Posts tagged with vampire weekend
It’s been a while since we last talked about Theophilus London but just today he dropped his new mixtape entitled “I Want You”. And I just finished listening to it for the first time. And I gotta say, it’s HOT. I think he covers just about every style imaginable in these 19 tracks, so there is definitely something for everyone. There are lots of great samples throughout, the most unexpected being, in my opinion, Jack Penate. Others I can remember off the top of my head were a FANTASTIC Ellie Goulding “Starry Eyed” remix (which sort of has a disco vibe going on and which goes directly into a great 80s sound in the subsequent track), Discovery, Vampire Weekend, and oh so many more. And in case you missed it in the title, this bad boy is FREE. Just go to the Theophilus London blog and download the zip file. I was a fan of Mr. London before I listened to this, but he just jumped up a few more notches with this great display of versatility. And for your listening pleasure, here’s that remix I mentioned above, but it would really behoove all of you to listen to the whole mixtape. I’m not exactly sure what to name this track, so I’m just going to call it exactly what its called on the album.
In today’s tough economic times, you can’t really afford not to download this free mixtape. It’s definitely great bang for the buck, even if there were a charge.
Starry Eyed (remix)
in the spirit of the season, a holiday-inspired charity track that you should purchase if you enjoy it. this should really be called “fucked up featuring everyone ever – do they know its christmas”, and by everyone ever, i mean tegan and sara, GZA, kyp malone (of tv on the radio), andrew w.k., ezra koenig (of vampire weekend), yo la tengo, bob mould, kevin drew and even david cross. and they are singing the famous band-aid track from so many moons ago, and all for good causes: justice for missing and murdered indigenous women, DTES power of women group, and sisters in spirit. even though the original track is pretty americacentric (or i guess more specifically christian-centric), it doesnt mean its not a memorable track that got a pretty nice facelift.
it stays pretty true to the original, but still gives you those warm fuzzies inside when you hear it, and a few more when you picture all those great artists in a room, standing 3 around a mic, on 2 or 3 steps so that theyre all on different levels. and then the camera shot changing to close ups of whichever set of 3 happens to be singing at that time. you may also remember the star-studded mockery of this scenario on 30rock, with the season ending “he needs a kidney”. its nice to see that a hardcore punk band can still have a heart. especially since they reportedly spent most of the prize money from their polaris prize putting this bad boy together. so happy holidays to all, and to all a good night.
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since i kicked it down a notch last friday, ill kick it up two notches this friday. today features one of my favorite tracks from the most recent peter bjorn and john album “living thing”, entitled “it dont move me”. i just never could get into “nothing to worry about” with all the kids screaming in the beginning, but this song does really hits the spot. and how do you take a great song and make it even better? mix in one of my favorite new acts of the year, miike snow, to remix the song. not only is their album “animal” one of my favorites of the year, but theyve also put out two of my favorite remixes of the year, the other of course being their incredible vampire weekend remix, which im going to post again below because i like it just that much.
the remix for “it dont move me”, which i think tkop first told me about a few months back, is very different than the vampire weekend mix. its signature miike snow moments are not always as obvious in this one, but when they hit, they hit hard. and once you get to the breakdown in the third minute of the song, fuggedabatit. this remix is very reminiscent of a live miike snow song. get through the song and just when youve got the crowd, break into a multi-minute electronic jam.
peter bjorn and john – it dont move me (miike snow remix)
and just for old times sake….
vampire weekend – the kids dont stand a chance (miike snow remix)
songs that sound like summer week continues on this thursday and today ill be posting another track by discovery. im trying not to repeat artists until absolutely necessary, but i felt like i didnt give due diligence to discovery because i only posted them to be timely and to acknowledge the passing of someone whose passing we are kind of getting tired of hearing about. plus that song just happened to sort of fall into my lap a day or two before i posted it, so it all happened by chance more than anything else. and i promise not to repeat artists for at least another 2 weeks.
the discovery lp, which i think is officially titled lp, has summer written all over it. even the album cover has a super awesome color palette which goes from bright oranges to greens and then to blues and which could be considered in some prehistoric civilizations to be a very abstract picture of a sunset over a lake. and the music is just so fresh and bright sounding that it can probably only be fully enjoyed in the summer, but i hope i prove myself wrong on that one in a few months. todays track is carby and has quickly become one of my favorite tracks on the album because of its faster beat and overall instant catchiness. it allegedly features ezra from vampire weekend on vocals, but all the vocals sound kind of the same on the album so im confused about that one. i hope you enjoy this track while i am likely on a northern michigan winery tour right now. or tubing down a river. or doing nothing and loving it. its kind of sick how much i love drum machines and how badly i want one. someone buy me a drum machine.
discovery – carby
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well after 4 days of temperatures well below normal for mid summer and complete overcast skies, the weather has finally broken and just in time for the long holiday weekend. im prewriting again, and not even making any effort to hide the fact, because i know that i get to be in the sun for the next three days on a lake, which is pretty sweet. in honor of that, i wanted to bring a song today thats completely fun and interesting to listen to. regardless of peoples various opinions of vampire weekend (seems like most people either think they are the coolest things ever or the most overrated things ever), i think everyone both young and old will enjoy this remix with its too-fast-to-comprehend background layers. after much searching, i finally found this remix as the one i heard on hipster runoff blog radio a month or two ago.
i saw vampire weekend from afar at last years pitchfork festival (just a little over a week til this years. cha ching!). i believe it was midday saturday just after the sun had finally broken through the clouds and the mud was just beginning to dry up a little bit, but we were way back in the shade tent, so i have no recollection of it. as for miike snow, well, i dont know much except that its a swedish group. so im not sure if this is really a remix, or if its more of a mashup, but i definitely want to hear some more of their tunes after hearing this. either way, its pretty fun to listen to, especially in the second half when the super fast synth gets super crazy and expansive across a wide spectrum of octaves. even if you are among the vampire weekend haters, you should still check this out.
vampire weekend vs miike snow – the kids dont stand a chance
ok so the biggest pop star of all times passed away, and all i said about it was a sentence. but thats because i was in the middle of a theme week — the first ever theme week — and i couldnt justify throwing that off board for something i could talk about later, especially since that would be a time when not everyone in the whole world would be talking about it all the time nonstop. but then after we organized a 15 person pizza party at work today complete with watching michael jackson videos in the conference room, i decided that i wanted to put up a couple tracks in memory (two to be exact), but with a twist, and was lucky to hear two tracks today that i thought fit in quite nicely with whats been going on around this site lately.
the first track is by discovery (the second track is tomorrow). thanks to both karen and ursula for bringing them to my attention. discovery is a side project of rostam batmanglij of vampire weekend and wes miles of ra ra riot and its pretty much nothing you would expect to come out of those two groups, in a good way (dont worry, not hating on either of them, cuz im not a hoe). even though theyve been noodling around for a few years, their first album isnt officially released until july 7, but you can hear most of it streaming in about a zillion places, and im really really liking it so far. its kind of super lo-fi and hi-fi(what does that even mean?) at the same time. im bad at describing things. anyway, one of the tracks on the album is a cover of the famous jackson 5 hit “i want you back”.
do not click on the play button below if you are expecting a straight up cover with motown sounds, because you will be sorely disappointed. do click on the play button below if you are expecting an electronic dream world version of this song, because you will not be sorely disappointed. it features what i like to refer to as voice immodulation (even though i know that this is actually what voice immodulation is) and electric shooting star effects. what do y’all think of this? if you dont like it as a cover, you should still listen to other discovery tracks because they are “the whip”. im also pretty sure that this song features the yoshi noise from super mario world featured prominently after the first chorus. warning — song doesnt start for about 15 seconds, so wait for it.
discovery – i want you back
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in the car on a drive this morning, i heard hipster runoffs episode of blog radio on xmu. they were laying down the sickest beats ever, to the likes of the twelves remix of metrics “help im alive” and a pretty nuts remix of vampire weekends “the kids dont stand a chance” which far surpassed my expectations, then a similar sounding remix of cut copy’s “lights and music”. while im usually sort of annoyed with his intentionally droll and nonsensical commentary, today was especially on point. “tell me about yourself. i want to know about you. i want us to be soul mates. like that death cab for cutie song. soulmates body. i want to love you. i believe in a thing called love. the darkness.” this really has nothing to do with anything, but it did keep me in the electronic spirit.
i first heard crystal castles around the same time that i first heard cut copy. they were both completely different, but in my mind they both had a lot of the same thing going on, namely solid beats and electronic instrumentation. sure, crystal castles was a lot harsher and sounded more nintento electronic (which happens to suit them well), but i still lumped them into one category. so i was pretty surprised when i told a few others to give them a listen and they had crazy feedback like “why are they just screaming the whole time” and “my music was playing on random and this came on and freaked me out”. this is probably my fault for grouping them with cut copy, but i still thought people should give them a shot, so i recommended this track specifically. some would argue it doesnt even sound like crystal castles. in the end, even if you dont like the screams and the 8-bit sounds, the chances of you enjoying this track are still strong to quite strong.
ill be seeing them in a few weeks at bonnaroo and im still deciding if im excited or scared for the experience. if memory suits me i think they may be one of the uber-late night acts, so theres a chance that people will be too worn out by that point to trample me. ive heard very mixed reviews of their live show, seems to be a love it or hate it thing, but i guess theyre a love it or hate it kind of band.
EDIT! 5/28 — thanks to katie for pointing it out, but weve just learned that this is actually a cover (an awesome cover, i might add) of the song “sex city” by van she. which explains the title of the song. interesting tidbit!
crystal castles – vanished
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