We sat in the plane to Germany last weekend trading the headphones on Andy Stott’s “Passed Me By”. It’s grim and cold, heaving slow paced with low frequencies that suck in and inhale you. On ‘North To South’ the slow kicks beat like blood vessels while shards of distorted electronics slam in and out landing on crystalline pads. At these tempos, and with these atmospherics, it’s a kind of space with roots in dub played against the more ominous side of classic house.

Snare rolls made out of caged frequencies rattling, stark electronic buzzing in warbled sheets, disembodied vocals inverted, inhuman and vaporous played like samples which on “Dark Details” become the pitched down voice of doom, all of this might seem like it’s a record of brutal dreariness but it’s beautiful in it’s way and all that darkness plays against the sensual textures of the universe he’s creating. The final gasp of the title track is the most serene of these, a murderous night spent wandering under the industrial buzz of power-lines coming to end in gentle intoxication.

More here.

more tracks on these great blogs:
keytars & violins
alain finkiel krautrock
rcrdlbl
waves at night
feel my bicep

1. The Beach Boys “Prayer #2″
2. Broadcast “Echo’s Answer”
3. Wire “Heartbeat”
4. Elvis “Blue Moon”
5. Growing “Lens Around”

6. Mount Kimbie “Ruby”
7. The Del-Vikings “Come Go With Me”
8. Junior Boys “Neon rider”
9. James Blake “I’ll Stay”
10. demba camara et son groupe “exhumation folklorique”

11. Robert ‘Pete’ Williams “Louise”
12. Vorhees “condensor”
13. Broadcast “Tears In The Typing pool”
14. Ladysmith Black Mambazo “Uphi Umhlobo”

1. Factory Floor “Lying”
2. The Crystal Ark “The City Never Sleeps”
3. Iggy Pop “Sister Midnight”
4. Asiko Rock Group “Lagos City”
5. King David “Hitchhike One More Time”
6. Toots And The Maytals “Funky Kingston”
7. MOSDUB “History Town” (Desmond Dekker meets Mos Def)

All week long we’re taking over The Line Of Best Fit’s Song Of The Day. Today it’s “For You” by Sharon Van Etten.

I was living in Berlin a few years ago working on a record, drawing and doing far too much of those things people do in Berlin at ungodly hours for days on end. Gavin moved there right as I was getting ready to leave and I was actually rooming with his old partner Delia (their ‘Days of Mars’ record is amazing and DFA just put out their final single. If you don’t know it, seek it out). So we got to know each other briefly then for probably the umpteenth time. It’s been like that, friends of friends and acquaintances but always moving in opposite directions. Currently employed as LCD’s resident Eno, Gavin found time to launch his latest incarnation, The Crystal Ark this summer with two epic 12”. This monstrous track is beyond banging. A space odyssey of Moroder proportions fit for the endless oddity of those icy Berlin streets. Everybody’s working for the weekend.

Check out more over at The Line Of Best Fit’s SOTD

All week long we’re taking over The Line Of Best Fit’s Song Of The Day. Today it’s “For You” by Sharon Van Etten.

Shannon Funchess, a touring member with !!! and a legend in New York, has worked with or been revered by almost every band that’s come out or through the city in the past ten years. She’s a singer/songwriter who takes on many guises. Light Asylum is one of her incarnations and we’ve been hooked since we saw them open an LCD warm-up show in Brooklyn last spring. Shannon’s voice thrashed the place rising in neon light and rattling through the room. Zola Jesus grabbed headlines this year as the heir to Kate Bush goth turned tectonic shifts of glacial new wave but anyone interested would do well to look up Light Asylum as a nice counterpoint. “Shallow Tears” is a tense bold love song that will dig into you. The synths are stoic and aching, the space it inhabits empty and barren even as her voice and presence fills those blanks like a cityscape.

Check out more over at The Line Of Best Fit’s SOTD

All week long we’re taking over The Line Of Best Fit’s Song Of The Day. Today it’s “For You” by Sharon Van Etten.

Wednesday is for the melancholic and so here’s this instantly nostalgic track to get you pinning for lost love. It actually came out a while back and Sharon has a new LP just out but this song still stings and absolutely kills us. We played with Sharon at one of our very first shows in Brooklyn. Sharon was saying she could never be in a band because she wanted to be in control and didn’t want to have to compromise to fit in with other songwriters. She then shuffled almost apologetically to the mic lost in her own headspace and discreetly began to devastate everyone within earshot. There’s a lot of “girl n’ acoustic guitar” acts in the world but it’s rare that you come across one that completely stops you in your tracks. Sharon does that, reminding you how fragile textures can combine to become something unbelievably powerful. “For You” is so haunted, solitary and insular that it feels like eavesdropping on conversation between ghosts.

Check out more over at The Line Of Best Fit’s SOTD

All week long we’re taking over The Line Of Best Fit’s Song Of The Day. Today it’s “Gold” by Darkstar.

The story behind this cover/re-imagining is apparently a willfully mistaken RPM which apparently re-rendered the Human League glossy original a glitched out dubstep oddity when slowed down. Darkstar’s rendition of that slow pitch plaything is an unexpected and forward thinking pop song combining three things we’re fans of: Darkstar, Human League and misappropriated RPM’s. It grows head downward skittering forward and floating away around a spaced-out vocal. Makes us want to get out some of our all time favorite RPM mistakes and rip them off. Seem to remember having fun with slowed down 45 to 33 versions of a near ambient Led Zepplin and a shoegaze nod-off of Kym Wylde’s innocuous B-side “Tuning In, Tuning On”. “Gold” is the first single off Darkstar’s hugely praised debut album.

Check out more over at The Line Of Best Fit’s SOTD

All week long we’re taking over The Line Of Best Fit’s Song Of The Day. Today it’s “Yang Yang” by Anika.

A sing-along electro 60’s influenced stomper from London via Berlin Anika has us head bobbing this week. It sounds like a de-toxed Nico singing Brill building hits or a more kraut, less brit-psych, Broadcast. The LP’s out now in the EU and out in the US this December on one of our favorite labels, the legendary and impeccable Stones Throw. At first listen Anika maybe bucks the usual trends for a label famous for putting out Madlib, Dilla and more than a few amazing hip hop and funk compilations. Yet, somehow, that makes us like her even more. Really, there’s nothing like toying with expectations to help you connect dots in unusual ways. And anyway, once you’ve gotten a good listen to the sultry steam busting synth and dug into the vibes of the obliterated beat and bubbling bass-line, well… it’s maybe not so far from the funky sixteen corners after all.

Check out more over at The Line Of Best Fit’s SOTD

]]> http://thehundredinthehands.com/anika-%e2%80%9cyang-yang%e2%80%9d-s-o-t-d/feed/ 0 http://thehundredinthehands.com/james-blake-eps/ http://thehundredinthehands.com/james-blake-eps/#comments Mon, 18 Oct 2010 01:26:47 +0000 Jason http://thehundredinthehands.com/?p=4102

Over the last couple days as we drove and drove and drove from Minneapolis to Seattle (28 hours+ if you’re keeping score) we spent part of the time disappearing into electronic wunderkind James Blake’s EP’s. It’s soulful post-dubstep, Rn’B that dissolves and bends with skittering glitches hissing, pulsing and whirling beneath pitched and warped vocals revealing as much emotion as they keep hidden.

“Air & Lack There Of’” works a nervy beat and bleep/blop low bit synths against a jarringly mischievous movie score flute. The “The Bells Sketch” comes in and out of focus while scraps of conversation and humming muddle together. A fidgety synth, warbled bells and gibberish vocals stick to a steady snare in “Buzzard & Kestral”.

But it’s on CMYK and the newly released Klavierwerke EP’s he really seems to stretch out. “Look, I found her—damn—redcoat, look, I found her…” from CMYK, the track, has got to be one of the most confounding and hypnotic hooks of the last year. The clarity of his vocals pitched higher and lower reflecting and refracting like a funhouse mirror. On tracks like “I Only Know (What I Know now)” off his latest EP, sentiments and associations bubble to the surface and melt again melancholic and introspective in a really unexpected way.

If the melodies and vocal scraps of all these tracks carry a certain sub-conscious reverberation of Rn’B, it’s brought fully conscious with his latest track, a cover/re-imagining of Fiest’s, “Limit To your Love”. The track and video exposes his croon and shows why so many people are getting hot and bothered by the prospect of his forthcoming full-length.

see more here

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