In an effort to continually seduce your ears, Clash has rounded up the cream of the music that is spoken about in this issue and slapped it on a download album.
This month’s Cross Section grabs tunes from all over the world – Toronto, Turin, Paris and Brighton to name but four cities – and lovingly presents them in one handy digital long-player that serves as a perfect aural accompaniment to this here magazine you are holding.
Check out these profiles, follow the link at the end to get your tunes gratis, then read more about these artists in Clash magazine.
Master Shortie
‘Dance Like A White Boy (Crystal Fighters Remix)’
Mustachioed electro-hop prodigy gets beaten up by a tasty Crystal Fighters remix. Master Shortie is currently the great white hope of British hip-hop (it being about time for Wiley to go back to E3). Only nineteen, he’s gathered influences from Prince to Paul Simon and has serious musical nouse rather than just a basic grasp of Logic. Here at Clash we all dance like white boys, and we like to dance to this masterful rework by hot London dance band Crystal Fighters, especially with that warm, fuzzy bass sound ripping through our brains.
Casiokids
‘Fot I Hose (Axemax remix)’
Scando-pop favourites on the Moshi Moshi label, Casiokids are a Norwegian band that play wonky disco-pop, put on puppet shows and sound like they throw great parties. Yet all thoughts of dancing in geothermal spas that accompany the original of this track are immediately evaporated by this excellent remix from brothers Axemax and Big P. It’s a printer jam of a rework that warps the song’s central hook into an ear-slicing bass line. A hoarse call from the fjords to the dancefloor.
Dan Deacon
‘Red F’
Make your own kicks at home, Dan Deacon shows how. Single cells join together, life is spawned, fish climb out of the seas, monkeys come down from the trees and, millenia later, Dan Deacon reaches the peak of human evolution, at home in Baltimore with a bedroom full of old synthesizers, a laptop and some spare time. This is Animal Collective if they really knew how to party; I mean REALLY. You’ll struggle to find music that is more fun, original and inventive than this.
Thecocknbullkid
‘On My Own’
Smooth, emotive songwriting coupled with endearingly rough-edged electronic production. A doddery keyboard beat and some intrusive cyber-brass (hallmarks of collaborator Joe ‘Metronomy’ Mount) underpin this debut from hotly tipped Ghanaian songwriter and producer Anita Blay. The Hackney-based hopeful has been wrongly mixed in with the urban lot by the music press, but this is thoughtful music for the skinny jeans set if we ever heard it, all about complicated break ups and showing off.
The Brighton Port Authority
‘He’s Frank’
Catchy, funky cover from Fatboy’s side project. In 2008 Iggy Pop took a break from selling us car insurance to visit Norman Cook’s secret BPA bunker in Brighton and provide vocals for this cover of The Monochrome Set’s song, ‘He’s Frank’. In the annals of music history it will be mentioned that the track was then played on infamous catalyst of social collapse, Skins, and that further contributors to the BPA included David Byrne, Martha Wainright, Jamie T and the first black British Prime Minister, Dizzee Rascal.
Disco Drive
‘The Giant’
Italian punk-funkers Disco Drive have contributed this sensitive, fuzzy little animal to the March Cross Section. A small song this may be, but the band are no pushovers. They’ve cranked out several edgy, playful hits in their home country, exciting the Italian youth with their clever harmonies and innovative instrumentation – a sound reminiscent of Liars or the best of DFA’s output. ‘The Giant’ is, comparatively, a mellow, unobtrusive song. They do quiet, they do loud and they do do disco as well.
The Coast
‘Ceremony Guns’
Canada: crimeless, cold and full of bears. But The Coast serve to remind us that Toronto, their hometown, is really just a hop across the Canadian border from upstate New York. The band has carried all the sensitive, haunting depth of the NY scene way up north and this track heaps on the reverb with the same extra-large spoon as Brooklynites Yeasayer and Grizzly Bear, leaving the significance of the lyrics (“I’m lost in this riot / This riot deep inside.”) to linger somewhere, tantalisingly, just below the surface.
Marianne Faithfull
‘Salvation’
The guitars are grinding, the organ’s going crazy, the drum beat kicks in, and along drifts a lyric that you somehow recognise: “So, Jesus left you lonely / Feels like nothing’s really holy”. That’s right, it’s a Black Rebel Motorcycle Club song, the last track from their debut self-titled album. This cover takes the insistent, droning, rock ‘n’ roll sound of the original and twists it into a full on psych-out, headed by Faithfull’s hazy, nostalgic vocals that have lost none of their ’60s charm.
…And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead
‘Ascending’
Sing along to the vocals (except the bit in Spanish) then rock out to the guitar parts. This is typically rousing, chaotic stuff from the Texan group who almost disbanded in 2006. Thankfully, after an EP release last year, the band is back in ’09 with a world tour and a new full-length album, ‘Century Of Self’, featuring this anthemic track. The vocals overcut each other, the guitars hum and vibrate, then a slow chant rises out of the melee like an old sailor’s song remembered during a bar fight.
Sparks
‘Good Morning’
You wake up, hazy and hungover, next to a beautiful woman you don’t recognise. A fortuitous scenario here made hilarious by Sparks’ uncanny ability to pull genius, off-kilter lyrics out of the air: “I hope it’s just your laugh that is infectious”. Brothers Ron and Russell Mael released the new Sparks album ‘Exotic Creatures From The Deep’ in May last year, playing twenty consecutive shows in Islington to mark the release, and extending their reputation as one of the strangest, most intelligent and wittiest bands alive.
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