5 jams for the weekend

Holy crap, we actually made it. Today is Friday. My god, I never thought it was going to come. It's beautiful out, why do I feel like I could sleep for a million years. We are going to turn this around right now.



I suppose I should have some sort of working thesis on the difference between electronic music, dance music, electro-dance music? I don't. I really don't know. Is this a dance tune or this a electronic tune? I don't think I could dance to it right now, but I think I could dance to it late at night after some drinks. Right?

I wouldn't put myself in the camp that one day we are never going to have genres, because we are. We are always going to have country music, hip-hop, pop, and metal. Those sort of dividing lines are always going to exist, but will there be artists that straddle genres? Yes, or course. That is the odd thing about electronic and dance music; those lines are a) not clear from people looking in from the outside and b) probably not worth the effort to erect. Besides filling the human need to put things in clearly designated boxes, what is the point of trying to catalog every piece of electronic and dance music into their own micro-genres? With that said, I'm sure I end up changing my mind on the subject come next week.



Also, how the fuck is John Talabot the only person on the planet without a Wikipedia page? I demand to know more about this person otherwise I'm going to write my own Wikipedia page about him and he probably isn't going to like it.

This two tracks are nice lessons in sun soaked house jams. His music has a clear shimmering element that I really like. It is fantastic summer music that you would want to hear outside on the beach or late night in someone's backyard. I am especially impressed with the vocal track on this tune. I can see some people not liking it but come on, he takes a females voices, screws the hell out of it, and tunes it in to so sort of mysterious vocodor instrument. It's great.



Ummmm, I found this song while flipping through some John Talabot live videos. He played this song at Sonar and someone had video of it. This is all I can say, imagine that bass line but about 1,000 times louder. Yea, it was fucking awesome. Come about 2:45 in you start to understand where this is going.  Kind of has like a 90's acid feel to it, I don't know, I might just be making that comparison up.

This song is clearly all about the bass, and if you can listen to this on a stereo with a bitching sub-woof I would recommend it and then invite me over to join you.

Find more Houseguest songs at Myspace Music

Its been all electronic music all week, time to mix it up. I'm still on an Akron rock kick so this is what you get....mother fucking Houseguest! Akron's most underrated band. I once saw these guys play for three albums in a basement with no A/C in August. I thought someone was going to die. It was a show that I will never forget.

Holy shit, listen to those lyrics...."Tonight I cried to an episode of Empty Nest/ I've never felt such emptiness".  You can take your Fleet Foxes and Bon Ivor's of the world and shove it.

Find more Düunes songs at Myspace Music

My new favorite band in Akron, mother fucking Duunes! Garrrrrrrr I love them so much, prog-metal, who the fuck knew I would ever like that. Soooooo good! Please go to their myspace page and check them out.

Jamie XX remixes The XX. Snake eats its own tail.

Listen guys, I understood last week when no one told me that there was a new Air France single. I mean it had been out for like 12 hours, I apologize about how I acted. But, you guys kind of f'd up on this. You-Tube tells me this song has been posted since September of 2010. Why am I just hearing this? Hmmm? You all got some 'splaning to do.

As Nick put it, it seems that Jamie XX is the brains behind The XX. This is another amazing Jamie XX track. God damn he knows that he is doing. We should probably have a conversation some day about that XX album and A) see if it stands the test of time and B) who was responsible for making it as good as it was.

It helps that he has a fantastic vocal track to work with. He does a fantastic job in this song of framing it properly between these sort of house-y beats, a little two step drums, and the right amount of tension built up around it all.

Damn, it has been an excellent week for summer jams. Wait until tomorrow.

John Talabot sneezes and rainbows come out

This is what I did today: 1) I researched a jail break at a for-profit jail in Youngstown from 1998, 2) I tried to find how many sex offenders there are in Ohio (I still don't know) 3) And researched further into the connections between the ultra right-wing group ALEC and Ohio state legislators.

I have nothing funny to report to you today.



A honest to god fucking summer jam. Holy crap, does everything John Talabot touch turn to gold layered with more gold on top of a mountain of gold? I think so.

I saw John Talabot walking down the street the other day riding a unicorn and having sex with a mermaid. It was amazing.

Don't give me any of that crap about how this tracks starts slow, I don't want to hear it. You gotta have some patience with this stuff. Let it build. Wait for it...wait for it....wait for it...there it is. When the 'you and me's' kick in. That's some good stuff right there.

It's kind of house, kind of balearic

Holy crap it is nice outside today. These are the type of days when we all need to work on tearing down this capitalist structure that is holding us all back. Yea!

Or not. It's kind of just up to you.



Ummmm, you might not realize this but the world is kind of on fire in London right now. I'm normally all for the youth fighting back and demanding things to get better but from what I can tell this just seems to be random violence. That doesn't mean anything. What's the point? I haven't read enough about it but based on some of the artists, labels, and record stores that are based in England no one seems to be happy with what is going on.

Don't get me wrong, I believe that there are legitimate complaints that the youth have over there. In fact, last year when the English government raised tuition by 10% kids rioted in front of the Department of High Ed. That was awesome. I totally supported that. In that instance the bailouts of multi-national corporations were being paid for by forcing the youth to pay more to go to school. That is clearly not fair. But what is going on right now seems less justified. There was a young father who died by the hands of the cops this weekend, that is tragic. Citizens are well within their right to protest and show their disapproval of current climate. That does not give them the right to attack and destroy the private property of businesses and individuals who have nothing to do with what is going on.

And now I'm getting of my soapbox. Enjoy the tune, I heard it on a Beats in Space mix today, I thought it was pretty bitching.

Drummer, Akron, and a sense of urgency

Most underrated band of the last five years or in the last 10? Akron's own. You might know them because the drummer from The Black Keys is in the band and he released the album on his own. Fucking awesome.




There is a lack of pretension in Akron and that is what makes it unique. Somehow, this rust belt town has a generation of kids who are fine with experimenting and throwing things against the wall to see what sticks. My brother and friends in Akron are every weekend going to see some sort of different type of band play. They are going to bars, to house shows, to abandoned buildings to see these bands perform. Every time I go home, and I have an opportunity to check out these bands, I'm amazed by the sense of community there. There are bands taking the building blocks left over from bands from yester-year, stacking them on top of each other, adding their own elements, and seeing what happens. There aren't indie rock bands, or metal bands, or pop bands in Akron. There only seem to be Akron bands in Akron.

There is a sense of urgency in the sounds coming out of Akron. It sounds something like this: things need to change, we might not know what things need to change into, but we can't let the status-quo continue. If the world isn't going to change then F-that we are going to do it ourselves. There is a sense of don't tell us what we should or should not do, we can figure it out ourselves. This is important, this is how things progress, this is what progress looks like. Only when you know you are free to do what ever you want are you free to become different.

This is what makes Akron different from Columbus. Too many times I have sat through shows here in Columbus only to walk out the door thinking, why did exactly nothing just happen? Why does that band sound like every other band in Columbus? What is this clear lack of urgency in the Columbus music scene? Can't these bands see that the world is kind of fucked up and the last thing we need is another indie rock band doing their best twee act?

I'm not saying that every band in Akron is doing this. I'm also not saying that there aren't any bands doing this in Columbus, because I'm sure there are. I'm just saying when I compare these two cities and the music coming out of them, the music coming out of Akron is much more adventurous. They are taking risks, they are morphing into new sounds. Of course it doesn't work every time, nor should it. It simply matters that the risks are being taken.