January 2010
27 posts
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Fatman Scoop Cares About Comprehensive Climate...
I normally try to keep my political ideology separate from my musical critique, but this is just too good. Watch legendary club hype-man Fatman Scoop endorse climate legislation for NRDC Action Fund’s This Is Our Moment Campaign. Single ladies, make noise!
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[Stream] The Knife's opera epic, Tomorrow, In A...
Stream the The Knife’s collaboration with Mt. Sims and Planningtorock in full over at theknife.net. mp3:The Knife - The Colouring of Pigeons
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[Video] Local Natives - Airplanes
Rising stars Local Natives, make good use of compost in their new video for “Airplanes”; probably the first and last time I will ever say that. Also, click through for an acoustic video of my favorite Native’s song “Wide Eyes”
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[Tracks] SlothPop
I don’t know much about SlothPop, but I gather she is from somewhere in the great state of Indiana. In spite of her name, she isn’t making pop music and I hesitate to categorize her music. Older critics will be tempted to label SlothPop as freak folk, because it’s not Leo Kottke, but there’s nothing freaky about it. In the same way that some of Grizzlies Bear’s biggest tracks are really...
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[Tracks + Non-Guilty Pleasures] Bedingfield...
Do you ever come across something in the music library managing application of your choosing and think ‘When and where did this come from? And why don’t I listen to this more often?’ That’s precisely how I happened upon this week’s non-guilty pleasures. I was in the rare mood for both Biggie and Sinatra at the same time and started typing “Bedstuy” into the search bar of the music library...
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[Tracks] Not new Daft Punk
So… it turns out that this track was not, according to their publicist, made by Daft Punk. Still no idea on who it is, or if we’ve actually heard anything that will be in the new Tron flick to be released this December. mp3: Not Daft Punk - Fragile (not from Tron Soundtrack)
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[Tracks] Childish Gambino
Childish Gambino is the alter ego of Donald Glover. During the day time, Glover is an actor, comedian and writer. He’s best known as Troy Barnes on NBC sitcom Community and a charter member of sketch comedy group Derrick Comedy; before that, he was writing on Tina Fey’s staff at 30 Rock. This is all to say, don’t feel bad if you think Childish Gambino’s flow could use some work. He has other...
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[Tracks] CFCF
As people who write about music, Heavy D and I pay pretty close attention to Blogworld, P4k and our Music Submission email inboxes. I can’t speak for Dylan, but just between my Google Reader and our email submissions, I listen to pieces of 75 to 100 songs per day, in addition to what I listen to day-to-day. I listen to each track online before I make a call on whether to download it or not. ...
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[Tracks] "Hey JR!"
Sometime on Friday, Mr. JPatt of The Knocks posted to his Twitter “J.R. Rotem is a fucking cheater…” I think of myself as someone who takes music fandom pretty seriously, but upon reading this on Saturday, I had no idea who J.R. Rotem was, nor why he was a fucking cheater. After some research, I learned that Rotem is a producer, mostly of top 40 dreck. And while I didn’t know the man by name, I...
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[Tracks + Thoughts] On Ben Wallace and The xx
PT Barnum used to champion the concept that there’s no such thing as bad publicity. The logic behind this statement is sound. Even if a movie or music star is fed up with their press coverage and blow up at a photographer, it usually results in more attention paid towards them, and thus, more attention paid towards their careers. Take Chris Brown. He beat up one of the biggest female pop stars...
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[Video + Tracks] Shout Out Louds - Fall Hard
Lately I have found myself swooning for new-wavey pop out of Europe - mostly influenced by this song - but my latest obsession is Stockholm’s, Shout Out Louds. There third album, Work, comes out on February 23rd and lead single “Fall Hard” has me doing just that. This style of music always makes me feel like I am in a John Hughes film, which apparently, I would be really into....
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[Video + Tracks] Congorock
mp3: Congorock - Babylon Congorock put out their new video for “Babylon” late last week, and it’s just as massive as the track. Big, big things to come from Congorock in 2010
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[Tracks] Kid Sister
Ultraviolet is one of those albums that you just need to listen to. Nothing I can say can accurately describe or endear the album to you. Case in point: after finally getting my hands on Kid Sister’s full-length debut and giving it a few listens, I suggested it to friend of CotP Naima, a Chicago native, feminist and rap fan. I sent her a link to an interview with Kid Sister with a few live...
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[Video + Tracks] Toro y Moi
mp3: Toro y Moi - Blessa Toro y Moi’s latest video for “Blessa.” The home-made aspect of all this chill/dream/GvsBcore-wave has me delusional about my own musical talents, and it really works well with this track’s video.
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[Tracks] Tweet.
A quick bit of housekeeping here: You should follow me on Twitter here. I have been for a little while. All posts here at CotP are posted automatically to my Twitter account through the magic of the internets. Additionally, I post deep thoughts (a la Jack Handey) as well as links to both interesting articles and stuff I’ve written in other places (hopefully those two things aren’t mutually...
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[Music for My Kids] Fat Jon the Ample Soul...
It’s time for another installment of Music for My Kids. In case you’ve forgotten, the general premise is that I am at my coolest right now (which still isn’t all that cool) and should pass along some of the albums I loved when I was at my coolest to my kids. Dearest children, I’ll keep this one quick, because as one reader pointed out, if I am actually making you guys read this, you probably just...
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[Tracks + Thoughts] Hot Chip
(In case it isn’t clear, my tongue is partially in cheek here, though I do think about this stuff far too much. And to my older readers, 35 isn’t old, don’t worry about it.) The evolution of taste is a topic I have considered frequently over the past few years. I’m primarily concerned with how people grow as appreciators of culture. The scope of my own admiration in music, art, film, radio...
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Haiti
I have little more to say other than to implore you to donate money to the relief efforts in Haiti. There’s plenty of easy ways to do it, be it to the Red Cross, Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors without Borders) or any other charity working down there. We can’t begin to imagine the pain and suffering in Haiti right now and every little we can donate helps to fund clean drinking water, food and...
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[Video] The Very Best - Warm Heart of Africa
I love Esau Mwamwaya (who doesn’t though, right?). I love green screens. I like Ezra Koenig. Put all three together and you got yourself a pretty fantastic (and cheap) video. Also, get to a Very Best concert, now.
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[Tracks] Monarchy
Things are still unclear about who Monarchy is. Here’s what we know: they’re definitely a duo, they’re definitely from London and their debut single will be released on Neon Gold sometime next month, but that’s the extent of our background knowledge. There have been rumors that Monarchy consists of the alter egos of Milke or a side project for producer Starsmith, but we can neither confirm nor...
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[Tracks + Thoughts + Non-Guilty Pleasures] Ke$ha
Long ago, in Monkey Music Magazine, I wrote that I don’t believe in guilty pleasures; I reasoned that taste is taste and nobody should have to defend, or more importantly, be embarrassed by what they enjoy. In retrospect, this is utter crap. We all judge people based on their tastes, particularly with regards to culture and we all can’t help but fight the impulse to defend something we enjoy...
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[Video + Tracks] Theophilus London - Humdrum Town
The video for Theophilus London’s downtempo jam “Humdrum Town” is just making it online. I hope Theophilus actually rides that moped around Brooklyn. mp3: Theophilus London - Humdrum Town
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[Music for My Kids] The Roots - Things Fall Apart
I am not cool, nor would I present myself as such. But, at this moment in time, I am likely at or near the apex of my coolness, headed quickly towards a downward trend. As such, I’m launching a new semi-regular feature here at CotP: music for my kids. Thankfully, for both the potential children and for me, I don’t yet have daughters or sons, but I figure it’s best to pass along knowledge before...
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[Stream] Spoon's Transference at NPR
NPR has a stream of Spoon’s Transference as part of their Exclusive First Listen series. Check it out here. Also, head over to NY Times for an interesting profile of the guys. Always good to see Spoon back in the spotlight. Update: You can now stream it below. Also, I am on my 4th consecutive listen and absolutely loving it.
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[Stream] New Vampire Weekend Album, Contra
There seems to be a range of opinions about this one so far, but I am digging it. Less immediate than its predecessor, but I think it will benefit from repeated plays.
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[Tracks] New The Knife (!!) - The Colouring of...
A few months back the Danish performance group Hotel Pro Forma commissioned the Knife to write music for their opera, Tomorrow, In a Year: an interpretation of Darwin’s, On the Origin of Species. Evolution and the Knife, hard to go wrong there. Now the group, in collaboration with Mt. Sims and Planningtorock, are going to release the whole thing as a proper album on March 1st. The first...
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[Thoughts] On Self Referential Albums/Bands etc.
At the end of Bear in Heaven’s latest record Beast Rest Forth Mouth the band utilizes a great stylistic trick that seems to be cropping up more and more these days. Half way through the last song, “Casual Goodbye”, the band recycles the chorus and a few other elements from an earlier track, “Lovesick Teenagers”. In an era where people often decry the death of the...