Some new beats for the summer months for your ears.
Tracklist –
Dinky – Fallen Angel
Luca Bacchetti, Guti – Loneliness
Anna Schneider – Stay Quiet (Dub Version)
Jamie Jones – Moan & Groan
Quell – Loose Meanings
Mikalogic – Nectarina
H.O.S.H. – Lifeguard
Just Be – Don’t Make Me Wait For You feat Jess Monroe (Magic Mix)
Forest – Creep
Alex Blaxx – The Evening News (Straight House Mix)
Mihai Popoviciu – Running In Circles
Dino Lenny – Waiting For The Daylight (Instrumental)
For July I have chosen the debut album for Jake Bugg. I admit that I caught the train on this one a it late; a year after most. Basically I thought that he was just another label puppet that was a flash in the pan. This time around I’ll admit that I was wrong. After hearing a couple tracks that I liked I decided to give the album a go and I’m happy I did.
There is an often comparison between Bugg and Bob Dylan. This I can see but have tended to like him a bit more to Paul Simon.
The track that earned my attention was Seen It All, and grew from there. Jake Bugg can sing and can write brilliant songs as well. He’s versatile in how he approaches songs. Sure he sounds like a few legends out there but what’s wrong with that? You have to pull your influences from somewhere.
I like Jake Bugg. Apparently he’s working with Rick Ruben on his next album which will be a good match. In the mean time I hope you enjoy his first offering as much as I did.
Kanye/Vampire weekend aside, what’s been on rotation lately? What’s been stuck in your headphones?
Things I’m loving at the moment:
Jagwar Ma
Ms Mr
Phoenix
Chic (all 4 inspired by Glastonbury)
Daft Punk
Endless mixes from Andrew Weatherall and Sean Johnston (in their A Love From Outer Space guise)
Rumours
John Grant
What about you lot?
So I thought I was done with Vampire Weekend. I bought and enjoyed the first two albums, but as with many albums I’ve bought in the last decade, they didn’t feel like they sustained my interest and eventually I stopped listening. I was ready to file ‘Oxford Comma’ and ‘A Punk’ under tunes from a certain era, and then move on. And when I first heard new single ‘Diane Young’, it confirmed my waning allegiance. It sounded irritatingly hyperactive, like a throwback to their first album. One trick ponies that got found out, I thought to myself.
And then the reviews started coming in. Huge leap forward, they said. New maturity, they said. Surprisingly introspective, they said. And I listened to the minute long previews on iTunes, and within 5 minutes I’d bought it.
The reviews are right. This is an album that states that Vampire Weekend are not just preppy boys playing Graceland-style pop. It starts off with with the downbeat Obvious Bicycle (still need to work on those titles now and again, boys), with its repeated imploring to ‘listen’, as if the band are insisting we reconsider them. And then we go on really quite an odd journey, that feels both like a crisis of identity set to pop music (Ya Hey, surely one of the album’s highlights, appears to be a bleak exploration of faith and Jewishness), mixed with beautiful tunes (Step’s brilliant Bach steal, the gorgeous Hannah Hunt – probably my favourite song – and the album’s small, melancholic closer, Young Lion) and in amongst them, some reliable bops from the old school Vampire Weekend – such as Unbelievers and the single, Diane Young. The latter suddenly makes so much more sense in the context of the album as a necessary shot of fizzy sugar in amongst all that wistful existential angst.
And its funny that the band started off with Paul’s Simon’s Graceland as a template, because it’s Simon’s songwriting that most comes to mind – both his late work with Garfunkel and his early (brilliant) solo albums. That’s quite a comparison, but I think the songwriting on this album is that good.
So yes, a great leap forward and a sign that these boys are hear to stay. I hope you’re enjoying it as much as I am.
Kanye has debuted his new video all over the world by projecting it on walls around the world. Ye is SPITTING ON THIS!!!!!
thisisnothappening.net 