Austin Texas’ Fun Fun Fun Fest (not to be confused with LA’s FYF Fest, which I will be stage-hopping at this weekend) just released the full line-up and schedule for their 5th annual music festival at Waterloo Park this November. Headliners for the two day fest include MGMT, A-trak, RJD2, Devo, and Mastodon (plus a Friday Kick-off party with Weird Al?). Fx3!
The latest in a series of label mixtapes for Wow Magazine comes from Young Turks, home of The XX, El Guincho, Holy Fuck, Glasser, and more. The So So Deaf mix features new tracks from label releases by Dog Bite, Kwes, and Sampha, as well as other random selections (Strong Arm Steady, Chris Brown) in response to the question, “What do you want us to hear?”
Listening.
Full tracklisting at Wow. Stream/download, below. (Fader)
On his new single, “Due West,” Los Angeles/West Covina rapper, Trek Life, explores the history of LA and the black migration to California with the help of up and coming DC producer, Oddisee. “I talked to my family and the parents of my friends to hear the stories,” Trek said in a press release. Trek tells those stories over an unbelievably vintage and soulful beat (not a sample?!) on what he calls the most important track on his new album.
Trek’s debut LP, Everything Changed Nothing, is out now on Mello Music.
This year kind of = Robyn. The exceedingly lovable Swedish pop princess has so far put her money where her body talk is (heh), releasing 2 of the 3 promised Body Talk albums for the year 2010, including the winner-by-a-lot Song of the Year, “Dancing On My Own.” She’s also managed to follow-up her groundbreaking rebirth on 2006’s self-titled Robyn with not 1, but 2 incredibly solid, album length EPs. The whole industry knows not to f*ck with Robyn.
Where Body Talk Pt. 2 lacks in track by track quality (Pt. 1 remains the stronger of the two on this count), it makes up for in overall flow. Unlike Pt. 1, Pt. 2 rises and falls as a cohesive record from beginning to end, starting out with the slow rise of the mid-tempo “In My Eyes,” and coming full circle with the beautifully orchestrated “Indestructible.”
At its center, Pt. 2 rumbles steadily with pulsing dance floor bangers, “Love Kills”, “We Dance to the Beat,” and “Criminal Intent,” slinging lyrics like, “We dance to the beat of the continents shifting under our feet/We dance to the beat of a new, better, faster breed/We dance to the beat of radioactivity blocking the exits/We dance to the beat of false math and unrecognized genius.”
The heart of the record is found in its third track, “Hang With Me”, a sentimental, synth-driven club anthem that previously shined as an ‘acoustic’ version on Body Talk Pt. 1. This version of the song, which combines innocently delivered, stellar pop vocals with a bass thumping electro beat, embodies in 4 and a half minutes everything that there is to love about Robyn (aside from the awesome hair). “Just don’t fall recklessly headlessly in love with me/cause it’s gonna be all heart break/Blissfully painful and insanity.” Too late?
Robyn’s increasingly genuine, relatable pop music continues to be a priceless rarity. Even the Snoop Dogg featuring “U Should Know Better”, which I had initially pegged as the weak spot in the Body Talk series thus far, is full-fledged pop-princess badass – and completely lovable. Clocking in at a little over a half hour, Body Talk Pt. 2’s 8 tracks are just enough to round out the release, proving anyone who may have doubted Robyn’s 3 albums-1 year ambitions 2/3’s wrong.
The Walkmen’s latest LP, Lisbon, sounds very much like what I imagine the rainy season in a Portuguese city to sound like. The You & Me follow-up is streaming below, via NPR, until its September 14 release.
A group of Radiohead fans in Prague have spliced together footage for an unofficial, fan made concert DVD from last summer’s show at the Výstaviště Holešovice Exhibition Hall that, judging from the trailer, turned out extremely official-like. The reason for that is mostly that the audio masters from the set were provided by Radiohead themselves in support of the project.
Radiohead Live in Praha is available as a free download (with some patience) or can be viewed as individual songs on Youtube, now, for free, now. (SKOA)
In a surprise (or not so surprise?) announcement last week, both the New York and Los Angeles Fat Beats stores (a brief history) will be closing their doors forever in September. The record shops will celebrate their final week with a full schedule of free in-stores from 4-9pm, including this Saturday, the final day in New York, with Premier, Just Blaze, A-Trak, Pete Rock, and more (in other words, it will be very crowded in there). The schedule for the LA location (which closes on the 18th) is due soon.
The online store and record label will continue operation after the closings.
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