Wild Highways: "Full Metal Jacket"

I can't figure out what the fuck the stilted, pseudo-rap singing on "Full Metal Jacket" reminds me of, but this song is all about that filthy ass beat. I could use another drop or two like the one around the 2:30 mark, though. In fact, this shit is just way too short, the type of hypnotic drone-funk that should theoretically just be getting started around seven minutes in, and instead we get an unceremonious (rather awkward, really) edit just after the 3:00 mark. Fuck you, Wild Highways, almost didn't post your ass.

Dreamcrusher: "Vulpeculae Freeze"

Back in the 90's I used to dig me some gabber. Well, I dug a lot of things about it. What I actually really fucking hated about it was that every song had the exact same build - with only minor variation in BPMs - and the only thing that distinguished one track from the next was the rudimentary texture of abrasion layered over top. Ho hum and shit.

Dreamcrusher toy around with that abrasive overlay but don't bother with the unyielding, metronomic beats. "Vulpeculae Freeze" sounds like old Godflesh updated with modern production software, particularly in the overdrive dept... and considering Godflesh were my favorite band for a pretty good chunk of the 90's I guess that earns this track a blog entry, eh?

Lee Bannon: "NW/WB"

Ah, I miss drill & bass. I don't even think people call it that anymore, even in hindsight, but it used to represent the art contingent of drum & bass producers a la Richard James and Squarepusher. Mr. Lee Bannon brings it back strong here with an early dubstep-influenced banger, back when the latter meant sinister dub and a nod to grime instead of airraid siren nu rave.

Duck Sauce: "It's You"

You ever meet one of those middle-aged adults who somehow think they're being progressive by listening to LMFAO? "I like that they're having fun and not taking themselves seriously", is often the justification for such ill-conceived fandom. Yeah, well, that doesn't mean the fun is being conveyed to me, motherfucker. ICP look like they're having fun too, doesn't mean I wouldn't enjoy feeding them and their whole crew to a tree shredder and oiling the gears with Faygo. Anyway, in a perfect world Duck Sauce would be the fun time, party duo getting blared from every stadium soundsystem instead of Berry Gordy Jr.'s trust fund kids.

Major Lazer: "Bubble Butt"

Don't y'all think this twerk shit done got out of hand?

Butterclock: "Hologram"

In contrast to the previous two posts this morning, this synthpop jam from Berlin upstarts Butterclock is sweet effervescence with no trace of cynicism or doom. The beat has a beat of that 80's freestyle (a.k.a Latin hip-hop) vibe, also reminiscent of cracker-rap classic "Genius of Love", which I guess had kind of a Krautrock engine driving it as well now that I think about it. Full circle, then, carry on...

Lemonade: "Perfect Blue"

"Perfect Blue" is like vintage Erasure, putting full stock in a minimal synth line with only skeletal beats adorning the framework, with a lilting vocal line taking center stage. Lemonade also share that band's penchant for huge choruses to provide contrast to the more intimate verses. When done well there's always room for more of this.

Soft Metals: "Tell Me"

Pretty snazzy Kraftwerk beat you're rocking there, Soft Metals. What epitomized 80's post-punk and synthpop so well was the combination of icy, detached riffs and potent, repressed vocals and "Tell Me" captures that effortlessly. It also frankly adds nothing new to the now 30-year old dynamic, but I'm not sure that we really exhausted the formula back in the day before neutering it with dreams of pop stardom, so a little vintage authenticity is always welcome.

[EDIT 7/20/13: added music video]:

Paul White: "Street Lights" [feat. Danny Brown]

Running out of hyperbole to spit re: Danny Brown so let's focus on Paul White, a UK producer that I'm hitherto unfamiliar with but who is supposed to be producing a good chunk of Brown's upcoming album. "Street Lights" the single is billed to Paul White, and probably represents a more accurate picture of what he intends for his own material as opposed to what he's bring to the table for the Danny Brown record, but I do like the way Danny sounds over such an obtuse beat. Stay tuned, should be a video for this shortly.

(via URB):

Zorch: "We All Die Young"

With SXSW wrapping it up it seems fitting to post a rare song from an Austin band, it being WKMR's backyard and all. Zorch are pretty unclassifiable but their style of frenetic digital psych won't seem too esoteric if you've been keeping your finger on the pulse for the last year or two. Not drastically dissimilar to some of the more unhinged shit that Dan Deacon has been doing, for instance.

I feel like this band has been around forever now in local circles but for some reason are just now getting around to putting our their debut, ZZoorrcchh, this summer on Sargent House.

Keep Shelly In Athens: "Madmen Love"

Perhaps in response to EDM, the more experimental frays of electronic music are increasingly eschewing the soft edges of chillwave and dream pop for more incisive, cutting synth lines. So it shouldn't be surprising to see Keep Shelly In Athens employing a darker feel on "Madmen Love", the first single from their upcoming debut LP (through they have so many EPs and singles out over the last few years the whole scenario just shows how ridiculous the idea of a "debut LP" is in 2013).

Look for that on Cascine, a label with amazing taste but a correspondingly infuriating refusal to provide up-to-date release info via their otherwise snazzy website.

TOKiMONSTA: "The Force" [feat. Kool Keith]

I thought Kool Keith was retired? Seems like ever since WWF guys started welshing on mandatory retirement matches back in the 80's it's been trendy for all media type to promise to go away... and then come back six months later. Too $hort is the king of this but come on, Keith, at least knock out a clothing line before you call off your little time out. Give us time to miss a motherfucker.

Covered in Sand: "Heaven's Gate Suicides"

You remember Heaven's Gate, right? UFO cult... mid-90's... mass suicide. Thinning the herd, basically. Secretive UK producer Shifted is getting straight up industrial on his new project, Covered in Sand, with leaked track "Heaven's Gate Suicides" a kind of martial Bataan Death March through your dome. Along with his "solo" work, Covered in Sand is a key component of Shifted's new(ish) Avian label.

Tracques: "Click Track"

Stuart Price (a.k.a Jacques Lu Cont a.k.a. Les Rhthmes Digitales if you're old school) is perhaps best known for producing mainstream dance pop for the likes of Madonna, Gwen Stefani and Pet Shop Boys, but "Click Track" shows the man to have a grimey, hardcore itch that those breadmaking gigs can't scratch. The minimalist bass line that starts the tune could go off in a hundred different directions, but it eventually breaks off into a restless, jittery ADD defying the metronomic insistence of the ticking clock that tries to hold it all in check.

"Click Track" is the first song on an as yet untitled album to be released through Price's own Tracques Records.

Dan Deacon: "Guilford Avenue Bridge"

Another 2012 holder just recently getting a video, "Guilford Avenue Bridge" is probably the most abrasive song off of Dan Deacon's superb-if-inconsistent America, an album which - as a whole - saw the Baltimore-repping producer greatly expand upon (if not largely abandon) the hokey 8-bit aesthetic that made  his 2007 breakthrough Spiderman of the Rings so compelling. It is, however, a logical extension of 2009's Bromst, a record that was intended to be his "real" breakthrough but that arguably fewer people heard than Spiderman.

Purity Ring: "Lofticries"

Production values are definitely of an era: it's easy to imagine "Lofticries" coming out back in the late 90's with more of a hazy, slowed down trip hop vibe. All of which is to say that the central melody has a timeless pop quality to it, not dissimilar to what Grimes is pimping these days (both 4AD artists, none too coincidentally). The Shrines album came out last summer - and singles from it were already being released in late 2011 - so presumably this is the last of the OG shit we'll see until the sophomore material is prepped.

Othello Woolf: "Keep On"

Last round and then we're off until the first of the year. My NY resolution for 2013 is going to be getting back into the habit of posting daily, something I already needed to get back into the swing of, so it's kind of like a resolution freebie. Let's get this over with...

Othello Woolf sounds like the name of a really studied, possibly even stuffy singer-songwriter type with too many dusted off sonnets rattling around in his head. Nope, straight up cloud soul for that ass. Grab a free album + EP over at homeboy's website. Unfortunately the freebies do not feature "Keep On"... look for that track on a new album early next year.

Pillowfight: "Get Your Shit Together"

Where do I recognize that cinematic backing track? Ah, I'm pretty sure I heard it on a Tarantino soundtrack which means he in turn stole it from someone else. Double down on my research? Fuck that. Pillowfight is a new project by Dan the Automator and the somewhat lesser known Emily Wells. Wells' vocals strongly recall the trip hop era of the late 90s, which seems to be the next big era to be revisited wholesale.

Nguzunguzu: "Smoke Alarm"

Hippos in Tanks is putting out some of the best sideways/bent techno in an era dominated by arena friendly dubstep and glossy house. "Smoke Alarm" has the backbone of an accessible trance tune but the formlessness of the song's structure stakes its claim deep in the leftfield frontier.

Slackk: "Shogun Assassin"

This would have made an apropos inclusion to Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill soundtrack, but it stands alone as a bombastic techno tune with a martial underscore.