Com Truise – Galactic Melt

I’ve been listening to the new Com Truise LP Galactic Melt quite a bit since it was released a few weeks ago and it hasn’t let me down yet when it comes to thinking I’ve taken a trip back to the eighties. I’m a huge fan of Truise’s (real name Seth Haley) Komputer Cast mixes, and Galactic Melt fits well alongside them when it comes to perfecting what he calls “mid-fi synth-wave, slow-motion funk.” Everything here sounds exactly like it could have been created two decades ago; from a synth perspective he just nails a digital warmth from beginning to end.

VHS Sex and Hyperlips are my two favorite tracks at the moment, both of which are available below. I don’t think the VHS Sex video is anything official by Com Truise, but it’s equally perfect and hilarious.

Com Truise Website

Purchase Galactic Melt on iTunes

James Blake Live on NPR World Cafe

Via Pitchfork.com I just found this link to a great three-song live performance by James Blake for NPR’s World Cafe. The only live song by Blake I’d heard – and the first song I heard by him – was The Wilhelm Scream, and even after that it was hard to tell exactly how the sometimes sparse arrangements would work live. The first live song performed here is the excellent cover of Feist’s Limit To Your Love shows the variety he can throw into a live tune; I’d be willing to bet the song could be performed differently every time it’s played and always be great.

James Blake Official Website

Listen to James Black live on NPR World Cafe

Light Asylum – In Tension EP

I guess Light Asylum’s EP In Tension has been out for far longer than I realized given that it only became available on iTunes this week. I could be wrong… who knows. What matters is that I loved the hell out of the track Dark Allies, and each of the three tracks that accompany it on this EP stand up really well to the dark vibe in that song. Dark Allies and Skull Fuct (YouTube audio below) better both be used in the some sci-fi-apocalyptic-end-of-world movie as long as 80s new wave fashion is involved along with cheap explosions and asymmetrical face paint.

LightAsylum.com

Buy Light Asylum – In Tension EP on iTunes

Glasvegas – Euphoria /// Heartbreak \\\

We’re about halfway through 2011 and there have already been some phenomenal albums this year, and Glasvegas’ new album Euphoria /// Heartbreak \\\ is easily one of my favorites. I was a huge fan of their first album and was lucky to see them from onstage at Lollapalooza a few years ago when we had VIP passes. This new album is a huge leap forward in a sense that the whole thing flows as if it’s one giant emotion of a song. I’ve not really read much of what it’s about, but there’s some heavy stuff going on here for singer James Allan. It’s gotten great reviews and the opening  track combination of Pain Pain, Never Again and The World Is Yours really sets the tone for the entire album.

The first video below is the office video from Glasvegas for the song Euphoria, Take My Hand. The second video is a stunning live version of opening track The World Is Yours, performed on Swedish TV show Nyhetsmorgon. Give the album version a listen; this version is almost completely stripped down to vocals and should make the hair on your neck stand up if you’re familiar with the regular version.

Glasvegas Website

Click here to buy Euphoria /// Heartbreak \\\ on iTunes.

Weezer – Tired of Sex

This is a good-mood Friday song, and easily ranks in the top five best opening tracks on a rock album for me. I never checked out anything newer than Pinkerton; no offense to Weezer but the Blue Album and Pinkerton can’t be topped.

Battles – Gloss Drop

When Battles album Mirrored came out in 2007 I felt like they had something I should have liked – the video for Atlas was really cool – but the music did nothing for me. Most of the songs I listened to were just an annoyance. So it was with total surprise that I sampled new album Gloss Drop on iTunes and actually really liked what I heard. Immediatly recognizable was the lack of manipulated cartoonish vocals, which was the one thing I disliked the most about Mirrored. With former frontman Tyondai Braxton gone from the lineup, vocals have been taken on by a variety of guests throughout the album, with second song Ice Cream ending up as my favorite, with vocals by Matias Aguayo.

Gloss Drop feels like a perfect summer album no matter how frantic and chaotic it can be at times. There’s a ton of complex musical creativity going on here, and while it’s not something I’d listen to frequently, I like the range of weirdness and instrumentation. Semi NSFW video for Ice Cream posted below.

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Mogwai – Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will

Mogwai just released their newest album this week, entitled Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will. A perfect Mogwai album title as always, though I have to say that’s the strangest cover art of theirs ever. It’s just not very “Mogwai,” although I absolutely love the photo. I’ve had this album on heavy rotation since Tuesday and it’s hard to describe, but there’s a heavy Sonic Youth sound on a few of the songs. The second track, Mexican Grand Prix, for example, may as well have Kim Gordon singing in her often used raspy and unintelligible voice behind a pretty steady rhythm. The standout track to me, though, is track 4, Death Rays. It’s everything a perfect Mogwai song can be when they’re doing something uplifting instead of destroying the world around them with darkness. Not that I don’t like that any less… but over the past few albums they’ve really added some cheerfulness to their sound. The guitar that comes in at 3:56 in the song just floors me in it’s simple ability to cut through the same overall song like a sword. Letters to the Metro is probably the slowest song on the album, and I’d love to know what inspiration Chicago’s Metro could be considering they’ve played there plenty of times over the years.

I’ve been a huge Mogwai fan for more than ten years now and they’re a band that are just special to me. Nobody else comes close to making music like this and after seeing them live three times all this album does is make me look forward to seeing them again in full guitar assault glory.

Mogwai – Hardcore Will Never Die on iTunes

Mogwai Official Web Site

James Blake – The Wilhelm Scream

It’s official, I’m on the James Blake bandwagon and I’m loving every second of this guy’s music. I could listen to this song all day and overall all of his songs are some of the best headphone songs I’ve heard in a long time. In fact, after a morning of doing exactly that while on a 3 hour bus ride to snowboard this past weekend, I really prefer it on headphones and though it’s good on Alesis computer speakers, the swirl of autotuned vocals and the buildup of reverb is really stunning when it’s contained to your ears.

For the uninitiated, Blake is a 22 year old electronic composer from London who gained some popularity within the dubstep genre within the past few years. His newest music is some often seriously minimal material mixed with almost mechanical manipulation to the vocals – songs shift from thick reverb and autotune to practically garbled and indecipherable words, only to let some synth tones or minimal beats come in and take over. Many of the songs consist of elements that, on their own aren’t all that special, but when combined across a song fit perfectly as if you’re looking at some post modern art collage: altogether it just works and the result is nothing but infectious. My favorite song on the new self0-titled album, I Never Learnt To Share, is unfortunately not on YouTube anymore, but is probably worth the price of the whole album alone.

Listen and Download – James Blake on iTunes

Read – MetaCritic | Pitchfork