Aah, lovely lovely songs. And I think they're all linked?? Most of them anyway, by Little Dragon. I first heard of them when they featured on a Gorillazrecord. They already seemed like a band I felt I should have heard of back then. I can't say I've paid them loads of attention since, but they'll pop up on singles I like here and there.
First up, here they are with BadBadNotGood. Another band who have tracks I like, but I'm not necessarily a fan. They're also an example of a band who I didn't like as much live -- I prefer them on record, their live show was pretty unenjoyable. Anyway, I love this track, very atmospheric:
Now, here they are with SBTRKT; I heard this next one again today:
Now here's one by just them! It's from their latest EP, which is meant to be a dancey and positive record. This track definitely fulfills that mandate:
Ok, last track now, and it's destroying my Little Dragon link cos I don't think this person has any link to them (I could definitely be wrong). This is by Jon Hopkins and it's pretty great. I saw him live once, supporting the XX. Can't really remember much about the show, but I think he'd be good on stage.
The library is demanding I return a few CD's I've had for a while so I thought I'd write a little about them first. After all the hype around Sampha and his debut album, Process, I decided to check him out a bit, but I wanted to go back to the source -- I read about his guest appearances on albums by SBTRKT so started there. To be honest, while I think Sampha has a unique voice with a very warm quality to it, he wasn't really doing it for me; I even saw him live recently, with the XX, and felt the same way; just not feeling it. But I do like SBTRKT! He has some really great sounds on his records; I particularly love the squelchy synth bass on this track, Wildfire:
Features Little Dragon -- keep coming across them recently. Another good thing I've noticed about that track in particular is that it rewards repeated listening -- I keep hearing new sounds that I hadn't noticed before, like the warbles behind the singer's voice at certain points.
Second CD due back is 'Malibu' by Anderson Paak. Now, this guy is hardly unheard of; in fact I decided to check the album out after getting round to listening to a best of 2016 podcast from NPR. But there's so much music out there these days, including so much lauded good music, that even though he's on best of lists that doesn't mean you've come across him -- all I'd seen was the name, but hadn't heard anything. Really glad I got the album out though, as it's really good. I've been listening to the whole thing at a time as it all gels really well, though I can't say it's been sit-down in-depth listening -- mostly it's been on in the living room on a weekend morning. But I'm cool with that -- music that I can just put on and enjoy is more than welcome.
Non-library and newer listening now. I came across JLin thanks to NPR first listen. The accompanying write up for her album Black Origami talks about one of her records being played by Aphex Twin recently, her album being on Planet Mu (a UK label), and how some footwork-y music has junglist elements to it. All pretty interesting stuff and, to be honest, I even found the fact that she's a black woman releasing this type of music pretty cool and unusual in that I don't come across that often (maybe I'm looking in the wrong places). And she's from Gary, Indiana! I stopped there, once, in a snowstorm, on the way to Chicago with my brother and cousin -- we wanted to check out what was then described as the most dangerous city in America; we didn't stay long. Anyway, the album's hyper-erratic beats don't necessarily do it for me, but I do like this next track, and can definitely hear sounds that would fit right into some jungle:
This article on Monoloc and production is worth hanging on to. Some good stuff about the use of space, background noise. And the tunes aren't bad either.
Prolific rapper Oddisee's got a dancey track, Things, on his latest album, the Iceberg, that I didn't want to get overlooked. As usual you can hear the entire album at the bandcamp page.
Another boring technical thing here -- Four Tet talking about how he does his thing live:
I've read that he does everything in Ableton when it comes to making music, but it's interesting how he changes things up to play out live. I've seen him live, actually playing out the album that you hear bits of here, so it's extra interesting to see how he did it.
Finally, I've got around to listening to the third XX album, I See You. Haven't heard it all yet, and I know I'm late to this track, but really like it -- it's got me looking up how-to bits on dub rhythms and bass lines:
Two things really get me on this track -- the lovely nostalgic feeling has me looking back to college and all that emotional up and down; and I'm really impressed by the singing -- both singers really displaying that they've got great voices when the raise the volume a bit. Looking forward to seeing them next month.
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 interviewwith 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
Well, anyone who's pretty nerdy about their electronic music will have already heard this, but I'm going to put it up for all the normal people. A new Jamie XX track and it's not half bad. At first I felt like a lot of the layers sat a bit uneasily with each other but now that I've heard it a few times I think it all seems to fit together quite nicely. A nice, woozy tune this one. It's easy to hate on someone as successful as Jamie XX, and I do think his moniker is a bit crap, but the tunes are all OK really.
Even at the height of my musical fandom, back in my late teens and early 20's, I was never a true obsessive, or completist, like some people can be. Even with my favourite bands, I might've listened to some of their albums repeatedly, but I didn't always get round to hearing everything. There was a time, a fairly decent stretch of time, when the Clash were my favourite band, and I listened to 'London Calling', 'Black Market Clash', and 'the Clash' multiple times, til I knew all the songs. I even tracked down the UK version of 'the Clash', cos I'd read it had different tracks on it, and a 10 inch vinyl version of 'Black Market Clash' -- and where did I read about those albums? Probably not on the internet, cos back then I'd even read books about bands I liked, and I owned a few books on the Clash. Those multiple listens were great though, and it's probably cos I did that that those albums mean so much to me, and probably always will -- just like 'Achtung Baby' will, or 'Definitely Maybe' will. But there were some Clash albums that I didn't properly get round to, despite owning them, one of which is 'Sandinasta!', from 1980. I heard a track off that on the radio today, and while it did sound familiar, I don't think it's a song I really had heard a lot before. I liked it when I heard it today but I realised that the way I'll listen to it, pay attention to it, and process it now, is totally different from how I would've when I was younger. I may listen to it a couple of times today, and now and then when I look back at this blog, but it's not going to enter that part of my brain where my musical memories are kept -- it won't define a time period or anything for me, or go down in my thoughts as a great song because it's by the Clash; it'll just be a good song I heard today. Which is a bit of a shame, cos it's a good song, and it's by one of my favourite bands -- I'm just not hearing it during the right period of my life.
Next up is another track from young whippersnapper, Jake Bugg. What I'm gonna write now is different from what I thought I was going to write. I was going to ask, again, about what does this young person know about anything? and I can't take him seriously, etc etc. But I re-listened to his song and you know what, he's singing about normal things, things he probably does know about -- and he plays an instrument, writes the songs himself, and so on, which is more than you can say for most crappy teen-pop artists. I think his singing style is a little too throwback and contrived, but maybe that'll change with time.
Last up, Bodhi, from the capital city of Cardiff -- a town I wish I knew better than I do. Came across Bodhi yesterday, kind of randomly, but I'm glad I did as I think one can always use some euphoric dance music in one's life. Plus their beanies are cool!
Just wanted to highlight some decent blogs I've been looking at recently. First up is Class of 808, a superb throwback blog about the old sounds of Acid House and early Techno when it first took over the UK back in the late 80's. It's very frequently updated and posts up lots of great mixes -- I thought the sounds might seem cheesy 20-odd years on but they actually sound pretty great. It feels a bit sad to be nostalgic about music that's supposed to sound like the future but it happens to every scene eventually.
The other blog I've recently added to my "must check" list is Platform. Also out of the UK, the postings are Vice-style musings on various things but mostly music and pop culture related. I've not looked into the background of the site as I can't be arsed, but I've been getting a lot of links to new tracks and remixes through them (such as the Adele x Jamie XX one from not too long ago). Worth a look-in, I think.
Lastly, the Guardian had a good article recently about XL Recordings and how they're doing pretty well while the rest of the music industry is tanking. To me, XL is still rave music from the early 90's, but moved on pretty far from there. It's a good read, you can check it out here.
Not sure about Jamie from the XX's Jamie XX moniker, I have to say. He's been remixing again; came across this at Platform last week. Wasn't too thrilled at first, but it grew on me after a couple of listens. I like the South American/Caribbean vibes and prefer it to his Gil Scot-Heron remix from last year. Haven't heard much Adele in my life, did look her up but wasn't too interested in what I found. This remix is good though:
Gil Scott-Heron and Jamie from the XX have collab'ed on a remix album of Scott-Heron's recent 'I'm New Here' disc. First single out will be 'NY is Killing Me' which is up on the duo's website to be checked out. It's kind of dubsteppy, with some pleasant bleeps and samples throughout but not really mind-blowing. See what you think.
We saw current It band the XX at DC9 the other night for a sold out show. First time I've been to DC9 (which is tiny) and it's been so packed, but that wasn't surprising given the amount of hype the XX have been getting. Happily it didn't look like a bunch of hipsters, though plenty of people took pictures and iphones were on hand. I felt quite clever for buying tickets early, and we spotted one of the singers being very nondescript beforehand. Though some of their songs are a little too low-key, for the most part the XX's sparse dancey sound is cool and I like the beats, the very low bass notes, and the fact that they use drum machines instead of boring Apple laptops. Me and Lubna were quite excited about seeing our favourite possibly-Muslim musician, Baria Qureshi, who plays bass and keyboards for the band. Make that played because, sadly, she officially left the band about a week ago, which we didn't know til she didn't get on stage. Typical! We were excited to see a cool brown person and give her some support, but it wasn't to be.
We missed most of the opener, Jon Hopkins, and regretted it cos the one track we heard was great--sounded like the Aphex Twin, and he was playing his stuff live on some sort of music box. The XX had to walk through the crowd to get to the little stage in the corner, before starting off with "Intro", which had me thinking that maybe they'd play their whole record, in order. They did still play pretty much every song they've recorded, but that's what I expected given they've only got one album out and I don't think people really do B-sides any more. The songs actually seemed to be at a slower tempo when played live, which was a bit off-putting. But after a couple of tracks in the changes sounded cool; the songs came out very dubby, with an early dance vibe, more bass, and guitars that sounded like they were coming from underwater.
For the concert their beats were tapped out live rather than being pre-programmed, and the beats boy Jamie Smith got down on actual drums as well -- he def seemed to be doing the most work. He's filling in most now that the XX are a three-piece instead of a four, cos as well as beats he was adding in bass notes and keyboard live too -- what a hard-working young man! The other members also hit a few knobs at the back here and there, but Qureshi's absence was still felt as the overall sound wasn't as full, despite the effort. As the bass got heavier and the effects more prominent I started thinking that maybe they'd go all out ravey at the end, or go all dub-step on us, but that didn't happen. It's a shame more bands don't take chances when playing live, cos if you can't have fun then, when can you? Personally I'd like to see more live shows end in loopy techno with more cool covers thrown in (the XX performed covers that can be found on the interweb already: Womack and Womack's "Teardrops" and the other one by Kyla).
On the way home we pondered how far a band like the XX might go. Sadly, I don't think they'll go very far at all, at least not in terms of maintaining the buzz in the long-term. The emphasis these days seems to always be on the next big thing, and there are so many bands, all of them putting out great first albums to loads of hype. After the first rush of buzz, the first record, the first tour, it seems hard to stay important as there's some other, newer, band with a cool sound to hype instead. Things seem to become old news very quickly and I'd be surprised if bands like the XX, Vampire Weekend, or the Very Best have long careers. I think it's more likely that members will keep doing different projects with different people and stay musical that way, or just fade away. It's quite hard to keep up with everything that's supposed to be good nowadays as there's almost no such thing as obscurity any more -- the XX may never have a top ten single, but in their own way they're massive and can't be missed. Having said all that, at least their hype is worth it, and even if it all doesn't last long I'm sure they're having a lot of fun. I just hope they took their A-levels as a back-up plan.
