Ah Youth. . .

>Hey look, it's a new video from Girls.

Kind of sounds like East River Pipe or low-rent Beach Boys, and looks like what might happen if Urban Outfitters paid Harmony Korine to design heaven. Disheveled hipsters hang all over each other and eat in diners marked by ancient pinball machines.

Dumber in the Summer

Download 4 free mp3s by Lotus Plaza, Dent May, Thee Oh-Sees, and Hong Kong in the 60's

Lotus Plaza

The Deal: the guitarist from Deerhunter spends his free-time making songs that mimic the best Deerhunter songs. And that's not a jab. Sometimes EN-D wishes Deerhunter were this. . . predictable and consistantly enjoyable. RIYL: Deerhunter, My Bloody Valentine, Yo La Tengo Makes EN-D Feel Like: driving in a car with the windows down, finding backroads with steep hills that make your stomach queezy.

Dent May and His Magnificent Ukulele

The Deal: A Sailor from Texas turned EN-D onto Dent May, a former NYU film student living in Mississippi, writing whimsical little ditties on his ukulele. RIYL: The Magnetic Fields, Jens Lekman, Jonathon Richman Makes EN-D Feel Like: having a beer with friends, loafing around the streets of lazy, languid Lawrence, KS.

Hong Kong in the 60's

The Deal: Globetrotting Londonites create bittersweet pop songs with toy synths and tinny drum machines. If they were any sweeter they'd be lumped in with the scores of other keyboard projects. As it is, they've got just enough melancholy to balance out the candy-like hooks.
RIYL: The High Llamas, Stereolab, Air
Makes EN-D Feel Like: Perusing the aisles of a fine department store.

http://www.myspace.com/hongkonginthe60s

The Deal: A guy from San Fransisco forces his friends to play in his rockabilly freakout band, proving minimalism can still be cool if you slather on loads of reverb. RIYL: The Coachwhips, the Cramps, Panther Burns Makes EN-D Feel Like: drinking mooshine, starting fires, terrorizing the citizens of a small southern town.

6/27::: Nosaj Thing in Seoul

Seoul usually gets neglected when bands come through Asia. But a few dudes, namely Sighborg, are trying to change that. EN-D doesn't usually post about live shows but he really hopes this one goes smoothly, so he's giving it the coveted Fabulous Pleasure Bump of Approval. Up until a month ago he'd never heard of Nosaj Thing. As loyal FP-heads know, EN-D's more of a meat n' potatoes rock kind of guy, but he's been listening to the new album Drift and it's likely to stick around in the small stable of electronic ablums he listens to.

Here, just read the press report from Supercolorsuper, a promotion company that just popped out of Sighborg's belly.

Korean-American artist Nosaj Thing has been featured as an artist-to-watch in magazines like Fader, XLR8R, The New Yorker, and Nylon, and as one of Urb Magazine’s Next 1000 artists. He’s remixed Flying Lotus, Daedelus, Elliot Lipp, and Health, won Turntable Lab/Plastic Little’s remix contest featuring MF Doom, and won L.A.’s prestigious Project Blowed beat battle. He has shared the stage with the likes of DJ AM, Architecture in Helsinki, DJ Krush, Z-Trip, Flying Lotus, Free the Robots, Diplo, The Glitch Mob, and Daedelus. He has received regular airplay on BBC Radio One and Los Angeles’ KCRW, and is a staple and a crowd pleaser at L.A.’s underground hip-hop good time, Low End Theory. Comparisons run along with Ratatat, DJ Shadow, and Aphex Twin. A survey of his own record collection will turn up pieces from Boards of Canada, Stereolab, Radiohead, Daft Punk and Eric Satie.

Oh, and download some Mp3's from Nosaj Thing and Sighborg right here.

Nosaj Thing- Coat of Arms
Sighborg- Stack O' Camperbees

Nosaj Thing
http://www.myspace.com/nosajthing





Sighborg
http://www.myspace.com/sighborg


Bulssazo
http://www.myspace.com/bulssazo

covering Donut of the Heart, a J Dilla song
that samples the Jackson Five's All I Do Is Think Of You

Snatch the Sub Pop Sampler

EN-D's halfway through the Sub Pop Cybersex Digital Sampler (2009) and can confirm that it's pretty rad aside from the obligatory Fleet Foxes track that snoozes right along with heavy doses of reverb and patchouli. The Fruit Bats, and Mark Sultan are highlights so far, as well as Vetiver, who EN-D thought he hated due to their alliance with that scumbag (or maybe not???) Devendra Banhart. In general En-D is pleased. And what the hell, it's free.

Vetiver – Strictly Rule
Handsome Furs – I’m Confused
Mark Sultan – Hold On
Red Red Meat – Gauze
Obits – Pine On
The Vaselines – Son of a Gun
Fleet Foxes – Mykonos
Iron and Wine – Belated Promise Ring
Tiny Vipers - Dreamer
Zak Sally – Why We Hide
Fruit Bats – My Unusual Friend
Pissed Jeans – False Jesii Part 2
Grand Archives – Silver Among the Gold
Flight of the Conchords – Hurt Feelings

PS: EN-D found out about this through Very Short List

A Pavement Sighting

You probably know Pavement put out a reissue of Brighten the Corners this year. EN-D's still waiting, but not counting on, the potential reunion that pops up occasionally. The fab-five didn't do much to celebrate except have their most charming member Bob N accompany a humble young urbanite to IKEA as a nod to BTC's Spiral Stairs tune Date W/Ikea.



Notes:
1. Bob N wasn't this jovial when I talked to him a few years ago. He was serving as tour manager for Stephen Malkmus, and maybe he was tired or just tired of awkward fans who try to schmooze with him, but he was rather curt with me. Then again, I probably wasn't graceful. I think I asked him to recall some anecdote I'd read in Perfect Sound Forever, the bible of Pavement.
2. Thanks to every online newswire/blog on the Internet for discovering this video.
3. Air Mattresses aren't that bad, though I wouldn't want to sleep on one for months at a time.

June means Swine Flu

Download 5 Free Mp3s - the Bicycles, the 1990s, the Handsome Family, Karen Dalton, Kingsbury Manx

The Kingsbury Manx- Over the Oeuvre

The Manx' fifth LP is their first on their own boutique label, Oddessa. The North Carolina quartet stays with the previous formula though, dolling out the most gentle melodies around. This is the second track, a bouncy and infectious little number.

RIYL: the Byrds, the Sea and Cake, the Kinks

the 1990s-Kickstrasse

Who knows if there's a rivalry between 1990s and Franz Ferdinand, but Cookies was better than anything FF ever did. The new album, Kicks, isn't quite as urgent, though. Not as raw. Less guitar, more keyboard. In general EN-D's disappointed, though Kickstrasse is the kind of track that got EN-D hooked on the first album.

RIYL: David Bowie, Franz Ferdinand, Pulp

The Handsome Family- A Thousand Diamond Rings

After two lackluster albums, EN-D's favorite country band the Handsome Family are back with another winner, Honey Moon. It's a celebration of their twentieth wedding anniversary and another collection of lilting Appalachian mountain songs. A Thousand Diamond Rings displays everything EN-D loves about them, great guitar harmonies, Brett's great big baritone, and Renny's incredibly keen lyrics.

RIYL: George Jones, Merle Haggard, Uncle Tupelo

Another band cribbed from EN-D's girlfriend, the Bicycles are a bouncy, sugary, pop group from Toronto. Walk Away is about as dark as they get and it's still relentlessly upbeat. This is work-out music, assuming you're not too cool to be seen sweating.

RIYL: The New Pornographers, Elvis Costello, The Apples in Stereo

Karen Dalton-Something On Your Mind

Something On My Mind starts out with a huge, muffled bass. It sounds like something from the acid-rock era, or at least a revivalist band like the Warlocks. Then everything else kicks in and it goes to the other end of the spectrum, a beautiful, delicate song led by a drug-addicted Charokee woman with bad teeth and a jazzy, lithe voice. It's difficult to say what EN-D loves about this song, but the album cover captures the mood perfectly. It's tragic, melancholy, romantic, a portrait of the 60's as we imagine it.

RIYL: Bob Dylan, Billie Holiday, The Band

EN-D Oversteps His Boundary

Get White ESL Teacher's Funk

EN-D is your typical post-graduate indie-rock enthusiast. A former-college rock dj, lover of Pavement, reader of snooty fiction anthologies. Who is his to comment on funk? It's party music and EN-D is a rather curmudgeonly young man. He doesn't dance at parties. He won't join in any call & response chants, and he can't really keep time in anything but a simple 4/4. Afro-centric music may be far outside the bounds of his critiquing abilities, yet he cannot hide his adoration for sweaty, saucy funk. Though he plays bass with a pick he dreams of the day when he might be able to sit in with a air-tight group of musicians and laid down some devastating grooves. Still it's not to be. . . The world of funk is not his world. He can only gaze and wonder from afar.

But he has compiled a fantastic batch of singles. While White ESL Teacher's Funk is an homage to the genre that often inspires EN-D to dance and pivot in his underwear, it's also a nod to the mp3, the audio format that makes music truly democratic, for better or worse. EN-D did not compile this list by spending his Saturdays in the local record store, pouring through old vinyl. He simply downloaded some torrents and got some Stones Throw Records odds n' ends from E-music, picked out the duds, and there you go: a simply blistering mix of grooves. It seems that anyone can be a connoisseur there days.

(disclaimer: Some snobs might comment that a few of these bands aren't funk but rather Afro-beat or Soul, but all of them are of a heavily rythymic nature and far from what EN-D usually posts.)

Here's the roster. . .
Eddie Bo-Sissy Walk

The Ogyatanaa Show Band-Disco Africa
David Axelrod-You're So Vain
The Highlighters Band-Funky 16 Corners

Dayton Sidwinders- Slippin Into Darkness

Calyspo King and the Soul Investigators-Calypso Strut

The Daktaris-Musicawa Slit

Funkadelic-Good to Your Earhole

JD and the Evil Dynamite Band-Kalhari

Sugarman 3-So Funky

Juan Pablo Torres/Algo Nuevo-Son a Propulsion
Lee Fields-Let a Man Do What He Wanna Do