Monday, June 30, 2008  12:05 am 

Cowboys

The image of Snake Plissken advancing stealthy down the mesas, sliding in between the small flows of life that flourish in the desert at night like a shark tracking down the scent of his prey in the air so still, desert foxes, coyotes and wild dogs staring on his wake like a visitation from a world even more feral than theirs, all of this while the sun starts announcing its arrival with lines of blood-light in the eternal horizon is one that 20JFG would pay dearly to see.As it is, the soundtrack for that potential scene will have to do, but then, what a fucking soundtrack this is.

Ass- Escape from NY (Main Title)

Ass’ ‘My Get Up and Go Just Got Up and Went‘ is the sound of John Fahey looking at the skies with the eyes of some kosmische sorcerer, and then reporting back slow and furious battle between constellations.

It is RVNG OF THE NRDS time again, so get ready for something good.

Wade Nichols, alter ego of one of our favourite edit wizards out there steps in the ring of fire in the new 12” that these defenders of everything that is good and beautiful are putting out. In this occasion the source of joy are three ridiculously awesome edits of AM radio classics, so far we have identified two of them, America’s ‘A Horse with No Name’ and Canned Heat’s ‘Wanda Rode Again’, here you have the latter, where the mournful country blues one-two one-two of the original is skilfully transformed into a barnyard stomper racing metronomic through highways of loneliness to show us an epic western landscape covered in white clouds like the hands of god were stretching to comfort us, somewhere in between Bill Calahan’s demesne of despair and Black Mountain’s Appalachian hut, frankly incredible stuff, get it here.

Wade Nichols- Wanda Rode Again

Oh, and if you are in Scotland this week, you could do waaaaay worse than go to this

labels >> Ass, IGETRVNG, Wade Nichols, xxjfg

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Friday, June 27, 2008  11:25 am 

Eerie letters from the new

Welcome to my house! Enter freely, go safely, and leave some of the happiness you bring! … I am our Lady of Shadows, and I bid you welcome to this palace of darkness and dust, Gorgo, Mormo, the moon of a thousand faces always shines yellow and malevolent upon its spires, a wraith awaits around every corner and a gypsy curse lies hidden behind each door ready to spring like a bloated spider from its secret trap, our beds are soiled with the blood of virgins, and if you stare through the windows you shan’t see the dreadful and nebulous landscapes you crossed to arrive to these steps, but inconceivable dimensions of madness and lust with which this palace communicates, a gift from forces beyond your understanding earned through the undertaking of a thousand perverse deeds, this is the stuff that nightmares are made of, but then are they not sweeter than the dirge of that grey reality with which most mortals have to contend?

I see you look unsettled, it does take some time getting accustomed to the darkness, here, I’ll leave you in the hands of the Children of the Night, they will help you feel at home, listen to them, what music they make!

Fan Death sound like a black cat with iridescent emerald eyes fucking around with a mouse prior to its cruel, playful but intensely focussed dismemberment, oh, and disco, that string motif that kicks off ‘Veronica’s Veil’ grabs us by the pink lapels, hurls us in the centre of a dancefloor and impales our flesh with a merciless swarm of arrows so that we can become the late 70s NYC equivalent of St. Sebastian as painted by il Sodoma, taken to a quasi-religious ecstasis by the incandescent brilliance of the music engulfing us, black like sin and sweet like salvation.

Writing a exultant disco song about a legendary relic used to wipe Jesus’ blood and sweat during the Stations of the Cross strikes us of genius, as is the way in which they create an alternative night vision to that of our beloved Italian stars Glass Candy, perhaps more muscular and upbeat, tracing the path of progressive masters Cerrone or Rinder and Lewis after they got lost in the crimson halls of Helena Markos’ Palace, just check out the rest of their stuff and understand why they might well be our new favourite band.

Fan Death - Veronica’s Veil

Gatekeeper should have hailed from Haddonfield, Illinois, all cramped muscles, tension and the paranoia of a nebulous hallucination forever dancing in the periphery of your vision, their icy synthetic progressions unfurl in front of us like black pillars of smoke raising in the desolate streets of an empty suburban landscape from which everyone disappeared one spring night, TV still on, dinner cooling in the kitchen table, swings in a garden creaking ever so slightly, we still wonder what happened.

Or a silver blade held by a velvet fist cast in iron essaying a message of pain in the vertebrae of your spine, but not quite willing to deliver it yet, it’s all dark shit, dark the way we like it.

As it is they come from Chicago, which suits us fine and makes sense inasmuch their music has something of the Warehouse, just listen to ‘Mirrors’, which comes across like some sort of nightmarish scenario where Nitzer Ebb jacked Philip Glass studio during the recording of the Candyman soundtrack to inflict upon us one of the most gloriously macabre pieces of synthetic horror music we have had the pleasure to enjoy for a while, we can imagine such tableaux of carnage to these sounds! Sweet!

Gatekeeper - Mirrors

In a city that never sleeps where the icey rain washes away the blood from a thousand slayings of the innocent, Diamond Vampires work at nite, lit by the dark side of the Moon. They lounge in the penthouse of a monolithic citadel that towers over the blue glass and granite landscape, they’re pale vampirian flesh as cold as the brushed steel of the synthesisers that hum and click in a obsidian refrain of maddening mid tempo terror.

Its Friday nite in the city and all hell will break loose past the midnite hour. But until then, Diamond Vampires begin the chase for the blood of the innocent by constructing musical crystals from the frozen liquid in the stratosphere that then rains down rhythmically onto the phosphorescent spires of the unholy churches chiming a deeply malevolent beat, punctuated with slow motion attacks from the shadows by pan-dimensional creatures.

Diamond Vampires - Friday Nights

The day draws in and the violence from the previous nite is left encased in crystalline structures, the faces of the victims twisted, wide mouthed and bug-eyed in the last moments of terror. To escape the piercing burn of the sun, Diamond Vampires have retreated to the basement where they conspire with a coven of cosmopolitan witches to bring about sheets of rolling thunder and daggers of jagged lightning that will dance across the city with static discopic energy.

Diamond Vampires - Hungry Wives

Disco with a horror edge will always prick up the ears of your 2OJFG acolytes, and we thank the gods that Diamond Vampires have only just begun constructing the sound of Chromatics synths recreating the sounds in Ian Curtis’ head and then cross-processing it with the most potent strains of space disco viruses and recording the whole thing in black and white underground tunnels.

labels >> Diamond Vampires, Fan Death, Gatekeeper

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Thursday, June 26, 2008  11:12 am 

Get real!

Vivian Girls’ S/T album  encapsulates all that made C-86 great, that fortunate connection between Spectorian Pop and Post-Punk lo-fi, topped up with a good dose of cavernous feedback which makes us think of the ‘Girls in the Garage‘  compilations, i.e. teen turmoil unfurls over a spanking 60s psyche beat, natty!

This is an In The Red affair after all, but it wouldn’t be out of place in the distinguished catalogue of Sympathy for the Record Industry, just check out the awesome ‘Alright This Time Just The Girls’ pts. 1 & 2.

Somehow in between the angelic melodies of Love is All and the charismatic raucousness of Mika Miko or Times New Viking, with a pinch of B52s, ‘Tell the World’s’ conjunction of chugga-chugga take no prisoners rhythm and reverb drenched instinctive incantations cast in a shadowy voodoo bedroom (that’s what this music is for) is the kind of song I would have put in every single cassette mixtape for a friend back in the 90s when I used to wear stripy tops. As it is, I am putting in this erm, ‘virtual’ cassette mixtape for you guys, because I heart you.

Vivian Girls- Tell the World

As you well know, we have been keeping an eye on Abe Vigoda, smiling delighted as they ride the skies in a rhythmic walkaround full of jaunty melodic pirouettes , well, we have their ‘Skeleton’ album now and the promise is fulfilled, all those hits you have already danced to like crazy in the discotheque are included, as well as a few tunes we hadn’t heard yet, all of ‘em upholding the proud heritage of supreme nerdy masters of jangly discoid post-punk Talking Heads with illuminated & fierce spirit.

This is party music which is both passionate, intelligent and good natured, kind of twee, but in the right way. It makes Vampire Weekend sound like the second-rate ska act they are without even trying because it’s not about that, the Paul Simon’s ‘Graceland’ reference is truly valid for these kids, not plain wishful thinking.

They plant the seeds of a tree and the tree grows and its leaves spread towards the sun and the sun rains a shower of light upon them in the same way in which we stretch our fingers to touch something pretty, so that shadows of strange species of bird with wild eyes and colourful plumage flying up high in the sky, and free, can be projected upon the ground to dance jittery over the patch of luscious green where we stand, as we said, smiling, sweet, sweet!

Abe Vigoda- Dead City/Waste Wilderness

&&&

We mentioned Times New Viking above, well, they have teamed up with the excellent folks at Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction to bring us some t-shirts which are ace and true (hippies are the new punks, punks are the new avant garde, and new wave hippies should listen to Psychedelic Horseshit), get them here before they run out! (the Paper Rad ones are also well sweet, of course)

labels >> Vivian Girls, abe vigoda, xxjfg

  4 Comments »  

Wednesday, June 25, 2008  12:01 am 

Get colonial!

image supplied by Tommyboy

Codek is a relentless tidal wave of synthesised arpeggiated surf breaks and polyester primary coloured bongo loops. This faux 70’s wave is crashing upon the beaches of Afro-disco like a thundering black-watered leviathan, leaving the sunbathers drenched with dance music. If Italians Do It Better are the label of the year, then Codek is most definitely the sleeper hit of 2008, an island of reworked gems in a sea of re-edits, releasing perfectly crafted records that bring old classics back to the party.

Sounds Superb, Vol.3 holds a series of awesome edits, just as great as the first two volumes. Answers on a postcard/comments box entry as to what the anagrams are, but first off “Fredric Sinful” presents a disjointed prog Moon landing with ‘Crater Sands’, then In Flagranti themselves break open the lesbian porn stash during the beer-drenched and cocaine-flecked frat party with ‘Rush’ and Brennan Green covers Freddie Mas’ ‘Tails of Prevalance’ turning it into a seance to resurrect the spirit of Bobby Gillespie (y’know, before he listened to Electroclash and had any remnants of talent sucked out by rock vampire, Kate Moss).

Borke Woerter - Foe Tim Out

However, we will centre on the entry known as ‘Foe Tim Out’ by “Borke Woeter”, the most italotastic creation on the 12″, with copious laser squelches and all the hotness that a kazoo-like bassline can bring to a lowly dancefloor such as the one that revolves in the minds of your dear 2OJFG peeps. This is probably a re-edited track that should be glaringly obvious but its more the music than the identity that we are here for and we are too busy whirling through the star-spangled heavens in time with the phasing vocoderbeats to care much for confirmation of an original.

Compost have seen fit to finally issue a sequel to one of the best cosmic disco compilations of the past few years, “Elaste: Slow Motion Disco” as compiled by DJ Mooner. Volume 2 is compiled and mixed by Tom Wieland of 7 Samurai / Panoptikum, who speeds things up but still keeps the disco pumping on the dancefloor of vintage Battlestar Galactica.

Rufus and Chaka Khan - Ain’t Nobody (Frankie Knuckles Hallucinogenic Dub)

The mix ends with Chaka Khan’s classic ‘Aint’ Nobody’ remixed by Frankie Knuckles. the Chicago warehouse rave seems to be caught in some type of time flux where a robotic string quartet are slowly melting into the ether and sound is dragged into a central rift in space and expelled continually over itself across a volley of laser percussion and keys. Chaka eventually arrives from the heavens on a hologramatic cloud to chant the main refrain while versions of herself in mist-like forms reverberate around her.

labels >> borke woerter, chaka khan, codek, frankie knuckles

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Monday, June 23, 2008  12:05 am 

Get celestial!

If you liked that song we posted some time ago with Pete Tosh singing exalted about smoking doobie while dancing to tropical disco then you are going to love this one.

We first heard Junior Byron’s ‘Dance to Music’ in the astonishing James Murphy/Pat Mahoney Fabriclive cosmic/physical trip, it was one of those cuts that sounded simply timeless, a fantastic hybrid of slowed down italo strutting and warm reggae vibes with an uplifting synth riff wrapping things up into the sort of package that Kraftwerk would surely have taken home for research purposes.

We encourage you to dance soaked by the rain of kisses of its utopian mantra, as they fall from a pastel coloured sky which is the interface between our world and some constellation of love shining strong in the midst of the darkness of space. Dance. to. the. music.

Junior Byron- Dance to the Music

We know that Carl Craig is a genius, but it would be unfair and stupid not to take our proverbial hats off and genuflect in front of his aural image every time he pulls another piece of heart-rending music of the sleeve of his sorcerer’s robe, printed with the schemata of computer chips which connect with each other to deliver a message of electronic beauty. Here he compresses Ayumi Hamasaki’s j-pop drama oddyssey ‘Part of Me’ into a carriage of electric impulses circulating the reticle of a Tron style scenario under a gradient many tones of blue, accessing different regions of a RAM memory full of synthetic constructs of melancholy and longing that sound more real than the real thing.

We encourage you to stare at the night sky from the window of that train you travel in drenched loneliness across an anonymous urban landscape, because you might hear the stars singing you this song.

Ayumi Hamasaki- Part of Me (Carl Craig Instrumental Remix)

Photo of Bladerunner styles Tokyo above taken from here

labels >> Junior Byron, carl craig

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