Everyday is Like Sunday, Except for Blue Monday and Ruby Tuesday, and...Well, Friday I'm in Love: Weekly Mix #58

I wanna dance with somebody. I'm dancing for my life. Everybody dance now. Everybody cut footloose.

This one's called What a Feeling.

Testcard Girl - White Rose Movement

Bonne Nouvelle - Birdy Nam Nam

Teknoir - Kindle

The Melting Moon - VHS or Beta

25 Seconds (Gary Numan and Ade Fenton Remix) - Mandy Kane

This Rhythm - Filthy Dukes

State of Alert - Radio 4

The Magnificent Romeo - 2 Many DJs

Ares (Villains Remix) - Bloc Party

20th Century Boy - T.Rex (Hoshina Anniversary Remix)

Switchblade - HEARTSREVOLUTION

Into the Galaxy - Midnight Juggernauts

I'm Not Alone - Calvin Harris

I Feel Love - Donna Summer

Boy (Extended Mix) - Book of Love

The DJ's Got a Gun (IAMX Remix) - Robots in Disguise

Turn It On - Ladytron

I Want Nothing - The Black Ghosts

Phantom Pt 2 (Soulwax Remix) - Justice

Extraball - Yuksek

IAMX's Kingdom of Welcome Addiction Release Date and Tour

I usually don't do announcements for upcoming albums this far in advance, but I make exceptions for the ones I'm really excited about. In this case, it's IAMX's forthcoming third album, Kingdom of Welcome Addiction. It will be released worldwide on May 19, but if you pre-order directly from IAMX's shop, it will be shipped to you on May 6. Judging from the first free download track, Think of England, and from what I've gleaned through live YouTube videos, the tracks off the new album are just as fantastic as those off the first two albums - once I get my copy of the album, there will be a review.

I'll also include the tour dates that have been announced so far (of course none remotely close to me, but c'est la vie):

01/03 GAGARIN 205 / Athens, Greece
10/03 CONRAD SOHM / Dornbirn, Austria
11/03 WEEKENDER CLUB / Innsbruck, Austria
12/03 POSTHOF / Linz, Austria
13/03 GASOMETER / Vienna, Austria
14/03 KIFF / Aarau, Switzerland
16/03 MAGNOLIA CLUB / Milan, Italy
17/03 CIRCOLO DEGLI ARTISTI / Rome, Italy
18/03 BARRUMBA / Torino, Italy
19/03 LE GRILLEN / Colmar, France
21/03 AB BRUSSELS / Brussels, Belgium SOLD OUT
27/03 BELZIK FESTIVAL / Battice, Belgium
10/04 YENI MELEK / Istanbul, Turkey
14/04 ACADEMY 3 / Manchester, UK
15/04 STEREO / Glasgow, UK
16/04 CORPORATION / Sheffield, UK
18/04 TALKING HEADS / Southampton, UK
19/04 KOKO (14+) / London, UK
21/04 ROCKHAL / Luxembourg
22/04 LE LOCOMOTIVE / Paris, France
25/04 FESTSAAL KREUZBERG / Berlin, Germany
19/05 LOPPEN / Copenhagen, Denmark
20/05 JOHN DEE / Oslo, Norway
21/05 DEBASER / Stockholm, Sweden
22/05 NOSTURI / Helsinki, Finland
02/06 T.T THE BEAR'S / Boston, USA
04/06 BOWERY BALLROOM / New York City, USA
06/06 SUBTERRANEAN / Chicago, USA
09/06 SLIM'S / San Francisco, USA
12/06 EL REY THEATRE / Los Angeles, USA
21/06 BLACKFIELD FESTIVAL / Gelsenkirchen, Germany
17/07 JAROCIN FESTIVAL / Jarocin, Poland
26/07 BLACKCAVE FESTIVAL / Waregem, Belgium

Welcome addiction, indeed.

Your Joy is My Low - IAMX

Spit It Out (Live in Warsaw) - IAMX

They Know Exactly What They're Doing: Helen Love's It's My Club and I'll Play What I Want To

The question is how did I manage to miss out on the Ramones-obsessed Welsh girl group Helen Love for so long? They've been around since 1993 and released four albums prior to the latest one, It's My Club and I'll Play What I Want To, which released last year. With a blend of punk, glam, bubblegum pop and electronic elements, Helen Love feel like the predecessors to bands like Robots in Disguise and Chicks on Speed. They don't take themselves seriously, and they come with some brilliant pop songs. With a pastiche of references from the 60s and 70s, Helen Love fuse the past with the future perfectly. At any rate, I'm going to review their latest album despite the fact it's come about a year late. They're that good.

Like Helen Love's previous work, this album is full of brief, speedy tracks and fantastic little spoken samples that remind me of a Sigue Sigue Sputnik album. The record begins with the title track, which had also been released as a single. It sounds like a Ramones song being played from a bubblegum pink jukebox in a Japanese retro arcade in the year 2050, replete with vocoder and laser sounds. Then the CBGB fantasy Debbie Loves Joey bursts in with guitar-laden pop-punk and cheeky references, including The Stranglers' Peaches. As its title suggests, the following track, Dance On (Solid Gold), takes its influences from disco, but adds an electro-rock feel while You Better Learn Karate is as crazy as anything Polysics could come up with as it kicks the stuffing out of you with hyperspeed. With its repeated snippet of "Great galloping gumdrops," The 1910 Fruitgum Company is an homage to the 60s bubblegum pop group of the same name; it has a bouncy compulsion to it that makes me think of Saturday morning cartoons and the abandon of a Kindergarten class.

After the whirlwind of Transistor Radio, the speed slackens for Jet, which features a snippet of the fantastic dialogue from the 60s Brit comedy The Likely Lads: "In the chocolate box of life the top layer's already gone and someone's pinched the orange cream from the bottom." "Bloody hell." With a springy use of synths, First Boyfriend recalls the ludicrous novelty in the mundanity of a first adolescent romance. A faster, pumping disco beat peppers Rodney's English Disco, yet another brilliant reference, this time to Rodney Bingenheimer's English Disco, a Los Angeles glam club in the 70s. At under two minutes, Honolulu Superstar is the fastest track on the album while Garage Band uses some jazzy piano interludes and surf rock to tell the story of forming your own band after listening to John Peel. The fun continues with Queen of the Disco Beat, which has blasts of brass and more than a passing resemblence to Rockaway Beach. An anthem to the homebound, Staying In has deadpan verses that are dry enough to peel paint. With 60s girl group flourishes, The New Squad Attacking Formation is a quirky track that makes me think of a gang of teenage girls on scooters terrorizing the neighbourhood. Released as a single, Junkshop Discotheque features a great guitar line as all of Helen Love's musical influences get jammed together very much as the title suggests. The album crashes to its conclusion with Saturday Nite, which surprises with a classical introduction before launching into yet another potential dance anthem.

Now that I'm aware of Helen Love, I eagerly await a new album called Stick It due out this year (it's preceded by the latest single called Calm Down Dad - a song in line with the theme of Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, but with a sarcastic sheen that mocks adolescence cool and with a hilarious piece of White Riot at the end). There's something old-fashioned and child-like about Helen Love, but they fire obscure and not-so-obscure references on all cylinders, reminding you that they know exactly what they're doing.

Debbie Loves Joey - Helen Love

1910 Fruitgum Company - Helen Love

Calm Down Dad - Helen Love

2008 Wrap-Up and New Year's Eve Mix

Well, here I am at the end of my first year doing this blog. I would love to be able to say something very profound at this point, but frankly, I'm just surprised I managed to keep it up for the entire year in a semi-regular fashion. Looking back at it now, I now realize why so many blogs litter the cyberspace as abandoned detritus - it can be pretty difficult to find something worth writing about on a regular basis. The bloggers who write daily or nearly daily are people to be admired. My sole aim when beginning this blog was to write about music I was passionate about and to write passionately about music. I may not have always achieved that goal, but I definitely tried. And for the most part (aside from a couple of rants and reviews of disappointments from artists I used to love), I've attempted to stick to the "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all" formula.

This blog has been an oddly apt support system during a fair bit of stress and strain this year; when I was a bit lonely and living in a different city for grad school, it became something to occupy my time and reach out beyond my small bedroom; when I was fretting and puzzling over my MA thesis over the summer, it became a way to refine my research and thoughts; and now while I'm desperately trying to find some sort of gainful employment, this blog is keeping me motivated, keeping me sane during the daily search through job ads. Through all this, I've truly met some extraordinary people, bands and fans, and they have made me feel less alone in my thoughts and tastes. They have also sometimes challenged me and made me think, which is just as great. I would like to thank all those artists and music lovers who have contacted me whether by email or by leaving comments behind, and I would especially like to thank a few regular commenters whom I now also consider my friends: Urban Gypsy, Rol, and of course JC, who has been a generous cheerleader from the day I got some hard-to-find Orange Juice off him. Your support has kept me at this when I've felt that I had no more words about music.

As my final gift to all of you for 2008, I'm leaving you with a New Year's Eve mix - play it at a party, big or small, and dance around like a maniac. It's called Party Like It's A Prince Reference, and it comes in as the longest mix I've done this year, featuring many hits of 2008 along with some very danceable songs of yesteryear. To top it off, I've included a not-so-dancey bonus track from El Perro Del Mar, which you can play when the clock strikes midnight before heading back into the mix. In some ways, perhaps, this exercise fulfills some preposterous DJ fantasy I have, and that's another thing that this blog has allowed me to do: fulfill some of my dreams for an audience that is larger than I would have ever expected back in January 2008.

Thank you, and good night.


Hallelujah (Club Mix) - Happy Mondays

One More Time to Pretend (Daft Punk vs MGMT) - Immuzikation

Wow - Kylie Minogue

Heart of Glass - Blondie

Blind - Hercules & Love Affair

Standing in the Way Of Control (Soulwax Remix) - The Gossip

Mercury (CSS Remix) - Bloc Party

Spit It Out (Alex Kowalski Remix) - IAMX

D.A.N.C.E. (MSTRKRFT Remix) - Justice

I'm Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance With You (The Twelves Remix) - The Black Kids

Relax (New York Mix) - Frankie Goes to Hollywood

Ready For the Floor (LA Riots Remix) - Hot Chip

Lights & Music - Cut Copy

Money - Salon Boris

Love is My Drug (Remix) - Protocol

Radio Wolf - Kindle

Alsatian - White Rose Movement

Synthetiseur - Housse de Racket

The Sex Has Made Me Stupid (Stupid Sex Midfield General Mix) - Robots in Disguise

Kill Ya Stereo - Astra Moveo

Black Milk - Zeigeist

Kids (Pet Shop Boy Remix) - MGMT

Temptation - New Order

Kelly (Lifelike Remix) - Van She

Walking on a Dream (Treasure Fingers Remix) - Empire of the Sun

Paris is Burning (Cut Copy Remix) - Ladyhawke

Danger! (Mr. Pedro Remix) - The Sound of Arrows

Rebel Rebel (Soulwax Club Edit) - David Bowie

Personal Jesus (Boys Noize Remix) - Depeche Mode

You and My Pearldiver - TNT Jackson featuring Chris Corner

Supermassive Black Hole - Muse

Billie Jean - Michael Jackson

Paris (Justus Köhncke Remix) - Friendly Fires

Girls on Film (Night Version) - Duran Duran

This Boy's in Love - The Presets

Hearts On Fire (Hoshina Anniversary Remix) - Cut Copy

I Get Around - Dragonette

Bounce - MSTRKRFT featuring N.O.R.E.

Higher State of Consciousness - South Central

Crimewave - Crystal Castles

Love Song (Philadelphia Bluntz Remix) - Simple Minds

Love Shack (12" Remix) - B-52's

Repetition Kills You - The Black Ghosts

Debbie Does Montreal (Blondie vs Of Montreal) - team9 vs Stereogum

Apollo-Gize (Fred Falke Edit) - Digitalism

Spin Spin Sugar (Armand's Dark Garage Mix) - Sneaker Pimps

Runaway - Ladytron

Dead Sound (80KIDZ Remix) - The Raveonettes

Paper Planes (DFA Remix) - M.I.A.

Embrace (Fred Falke Miami Horror Remix) - PNAU featuring Ladyhawke

Auld Lang Syne - El Perro Del Mar


Party Like It's a Prince Reference (Megaupload)

"I bet that you look good on the dancefloor...but nowhere else": Mikrofisch's Masters of the Universe

Though Masters of the Universe by Mikrofisch released last year, I only just discovered it. I actually only just discovered Mikrofisch, so that could be part of the problem. Apparently, Mikrofisch began in 2001 when Mawe N. Klave and Silvi Wersi met in Cologne. Though they intended to cover The Smiths, they ended up producing original material, and a year later, they released their debut album Gleichstrom/Wechselstrom. After Wersi moved to London, the duo ended up recording Masters of the Universe over a three-year period, and the product is a magnificent anti-hipster shot in the arm. With lyrics like these, making countless music and pop culture references and observations about the trappings of being twenty-something in the 21st century, I'm surprised Klave and Wersi's tongues haven't come clean out the other side of their cheeks.

The album begins with Alien Monsters, a hilarious send-up of alien attack films complete with deadpan vocal delivery and rot-your-teeth twee background. Let's Kiss and Listen to Bis starts with a Peter Hook-like bassline and then '80s synthesizers kick in to augment a sweetness worthy of the twee mentioned. The narrators stalwartly refuse to make love to DFA; instead they want to regress into the '90s of their adolescence, including the Glaswegian pop-punksters. The '80s influence continues as arcade video game aesthetics, drum machines and vocoders cover the track Bad Hair Days with a retro veneer. Shifting into a more down-tempo feel, I Never Get Much Sleep on Weekdays emulates the catatonic state of the fatigued, apathetic twenty-somethings they sing about. The sarcasm and ennui drips off the chorus: "We're the twenty-somethings/We're the part-time punks/We got our records from Ebay and our clothes from H&M/Don't look back in anger/Today will okay/Tomorrow will be much like yesterday." The following track, Morrissey, Jeff Mangus, Stephin Merritt, John Darnielle, is a brilliant existential anthem for indie moper-loners everywhere.

Not only lonely indie songwriters get mentioned. Referencing the '60s model and muse of fashion designer Rudi Gernreich, Peggy Moffitt Look-alikes pops about like a soft drink or a fun fair as it satirizes those hipster girls who come to gigs dressed like thrift store mods. Then, whizzing into life and making a personificative address to the theremin, Drum Machines Will Save Mankind uses fuzzy, lo-fi synths and drum machines to revivify the twee genre - it's a bit like if someone decided to use Darling Buds songs in an Atari game. Then disco is given an 80s 8-bit makeover in Disco Fantasy as Klave and Wersi's vocals drift dreamily over top. They even use the galactic leitmotif that often comes with disco and funk music. The album then shifts into pure power-pop bliss with We Love You, a cutesy song ostensibly sung from the perspective of crazy fans, but which adds a brilliant twist to the narrative. It features a screamy chorus akin to Robots in Disguise or Chicks on Speed.

This is followed by one of my favourite tracks on the album, The Kids Are All Shite, which namechecks Brit indie rock mediocrity in monotone vocal delivery against an intense bassline. It lampoons the MySpace generation perfectly, including their propensity to follow "indie" trends slavishly and to idolize NME bands whose music plays in supermarkets "before the sell-out's even started" and who "all look like Johnny Ramone." One of the best lines is "I bet that you look good on the dancefloor, but nowhere else." The chorus also reminds me melodically of Depeche Mode's New Life. The record takes a slower turn with See You Next Tuesday, a delightful, electro anti-ballad with interplay between male and female vocals. The tempo comes back up for Evil Customer, a perfect track for anyone who's felt stifled by their city or town or chained to a crap retail job - they create a perfect contrast between the pleasant sing-song of a polite front and the deteriorating mental state of the narrator that descends into Tourette's-like hysteria by the end. Just as astute as Evil Customer, (No One Listens To You When You've Got) Flat Hair is one of the better songs I've ever heard about the mind-sickening "reality" of reality TV; the verses are delivered with a cool detachment like that of Black Box Recorder's Sarah Nixey. The record concludes with Focus On It, the harshest song on the album with its dirty, crunchy beats and its play on and with hypnotic trance and house genres.

With the generous use of drum machines and minimal synth sounds, there's something lo-fi and homemade about the record; indeed, it was recorded in various bedrooms and living rooms. At the same time, it is the perfect aural document of the love-hate no-win situation of being an indie music lover in the noughties. Mikrofisch intelligently deconstruct the world they live in while paying unironic tribute to the music they love. You can download the entire album for free here with the band's blessing. This album is a bit like finding a He-Man action figure inside a Kinder egg: a nostalgic but nerdy cool surprise inside a sweet, waxy chocolate shell. The perfect gift for a generation who know too much to care very much.

Let's Kiss and Listen to Bis - Mikrofisch

The Kids Are All Shite - Mikrofisch

Evil Customer - Mikrofisch

More Blistering Identitätkampf: IAMX's New Single

I've been waiting for this for over a year. IAMX has just released a new single today, Think of England, and it's available for free download. It is the first new material since 2006's sophomore album The Alternative. With the introduction of the single, there has come a new colour scheme and style for the MySpace page - gone are the yellow and black, replaced with red and muted grey. The single itself is a shift in mood - gone is the dark cabaret, instead there is a rather insistent, urgent sense of wild escape.

If anything, it is a natural progression. The debut album Kiss + Swallow was generally a slower, seedy affair, oozing sexual deviance and desire. Then The Alternative came with its cabaret image and feel, but with an extra punch of raspy, vicious need that pervaded most tracks, including the incredible title track. Now, the energy has continued to escalate with syncopated rhythm and high-pitched, brain-searing synths, pushing both speed and sonic limits. Additionally, Corner's vocals continue to careen between delicate vulnerability and desperate power, but paired with the intensity of the music, they have become even more frenzied than in previous material. As for the content of Thinking of England, Chris Corner has always been rather vocal about why he left England, and more specifically London, for Berlin. I feel like this song is part of that declaration and that necessary separation from older identities and lifestyles. IAMX continues to be an identity project.

According to IAMX's blog (with its idiosyncratic use of the caps lock), Chris Corner has been in the process of choosing which direction this project should go in and has solicited feedback from his fans (of which there is a rather intense cultish following). As vocal as he has been about moving to Germany, he has been equally outspoken about staying independent and DIY. He has mused over the dilemma of the independent artist:

HOW DO YOU SELL YOURSELF TO SUPPORT YOURSELF WITHOUT WHORING YOURSELF? IT HAUNTS ME. IF ART WAS INDULGED AND FUNDED MORE THEN MONEY WOULD'NT HAVE TO TAINT IT (IN SOME NAIVE UTOPIA) I SEE ONLY A HORRIBLE STEW OF BUSINESS, FAME AND CELEBRITY IN THE COMMERCIAL INDUSTRY. I CANT THINK OF A MORE REVOLTING MIX. WE MUST STICK TO THE PATH. AND YOU MUST STAY WITH US. SOMETIMES IAMX FEELS LIKE A SMALL RELIGION.

And ideas of a new Web site:

I WANT TO CREATE SOMETHING EXCLUSIVE. A LITTLE WORLD FOR THE FANS TO EXPLORE AND BECOME A PART OF. I WANT TO RAISE THE VALUE OF THE ART. TO SURVIVE AS A FLEXIBLE GIVING, INDEPENDENT PROJECT WE MUST OFFER SOMETHING UNIQUE BUT WE ALSO NEED THE INPUT AND SACRIFICE OF THE FANS. BASICALLY FUCK THE MUSIC INDUSTRY AND CREATE OUR OWN. WE ALL NEED TO GET ON THIS. FAN AND ARTIST IF WE WANT THE GYPSY TROUP TO CONTINUE. I WANT FEEDBACK. I WANT TO KNOW WHAT YOU WANT FROM ME. I ALSO WANT TO TELL YOU WHAT I NEED FROM YOU. IN THESE COLD , RISKY TIMES THIS COULD BE THE LONG AWAITED BEGINNING OF A BEAUTIFUL FRIENDSHIP.

Judging by the responses (myself included), there will always be conflicts of opinion, and by opening himself up to the floodgates of input, Corner will have many things to think about and consider. My only hope is that he remains as honest as he can within a framework that represents all he wishes to be. The fact he wants to create such a symbiosis between fan and artist is inspiring - he is definitely a pioneer in this brave new world of major label collapse.

If you're lucky enough to live or be in Europe within the next four months, you'll be able to see IAMX on tour, where more new material will be unveiled. Also, if you are the consummate IAMX fan, get yourself here to pre-order the Live in Warsaw album, which will only be released in Poland on November 14. I eagerly await a third album. Until then I will keep listening to this new anthem to Identitätkampf. All of us IAMX fans will be basking in the pyre of the past and dancing on the grave of the music industry. You are not alone at the frontline.

Think of England - IAMX

i-Polaroids - IAMX

Rusty Tears and Malfunctioning Heart Parts: Stars' Sad Robots EP

Largely unbeknownst to me (I've really been doing well keeping abreast of new music lately), Stars released an EP entitled Sad Robots EP on September 1, which can be sampled and purchased via their beautifully crafted Sad Robots site. The site asks you if you are indeed a sad robot upon entry, and its fantastic Victorian industrial revolution aesthetic makes me very happy to be a sad robot. As stated before on this blog, I really love Stars because of their bittersweet lyrics and brilliant pop melodies, but I think I was also ready for this return to some of their original electronic impulses, and this return may cause more recent fans of Stars and their last two albums to look into Stars' earlier work.

The opening track, Maintenance Hall, 4AM, hums with the steam of mechanized industry as a piano plays out a melancholic melody and a robotic voice creeps in periodically. Listening to the music, I can just imagine the space where robots are repaired, where a heart is just another part to be replaced. The following track is a sparkling song called A Thread Cut With a Carving Knife, which along with the rest of the EP, recalls the electronic influences more apparent on Stars first album, Nightsongs. As per their characteristic style, Torquil Campbell and Amy Milan's gentle voices narrate a love affair and its resulting heartbreak, and the song seems to swell and surge about them like a dirigible balloon only to burst around them in ribbons of feedback and white noise. On the track Undertow, Milan's lovely voice converses with itself as the vodcoderized refrain of "When will it stop?" pulses against the rest of the verses like legs kicking against the tide. It also features that laidback groovy beat that several of Stars' earlier songs did, but with augmentation by expansive synths.

The track Going, Going, Gone is an older song (actually off Nightsongs), but is listed as being a live track (despite its non-live sound) on this EP and it is the one song available for free download off the Sad Robots Web site. It has been modified from a rather sparse arrangement into a crystalline synthy piece, and Campbell takes on a few more lines. While the original version of track feels lonelier, this new incarnation feels like more of an emotional struggle with its stuttering drum machines; the narrator hasn't completely surrendered yet. 14 Forever is one of those fantastic paeans to the bliss and promise of youth and features the most joyful music on the EP, adding the sweet balance to the bitter tears shed in the other tracks. The EP ends appropriately with Sad Robot, which repeats the couplet "Il pleut, je pleure" that uses the wordplay to full effect against a background littered with bleeps and bloops as though a circuitboard is slowly being corrupted by water and going under.

This EP is a beautiful concept and I look forward to see and hear whether the next full-length album will take any cues from this shift in direction. All of us melancholic automatons would be so happy.

A Thread Cut With a Carving Knife - Stars

Going, Going, Gone (live) - Stars

Going, Going, Gone - Stars (from Nightsongs)

The Antipodean Parisians: Van She's V

I've been waiting for a proper Van She album for what seems like forever. They released an EP a couple of years ago, which seemed also to take a fair bit of time to come out, especially since I had enjoyed the singles I had heard prior to the EP's release. It seems Van She's debut album V dropped at the beginning of August, but from what I can tell, it hasn't been made available for North America yet aside from imported copies. Along with Cut Copy, MSTRKRFT, The Presets, The Tough Alliance and Ladyhawke, Van She is yet another fantastic band on the Modular roster and I think that they and Cut Copy are my favourite Modular artists. The Australian electro outfit seemed to have a bit of an 80s post-punk/synthpop vibe on their self-titled EP with songs like Kelly, Mission, and Sex City, but V takes them into a slightly different vein. Overall, V feels lighter and even more laidback while giving me a sense of French atmosphere and influences, including those of Phoenix and Air.

The record's first track, Memory Man, retains some of the synthy sounds of the songs found on the earlier EP while the vocals take the song into a more mournful direction before cycling into the next song, Cat & the Eye, which is the first single released from V and is a hissing explosion of technicolour steam and psychedelic flourishes. The following track Changes, which has also been recently released as a single, takes the band in a less electro, but more mellow retro direction akin to Phoenix and gives me that distinct feeling of Parisian partying. Strangers is equally as mellow and has an anthemic chorus riding along a cascade of synths. It Could Be the Same veers off into a more twee-electro direction as its opening revs into a video game-like melody, but then turns into a more minimal rock song before heading into screaming high registers of guitars. The next couple of tracks, The Sea and Virgin Suicide, turn back into the dreamier, laidback tone presented in Changes and Strangers, and Virgin Suicide has one of the album's catchier indie-rock choruses. After the dark but brief electronic instrumental, Temps Mort, Talkin' blows in with driving, bouncy guitars, which feel like they're bumping up and down an underlay of electro elements as vocals flip between soaring highes and lower levels. Kelly, the only track to migrate from the EP to the debut LP, gets a more textured makeover, but still fits nicely in this newer context, allowing its fist-pumping 80s chorus to sit alongside the airy indie of the other tracks. So High is a soulful tune perfect for a morning comedown as it bops along to a shimmery little synth line and the Thomas Mars-like flourishes on the vocals. Concluding track, A Sharp Knife, is a subtle finish with its steady drumbeat taking a prominent position before the song explodes with the lovely higher countermelody over top of the lower primary vocal.

It was definitely worth the wait for Van She's full-length debut - it gives me that same slightly bohemian, café-dwelling, club-hopping-with-hipster-kids feeling I like to dream Paris would give me (despite the fact I didn't experience Paris that way the one and only time I visited there). Hopefully it won't take as long for Van She to release a second LP as it took for them to get their EP and debut album into the fans' hands and ears. Vive l'Australie.


Cat & the Eye - Van She

Changes - Van She

Virgin Suicide - Van She

Racing the Stars to Supernova: TNT Jackson's Across the Towers

Despite the fact the Austrian electro-trio TNT Jackson released their sophomore album Across the Towers nearly a year ago, I have only just discovered them (via their excellent single "You and My Pearldiver," which features vocals from Chris Corner and references Gary Numan's Are All Friends Electric - buy it from iTunes) and would like to write a bit about them. Named after a Blaxploitation film, TNT Jackson includes Dr. T, Mr. N, and Danny T (TNT, you see), and was apparently founded during a near fatal plane crash in Estonia. And as you can tell, TNT Jackson is also one of those bands with a carefully cultivated crypticism to their identity. Fair enough, the music tells a story that's more important than the truth.

The instrumental opener, Lamarr, beginning with chiming keyboards, is a breathtaking array of synths and drums that builds from the inner silence of a spaceship to all-out astral sonic warfare. The wittily-titled Leaving Out Vowels is So 2000 begins in a wonky, cosmic fashion, making use of all those fun reverb effects I used to play with on my Casio keyboard as a child. It sounds like an interstellar disco interspersed by old film strips of space documentaries or old series of Doctor Who. Queen of Hearts is funky electro with a retro vibe similar to that of Chromeo, and Cool Mister has a tense, dramatic groove to it that feels like a spy theme for the 25th century. I Dreamed of Chaka Khan could have been a Tiga song with its fey vocals and pumping, but smooth background. Hearkening back to the 80's, All Black is freeze-dried synthpop that melts in your mouth. Title track, Across the Towers, is driven by tight rhythms that sound like laser pistons in some rave at a NASA warehouse. Ivan's Got the Answer tells the story about some enigmatic character who could be a "joker or a thief" with a rather detached, robotic voice and refracts the music into more angularity like the speed of light bounced through a prismatic disco ball.

Pushit, which features Eddie Argos of Art Brut, is one of my favourites on the record with Argos' deadpan voice stretched taut over top of the whizzbangs of electro beats. The lyrics take us back to 1983 as Argos relates a story littered with satirical detail about cassette tapes in the car and women who wear sunglasses at night. Album closer Ours is Forever returns to some of those spacier effects that were used in Leaving Out Vowels, but slows down into a laidback electro-ballad like a cosmonaut serenading his lover over the rocket's communication system. It's both dreamy and ominous and just tapers off like a burnt-out star.

As a whole, the album is like an intense explosion in space contained by the vacuum around it - chaotic, but precise. There's always an undercurrent of energy threatening to blow the whole project satellite-high, but it remains harnessed to produce an intensely glowing core of atomic hedonism. TNT Jackson is the soundtrack to decadent urban youth racing the stars to supernova.

TNT Jackson's MySpace: www.myspace.com/tntjcksn

I Dreamed of Chaka Khan - TNT Jackson

Pushit (featuring Eddie Argos) - TNT Jackson

Everyday is Like Sunday, Except for Blue Monday and Ruby Tuesday, and...Well, Friday I'm in Love: Weekly Mix #26

My very first weekly mix was one entitled When the Humans Are Away, The Robots Play, and the time has come, my friends, for another robot-inflected mix. It was very fun the first time round, and I know at least one reader out there highly enjoyed it. Oddly enough, the only actual link to robots in that mix was the fact Robots in Disguise featured - this time, I made a more concerted effort to include songs with robots in the titles without compromising the sound and flow of the mix (this rule ultimately made me discard using the song Sister Robot by The Trons, a band that is actually composed of robots - the song just didn't really fit with the feel of the rest of the songs).

In the midst of the ridiculous fun, I included robot classic Mr. Roboto from the notorious Styx and another track from Flight of the Conchords, which, like last week's track, is quite a ribtickler ("The humans are dead/We used poisonous gases/And we poisoned their asses"). Don't worry, I'll resist the urge to include an appropriate track from Flight of the Conchords in every mix. This mix is called More Than Meets the Ear.

Arcade Robot - Boys Noize

Kicking and Screaming - The Presets

The Lake - Muscles

Robot Love - Ganymed

Robot High School - My Robot Friend

The Anthem - Bitchee Bitchee Ya Ya Ya

Mr. Roboto - Styx

Robots - Flight of the Conchords

Too Many People (iamchemist Plus One Remix) - The Retrosexuals

Disko Eskimo - Salon Music

Professional Suicide - Ladyhawke

Bunny - Zeigeist

Wow (MSTRKRFT Remix) - Kylie Minogue

Neue Strassen - Metropakt

Heartbeats - The Knife

Someone Like You - Revl9n

Girl - Robots in Disguise

We Are Rebels - Alice in Videoland featuring Maja

The Negative Sex (US version) - IAMX

Spend the Night: Zeigeist's The Jade Motel

Whether or not the Swedish electro band, Zeigeist, is actually a conspiracy concocted by The Knife as blogs such as Caffeine and Music and More Than Milk have proposed, doesn't really affect the fact that I highly enjoy Zeigeist's debut album The Jade Motel. Yes, I really like The Knife, too, but at this point, it doesn't matter to me whether the two acts are related, or, in fact, the same one. I'm more fussed about the missing "t" in their band name than the concrete identities behind the music. I don't want to get bogged down with technical terms either (electroclash, electropop, electro-whatever) - I just want to share my enthusiasm for a new record. The Jade Motel was apparently released in April of this year, but I only just came across it a couple of weeks ago. I should have just called this blog Better Late Than Never at the rate I review things, but as Vonnegut says, "So it goes."

Zeigeist, consisting of Princess, Per and Mattias, and citing the influences of Andy Warhol and David Lynch, straddles the likes of The Knife (last time mentioning them), Revl9n, Depeche Mode, and Ladytron with their crisp electro and dark, trashy underbelly. Their visuals are also rather stunning in a glam masquerade way - see their MySpace. Album opener, Humanitarianism, which also graces the second side of the Bunny single, is probably one of the less memorable tracks on the record for me, but it still hints at the brilliance of later vocals and rhythms. The second track, Tar Heart, is one of my favourites on the record - it blends unhinged, banshee vocals with precise beats, and though it very obviously borrows from Running Up That Hill, it still manages to sound fresh and rather eerie in places. The following track, Wrecked Metal, which is also the latest single, takes New Romantic synths and pairs them with fey, detached male vocals. After a brief interlude, the next song, Bunny, shimmies in, sounding like Depeche Mode's Just Can't Get Enough on speed, and improving on Gwen Stefani's What You Waiting For. Zeigeist's first single, Black Milk, pulses along in an upbeat way to accompany the contrast of lyrics like "We are the prophets of sorrow," and the dichotomy creates a dancefloor anthem.

Cuffs takes a much darker turn as the tones step down into the spiral stairwells of lower registers, whispering at violence while Pressurized Chamber uses breathy, smooth male vocals like Dave Gahan at his dreamiest. Fight With Shattered Mirrors begins in a style quite similar to the preening of acts like Dragonette and New Young Pony Club, but then scatters into different directions for the chorus like refracted strobe light, staccato and spinning. Final track, Dawn//Night uses a riff that sounds a bit like Gorillaz's Dirty Harry, but then whips it into a funkier, Justice-like track, adding dashes of disco falsetto.

Blending the art and beauty implied by "jade" with the clandestine sleaze of "motel," Zeigeist's debut is an electro feat of dancefloor desire and rendez-vous reverie.

Zeigeist's Web site: http://www.zeigeist.eu/

Tar Heart - Zeigeist

Black Milk - Zeigeist

Fight With Shattered Mirrors - Zeigeist

My Flesh is Weak and Without Reason: IAMX's Release in North America

I'm sure a lot of über music fans have had this bittersweet feeling before. It's really a ridiculous, unfair feeling to have, but no matter what I do, I still get it. It's that feeling of possessiveness over a particular band or artist that makes you simultaneously want to keep that artist a secret for your own selfish purposes and want to share the brilliance of that artist with the rest of the world that was too thick to notice him/her in the firstplace. You also get a feeling of superiority for being an early adopter - you're the one who "got it" first and made all the necessary effort to support that artist. And then all of sudden, that artist is made more accessible to others, who think their new discovery is indeed new. This is how I'm feeling about IAMX right now.

I've loved and supported IAMX, which is former Sneaker Pimps mastermind, Chris Corner's solo project, for at least three years now. I think I was first alerted to the fact I might be interested in IAMX via a small blurb in the NME (oddly enough, it was through an article written by Noel Fielding, but this was before I knew anything about The Mighty Boosh - it actually took me over a year after reading this article to watch The Mighty Boosh and subsequently remember their connection to Chris Corner when I saw his face appear on various magazine covers used in the television show), and when I went to check out the IAMX Web site and MySpace, I was completely hooked. The decadent darkwave with ethereal vocals trapped me, and combined with Chris Corner's androgynous, theatrical look, pushed me to search out import copies of both of his albums, Kiss & Swallow and The Alternative. I think I ended up obtaining the former via someone in Russia (hopefully, the supplier wasn't particularly shady) and the latter via a European Web site. Because IAMX is self-produced and self-distributed and based in Berlin, the albums were only ostensibly available in mainland Europe - they hadn't even released in the UK yet, which confounded my usual online retail sources. At any rate, I did get the albums and haven't stopped listening to them since. I then proceeded to see IAMX live in both Toronto and Detroit last fall (see my earlier post for a review of those incredible experiences) - I was thankfully living in Waterloo, Ontario at the time rather than Winnipeg, but I can't say I wouldn't have tried the same thing even if I would have had to fly out there for that purpose. However, now IAMX has signed a deal with Metropolis, finally making the albums available to North America - The Alternative was released on May 7 while Kiss & Swallow will follow on June 24.

I should be very happy about this turn of events, especially considering it's sticking it to people who believe a band couldn't be successful and tour without massive major label promotion. And I am happy. But at the same time, I get this rather nauseated feeling about all the American college radio stations touting the "new" IAMX that I've loved for a relatively long time now. Of course, people who have always loved Chris Corner from his Sneaker Pimps days probably hate my guts, too - to be fair, I do also quite love Sneaker Pimps, but that love followed from my love of and emotional investment in IAMX.

IAMX will now be doing a small American tour later this year (as far as I know, no Canadian dates - not even Toronto), and I can only hope that the venues don't get too massive. Venue size on tours becomes an equally great concern for me when a band/artist I like gains more popularity. I need and crave intimacy in a gig, meaning being too far from a stage is pretty much useless for me. The small IAMX shows I did get to see rank in my top five live gigs because the energy and atmosphere was just so perfect, and being wedged against the stage contributed massively to that feeling. I'm one of those people who doesn't like casual fans - give me the unhinged obsessives every time, they are what change an ordinary gig into an event.

But in the end, I do want IAMX to be successful, probably also for selfish reasons: namely, the fact that success will likely lead to future releases and a long career of music for me to enjoy. So, everyone who reads this: please do purchase IAMX albums and go to the live shows. Kiss & Swallow is a slower affair than The Alternative, but you truly do feel like you're having an affair with the album in all its filthy glory. The Alternative tends to rock more violently, but put together with Kiss & Swallow, creates the perfect variety of intensity for a music relationship. Chris Corner has the uncanny ability to meld cryptic lyrics into dark soundscapes of passion and perversity, and his voice creeps over your skin like a velvet glove, sometimes slapping you in your willing face. IAMX makes you want to push your limits, push the boundaries of who you are and what you're capable of. IAMX is the transcription of the fantasy of what you would like to be but cannot be in the daylight. You, like Chris Corner, become x.

And if you're not convinced yet, listen to the sample songs I've included for download. Mercy, off the Kiss & Swallow album, is absolutely breathlessly brilliant - probably my favourite track off the record. And the title track off The Alternative is a genius electro-stomp of a song with Corner's voice soaring and breaking with desire. I have also included the re-tooled version of Nightlife, which is on the new US release. Corner is a consummate artist with an evident perfectionist streak, always making sure that from the visuals to production IAMX is a complete self-contained vision of heartbreaking beauty. He takes chances and they always pay off.

Looking directly into Chris Corner's dark eyes while singing his lyrics back to him is an experience like no other. And I have to learn to let others experience it, too.

"the flesh is weak and without reason...they say the wretched get their kingdom" - Bring Me Back a Dog

IAMX MySpace: www.myspace.com/iamx

IAMX Web site: www.iamx.co.uk/

Metropolis Web site: www.metropolis-records.com/


Mercy - IAMX

The Alternative - IAMX

Nightlife (US Version) - IAMX

I Feel Love...and Pain: Hercules & Love Affair

Tracks from American disco-electro outfit Hercules & Love Affair have been snaking their way around the blogosphere for the last couple of months, but their self-titled album was only just officially released this week in the UK and will be released March 25 in North America. Comprised of DJ Andy Butler, Kim Ann Foxman, Nomi, and Antony Hegarty of Antony and the Johnsons fame, Hercules & Love Affair is one of the latest in the DFA stable of artists. The project's name supposedly references the myth of Hercules and his futile search for his boy lover, Hylas, who had been seduced and taken by river nymphs. This interesting connection to Greek mythology can't help but be appropriate for a group which defies gender and sexuality categories, including Foxman, an androgynous lesbian, Nomi, a transsexual, and Hegarty, who has expressed interest in gender-reassignment surgery. Disco, a subculture that allowed freedom for and celebration of minorities in the 70's, is a perfect genre for this particular group to contribute to.

I've personally never been a fan of Hegarty's voice - yes, I know he won a Mercury Prize, but his voice was so warbly it drove me crazy if I listened to it too long. Oddly enough, his voice in this newer context of electro beats and disco drums, instead of the usual piano-backing, works quite well. In fact, the idiosyncracies of his signature tortured, vibrato-laden voice add to the soulfulness of this re-working of the disco genre. Lead-off single Blind has a fantastic bassline pulsating beneath Hegarty's distinctive divaesque warble. In my opinion, without Hegarty's vocals on this track, it wouldn't have had the same power and originality. While it pumps along with its powerful bassline and conga drum backing, its lyrics relate a bittersweet story of someone looking back at his/her life and realizing s/he is now alone. Musically, the later track Raise Me Up follows along the same lines as Blind. Two other Hegarty tracks, album beginner Time Will, a sorrowful song in which Hegarty "cannot be half a wife, cannot hold half a life," and Easy, another slow track with his voice brought into a low, sinister register, are decidedly more reined in than songs like Blind and Raise Me Up.

Of course Hegarty isn't the only vocalist on this project, and several of the tracks feature Foxman and Nomi in breathy vocals which sometimes recall Prince and sometimes recall the lead singer of Dragonette. Hercules Theme, which is one such track featuring Foxman and Nomi, struts along like Parliament with a catchy horn refrain while their smooth vocals roll along over top of it. This is My Love, another track without Hegarty, sounds like it could be a Hot Chip song with its lilting vocals, disco shimmer and trumpet noodlings. On tracks like You Belong, Foxman, Nomi and Hegarty all complement each other, Hegarty providing a strong, distinctive backdrop for lead vocals and a contrasting movement for the lead vocal to melt into during the chorus.

As an album, Hercules & Love Affair is both straightforward and complex. It's straightforward in its use of danceable disco beats and retro basslines, but it fuses this genre with early house music and electro in an act of contemporization. Its mood is also deceptively celebratory in its uptempo dance anthems, but at the same time, an undercurrent of sadness and loss flows beneath them like a River Styx, which occasionally gushes up and saturates the slower, darker songs. With the more laidback, brooding songs like Time Will, Easy, and Iris, you can sometimes forget that this is supposed to be a disco record. They're still very well-crafted songs, but they are also evidence that the singles leaked thus far (Blind, Hercules Theme, Athene, and b-side Roar) aren't exactly representative of the album as a whole. What's a love affair without a little grief, though?

Blind - Hercules & Love Affair

Hercules Theme - Hercules & Love Affair

Easy - Hercules & Love Affair