Fall Mixtape

The fall Mixtape is here!  A little late, but thats the nature of things these days.  With temps in the 60's last weekend in NYC, it was hard to fully embrace the fall mood.  Tracklist and download link after the jump.  If you like the music, buy the albums, all these tracks come from some of the best releases of 2011.  

Spem In Alium (The 40-Part Motet)

Janet Cardiff. The Forty Part Motet. 2001. Reworking of "Spem in Alium Nunquam habui"(1575), by Thomas Tallis. 40-track sound recording (14:00 minutes), 40 speakers. Dimensions variable. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of Jo Carole and Ronald S. Lauder in memory of Rolf Hoffmann. © 2011 MoMA PS1; photo: Matthew Septimus.    

Last weekend my roommate and I biked up to queens to visit MoMA PS1's Sept 11th exhibit.  One of the more moving experiences of the day was Janet Cardiff's The 40 Part Motet.  The piece features 40 speakers, each playing one of forty voices performing Thomas Tallis's "Spem In Alium".  As someone who knows little to nothing about this kind of music, I was absolutely floored.  Beyond the cool factor of wandering the room and experiencing different voices within the piece, the song itself is one of the more emotionally moving things I've heard.  Run through the lens of an afternoon spent pondering the relationship between art and 9/11 and you've got a real doosey on your hands.  Hard not to find yourself in a state of deeply emotional reflection.  But that's why I love music, and it's why as soon as I got home I bought a recording of "Spem In Alium" and have listened to it regularly since.  It has a way of stopping me in my tracks, and transporting me to another place entirely.  This kind of transportation is the reason I listen to music, the reason I spend hours each week scouring the internet for sounds, and the reason I'm willing to dedicate my life to working with music.  If you get a chance to check out the exhibit, I highly recommend it.  

The version I've been listening to is from The Winchester Cathedral Choir.  It's featured on 1001 Classical Recording To Hear Before You Die.  Looks like I've got 1000 to go.  

Turn it up to 11.  Or just go to PS1 before 1/9/12.

Here's a video of Cardiff's piece when it was featured at Opera North in Leeds. 

Things I saw on the street today

Went for a little walkabout to the east of my apt to the wild country known as "Bushwick".  Saw some stuff, took some pics.  

More after the jump

Daughter - Medicine / Wild Heart [EP]

This ones a stunner.  Perfect for the ever shorter days of November.

Daughter - 'Medicine' (Taken from 'The Wild Youth' EP) by ohDaughter
I highly recommend this 4 track EP, it's only 3 Euro ($4 and change?), and worth every penny.  Amazing songs about longing, regret, breakups, all set over sparse rythms and simple guitar lines.  Think the understated beauty of The XX, only more mature and with a shattered heart.

Wild Child - Pillow Talk

 She & Him eat your heart out.
Pillow Talk by WildChildSounds

Elizaveta

Straddling the line between the indie-piano pop of Regina Spector, the soul pop of Adele, and a whole lotta Opera, meet Elizaveta.  Born in NYC, raised in Russia, she spent her teens in an Italian monastery, only to return to the states to study Opera.  Various influences emerge on what as a whole can be classified as a collection of 4 excellent pop songs that are just arty enough to captivate the imagination, just emotional enough to pull at the heart.
Listen to the whole EP bellow. It's all good, but Odi et Amo is the one that made me stop in my tracks a couple days ago.
Elizaveta EP by elizaveta   

aarabMUZIK Bowery Ballroom 10/31

Monday night I took a much needed break from paper writing and headed to Bowery Ballroom for the long sold out SBTRKT show.  I've been hearing murmurings about opener araabMUZIK for awhile, but really had no idea what to expect.  Kinda glad I waited, because I love surprises, and this guy fucking blew my mind.  I mean, he turned my brain into jello and then turned on the blender.  I have never gone so quickly from weird lonely awkward guy in the corner to dude jumping up and down, fist pumping with my meanest bass-face. 

The thing about seeing electronic producers live is you never really know what kind of a show your going to get.  Usually your at least guaranteed you'll hear some cool sounds played really loud.  But there's only so much stage presence and charisma you can squeeze out of a dude standing behind a laptop bopping his head, twisting knobs, ect.  What the fuck are you doing up there, I often wonder?  I don't want to get too cynical about it, because even if they're just pushing play, it can be a really good time to be in a room full of like-minded people listening to music you love, really loud.  I caught Zomby's set a couple weeks back at Glasslands and it was more or less that, and it was awesome (his indifference and persistent blunt smoking through a mask where somehow charming).  

But what blew me away about araabMUZIK was not just the beats he was playing, a mashed mix of trance sounds, breaks and wicked bass music, but that he was up there ripping the shit out of his drum machine as he did it.  I mean, the dude was producing most, if not all of the songs live.  I could have been mesmerized all night just watching his hands flurry like hummingbird wings around his MPC keypad. 

Here are some videos from other performances: 

Here's a sampling of tunes off of his 2011 release Electronic Dream

Mina Tindle - Carry Many Small Things

Mina Tindle's debut EP dropped a week or two ago and the above track has become something of an obsession for me.  It's rare that I prefer to listen to a song while watching it's video, but something about the bizarro-romantic-retro-basketball-sexy-footloose-randomness of the above keeps me coming back for repeated views.  Despite the obvious comparison to Feist (tell me this track's not iPod commercial material), this 6 track EP is a promising sign of what's to come from this gal.  Carry Many Small Things starts the EP out with a punch that cools down significantly with a couple indie folk numbers such as the fantastic "Echo":



Here's a nice striped down version of Carry Many Small Things:  


This whole things got me wanting to take french lessons. . . .

Tycho - Dive

If Capri Sun was a rave drug, this is what I'd listen to while drinking it.  Ambient electronic vibes from San Fran producer / designer Scott Hansen (producer name: Tycho, Designer name ISO50).  This music is like a polariod picture, fuzzy in all the right spots, crystal clear in all the right spots, giving your memories the qualities of dreams.  You can almost feel the evening breeze coming off the surf in these tracks, taste the salt on your lips as sun kissed days fade into dark, full of nostalgia for what's passed and excitement for what's to come.  The new record Dive is out now digitally, physical is due around mid November on Ghostly International.  


Heres some tracks from his soundloud.  So far Coastal Break is my fav.

I'm hoping to catch his set this coming weekend when he plays Music Hall of Williamsburg on 10/16 (CMJ warmup anyone?).  Looks like there'll be a little visual accompaniment:

Dates:

• 10/12/11 - Toronto, Canada (/w Little Dragon)
• 10/16/11 - Brooklyn, NY
• 10/17/11 - Boston, MA (/w Little Dragon)
• 10/18/11 - Philadelphia, PA (/w Little Dragon)
• 10/19/11 - Pittsburgh, PA (/w Little Dragon)
• 10/21/11 - Atlanta, GA (/w Little Dragon)
• 10/22/11 - Miami, FL (/w Little Dragon)
• 10/23/11 - Orlando, FL (/w Little Dragon)
• 10/25/11 - Tampa, FL (/w Little Dragon)
• 11/18/11 - Fort Collins, CO (/w Little Dragon)
• 11/19/11 - Denver, CO (/w Little Dragon)

Peter and Kerry

I'm doing a project for an A&R class about music discovery tools online, and its distracting as hell.  Spent about 5 minutes over at wearehunted.com before this one caught my ears.  Like it allot. 

These kids are label mates at Tape Club Records.  This poppy little EP they joined up for is just off kilter enough to stay interesting.  The EP is def worth checking out if "Knees" is your cup of tea (note tea reference in a post about a British band.  Bonus points).  

Peter and Kerry - Knees.

If you'll be spending this weekend seeking new sounds like Columbus sought new continents (Columbus day weekend reference, bonus points), here are some of the other sites I'm writing about for the A&R project:

www.indieshuffle.com

www.thesixtyone.com

shuffler.fm