God, this is such a pretty, pretty song. Chad Valley makes some beautiful Balearic pop songs, and his remixes are usually better than the song they’re based off of. “Now That I’m Real (How Does It Feel?)” is off of his ‘Equatorial Ultravox’ EP, which if you haven’t already figured out is worth picking up.
Now That I’m Real (How Does It Feel?) from chad valley on Vimeo.
What do you get when two guys and a girl from Belgium decided to cover a Siouxsie And The Banshees song from 1980? This video for “Happy House”, that’s what. I really dig their version of this song, with its steel drum rhythm and funky, wonky baseline beat. You know what it really sounds like to me? A Chromeo remix of a Fan Death cover of the song. And that’s not at all a bad thing. Can’t wait to hear something original from these guys.
The original Siouxsie And The Banshees song is one of my all-time favorites. If your life is empty from never having heard it before, you can remedy that right here:
For some reason this new cover of “Happy House” by Shindu made me think of The Juan MacLean song, “Happy House”, which, I discovered upon re-listening to it, appears to be in no relation to the Siouxsie song. It’s still an awesome, amazing song though, so I figured, why not share it? It’s probably the best modern disco track to come out since disco died in 1980. Died because of songs like Siouxsie’s “Happy House”.
Just in time for the Fourth of July weekend, I’ve made a new mixtape for y’all! It’s been a while, I know. While my last mixtape — The Winter Wonderland Mixtape For Headphones — was all about music that made me think of cold, snowy winters, this new mixtape is all about hot sunny days and cool, breezy summer nights. You can download the new mixtape right here.
Ever since I started this whole business of making mixtapes I’ve kept a special playlist in my iTunes for new songs I’ve downloaded, or just songs that I had come upon randomly in my library that I really liked. Suffice to say that playlist has since grown to over 1,200 songs, so the idea of whittling that down to 30+ songs was a daunting prospect indeed. I scrolled down to the middle of the playlist, started clicking through all of the songs, and threw all the ones I liked into a new playlist. A common theme somehow arose and so I just went with it, giving you what we have here today. I hope you enjoy it.
A few highlights include:
–This mixtape got its name from the first track in the mix, Animal Collective’s “Summertime Clothes”. It just happened to randomly be the first song I selected for this mixtape and by a stroke of luck it set the tone for the whole thing. Making it the inspiration for the title seemed like a no-brainer. What’s the meaning of the album artwork I chose for this mix then? Well, I’ll leave that one to you to figure out. (If you’re also wondering why this is called the Summer Clothes Mixtape and not the Summertime Clothes Mixtape, well, that one I can answer. Embarrassingly, I have to attribute that to copying down the song title incorrectly. It wasn’t until the whole package was put together and uploaded to Mediafire that I realized my mistake. Oops.)
–A lot of this mixtape brings up old summer memories for me. During the summer of 2000 I got my first summer job, suddenly came into quite a bit of disposable income, and discovered European electronic dance music thanks to Amazon.com’s (and then Amazon.uk’s) ‘We Recommend’ feature. Obviously this had a huge impact on me, and for the next few years all I listened to was DJ mixes, specifically of trance and — a little later on — house music. After about 2003 new music those genres started to become cliché-filled and derivative so my tastes moved on, but I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for those genres and they always make me think of summer. In honor of that I’ve included some current trance songs that don’t suck, like Dash Berlin’s “Till The Sky Falls Down” and the Wolfgang Gartner remix of Tiësto’s “I Will Be Here” featuring Sneaky Sound System and some current house tracks like the Burns remix of The Buckethead’s “The Bomb” and Shazam’s remix of Mobroder’s “Love Duet” featuring Amanda Blank.
–If you haven’t yet seen Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, you really should, because it is awesome. And if you have seen it, then you’re probably already familiar with the amazing Metric song “Black Sheep” that they used for the Clash At Demonhead number in the movie.
–Nothing really seems to make you think of summer more than AM radio from the 60’s and 70’s, and in honor of that I’ve included TV Girl’s “If You Want It”, which samples Todd Rundgren’s 1968 classic “Hello It’s Me” and Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros’ new retro-classic, “Home”.
–See if you can figure out which track includes audio from a famous YouTube video. It’s cheesy, I know, but oh so addictive.
Well, it feels like I’ve already spent entirely too much time writing this up, so all I have left to say is: Enjoy!
I want to say this up front: I am not, nor have I ever been a Britney Spears fan.
Now with that disclaimer out of the way, I did download her new album ‘Femme Fatale’ because I heard such good things about it. And you know what? I really like it. Mainly because someone finally figured out what exactly to do with this train wreck we know as Britney Spears. The first and most important lesson learned? No likes Britney because of her amazing singing voice. Her vocals on the entire album are heavily auto-tuned, which you can get a pretty good feeling for in “I Wanna Go”. Instead the weight of the album is more about the producers than it is her. This album is filled with straight up club bangers.
Lesson number two? People like Britney as a hot mess, but they don’t necessarily want to see her as a sad hot mess. Thus this video “I Wanna Go” is batshit crazy insane, but in a good, fun way, and the lyrics have a wink-wink quality to them where Britney is basically saying to everyone, “Hey, if your life was a zoo like mine, wouldn’t you go off the deep end every once and a while too?” It’s bizarre and weird and freaky, but intentionally so, and I like that.
I know I post a lot of 80’s New Wave inspired music on my blog, so for those of you who are feeling more nostalgic for some 90’s alternative stuff, this post is for you. LCMDF (which stands for Le Corps Mince de Françoise) are a girl group comprised of two sisters from — you guessed it! — Helsinki, Finland. Wait, you didn’t guess that? Don’t feel too bad; I had to look it up. I could have sworn they were from Paris, but nope. Anyway, anyone else getting a heavy 90’s alternative flashback vibe from this video? This is a fun summertime block party type song with probably one of my all time favorite gibberish choruses: Ba-ba-ba ooo-ah oh!
YACHT was all right when it was just Jona Becholt doing everything, but the band really took an uptick in quality when Claire Evans joined the group. She adds an animated intensity that just uplifts all the songs and makes them so much more fun to listen to. The video for "Utopia / Dystopia (The Earth is on Fire)" is a two for the price of one type deal. They kind of remind me a little bit of early Devo or Talking Heads.
YACHT Utopia / Dystopia (The Earth Is On Fire) from DFA Records on Vimeo.
And if you like that, you should really check out this stripped down in studio performance they did for NPR. It’s actually somehow more visually interesting than the video, again because of Claire Evans animated performance.
“Magic” was actually released in The Sound Of Arrows’ native Sweden in January of 2009, but because it’s being released in August as a single in the UK it finally got a music video to go with it. I’m guessing it’s all part of a big push for their debut album, which logic dictates should be coming out the end of this summer. And you know what? Two and a half years just happened to be worth the wait for a proper video. Basically we’re getting teased with a trailer for the best Spanish 80’s sci-fi kids movie never made. You have no idea how much I wish this was a real movie. I don’t really want to spoil the video by discussing what actually happens, so just watch and see for yourself:
Two years ago they did make an epic 80’s themed living van art video for their single, “Into The Clouds,” which you can see below.
The Sound of Arrows – Into the Clouds (Music video) from The Sound of Arrows on Vimeo.
Earlier this year they actually came out with a new song, “Nova,” and a video very similar to “Into The Clouds”. I’ll let that pass though, since the song’s still pretty darn good.
As promised, here’s the second video for Florrie’s Experiments EP. I really like the song. It reminds me a bit of something Kylie would do. But while the video is nice, something doesn’t quite sit right with me about it and I think I figured out why that is. This video was a collaboration with Dolce & Gabbana and the director, Justin Wu, is a fashion photographer. I think the problem is that the video is split on whether it wants to be a fashion commercial or a music video and it ends up falling somewhere in the middle. Again, not bad, but not great either.
Pogo put up the video and mp3 for “Bloom” today, which was previously something you could only hear at his live shows. When I first heard this song at the Cha Cha I didn’t love it, as its mellow vibe didn’t quite fit in with the club atmosphere of the other songs surrounding it, but after listening to it again on its own I actually really love this song. “Bloom” mashes up samples from quite a few different Disney princess films, which become waves upon waves of beautiful melody crashing over you. This song is guaranteed to make you feel better after a shitty day.
BTW, do you remember in my previous Pogo post I mentioned how goldpikpikcarrots’ video for “Mellow Brick Road” was part of a competition Pogo was putting on to decide what the official video to this song would be? Well, the five finalists have been chosen and goldpikpikcarrots entry is among them. The other four videos are really good too though, and I’m quite conflicted as to which one is my favorite. If you want to check out those other four videos and vote for your favorite, you can do so on Pogo’s website here.
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