Welcome to my blog. I document my adventures in travel, style, and food. Hope you have a nice stay!
All in music
While we were off to the Holy Land, the mailman dropped off 'Contra', by The Vampire Weekend. Track by track first impressions & lyric snippets after the jump.
My prediction for the Word Cup finale in South Africa 2010? England v. Brazil. England wins. My prediction for biggest South African band in 2010? BLK JKS. I should say 'best band', not 'biggest', really. Check out their album 'After Robots'. It will stay with you long after those 'next big thing' hypes for 2010 have died away.
Ding Dong. Christmas is here. DJ Sega ups the tempo for a new version of the Jingle Bells classic and Prince Zimboo threatens to chop any man that comes through his chimney.
Portishead backs the Amnesty International cause by releasing a brand new track called 'Chase the Tear', which can be downloaded via the Amnesty International site. You already know my thoughts about Portishead's current output.
I'm not waisting too much words on this. It's massive. Go see the video and download the track.
'These New Puritans have a new album out called 'Hidden' in January 2010. So will they make it this time? Hellz no. The first single off the album is 'We Want More': it is more than seven minutes long, features a children's choir, a minute-long symphonic outro and the sound of a melon filled with cookies beying smashed with a hammer to mimick the sound of a crushed human head.
Attention marketing people. Your trend forecast for today includes: dancing in your underwear with a shower cap on, wearing gold beer cans as rollers, Dominicans and Spanish language in general.
I've you've ever wondered what Brooklynite Santigold might be doing today, chances are you weren't imagining her on a horse wearing puffy pants (Santi, not the horse) and swinging a mallet. Turns out she's taking Polo lessons. And doing quite well for an inner city girl who also happens to be allergic to horses.
This video for 'Spheres of Fury' by Hecq vs. Exillion (please, feel free to forget these names at synaps-firing speed) is a very silly idea, very well executed. Come to think of it, that could be the motto to my entire life. "A very silly idea, very well executed".
Mr. Lupe originally dropped this Mixtape 'cassette style', which means it was one long mp3, but I prefer the 'chopped' version with separate tracks. I haven't listened all the way through, but I've picked up the rhymes 'I'm doing this for the block and the blogosphere' and 'I am on my 'uh hu' they are on their 'oh no', I've heard him rapping over Radiohead, chuckled at what I can only describe as the first MC'd advertising on a mixtape (basically an ad for the HP DM3 laptop with Lupe saying 'yeah' and 'you got that right' on top) and you can be damn sure I'm gonna be bumping that singalong 'Angels' Remix in my car for the rest of the day. 'Cuz I'm commercial like that.
It's 8-bit ultraviolence with strippers, money shots, blood guts and a whole lot of poo. Like a car crash with a truck full of porn stars. Can't watch. Have to watch. The 'Trucker's Delight' track itself is from 2008. You might remember it popping up in the Soulwax Essential Mix on BBC last year. What's that? Don't have the Soulwax Essential Mix yet?
I've been working on a new project. Can't talk too much about it right now. What I can do is share some of the stuff that's inspiring me along the way.
Faris Badwan, the slightly eccentric frontman of the biggest hype of 2009 The Horrors, has been working on a side project called 'Lumina'. This is his self-directed video for their first (and only?) release "I'll be with you", a Black Lips cover.
Aux Raus are playing at the Diesel U Music party in BXL tonight. And by 'playing', we of course mean jumping naked from a giant inflatable tongue. We sent them some questions. This is the filth that came back:
Mixtapes by Lindstrom (feat. ABBA and Black Sabbath) and the XX (feat. the XX bootlegs, Four Tet, Skream, Burial and the XX edits)
Answering the age old question: "So what you done good?", Buraka Som Sistema goes back to Buraka -their original neighbourhood in Portugal- to throw their peeps a bona fide block party.
