to everyone, here’s a video chat he did recently with Blink 182 frontman, Mark Hoppus. Link.