Metaform - “Heaven Can Wait”
It is impossible to talk about Metaform without comparing him to DJ Shadow, RJD2 and even The Avalanches. Metaform, the moniker of a mysterious and somewhat unknown man, is the second coming of eloquently placed samples.
Standing on the Shoulders of Giants, released in February, has 19 tracks of deep breaks, eerie vocal samples and cinematic sound waves from a lifetime supply of backroom vinyl. Layered with his own instrumental samples, it’s a mixtape of epic jazz, funk, soul, disco or chill out electronica.
“Heaven Can Wait” breaks up the first third of the album with a haunting piano melody, familiar drum breaks and an Eraserhead sample. Anyone familiar with the movie, or with a Pixie’s live show will recognize “in Heaven, everything is fine.” Go ahead and nod your head. This isn’t just good sampling and producing, it’s a solid debut of music discovery.
Brazilian Girls - “Problem”
Brazilian Girls are a New York City band that can sing in 4 or 5 different languages, and they’re weird in the best ways. This song “Problem” is one of their faster, English songs that’s fun to sing. Another good sing along is “Pussy” in case you haven’t heard of it. Their sound is a seductive experiment of jazz and electronica melted into complete unpredictability that gets stuck in your head. You have to listen to the entire albums because within and between songs vary drastically. The singer Sabina Sciubba is the only girl in the band, and some friends have told me that she’s never made her eyes visible in any photos or live performances. I know the Brazilian Girls opened for Ween this past January, and they are currently on tour with a third album due out in August.
Goldfrapp - “Caravan Girl”
This is the next single from Goldfrapp’s latest effort entitled Seventh Tree. The band plans to release the single on June 30th, which is also the date they plan to embark on a tour in support of the album. Seventh Tree explores a muted, more pensive and earthier side of Alison and her band.
“Caravan Girl” follows in this vein as a breezy pop song more suited for rides through the desert than the discotheques of Goldfrapp’s past.
Quiet Village - “Circus of Horror”
Quiet Village are a British duo that make funky, chilled out, midtempo electronica that draw an easy comparison to The Avalanches. Designed for the dancefloor and heavily inspired by the Balearic movement, with a slow, heavy beat, and vintage movie soundtracks. In fact, I watched Grindhouse this weekend, and I realised: this track, “Circus of Horror”, sounds like it was ripped straight from a Tarantino movie.
Orbital - “Halcyon + On + On”
The podcast theme this week is British electronica. The podcast isn’t finished yet, but here’s a little taster.
No discussion of British electronica is complete until you come round to Orbital: the brothers Hartnoll, whose career started way back in 1989, and just about took over the British electronica scene through the 90s. I wanted to include this song on the podcast this week, but it’s a little long, so we used the more uncommon “Halcyon” (at a more manageable 4 minutes), of which this is actually a remix.
Late of the Pier - “The Bears Are Coming”
I barely have the words to describe this UK electronic quartet’s latest single. It’s like Kraftwerk took psychedelics with Frank Zappa in some dark and sinister arcade. Sort of…
Stoney - “Jailbird”
A reader e-mailed Tuneage recommending Stoney a few days ago. This morning, his album The Scene and The Unseen dropped through my letterbox, and it only took a couple of listens to realise I’d found my favourite album so far this year.
Stoney is a British musician that got started in his basement in Sheffield — home to multitudinous great musicians — in 2001. Since then, he’s supported the Arctic Monkeys, played at Glastonbury and SXSW, and garnered critical acclaim from various British publications, including NME, for his latest album, The Scene and The Unseen.
This track is one of the singles, and the first track, from The Scene and The Unseen. You can, and absolutely should, download three more from his website and stream another four on his last.fm page. And after that, I highly recommend buying the album.
Lunavelis - Lexicon
The Cleveland music scene has a very strong history dating all the way back to the creation of Rock and Roll. The musicians are diverse but included in the list are names that you know…
One name that you may not know (yet) is that of the band Lunavelis. Their sound is their own so who better to describe it than lead singer/songwriter and PR Department, Chris Feran…
“If coffee and Jolt Cola set aside their differences and made a rock band, it might sound a lot like Lunavelis. The group’s melodic, emotive pop appeal combined with heavy use of electronic and digital instrumentation makes Lunavelis’ music as attractive as the members of the band.”
It doesn’t sound so pompous when you find out that it is all true. The song posted here is the second version of their song Lexicon that will be released with their forthcoming Rest of the World EP.
Holy Fuck - Latin (Daytrotter Session)
We love Holy Fuck, so imagine how excited we were to find a Holy Fuck Daytrotter Session this morning.
This track is the second song from their session, previously unreleased, called Latin. This is what Holy Fuck had to say about it:
A relatively new song. It hasn’t been released on anything yet and we’re not sure what will become of that song yet. We’ve been trying out different things on this one during this tour, and it’s starting to take shape!
There’s also a live version of it (you know, liver than a Daytrotter Session) here, recorded at this year’s SXSW.
The full Daytrotter Session can be found and downloaded on Daytrotter.com.
Björk - Wanderlust
If you haven’t seen the video to this song yet, do it now! I was tempted to post a lower quality version, but thought better of it. Apparently, this video is also in 3D, which I’m sure is equally awesome. Wanderlust is the latest single off of Volta, an album continuing Björk’s tradition of releasing absolutely stunning music. Like I said before, go watch the video. It will blow your mind.
Note: this was reblogged into Tuneage because Russell accidentally posted it to his personal blog. Crazy kids…
