The fight for diverse and conscious voices

I have another huge backlog of open music tabs. This is all over the place, so let's start with some new stuff.

http://rcrdlbl.com/artists/Parenthetical_Girls/track/Careful_Who_You_Dance_With_Xiu_Xiu_Remix
Parenthetical Girls are new to me, though the Intarwebs says they've been around in one form or another for almost ten years. The present incarnation is very much post-grunge Northwest USA sound, which is about equal parts pop, intense young-male vocal, electro, and smooth post-production. The sound is rich and complex - it reminds me somewhat of early REM meets OK Go. If that doesn't make sense to you, then just listen and see if you like it.

http://rcrdlbl.com/artists/Gang_Gang_Dance/track/MindKilla
Gang Gang Dance (http://ganggangdance.com/) is another new-to-me act that has been around for a decade. Very different sound than P.G., though. This one tends toward heavy-bass and strong female vocals with interesting, sparse, and varied electronica backing. The set of styles on this mix is all over, including rasta-rapping from Tinchy Stryder, and lovely a capella harmonies on "House Jam" (the original), and Bjork-esque breathy bits on "MindKilla".

http://audioporncentral.com/2011/04/colatron-vs-reborn-identity-we-still-miss-you-double-pack.html
Trentemøller's "Miss You" has been a familiar friend for a couple years now. It's a little melancholy, but very beautiful. Perfect rainy summer-day music, I think. Or winter fireplace music, come to that. Here APC offers up two remix takes on the original. The first one is Colatron's "Someone’s Still Missing" and it does the trick of taking the Cubism Remix of the song, and mixing back in the original, but also drawing heavily on Vangelis's "Rachel's Song" and closing out with a sample from Blade Runner that just ties it all up beautifully.

The second is Reborn Identity's "I’ve Still Never Missed You" and it goes in a wholly different direction, using Charlene Duncan's "I’ve Never Been to Me". As you'd expect, this one has much more of an 80's pop feel to it and yet somehow the Trentemoller melancholy still permeates the track. I think it's not as good as the first but that's because I'm a closet Vangelis fangeek.

http://audioporncentral.com/2011/04/depeche-mode-personal-jesus-the-stargate-remix.html
I can't believe I somehow missed blogging this when I was talking about Royksopp's D.M. cover. This isn't a cover - it's the boys themselves, remixed. I might have mentioned that I spent a lot of time listening to D.M. back in the day. Somewhere along there I became convinced that "Personal Jesus" is a song about phone sex; of course, there's an "official" answer but that's kind of dull. This mix really makes me want to hear more of what they have in store - apparently there's a three CD set of remixes due out next month.

http://audioporncentral.com/2011/04/ben-double-m-policy-of-truth-miami-heat.html
It's apparently Depeche Mode month. Here we have Ben Double M working DM's "Policy of Truth" against Boy Hagemann’s beautiful electro-trance "Miami Heat" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_VJ1K_xLfg). The result is smooth and floaty and still just a little bit intense. I particularly like the way he spreads and stretches the DM tune to fit over the longer Hageman track without making it seem slowed down or unnaturally drawn out.

http://audioporncentral.com/2011/05/illegal-sunday-fissunix-end-of-the-walrus.html
This one is just a little bit brain-busting. Imagine taking Daft Punk's "End of the Line" from the recent Tron: Legacy, mixing in sound bits from Tron and Battlestar Galactica, and then mashing it up over The Beatles's original psychedelia "I am the Walrus." Yeah, it's that level of weird, but Fissunix makes it work.

Finally closing out the last set of music tabs so I can open new ones for next week.

http://www.kleptones.com/blog/
Let's start with the good and ugly. The Kleptones' latest, "Shits and Giggles" is out and it's amazing. Densely packed with all kinds of throwback goodness and modern fun. They've mixed it as a CD-length track with some obvious transition points between tracks so you can lift items and put them into mixes without having to chop things up too horribly.

And then there's the image they picked for the cover. Ugh. I just... sorry, that's fail. Awful doesn't begin to describe it.

http://belgabootlegs.be/audio.php
I confess I'm still working my way through this HUGE collection of mixes. There's so much here it's nearly impossible to pick out individual winners and losers. And I'll say up front that Ben Double M both has too much ego (OK, stop putting your name into every mix, we got it already) and an oddly quirky talent. He produces "enh" mixes from some great source and then he goes wandering off into Britney Spears of all things and produces really good mashes. I'm also liking his Bob Marley mixes, but when you start with source material that good you'd expect something good on the other side. But Britney? Impressive.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDxTriWlYiY
Speaking of Britney, one of my guilty pleasures is Eminem. I realize that he's problematic in all sorts of ways, from mere annoying egotism to grossly misogynist and offensive lyrics. But man can he sling a line and he's worked with some of the best producers in the business. Here we have DJs from Mars putting Eminem up against not one but two Britney tunes. And gods help me, it moves. So excuse me while I shut off the critic-brain and just dance.

http://rcrdlbl.com/artists/Matthew_Dear/track/Soil_To_Seed_
http://ghostly.com/releases/pom-pom
Usually when RCRD LBL is pimping an artist they give you links and downloads for each individual track in the stream. Sadly that's not the case here. Matthew Dear (http://www.matthewdear.com/) has a large body of work over a wide range of styles. I was just listening along, being entertained but not hugely impressed, when the stream hit "Pom Pom (The Juan Maclean Mix)." It's a very smooth disco-house mix that lifts one small vocal sample and builds around it. The result is haunting and not at all what I expected. A little Web searching led me to the Pom-Pom release page and samples from five mixes Juan Maclean... excuse me The Juan Maclean (http://www.myspace.com/thejuanmaclean) has done. These mixes are bloody brilliant, and well worth the time to hunt down. The fact that he's stealing riffs from P Funk did not influence me at all :)

http://audioporncentral.com/2010/08/bynar-broken-by-angels.html
Rob Dougan burst into my consciousness with his "Clubbed to Death" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pt-NvcuDVBc) track that featured so prominently in the climactic scenes of The Matrix. About 3 years later he released his "Furious Angels" CD and then promptly vanished. While Clubbed has been remixed dozens of times there are far fewer remixes of Angels. Now Bynar (http://www.djbynar.com/) gives us this luscious mix that includes two versions of Angels, two Leftfield (another under-appreciated band in my opinion), and some other samples. You can read the details on Bynar's page. Or you can just close your eyes and let this gorgeous, lush, and very slightly creepy mix wash over you.

Most of these tabs have been open for a while.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7d1cz16pAIc
I'm putting this one first because if I put it last you'll have the damned song stuck in your head for days. Like, say, me. DJs from Mars do their thing on Katy Perry, with the help of some seriously hair-era Van Halen. Further warning: a couple of people have found the video to be even more annoying than Ms Perry, which is going some. Personally I ignore the video in favor of imagining just where David Lee Roth would like to "put his hands up."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uozmvb3yPLc&feature=player_embedded
Toddla T (pronounced a lot like "Todd latte" - http://www.myspace.com/toddlat) is a young UK DJ who lays down here a serious boom-skank tune. High-speed, reggae-rapping courtesy of Wayne Marshall's (http://www.myspace.com/truwaynemarshall) Jamaican sounds. The video is silly but you don't have to watch it; just get up and dance.

http://audioporncentral.com/2010/07/dj-earlybird-everyones-on-cocaine.html
DJ Earlybird (http://fairtilizer.com/users/DJVU) puts out an unusual mash-up by combining two older tunes. The famous Clapton "Cocaine" lyrics go with the sounds of Hot Chocolate's 1978 disco hit "Every 1's a winner (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-GkwIRbLw8 - check out the PANTS!) What's interesting about this is that re-listening to the Hot Chocolate track, which I haven't heard in probably 25+ years, it sounds a lot like the guitar riffs Clapton used in Cocaine. It's worth remembering that Clapton didn't write Cocaine originally - it's a cover of a 1976 JJ Cale song, recorded in 1977 by Clapton.

http://audioporncentral.com/2010/07/ben-double-ms-summer-double-pack.html
Ben Double M (http://belgabootlegs.be/) is a European DJ with some definitive ideas on what's a remix versus what's a mash-up. This here is a double sampler of his work. The first one is a slow, electro-trance feeling mash using Massive Attack's "Teardrop" and some contributions I can't identify from Waterspark (http://www.myspace.com/infynitwaterspark) an Eastern European trance DJ. Ben speeds things up a little bit and adds a beat track to give the tune a house edge that works surprisingly well below the vocals and electronic instruments.

The second track is much more "meh" - I'm not a jazz/soul fan and wrapping disco beats around it doesn't really help.

http://audioporncentral.com/2010/07/the-glitch-mob-fistful-of-silence-eskmo-remix-the-remix-it-like-you-stole-it-competition.html
A much better set of beats comes from Glitch Mob (http://www.theglitchmob.com/) who have been running a remix competition to benefit Haiti. They've got an instrumental album out and have invited remixers to go at it; most put vocals on top, which is cool, but here Eskmo (http://www.myspace.com/eskmo) lays down some old-style electro and heavy sounds - shades of Jan Hammer.

http://audioporncentral.com/2010/07/sunday-girl-%E2%80%93-self-control-video-and-azari-iii-remix.html
Laura Branigan's early-80's hit "Self Control" gets a very modern makeover here from Sunday Girl (http://www.myspace.com/wearesundaygirl). The single came out early this month in several remixed versions, with this one having an etherial and haunting electro texture courtesy of Azari and III (http://www.myspace.com/azariandiii). The a capella version on Sunday Girl's page is pretty thickly produced, which is a shame. I think her voice sounds better with the effects turned down and instead laid over the Azari beats.