The Audiozine

After yet another long dormant period, the Audiozine Listening Series shudders back to life. Two aural delights this time:

1) Dirty Projectors – Stillness Is The Move
Yes, this track has been out for a while. In fact, the full album leak’s been out for a while. That doesn’t change the fact that this song is a hugely auspicious sign that Bitte Orca, the latest offering from the Dirty Projectors, will be among the year’s better collections. Two notable points about “Stillness…”: a) it features a killer vocal that, for once, utilizes melisma, vibrato, and other elements that seem directly pulled from modern R&B; b) the track’s combination of huge drums, synthesized bass, spidery and spare guitar licks, and pop-friendly vocal strike me as being a delightfully warped take on the spare nursery rhyme-like quality of the last few years of hip-hop and R&B. A grayer shade of white, maybe?

2) Wintry Mix 2008-2009
Since last fall I’ve been playing around in my spare time with some really barebones free DJ software, mostly blending hip-hop and other danceable genres. Last winter, I decided to blend some songs outside of the dance music world in an attempt to catch the feeling of the season. From a mixing standpoint, there’s really nothing notable going on. But when I dug the mix up earlier this week, it seemed like something people might enjoy. Runtime is approx 30 minutes.
Tracklist:
D. Lissvik -- Track 6
Arthur Russell -- You and Me Both
Autechre -- Altibizz
Flying Lotus (orig. Kanye West) -- Love Lockdown Remix
Erykah Badu -- My People
Jaylib -- Starz
Slum Village -- Fall In Love
Jape -- Floating
No Age -- Keechie
Portishead -- Hunter

1) FFFF! Satellite Ballroom's demise is imminent. And the rumor going around was that the blowout show on May 31st was gonna be GWAR. But in one final iniquity, it looks like even that won't come to pass.

2) Here's a video of Portishead playing an amazing live set of songs culled from their upcoming album, Third. Hopefully our show tonight will come within a fraction of their awesomeness.

3) Speaking of which, SHOW REMINDER:

April 21st 2008 @ 9 PM
$5 for 21+, $6 for the kiddies
Twisted Branch Tea Bazaar

BANDAZIAN
Social Viscosity
Clarence Thomas-Action Adventure Unit

Scroll down for bootlegs of our previous set at the Bridge or click here.

After an achingly long period of dormancy, the Audiozine is back in action. It's been over a year since I posted to the Listening Series, but today's posts should be a nice return to form. Check it:

1) Portishead -- "Machine Gun"
This is the new single from the upcoming (and 10-years-in-the-waiting) new Portishead album, Third. "Machine Gun" represents a significant change of pace, with a stuttering electro beat replacing the pitched down R&B samples of yesteryear. This bodes extremely well.

2) Ricardo Villalobos -- "Enfants (Chants)"
After hearing about Villalobos for a long time, I picked up his Fabric36 Mix many months ago and it quickly became one of my favorite albums of 2007. He has a knack for sculpting really clean, round sounds and placing them into really intricate rhythmic structures. The tracks are minimalist dance music through and through, but when I played the mix for non-fans of electronic music it resonated with them too; his attention to detail, the seamlessness of his mixology, the snappy treble and elastic bass sounds, and strange leftfield turns (taiko drummers?!?!?!) invite outside listeners in, even as they confound dancefloor conventions. "Enfants (Chants)" is a 17 minute epic that Villalobos made the day before his first child was born. The track is deliberately minimal because he meant for a handful of his DJ friends to use it as a scaffold for mixing with other tracks. As his small coterie of friends started spinning this jam, it created a sensation that culminated in its release as a somewhat limited release EP and tons of blogohype. Rather hard to find for a while but now proliferating on the interweb, enjoy this slab of digital hotness!

these days, pretty busy.

Portishead = Led Zeppelin?