Goodbye dull days…Hello sunshine!

Happy Easter to all our readers!

I love this time of year, after the slog of the first half of the year when its a major effort to do much at all, we are blessed with a few days R&R when we can kick back and chill looking forward to the year ahead!

The purpose of this post is to hopefully infiltrate your spring playlists! Warming you up for a (hopefully) glorious summer ahead. We’ve made it through the darkest parts of winter (that in itself deserves a pat on the back), time to start getting into gear for a corking 2010!

TANLINES – SETTINGS (EP)

So first up its time for some dub disco poptronica from the excellent Tanlines. What can I tell you about the band? Not much to be honest…I’m not sure I want to know much more than the fact they have produced an almost flawless slice of dub pop disco that grows and grows on you leaving you craving another listen.

For most, the standout track is Real Life which blends excellent production (often reminiscent of early Knife tracks) with well placed vocals for a quirky jangle of a tune you can hum along and tap your feet to. But for me its the instrumental moments of lush percussion mixed with catchy hooks that light my ring!

See below for a snippet of the EP – you can purchase it from 7Digital for just £1.99 HERE… money well spent in my opinion!

Enjoy the Caribbean percussive belter known as  ‘Reinfo’:

http://www.divshare.com/download/10952210-101

And the multilayered sensibilities of ‘Z’:

http://www.divshare.com/download/10952211-c50

FOUR TET – THERE IS LOVE IN YOU (ALBUM)

Next up we have an offering from master of laptop electonica music Four Tet (real name Kieran Hebden). Now I’m no expert on Four Tet’s music, so I can only speak on my experience of  coming into contact with his particular form of looping and blending samples into multi layered often hypnotic tracks.

My first encounter with a four tet cd was back in 2007 when his brilliant album Pause made its way into my life. I was moving house around the time (a time of great transience and change for anyone)  and Pause was the cd that was permanently in my new housemates ghetto blaster.  Being busy and tired from lugging boxes the cd got play after play on the stereo during times of great activity and also the times of kicking back catching up over a good brew. That was the beauty of the music, it neither grated after ‘one too many listens’ nor did it completely wash over my consciousness like most background music, it just worked its way into head with its clever percussive and always interesting brilliance. Check out Everything is alright for a slice of what I’m talking about.

Needless to say that CD still gets a play on a regular basis, whether on the headphones while I’m working, on the iPod dock  when camping with friends or doing its thing while I’m simply kicking round the house. Its quite simply music for life.

Now, Pause has been enough of the Four Tet sound for me for the last couple of years, but when I heard there was a new album out I thought it was time to catch up and see how the sound has mutated. Needless to say Four Tet’s sound has changed in ‘There is love in you’ significantly. For me it has become a crisper, tighter production in places with less of the homebrewed samples and more of a conforming sound. This isn’t always the case and is by no means a bad thing, as sometimes within we get plenty of revisits to the classic sound  prevalent in pause, but these echo’s of familiar sounds with their rough edged charm sit perfectly alongside well produced more dance based offerings you might expect from current Balearic masters such as Aeroplane. I’ve chosen a track with encompasses both styles, essentially a darker offering with its underlying driving groove that ends in a familiar sounding loop of strings flipped and reversed in that clever way Four Tet does so well!

Get the album here – you wont regret it any time soon!

Behold ‘Love cry’ off the album There is love in you:

http://www.divshare.com/download/10952860-9cc

LCD SOUNDSYSTEM – VARIOUS

LCD SOUNDSYSTEM! YES!!! Why am I so excited? because next month I’ll be standing in front on the indie disco crossover maestro that is James Murphy in full effect at Brixton academy catching LCD on their worldwide 2010 tour! Why else?….. LCD have finished their new album!

Before we take a peek  into their new material though, lets first talk about an offering from 2007. I was lucky enough to stumble across the 45:33 EP (above) around the time of its release.  I came across the mysterious vinyl in a record shop in Brighton, having no idea what is was. A simple black sleeve with the band name and the 45:33 text and very little else. What I went on to find out is that it was a composition of LCD material commissioned by Nike for a series of mixes to run to. That discovery blew my mind! a composition specially formulated to run to….what was I in store for? the answer is a brilliantly compiled journey into the aspects that make LCD and James Murphy so special. All the best bits of the disco, indie and electronica sound rolled into 45 mins (actually just over) of breathtaking music.

The segment I’ve chosen to share is something a bit special. The instrumental mix of ‘Someone Great’ from the album The sound of silver. Although lacking the touching vocals from the original (found here) the instrumental still holds the amazing tune that makes it such a special track! On 45:33 it’s sandwiched between the vocal disco opener and the dance floor bound peak of the mix – this track couldn’t have been better selected for the composition!

Check it out here – 45:33 part 3 – Someone Great (instrumental):

http://www.divshare.com/download/10953025-3dc

45:33 available album available here

What I also love about LCD SOUNDSYSTEM is their ability to jump between seemingly touching and sentimental moments to the down right silly but brilliant dancefloor sound. My first encounter with their music was buying a 12″ called ‘Daft Punk is playing at my house’. I had no idea what it was, but how the hell could a track by that name ever be bad?! Needless to say I wasn’t disappointed and the record has had a good bashing at parties  still to this day.

Revisiting this sound is the first release off their next album ‘This is happening’ due out in may this year. The track ‘Drunk Girls’ is a fun sing along  track with plenty of catchy hooks and key changes to keep even the most easily distracted listener locked in for it’s 3:45 mins!

Listen to Drunk Girls here and if you’re in Brixton next month, I’ll see you at the front!:

http://www.divshare.com/download/10953024-c78

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That’s it from me for now! Enjoy the rest of your Easter break and most of all Enjoy the good music!

Peace.X