30/10/2007

Rewind the video : Andreas Dorau

Eighties pop to the extreme : that would be the only good way to describe how this song sounds. Andreas Dorau's Fred vom Jupiter (mp3), a German song which you don't have to understand to enjoy, is as eighties as it could be. In fact, this could as well have been posted in my 80's theme...

This video breathes amateurism, which is exactly which makes it so irresistable ! I wonder whose children have painted the background and made the rocket for Fred...

29/10/2007

Lazy Monday : Amsterdam Assholes

Amsterdam Assholes is the live project of DJ Sandrien, a co-operation with Wouter Hisschemoller.

Enjoy these tracks :

  • Boormachine
  • Da ga mooi nie door da feest

Buy the record here

27/10/2007

A lot of Sigur Ros music

I do so adore Sigur Ros !
Listen to all of these tracks :

This is the video for Hoppipolla :

You can buy their records here

Cem Karaça

Music blogs have set me on the trail of numerous artists I had never even heard of, and I consider myself someone who knows quite a bit what's around in music though...
One of the discoveries I made through such a blog, was the Turkish artist Cem Karaça. He fled Turkey about a year before the 1980 military coup and it wasn't until 1987 that he could return under strict conditions about not doing any political actions. He had lived in Germany as an exile and he died in Istanbul in 2004. In the video to the song I like best of this artist, he looks a bit like a Zappa-esque bohemian, and his gesticulating is really intruiging...



Enjoy these tracks :
  • Namus belasi - Cem Karaça (mp3)
  • Suya giden alli gelin - Cem Karaça & Apaslar (mp3) : it starts a bit like California über alles by Dead Kennedys

You can buy Cem Karaça music here

25/10/2007

I'm (not) from Barcelona

I am not, and neither is Emanuel Lundgren (he's from Sweden !). But he and his friends have brought some of the purest pop music of the last years, and I still can't help smiling every time I listen to We're from Barcelona, their big hit...
Enjoy these tracks :

  • We're from Barcelona (mp3)
  • Treehouse (mp3)

Buy their record here

18/10/2007

Rewind the video : Aphex Twin

It takes more than 4 minutes in this 10 minute video before the music even starts, and we get to be served a whole lot of explicit language before it does (and I really, really mean a lot of explicit language !) Then some guy with Michael Jackson-like dance moves gets out of an extremely long car and the song itself sounds like a nice melodic tune that has been crushed by a train. Every time your ears get comfortable with it, some weird cut-up or breakbeat makes them alert again. And as on the sleeve of the vynil edition of the single (which I happen to have in my possession), Richard D James, aka Aphex Twin, does something funny/strange with the heads and bodies...

And the weirdest part yet has to come... The video ends as if the movie has ended, with all the credits rolling over your screen. Enjoy it !

You can buy Aphex Twin music here

15/10/2007

Lazy Monday : Pompelmoessap

Pompelmoessap is Dutch for "grapefruit juice", so when I stumbled upon this song I was a little intrigued by the band name. I found out that Pompelmoessap is a Swiss minimal techno act that seem to have released only one EP so far, Winters are getting shorter.


Enjoy this track : Untapped terrain (mp3)


Buy the EP here

14/10/2007

Album of the week : Puta's fever - Mano Negra

I remember that the first song of the 1990 edition of the Rock Torhout festival that I could properly listen to after having entered the festival site, was a cover (didn't know that then, however) of Bobby Fuller's I fought the law. The band that opened the festival was having a massive radio hit with King kong five, and their mix of all kinds of languages and all kinds of music genres blew me off my feet.
Today their lead singer Manu Chao has a relatively succesfull solo career, but I still prefer their breakthrough album Puta's fever.
It has witty lyrics in French (Pas assez de toi, La rançon du succès) as well as Spanish and even Arabic sung songs. It has punch, a sort of gypsy punk attitude, but also downtempo songs that touch your heart.

Enjoy these songs :

  • Rock 'n roll band (mp3)
  • King kong five (mp3)
  • Sidi h' bibi (mp3)
  • El sur (mp3)

You can buy the album here

Next week's album of the week : The fat of the land - Prodigy

13/10/2007

Somebody's watching me

Antwerp based band Capsule have released a very well-sleeved debut album, Haunted house, in 2006. It has a very goth-like look, but actually the music rather bluesy and jazzy. On the album they cover Screamin' Jay Hawkins' I put a spell on you, as well as a rather surprising Rockwell cover : Somebody's watching me (mp3).

You can buy the album here

This is the video to the original Rockwell song :

Explosions in the sky

It's hard to imagine that a band that plays instrumental post-rock would ever score hit singles. Explosions In The Sky probably never will, but anyone with ears should take a good listen to them. They sound absolutely fabulous, and a friend of mine who has seen them live earlier this year, claims they are phenomenal.

Enjoy this song : Yasmin the light (mp3)

You can buy their albums here

New Grace Potter video

Grace Potter & The Nocturnals (read this and this post) have released a second single from their album This is somewhere.
You can watch the video for Ain't no time here :


Grace Potter and the Nocturnals "Ain't No Time" from John Furnari on Vimeo.

07/10/2007

RMX : Bring it on - Goose

This is a Belgian band that invariably got picked to be the band with the best live show on all the major Belgian festivals they've played the last two years : Goose !

Enjoy the remix for their latest single :

Bring it on (Tronik Youth edit) (mp3)
Bring it on (album version) (mp3)

Watch the video :





Buy their debut album Bring it on here

02/10/2007

Album of the week : This is somewhere - Grace Potter & The Nocturnals

Think Bonnie Raitt ! Think Heather Nova (on Oyster or Siren) !
Yes, now you've reached the place where you could meet and hear Grace Potter...
On her latest album This is somewhere, she and her band bring you songs which we could so easily call americana. Personally, I prefer the uptempo songs (like Mr Columbus, Ah Mary and Mastermind), but you've got to give it to them : they bring us some brilliant slows, on which I'd dance with a beautiful woman any time of day ! Apologies (tears almost have to well in your own eyes listening to this) and Falling or flying (never heard anyone sound like Heather Nova this much, not being Heather Nova herself...) have musicians taking you along on their trip and a voice heavy with cigarette smoke and heartache.
I regret to say I don't think Grace Potter will ever become big here in Belgium (haven't heard of her on the radio yet, so if it weren't for the internet, I would have remained in oblivion about her too...) : this is just not the kind of music many over here listen to, but hey... they're so wrong !
Think Bonnie Raitt and think Heather Nova, and think even better : that's where you'll find Grace Potter ! And keep listening to her album, over and over again...

Enjoy this song : Ah mary (mp3)

Listen to all songs on the album on her website, under Media.
Buy the album here

Newt week's album of the week : Puta's fever by Mano Negra

New Radiohead album

Radiohead will be "self-releasing" their new album, which happens a lot earlier than expected...
In rainbows can be ordered as a download, or in a special discbox (containing the CD, an extra CD, 2 12" heavyweight vinyl records, artwork and lyrics booklets). And... you choose how much you value that, cause there's no fixed price !
It all sounds pretty revolutionary to me !

You can pre-order here

01/10/2007

Lazy Monday : Daniël Lohues

It must be over a year now since I got acquainted with Daniel Lohues, a Dutch singer-songwriter who sings in his own language, which is a Dutch dialect ( Drenthes ), over the fantastic internet radio of Kink FM, a radio station that got no spot on the FM band in The Netherlands and which can only be heard on the internet and through cable.
I really love this simple song, which comes as a love story at first, but which really tells the tale of nostalgia and of how you change from being a young lad starting to discover the world to a grown-up who's been around...
Enjoy it yourself : Annelie (mp3)

You can listen to fragments of each song on the album Allennig here
You can buy the album Allennig here

Manic Street Preachers

Although the Manic Street Preachers keep releasing new albums, I love their earlier work a lot more.
To explain this, I've collected some of their older songs for you :
  • Motorcycle emptiness (mp3) : their first hit single over here, and the one which won them my ear for quite a long time... It must have been the combination of the raw (motorcycle) and the sad (emptiness)...
  • La tristesse durera (mp3) : French lines sung by an English speaking band (even if they are Welsh...), it keeps sounding quite funny in a way, but still... a very good song !
  • If you tolerate this your children will be next (mp3) : an anti-fascist song with a title that has multiple meanings really...
  • Suicide is painless (mp3) : the theme from M.A.S.H. covered by the Manics... how cool is that !
  • A design for life (mp3) : just a simple example as to how to succeed in striking the right chord...

Enjoy these tracks, which can all be found on Forever delayed which you can purchase here