Friday, May 29, 2015

You can't go back

It seems like a host of 90's music acts are making a comeback this year . First there was Blur, then Ride, now the Chemical Brothers and Leftfield are getting in on the act.  To be fair, the latter two aren't reunions like the first two, but it's still been a while.  See what you think of their latest efforts below.  I wonder if these acts take a look at their popularity on social media sites and decide to have another go?  It would make a lot of sense for Ride to say something like "Oi, we've got 125,000 fans on our unofficial facebook page!  Time to get back together!"



Friday, May 8, 2015

Jamie XX and EBTG

As we've mentioned on the blog before, Jamie XX of The xx has been doing his own work outside of the band. He's remixed the likes of Adele, Gil Scott-Heron, and more, and has become a very good and popular DJ. He's released some of his own solo tracks before and now he's putting out his debut solo album next month, called 'In Colour'.

The first single is 'Loud Places'. I LOVE this tune. Its been on repeat all week. I also quite like the video, especially the cinematography towards the end. Here's what Jamie and Romy had to say about the video via The xx facebook page:
"Romy and I grew up skateboarding together, when I was thinking of what the video for Loud Places should be, I kept coming back to the idea of Romy and I skating in London, visiting the places we used to go to. It’s a part of our friendship not many people really know about and it’s something I wanted to share.” Jamie
"When Jamie asked me If I was up for skateboarding in the video, I wont lie I did hesitate, it’s been a few years since I was properly into it, but skateboarding was such a big part of Jamie and I’s friendship when we were growing up. We would literally spend every weekend from early in the morning till late at night, skating and exploring the streets of London. I guess it gave us an escape and a sense of freedom, which we later found from making music." Romy 

Here's the tune and video, oh do enjoy!


'Loud Places' has a terrific sample from 'Tracey In My Room' by Everything But the Girl, a group I fell in love with a couple years ago. Tracey Thorn responded to my tweet about the sample, have a look! https://twitter.com/tracey_thorn/status/596206757782953987
She corrected me and reminded me that 'Tracey In My Room' was actually a mash-up of EBTG's 'Wrong' with Soul Vision. Here's the wonderful mash-up :-D


AND here's the original version of 'Wrong' - its definitely more of a melancholy tune, but still quite good of course. Todd Terry also did a version. Here's the original though:



Ok now back to Jamie. There's a nice interview with him in Fader about his new album, and gasp, in one photo he's not wearing black, which is what The xx are known for. Here's a nice quote, and it expresses how I also feel about dance music:
"I don't think dance music is important in the big scheme of things to a lot of people. But it's important to me because it just makes me happy. There's not that many things that make me happy. I mean, that's why it's important to a lot of people. It can be something that you listen to on your own if you want, but really it's something designed to make people happy, even if it's a sad song. The act of dancing is a happy thing to do."

I'm not sure how I got word about his new album, maybe it was through browsing The xx facebook page. I also found out about his tour, and of course his NY gig was already sold out. But guess who got tickets today!! Hell yeah! I am so excited!! Here's a set from Jamie that's quite nice, I wanna download this set, unfortunately not allowed to embed the video but make sure to have a listen! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YNkAUtwMB4


Yay. And happy birthday to my nephew Yusuf, who turned one year old today mashAllah :-D