Hova does the power clap and drops a verse on Swizzee’s beats. It’s whatch’all been waitin’ for ain’t it?

Download after the jump.

DOWNLOAD KANYE WEST “POWER” FEAT. JAY-Z (REMIX)

Dutch band ‘Palmbomen’ just released the “Moon Children” EP, which will be classified as ‘chillwave’ by your local snobby record dealer: muted synths, lo-fi vocals and a chill vibe. Think Human League, played by Ariel Pink.

Here’s the single: “Moon Children”

Press play. Or Download HERE

After the jump throwback bonus: download the Palmbomen Mixtape for Vice Magazine (Tom Tom Club, Kraftwerk, Carly Simon, Breakbot, etc.)

Palmbomen Mixtape exclusively for Vice by nonrecords

Tracklist:

Tom Tom Club — Genius of Love
Washed Out — Feel It All Around
King MC — What Have I Done For You Lately
Yazoo — Situation (Dub Mix)
The Flirts — Passion
Renkas — Interstellar
Human League — What Dreams Are Made Of (Instrumental)
Polarius — Apollo Park
Seb & Seb T & Oizo — Ringardos
M83 — Run Into Flowers (Jackson Remix)
Jan Turkenburg — In My Spaceship (Breakbot Remix)
Neon Indian — Terminally Chill
Rocksteady Crew — (Hey You)The Rocksteady Crew
Grauzone — Eisbär
Moses — We Just
Kraftwerk — Spacelab
Tom & Ien — Apendans
Carly Simon — Why?
Palmbomen — Dark Stuff (Demo)

I was watching a documentary on Front242 the other day: same old mishmash of old footage and talking heads, really. One of those talking heads belonged to Luc Van Acker (a true raconteur: a man of a thousand stories – someone give this guy a book deal already!). In between anecdotes (”Front 242 said they wanted to kill the audience. I didn’t know it was a metaphor so on my first gig with them I jumped into the audience and started whacking people with my guitar. I didn’t look up until I stopped at the PA, where the sound guy was looking at me, stunned by confusion and fear.”) he started naming good Belgian bands playing in the post-punk era. Turns out there’s a lot of them. Good stuff, too. And as it turns out, there’s a growing scene hunting those lost tracks down. Brooklyn label SoftSpot has just released “We Live in a System” by the short-lived Belgian band Kebab. You can have the cult classic ‘Life, it’s a joke’ for free. Press play or hit the jump for the download.

DOWNLOAD HERE

If you’re digging the post-punk cult: check out this gem: ‘The Wake – Give Up”, dug up by none other than Parra.

2 of my favourite Belgian musicians on one track.

Baloji tapped dEUS’ Tom Barman to lay down some vocals on the remix of his latest single “Le Jour d’Après (Indépendance cha cha)”. Who knew Tommie was harbouring  a tad of Gainsbourg?!

Faisons un pas de deux!

(DOWNLOAD + interview+ lyrics after the jump)

DOWNLOAD BALOJI + TOM BARMAN “Le jour d’après (indépendance cha-cha)“

How well do you know Tom’s music?

Baloji : My older brothers were playing “In A Bar, Under The Sea”, but for me it really started with “The Ideal Crash” and that amazing video they shot at Café d’Anvers (ed. Instant Street)

Have you and Tom met before?

Baloji : Yes, we met at a party for the brand “Marcel de Bruxelles” last year and we’ve seen each other at the Gent Blue Note Festival a couple of times.

What image did you have of him before you actually met?

I thought he looked a bit snobby and jaded, but I was wrong : he’s smart, friendly and madly talented.

Do dEUS have fans in Africa, that you know of?

I don’t think so, but I do think “The Architect “ deserves a Buraka Som Systema remix!

What’s your favourite dEUS song?

They made history with “Instant Street” , but for me personally it’s hard to choose between “Wake Me Up Before I Sleep” and “Little Arithmetics”.

Where you confident that Tom would agree to do the collaboration?

Well, it never hurts to ask. He answered my phone call and we booked the session in less than three days.

Did he know about your music?

Yeah, a little. But I know that Tim Vanhamel and Stef Kamil Carlens are more into my stuff than Tom.

Did you talk about music before/during the recording? Records that you both like, stuff like that?

We talked a bit about the great crooners, tropical music and French chanson but we mostly discussed “Couleur Café” the “percussion” album of Serge Gainsbourg that we used as an influence for Tom’s part of the song.

Was there a specific track you asked Tom to listen to?

I played him “Ces Petits Riens”, one of my favourite songs on that album.

You recorded the remix version in dEUS’ Vantage Point studio. Was there anybody else around?

Klaas Janszoons and CJ Bolland. I got to pre-listen some heavy Magnus tracks!

What was it like, working with Tom?

It took us three hours to lay down the track: choosing the lyrics and finding the right melody took us a while. But all in all it was a really chill session.

Tom sings in Lingala, too. How did that come about?

I wanted it to sound more traditional and CJ Bolland liked the idea a lot and he pushed tom to give it a go! Lingala is such a melodic language so it worked out great.I

Any plans on performing the song together?

Yes, we might do a TV performance real soon.

Tom is working on the new Magnus album. Did you talk about doing a remix with you as an MC?

Yes, we did!  But  they are finishing the new dEUS LP first. I did get to hear some new Magnus tracks and they sounded great.

If you could remix/rework any dEUS or Magnus song, which one would that be? (Why?)

They have this song with a Charles Mingus sample on “In A Bar, Under The Sea”  (”Theme From Turnpike”) that’s screaming for MPC drums. I think I could cook up something for “Roses” or “Nothing Really Ends “ as well…

More Baloji here

Lyrics :

Indepance chacha tozui e
Indépendance cha cha le jour d’apres
O Kimpwanza chacha tubakidi
Indepance chacha tozui e
Indepance chacha tozui e
Indépendance cha cha le jour d’apres
O Kimpwanza chacha tubakidi
Indepance chacha tozui e

Faisons un pas de deux
ou un pas de côté
trouvons un juste milieu
l’envie prend le pas sur les idées

Des hommes d’apparat
ou des hommes d’appareil
ils se couvrent d’embarras
ça ne sera plus jamais pareil

mais qu’est ce qu’il va rester
après les cortèges et les sermons
les accolades et les postures ?

perspective de renaissance
après l’air de la repantence
entre la nuit et le clair obscur

La multitude d’origines
Autant d’éthnies que de coutumes
N’empêche le partage d’aspiration commune

Indepance chacha tozui e
Independance cha cha le jour d’apres
O Kimpwanza chacha tubakidi
Indepance chacha tozui e
Indepance chacha tozui e
Independance cha cha le jour d’apres
O Kimpwanza chacha tubakidi
Indepance chacha tozui e

Les promesses de lendemain, les promesses de l’aube
d’un état souverain où le sol se dérobe
entre milices et rebelles, pillages et recels
peuples que l’on déplace comme des cheptels
de parcelle en parcelle
de gouvernance en tutelle
l’état de droit est essentiel
à nos ethnies unies au pluriel
effet papillon, effet tampon
car ici on change l’or en plomb
la révolution au bout du vote
la force du nombre est l’antidote
pour changer la dette en dotte
autant de droits que de devoirs
plus de points de convergence
que de divergence
oublier l’idée d’état providence

j’ai repris cette chanson fédératrice
symbole de la crédulité de nos prémices
entre indépendance et armistice
mais pour que nos démocraties progressent
faut qu’elle apprennent de leurs erreurs de jeunesse
mon pays est un continent émergent
bâti en moins de 50 ans

tango ya indépendance,sima ya indépendance
yebisa nga nini yango é  changer
toza ko rond point,toza kozinda
suka suka toza kozonga sima

Das amazing

Das spaceship

Das space shit

Das offensive

Das Racist

Das Racist ‘You Oughta Know’

I’ve been a bad, bad blogger. I’ve been living my life instead of writing about it and as a result of this shameful act of egotistical self-complacency, I’m ten days late on the Das Racist mixtape.

I do apologise.

The quickness: Das Racist is a duo from Brooklyn. They became one of those ‘famous on the internet’ things when they made ‘I’m at the Taco Bell, I’m at the Pizza Hut’. The Guardian tipped them as a ‘band to watch’ a while back, but who reads those things, anymore, right? What you really need to know is that they released a mixtape with the dudes from Mishka called “Shut up, dude” and it’s awesome.

Why?

Because by shamelessly wasting good beats with jibberish, random rhyming and occasional blurts of accidental genius, they might have saved hip hop from itself. No Volvo.

DOWNLOAD THE DAS RACIST MIXTAPE ‘SHUT UP, DUDE’

A word of advice to rappers trying to make it to the next level of hype on the net: don’t use a roman numeral for a name. Seriously, how am I supposed to Google you and pretend to have known all about your freestyles for months before the mixtape dropped? Can’t do it. Won’t do it.

Luckily, XV (call him ‘X tot the Vizzy’ of you’re not down with numerals unless it’s at the end of a ‘Saw’ title…) has the talent to make him float to the top.

He wasn’t on the XL ‘freshmen’ list. He hasn’t been hanging out with Lil’ Wayne all that much. He’s just been releasing good tracks and people are starting to stumble over the towering amount of fans and admirers he’s been able to gather so far.

Listen to Vizzy introduce himself:

His new Mixtape is called ‘30 Minute Layover’. Watch this kid.

Download link after the jump.

DOWNLOAD ‘30 MINUTES LAYOVER’ BY XV

01 Intro
02 Warmup Freestyle
03 Top Of The World
04 Championship
05 Nothing On You
06 X.plosi.V.e
07 Lift The Game
08 I’m V!zZy
09 One Thing
10 This Plane
11 Friendly Skies (Outro)

(via 2DopeBoyz)

How good is THIS?

No, seriously. If you download only one thing this week: let this be it.

Gonzales, now (officially) called Chilly Gonzales, has released a mixtape with piano interpretations of Fifty Cent, Lil’ Wayne, Beyonce, etc… mixed with interview snippets and even a Rocky monologue.

Quote:

“You know those rap beats and electro songs – the ones with almost nothing in them? Tipsy, Grindin’, A Millie, Rollin’ and Scratchin’, Single Ladies? Well, I go all Liberace on these beats with my piano and my orchestra. Claude Von Stroke, 50 Cent, Kelly Clarkson, Rocky Balboa and Gonzo himself all make cameos.”

Press play.

It’s hard to explain why I love this man so much, but I’ll give it a go.

(Download link after the jump.)

Download at arts-crafts.

The first time I saw Gonzales, I mainly went to see him because I heard some white Canadian was doing a rap-act with a white girl named Peaches, both dressed as superheroes with a strap-on for the girl (and sometimes for the dude, too…). It was a gig at 1 in the afternoon at a small festival. There were about fifty people there. A cow was peacefully grazing about ten feet away from the stage. The headliner that night was (no kidding) a Led Zeppelin tribute band. The gig lasted about half an hour with Gonzales rapping over a taperecorder and attempting to start a fight with Alec Empire (see Aatari 3000), who he apparently had a tiff with backstage. I laughed a lot and, strangely, actually thought he was good. Not just funny. But really good.

The second time I saw Gonzales, he was performing at about 3 in the afternoon at a bigger festival. It was scorching hot. The tent was packed because some popular crap hipster electronica band who I won’t mention here was playing right after. (It’s better they stay forgotten.) Gonzales came on dressed in a tropical outfit, helmet and all. Killed it. Everybody laughed. Peaches was getting famous by then and people recognised her voice on the tape in the back. And then the man in the tropical outfit rolled out a piano and said ‘Listen! No. Listen! I made this! I’m not kidding. This is really me!’ And then he started playing an impromptu (Yeah, I know classical terms. Bite me.). I was baffled. This wasn’t just some fiddling about. This was gooooooood. Like music to melt your spine and make everything, the heat, the crowd, the tent, the stale beer smell, the burn on my shoulders.. just fade away into a blur that could not reach you inside your cocoon.

The piece he played was from the yet to be released ‘Solo Piano’ record, which was just re-released in a deluxe edition.

Get it.

(Mixtape via the ever watchful Asian Dan)

Gareth Pugh’s vision of summer looks like the kind of garbs a friendly, advanced society would wear in an RPG game. He literally went from seeing everything in black and white to going for soft shades of grey.

Matthew Stone is (again) responsible for the soundtrack, which kind of sounds like the Spring Summer soundtrack from last year with a bit of the dark romance of Requiem for a Dream mixed in.

Press play.

Download link after the jump.

DOWNLOAD HERE

Image culled from Fashionising and Some/Things.

You might not know this, but when I’m not kicking ass in the morning and taking names in the evening, I like to stare out the window at noon. Preferably to the soundtrack of Magnetic Fields’  69 Love Songs.

This classic double-hitter was released in 1999 and I have no idea how I found it. There was no promo, no hype. I just happened to listen to it and love it. For those of you who haven’t heard it: it’s sweet, sad, arty and poppy and a purrrrfect soundtrack to staring into the distance and wondering when your future is going to start. (I did a lot of that in 1999.)

Quote from the Magnetic Fields website:

“The story has it that Stephin Merritt came up with the idea for “69 Love Songs” while sitting in an elegant midtown Manhattan gay piano bar. He originally planned for it to be a live musical revue, performed with a rotating cast of singers in the plush hotel bars and cabarets of New York City.”

69 Love Songs is loved by most of your favourite artists. If you listen to it, you’ll love it, too.

It will now be re-released as 6 x 10″ vinyl collectables and a booklet of new liner notes.

(via Pitchfork)

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If you thought the internet was feeling a bit cramped today, you were right. Right now, millions of hipsters, bloggers and twitterati are spewing their opinion about the surprise drop of January 2010: new fake Justice.

UPDATE: Boy, did we get punked. It’s a fake. A good fake, but a fake. Woops.

Press play to listen to the track that fooled ‘em all.

Download link after the jump.

There will be no new Justice material this year, people are saying. Other people are saying this was new material, but it got yanked because everyone thought it sucked. The official Ed Banger blogs are sitting this one out for now… Moving on.

DOWNLOAD FAKE JUSTICE – THE BEGINNING OF THE END (right click, save as)