Home Taping Is Killing Music #7
I know I’m usually a little late with these but I have excelled myself this time. It’s been over three months since the last Home Taping..., and I’m very sorry to any of you who were keeping an eye out for it in the interim but I’ve had exams, and they left me barely able to function as a human being so it’s probably for the best that I didn’t post anything because it’d have just been an incoherent jumble of letters with the occasional Rickroll thrown in for good measure. Anyway, as normality is restored and the sun continues to shine (most of the time), here is a nice chunky slice of the blog-pie for you to sink your teeth into.
Swahili Blonde - La Mampatee
This is mad stuff. Nicole Turley, aka Swahili Blonde, is a solo artist from Los Angeles (another one of those coming up later), but ‘La Mampatee’ is entirely different from the sort of stuff you hear about going down musically in that city at the moment. Enlisting members of Duran Duran, The Like and Warpaint along with John Frusciante on this track, Turley manages to create the most bonkers, alive and riveting track to come out of the city all year. I’m not even going to try and describe it to you because it simply wouldn’t do the thing justice, but I think it’s safe to say that if your musical interest is anywhere between Foals and free jazz then you will be bowled over by ‘La Mampatee’. I’m not joking, this is actually incredible. [DOWNLOAD HERE]
Sky Ferreira - One
After years of hanging around in Uffie videos and whipping the blogosphere into a frenzy without actually releasing much music, Sky Ferreira will finally drop her debut LP later this year. If we’re going to get ahead of ourselves and judge that record by the jump-off single, I think it’s safe to say that it’ll be one of the best albums of the year. ‘One’ is one of those rare records that you come across every now and then that, try as you might, you actually cannot stop playing. Produced by Bloodshy & Avant (the duo behind, among other things, ‘Toxic’), the song begins with a chugging synth that soon morphs into a behemoth of a bassline that compliments the out-of-kilter relationship mapped out in the lyrics, in turn mirrored by odd, jerky phrase lengths and some very clever production - one moment Sky sounding like she’s singing to you from across a canyon; the next, she’s whispering in your ear. Her delivery is sexily breathy - sparse enough that it always leaves you wanting more, but smart enough that you always get another hit, and when the chorus comes the vocal blooms, and she has you hook, line and sinker. This track was released a month shy of her 18th birthday - on this form, she’ll be a superstar by the time she’s blown out the last candle. [DOWNLOAD HERE]
Maximum Balloon - If You Return ft. Little Dragon
Dave Sitek has been a little quiet since TV on the Radio’s Dear Science way back in 2008. Now, it seems that his energies have been focused on honing his new solo project Maximum Balloon, and we now have word that a full-length is to be expected on August 24th in the US. The first release from the album, ‘If You Return’, is a lovely slice of electro which has guests vocals by that singer from Little Dragon who featured a lot on Gorillaz’ Plastic Beach. Understandably, it sounds a fair bit like TVOTR, but that is of course no bad thing, and Sitek seems to have got over the Antibalas horns that some might say over-populated his productions at points. There are some synth-y biths here, some whistle-y bits there, and a lovely little chorus-breakdown thing that crops up a few times. It’s nice, go listen. [DOWNLOAD HERE]
Best Coast – Boyfriend
I hadn’t been particularly impressed by Best Coast prior ‘Boyfriend’ - stuff like ‘Sun was High (So Was I)’ seemed to lack bite, concealing flaws by drenching the whole thing in waves (Wavves?) of reverb. However, whatever your opinion on Bethany Cosentino, or in fact the whole of the West Coast lo-fi scene, I’d suggest shedding your preconceptions and plugging in your headphones to listen to ‘Boyfriend’. One way to sum up the sound is that it sounds a bit like the song the female protagonist of an 80s teen movie (see; Heathers. No, seriously, see that film) would write about her pining after an unattainable man. Actually, that is exactly what it sounds like; ergo, it is fantastic. There’s a whole lot of weighing up the challenger (“the other girl is not me,/she’s prettier and skinnier,/she has a college degree,/I dropped out when I was 17”) and professions of adoration (“I love him til the very end”) and general angsty whining, but it’s all dealt with in a way that makes you find the girl endearing rather than irritating. Yes, there is a bit of reverb, but not so much that you can’t pick out the lovely melodies and harmonies bobbing about all over the place, and structurally it’s one of those songs where every new section could be a chorus which is never a bad thing. Good work Bethany, although for our sake I hope you never get your man if that means we’ve more tracks like this coming our way. [DOWNLOAD HERE]
El Guincho - Bombay
El Guincho’s debut, Alegranza, was one of the shiniest gems of the underground in 2008. A tropical wash of steel drum, shouty Spanish harmonies and mounrains of crunchy, joyous guitar loops, it had the singular power of making the whole world technicolour and everyone you saw beautiful. Now, after two years away, Pablo Diaz-Reixa is back to once more challenge for his crown as the king of the summer. Recent release Piratas de Sudamerica was a terrific EP of covers of Latin-American folk songs, and he has quickly followed that up with (probably) the first leaked cut from upcoming full length Pop Negro. ‘Bombay’ strikes an excellent balance of the things that made his old sound so arresting and ironing out the creases that remained in that raw sound. Still built primarily around a schizophrenic steel drum refrain, Reixa now affords more prominence to the vocal than he did on Alegranza and reveals a soulful and slightly mournful set of pipes that was on occasion buried by everything else that was going on first time around. There’s more variation in structure this time too - whereas for a lot of Alegranza he was content to just bash out the same bunch of riffs for a few minutes, ‘Bombay’ has more than its fair share of unexpected twists and turns to keep the listener guessing, though all is tied together by that exuberant steel drum hook. Managing to be both contemplative and full of life, ‘Bombay’ will both satisfy old fans and, if the stars are correctly aligned, draw in many new ones. If you missed him the first time round, you’ve got a second chance catch the El Guincho experience this time round. It’s a chance worth taking. [DOWNLOAD HERE]
Panda Bear – Tomboy
Noah Lennox, when he’s not doing his thing in Animal Collective, has a very good track record as a solo artist, and three years after Panda Bear’s Person Pitch he’s returning with a new solo record sometime in the near future. ‘Tomboy’, the title track of said upcoming album, was recently released on 7”, and his various record labels say there’ll be several limited edition singles in the run-up to the album. As with everything any member of AC says/does/eats/thinks/breathes/farts, ‘Tomboy’ has already saturated web-space, meaning that by the time this article is released you’ll know all of this anyway. Nevertheless, it is an excellent song, and if you haven’t yet got round to listening to it (or the equally excellent b-side ‘Slow Motion’) I’d suggest rectifying that as soon as possible. No, it’s not another ‘Bro’s’, but that’s no bad thing - he said that the new record would be darker, rawer, and that’s certainly in evidence here. True, it’s in a major key, but everything feels uneasy and off-kilter, not to mention the fact that Lennox sounds like he’s singing in a well. But you probably know all this and much more already, so I’ll just shut up and let you listen to the bloody thing now. [DOWNLOAD HERE]
Sleigh Bells - Run the Heart
Recently signed to M.I.A.’s label N.E.E.T., Sleigh Bells are one of the more unusual indie duos you’ll come across this year. Formed when instrumentalist Derek Miller asked Alexis Krauss if she’d like to sing for his new project while she waited his table at a Brazilian restaurant in New York, they both have backgrounds in music already - Miller was in post-hardcore group Poison the Well for six years, while Krauss performed in girl band RubyBlue as a teenager. Not the likeliest of musical couplings, for sure, but their differing approaches seem to have aided the Sleigh Bells sound. Miller makes whacked-out beats full of razor-edged guitars, bowel-shuddering drums and frantic hi-hats, which may get too heavy over the course of an album if it weren’t offset by the blissy cheerleader call of Krauss. The album Treats has already been making waves in the US, debuting in the Billboard 200 at #39, and with the album recently out in the UK I should imagine a similar response from the mainstream may be on the way. ‘Run the Heart’ is one of the album’s relatively subdued moments, though that’s not to say it doesn’t have guts, being as it is full of the trademark blips and bloops that make Sleigh Bells so intriguing. However, this is also on of Krauss’s best vocal performances on the album, the bubblegum harmonies contrasting with lyrics like “you take a heart, I can take out you”. It is, without doubt, a Treat. [DOWNLOAD HERE]
That’s yer lot this time around, hopefully it won’t be another three months until we next see each other.
P.S. Quick plug for Home Taping... fave Big Boi’s new record, out this month. It’s, like, really good n stuff.
Fred Mikardo-Greaves
Artists in this article: El Guincho, Sleigh Bells, Panda Bear, Best Coast, Maximum Balloon