hey man, slow down

Grizzly Bear - While You Wait For The Others

*applause*

xxx

bye bye bye, i'm going away now. have a radiohead song!

I'm going to America, leaving in about 6 hours. And I should probably sleep in between now and then, so I'll keep this brief. I'm not gonna back from about 6 weeks. I figured I should tell you, my devoted readers. Y'know, all three of you or whatever :)

But I might write a little from time to time over the next 6 weeks, and more importantly, hopefully Joe might continue his contributions, which I have to say are awesome and awesome and good. Not like, the first one's awesome, the second one's awesome and the third one's good, just that all three can be described, individually and as a whole, as "awesome and awesome and good". So there.

Here's a beautiful song:

mp3: [mp3 removed]
(from Hail to the Thief)

And here's a song:

i know you're on to something

http://www.thedears.org/files/

http://www.woostercollective.com/

xxx

Snoop Dogg in Bollywood - the video is here. And AWESOME.

Snoop's sex is most definitely on fire.



"Singh is King / And Snoop D. O. Double-G is also the King, ya dig what I mean?"
Yes Snoop, we most definitely dig what ya mean. No questions asked.
There's a moment at 4:20 where he's playing the bongos that made my stomach muscles hurt. With laughter.

*resists urge to end words with '-izzle'*

i was just waiting for you

The Wrens - Sleep

from Rock the Net

Excuse me, sir, but I think you'll find that your sex is on fire.

xxx

Late of the Pier - 'Heartbeat (Hot Chip Remix)'

Late of the Pier and Hot Chip are possibly the two most exciting names in British electronicky-indie. After a run of brilliant and eclectic singles, Late of the Pier are finally about to release Fantasy Black Channel, their pretty-much-brilliant debut album, the third of two-and-a-half Erol Alkan-produced 2008 indie records (the equally brilliant Twenty One by Mystery Jets, plus half of the slightly underwhelming "Couples" by The Long Blondes).

'Heartbeat' is the pre-album single (you can download it and watch the video here). This is the Hot Chip remix (yeah, I kinda said that already didn't I?). Despite my adoration for Hot Chip as an artist in their own right (they were one of the highlights of Glastonbury this year), their remixes (Winehouse, Ladytron &c) have thus far somewhat failed to stick with me. This here's my favouritest one so far. It's slightly strange, almost like three or four separate remixes glued together, but manages to pull off the twin (often seemingly mutually exclusive) goals of remixery: be different from the original and still end up as a coherent whole that works in its own right. What d'ya think? Please leave comments. Please...

mp3: [mp3 removed]

(buy Fantasy Black Channel here)

Biffy Clyro's New Single - 'Mountains'

Is this not the greatest artwork EVER? Two lions wrestling each other. In the ocean. Beneath an iceberg. Or maybe the whole thing's in the sky and the 'iceberg' is just some crazy light effect. Whatevah. And it looks a bit like the Jaws poster. Doesn't it just scream "MANLY BEARDED MAN" or something like that?

Anyway, only 14 months after the release of the fantastic Puzzle, Biffy bring us another single, which is out on August 25. No clue if anything else will follow in the near future, but I'd guess that this is just a inter-album stop-gap. But that would kinda imply that the song sucks a little, and that would be a falsehood as big as them lions.

Biffy have turned into a massive great singles band, and this continues their run. I'd listen to it again in order to be able to say something more detailed and clever about it, but I'm currently listening to the Bon Iver album, and I don't want to disturb it's quiet brilliance with the bombast of Biffy. So just download, listen and be happy, yo.

mp3: [mp3 removed]

(go to their official site and buy tickets for their December tour, it's gonna be more than semi-mental - see, Biffy fans, I did a jokey-jokey - "hahahahaha" is the noise you should be making right about now...)

Oh, and you can watch the video here. Yay!

New Kings of Leon! New Kings of Leon! New Kings of Leon! 'Sex On Fire'! 'Sex On Fire'! 'Sex On Fire'!

Me tres excited about the new Kings of Leon album. Zane Lowe shares the sentiment, this being his Hottest Record In The World Right Now last night. He called them something like "the greatest back-catalogue band of their generation", which, even if it kinda sounds like a back-handed compliment, I think is a fairly succinct way of summing up the fact that they have one of the solid-est repertoires of any band that have been around for a similar length of time. This is the myspace rip of the new single, out to download September 8 if I remember correctamente:

mp3: [mp3 removed]
(from their MySpace)

As far as I'm concerned, they still haven't put a foot wrong, and I trust the album will see their altissimo standards maintained and surpassed. Objectivity schmobjectivity.
On a scale of ace-ness of first singles off Kings of Leon albums, this probably rates somewhere higher than 'On Call', but despite the brilliance of the title, for me it doesn't quite hit 'The Bucket' levels of bliss. But still, this is my most anticipated album right now. So there.

Muse & The Streets create music together for your listening pleasure or otherwise - 'Who Knows Who'

Wikipedia says that this leaked "early in 2008", which somewhat steals my thunder, but this record was Zane Lowe's Hottest Record In The World Right Now earlier tonight, and the news of its leak only just hit NME.com - well, here it is:

mp3: Muse & The Streets - Who Knows Who

This isn't slated to appear on Everything Is Borrowed, the new Streets album, out September 15. I don't know how/if it will be released, but the presence of everybody's favourite live band Muse is surely enough for a certain amount of sales, and therefore, from the record label's perspective, should warrant some kind of release. I can picture the advertisement on iTunes already...

Anyways - is it any good? Yeah I guess. I was never a maaaassive fan of Mike Skinner, and this is certainly The Streets feat. Muse rather than vice versa, for there aren't any Matt Bellamy vocals. Rage Against The Machine is the obvious reference point, but a very much British-ified version. If you're one of the many thousands of hardcore Muse fans then you're gonna download this, but I'm not sure you're gonna love it. I think the respective fan bases of Muse and The Streets don't cross over a huge amount. On a Venn diagram the middle bit would be fairly small imho. I could very well be completely wrong, especially given the fact that The Streets supported Muse at one of their Wembley dates in 2007. Your call...