PSA: Dance it out, next week

I'm going to be throwing down some tunes next Thursday at Hugs in Williamsburg with my friend Andy D providing live jamz, along side Suspicious Package and Macaque, and DJs Jay McElfresh and Carlen Altman. The show starts early, so show up and party with the setting sun!

Joining the party

Santogold - Your Voice (link via RCRDLBL)

So yeah, MFR is joining the party a little late - if you're a regular reader, you know that we often do, just because Mark and I both like to ruminate a bit, you know, let things seep in a bit more, before hyping something.

Anyway, I'm happy to put the MFR stamp of approval on Santi White's new band and album, Santogold, because the record is a solid piece of multi-referential cross-cultural pop music, tying together electronic dance music, hip-hop, reggae and punk into an incredibly listenable album with a massively broad appeal (think modern Beck or Gnarles Barkley). It seems that everyone online and in print (Rolling Stone, Spin) has been hyping Santogold since people first saw her live shows last year, and heard about her collaborators on the album (including Spank Rock, M.I.A., Diplo, Radioclit, Sinden and Switch, etc.), marking the project "one to watch" in 2008.

Now, I'm not going to toot ye olde MFR horn that much, but remember MFR Vol. 1? There's this track on there, "A Day With Andrew", by a band called Stiffed - that's right, that is Santi's previous project. So yeah, we were there. Ha ha!

No, all right, you got me. I tend to shy away from majorly-hyped stuff like this, but from when I first heard "L.E.S. Artistes" I was certainly curious to see what would happen with Santogold, and it is looking like big thing are afoot.

Buy Santogold from Amazon.com, or download it from Amazon or iTunes. Recommended. Also check out the video for "L.E.S. Artistes" over on Youtube.

The coming apocalypse

The Presets - This Boy's In Love (Lifelike Remix)

Boom!

If you're a regular reader, you know that MFR and Modular have been buddies for a while now. That is because we are fans first - I myself have been a big fan of the label's releases since the Avalanches (where on earth is that second album?) and Cut Copy waded ashore in the early 00s - and blog-nerds second.

Well, one of Modular's biggest acts, the Presets, have returned with their second album, the cleverly titled Apocalypso. Their first album, Beams, while a great introduction to the band, at times felt too dark, too jarring, and perhaps just too industrial-sounding for my taste. Having seen them perform live multiple times, their sound seemed to lose something in translation to that record. With Apocalypso, I'd say that has changed - the new album feels more full of life and energy, and more light and fun(!), all of which seemed just a little bit lacking before, and all of which are a huge part of the band's live sound. Don't get me wrong, this new record still bangs pretty hard, but there is a little something in there that was missing before. If you're already a fan of their sound, you will almost certainly love the new record, and if not you should definitely check them out - they're the darker, Depechce Mode-esque foil to Cut Copy's ELO-esque magic.

If you've been following along with the Modular site you already know they've been giving away songs and such, but since Modular told us we could give away this awesome Lifelike remix of "This Boy's In Love" I was all over it in a second - check out the video for the original version of the song here.

Apocalypso is out now exclusively on iTunes, and comes out in regular stores this next Tuesday. Highly recommended.

Also they're on a national tour in May and June (with our pals Walter Meego!), so hit their Myspace page for details and dates.

Nice Pants

James Pants - We're Through

Awesome.

If ever there was a great one-word description of an artist, "awesome" would definitely be applied to James Pants.

Why? Because to my ears, James Pants' music sounds like Beck did when I first heard Mellow Gold at the age of sixteen, and that was awesome. It just sounded so unusual and downright freaky, I barely knew how to process it - what is this? Where does this fit in with what I know? James Pants not only sounds a bit like that Beck of old, but feels just as unusual and un-categorizable, and thank goodness for that.

Pants' new album, Welcome, is a great crossbreeding of 80s-style synth and lo-fi sample-funk (plus indie rock weirdness thrown in there for good measure), yet it all sounds new and only-possible in the 00s - not quite Cameo, not quite Chromeo, not quite Beck, not quite Madlib. All those not-quite's end up balancing the equation towards the out-there side of things, thus it is fully appropriate that the album is being put out by Peanut Butter Wolf's Stones Throw.

Welcome comes out on the 27th, so be sure to pick it up at your favorite retailer then, or pick it up now via iTunes. Pants is going to have a lot of people talking him up with this one - he's already on the British press radar, and the bio for the record includes a quote from Busy P, so yeah, revel in the freaky and enjoy.

Plus peep the weird, out-there album art by Parra, which you can enhance with a sticker-pack by visiting this page over at Stones Throw. Awesome.

Put a penny on the ocean floor

Nik Freitas is hot soup, sunshine, an electric blanket. He is lemonade. This is refreshing, reassuring springtime music: the voice goes down smooth, the chords are where you want them.

Nik Freitas - All The Way Down.

Nik's new record Sun Down comes out today on Team Love, and it's really a great listen. It won't break any ground or anything, but it's not supposed to. It doesn't need anything crazy to hold it up.

Nik's bio was written by his next-door neighbor, and if you can't trust the guy who heard this record's conception through the walls, who can you trust? He says he heard traces of Todd Rungren and The Kinks, but "I also heard no evidence of frills or pretensions to greatness. No going for the gold. Just immaculately produced and performed pieces that informed you exactly how their composer was feeling at that particular time. "

That's exactly right. Sun Down is awesome, and perfect for spring. Pick it up today anywhere awesome stuff is sold (but you can start at Insound).

Safe As Milk

The Black Keys - I'm Glad.

For the Black Keys this song is like walking into a thrift store and finding a shirt that fits like a glove. A straightforward but smoking cover of this Captain Beefheart jam works pretty much perfectly for them. There's a thin layer of fuzz that makes you forget it was literally recorded yesterday. And somehow I believe them, just as I believed Beefheart when I first heard it.

I can only hope they share more tracks from this session, because hot dam this one's fine.

Have a good weekend. I'll see you around.

Super stressed/Super smoothe

One of the highlights of the Justice "cross" album is the song "Stress" - its all squealing strings and squelchy synths squashed on a pounding beat - the song is actually a bit off-putting, especially when you've not heard it before. That said, the track is absolutely brilliant in a late-night set on a big sound system. Now, the video for "Stress" is a dark one: a mob of angry youths wreaking havoc in the Parisian suburbs? Check. Think "La Haine" cut down to six minutes. If anything, it feels less like a music video and more like a short film that features the song on the soundtrack.

Then on the other side of the coin, we've got the video for Sebastien Tellier's "Divine", which Mark posted here a while back. I say the other side of the coin because here the darkness of Justice gets washed off by delicate electro-pop and hilarious vignettes of Tellier (or is it just a variety of people dressed up as him?), singing in sunny southern California.

Justice "cross" is out now on Vice Records/Ed Banger, and Sebastien Tellier's Sexuality is out now on Record Makers/Lucky Number. Gotta love Paris!

I will break the bass drum right over my head

Sam Keenan is one of those Twin Cities musicians who pops up everywhere. He's one of the creators of Misplaced Music, a site that streams local music; he's a producer at The Current; and he makes a lot of music. I mean a lot of music.

He also just put out a record called All The Dark Colored Markers Went Dry, and it's pretty ridiculous, in a good way. Half the record is straightforward rock music, and the other half is... like this.

Sam Keenan - Chalk Circle.

As a musician, I'm constantly astounded at arrangements people come up with. How did Keenan come up with this treatment for what's essentially a melody from a Busby Berkeley movie? It's great.

All The Dark Colored Markers comes out soon from Draw Fire Records; keep an eye out for it.

No one can live it for you

I first wrote about Meg Ashling in September 2006, when I saw her at the 331 Club in northeast Minneapolis. I loved every second of it - even though she played solo, her songs and her voice were good enough to represent a whole band.

Meg Ashling - Move Down The Line.

I saw her play at the Java Jack's Hootenanny a month or so ago, and she sounded just as awesome. Her new record is called Look At The Moon, and it's very lo-fi. But it's also excellent, and who needs slick production when you sound this good?

I'm not sure how you can get Look At The Moon, but you can start by hitting up Meg on MySpace. Update: Meg says the best way to get a record is to come to one of her shows. And that she'll have a new record available in the next couple of months. So there!

If you live in Minnesota, you can catch her at The Rox in St. Cloud tonight.

This goes on the record

It doesn't take much to make a pretty good song very good. It's often something you'd never think of, too - a trumpet solo, say, or really loud backup vocals. In this case, it's someone playing the same piano arpeggio over and over again. (It's just a loop, of course, but I like to imagine there's a guy in The Heavenly States whose sole job is to play this piano part repeatedly.)

The Heavenly States - Morning Exercise.

The Heavenly States are from Oakland, California. This song is from their record Delayer, which is full of power-pop goodness. I like this song in particular because sometimes you feel like hearing big, fat power chords with someone yelling something melodic and concisely clever. But Robot David, you're saying, isn't "this goes on the record" too clever by half? Yes, yes it is. Sometimes you feel like hearing something too clever by half, too.

Delayer is out now on The Rebel Group. Buy it now from Insound.