A little under a month ago we hosted our first in-store performance with the neo-folk styling of Seattle’s King Dude. We’re proud to announce that this will be an ongoing thing, where we’ll host in-store performance once a month or so. With all he initial kinks worked out we’re thrilled announce our second performance, Portland synth duo Soft Metals which will be happening at our Brooklyn store tonight.

Soft Metals is the electronic romance of Ian Hicks and Patricia Hall of Portland, Oregon played on vintage synthesizers and drum machines. Brought together in April of 2009 through a common love of late 70s to early 80s analog synthesizer music, they decided to meet up and write some songs. Inspiration came to them by way of experimental noise and avant garde, early industrial music, minimal synth, 1980s Chicago house, synth pop, and italo disco. Building their songs from moody, experimental, and improvised sessions together, they never know what influence will have the upper hand. It’s simplest to say Soft Metals make dark, romantic, electronic dance music.

We’ve written a few times about Soft Metals on the Bloglin and we hop you took our advice and checked them out. Ian and Patricia make some of the best and sultriest synth sounds that are equally informed by Darkwave as they are classic Italo. They’re going to turn our magic fun house into a dark and fantastic dance floor.

Check out their new video for “Voices” off of their debut EP, The Cold World Melts now available from Captured Tracks. We hope you’ll come join us and take in a band that we’re very excited about on their first ever tour to the East Coast!

The performance will take place today from 7-8pm and will be on a first come, first served basis. Our shop can only fit so many people so please arrive early to ensure a spot for the show. We hope to see you there and enjoy the show.

Saturday September 25th, 7pm-8pm
Мишка
350 Broadway
Brooklyn, NY
718-388-1725

J/M/Z to Marcy Ave
G to Broadway
L to Lorimer

Last week we received a pleasant albeit quick visit from our new brother in arms, Vincent Bennet. Maybe you know him? He’s the frontman for the Metalcore powerhouse that is The Acacia Strain. Vinny was in town to see Sleep perform their 8-hour long set at the Brooklyn Masonic Temple and decided to give us a visit before the show.

Besides being in The Acacia Strain, Vincent also has a fashion endeavor called Diamond Cut. Diamond Cut specializes in Straight Edge clothing (if there is such a thing) flipping classic hardcore iconography and pop culture to communicate a life long commitment to the edge which is catered to the hypesnobster in you!

The Acacia Strain will soon be leaving to headline an American tour with support from the Red Chord and Terror. This tour will certainly smash your face in properly! We will be supporting them by preparing our own form of black magic to add to the tour.

If you’re new to The Acacia Strain then do check out their punishing sound on the video for “The Hills Have Eyes” off their newest album, Wormwood.  Keep Watch on the Bloglin for more details on our evil plans with TAS!

Мишка
350 Broadway
Brooklyn, NY
718-388-1725

J/M/Z to Marcy Ave
G to Broadway
L to Lorimer

Chromeo - Business Casual (2010) [Atlantic] // Grade: B+

It’s a tricky path to walk when you’re a throwback or revival band. From the jump you have an immense amount of restrictions placed on your creativity. You have to replicate a defunct style of music down to the smallest detail or you risk coming off as a cheap knockoff or insulting to fans of the genre. Yet, even if you nail the conventions of the genre perfectly, there’s still the possibility that you’ll simply sound derivative. The looming question remains “why should I listen to these new guys when I have the old records”? Enter, Chromeo.

The duo (Dave 1 and P-Thugg) have spent their career throwing back to the electro fuck/boogie of the early/mid 80s that was perfected by the likes of Rick James, Cameo, Ready For The World and Morris Day & The Time. This is a genre that’s weirdly, not been embraced in the revival of all things 80s that happened at the turn of the century — yet, it’s pretty much perfect dance music. It’s a distillation of the excess of disco, merged with the extra heavy groove of funk and the electronics/futurism of new wave. There’s no fat here, no unnecessary parts. Just pure jams, for sweating out expensive haircuts — Chromeo fully realize and celebrate this.

Business Casual finds Chromeo coming the closest to recreating the bands they draw their influences from, musically they’re pitch perfect. From the bleet of classic synth solos, to the coldness of the drum machine’s hi-hats and delicately rich harmonies it’s all here. The album starts of with “Hot Mess”, a sexy dance song, engineered for women with big hair in tube dresses to demonstrate how well they’ve strengthened their core muscles during pilates. Serpentine motions are so necessary for this one, especially when it reaches it’s crescendo of fat synths and vocoder. Songs like “Night By Night” and “You Make It Rough” both enter the realm of disco/electro hybrid usually occupied by bands like Daft Punk and demonstrates that Chromeo understand the subtleties of electro by throwing in some great flourishes. “Night By Night” has a synth, vocoder, guitar dueling solo section that reeks of the early 80s fascination of combining shitty guitar solos with synthesizers — an idea to later be revisited in the 90′s with DJ scratching replacing synthesizers, shitty guitar solos remain a constant. “You Make It Rough” not only comes through as a great smoothed out electro number, but also serves as a demonstration of how awesome the arpeggio function is on a synthesizer. Which in 2010, is kinda whatever, we’ve all heard arpeggios before. But, in 1983? “Shiiiitttt”® – The Wire. It’s tiny details in songs like this that give the album the authenticity that your ear (even subconsciously) recognizes. This authenticity also allows Business Casual to fully function as an entry in the genre along side all those classic bands, instead of just being a commentary on them.

The only part of the album that really comes across as lacking are Dave 1′s vocals. That’s not to say dude has bad vocals, he’s very competent. The issue lies in his lack of flair. He has a limited range and wisely stays within that range, but this robs the songs of some of the hysterics that are par for the course in this style of music. If you play metal, at some point you’ve gotta scream. If you rap hard, you’re going to have to curse at some point (except Will Smith, he don’t have to curse in his rhymes). If you’re going to play electro you’ve gotta wild the fuck out and gimme some “oohhh”‘s some “ahhh”‘s maybe a “babbbyyy”, even a patented Klymaxx “somebody slap me!” would do. I know it’s Business Casual — all praise be to The Gap — but even dudes in chinos and moreno wool cardigans break the girl in accounting off a lil something every once in awhile. Let me hear that shit Dave 1.

The lack of vocal histrionics aside though the album is pretty spot on, and totally ready to transition your next party from lounging on the leather sofa to clear out the tables so we can dance territory. I just wish it had a little bit more of the Prince feel, that transitions the party from dancing in the living room to “ladies please don’t scuff my silk sheets with your heels” territory.

Ellen Stagg of Stagg Street dropped by our studio a couple of days ago to shoot the very lovely and sweet Kristen for a little lookbook featuring some of graphic tees, caps and shirts dropping in our second Fall 2010 delivery. I was there (since my office is the photo studio, duh) and was able to snap a few behind-the-scenes pics from the shoot.

Click any of the images to expand them to get a better look (come on, you know you want to!). Keep watch for the Fall-2 drop and this full lookbook dropping online very, very soon!

Welcome to Press Start! The place where I uh, do stuff and ramble a lot about video games. I’m going to level with you guys, I have a god damn head cold that won’t quit. This entire column is powered by Sudafed and the hazy feeling that antihistamine bring upon me. In other words; it’s sort of half-assed! Apologies. You’ll never know the difference, so low is the bar I set for myself. Here is it, the five things that caught The One Dork Eye of mine this week, in no particular order, and without anything resembling sense. Hit me in the comments box with your list of happenings.

Onward! Upward!

—-

#1: Bioshock Infinite Gameplay Drops Ten-Minutes of Bonery Onto Fans
It almost doesn’t seem fair. Bioshock Infinite isn’t dropping until some time next year, and here we are in September staring at ten-minutes of pants tightening glory. And if you’re any sort of a fan of awesome or Bioshock, you’re going to produce a sordid amount of cream in your pantaloons. A good friend of mine crunched the numbers, and did some science, and proclaimed that this footage is in fact beyond boners. A crack team of scientists are trying to calculate exactly what the appropriate juvenile expression for this game shall be, since clearly it is something more righteous than a blood-flooded cock.

—-

#2: Donkey Kong Country Returns Pre-Order Gift is Strangely Erotic
There’s always something strangely erotic about Donkey Kong. At least to me. And that probably isn’t worth of remark, since I have the maturity of a fifteen year-old. But still. Today I was thinking about how the entire premise of Donkey Kong is that he kidnaps this white chick, and I presume he’s going to do some vag-splitting horror on her after he takes care of that fucking plumber.

[Aside: It also seems like a creepy Japanese manifestation over the fears of miscegenation.]

Even more terrifying is the fact that everyone is down with DK, despite his dubious beginnings. Like, now he gets to roll around kicking ass and hanging out with his brood like he wasn’t a serial monkey rapist back in the day. What the fuck is that shit?

Nonetheless.

Nonetheless, this week Nintendo revealed the pre-order bonus you get when you drop some money down on Donkey Kong Country Returns over at Gamestop. A strangely erotic glove that you can slip your Wiimote into. What exactly is the  functional purpose of this gift? I’m not sure. It’s a fucking condom shaped like a banana. I find it amazing though, and can’t help but want it for some inexplicable reason.

I want a banana condom.

—–

#3: MTV Gets Resident Evil Actors to Quote Lines From The Game
True confessional type shit: I saw Resident Evil: Afterlife. And I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it as some exceptionally awful action movie, that you can enjoy for all of its skillfully poor execution of action movie tropes. In three-dimensions! A concept which seemed to flummox Paul W.S. Anderson, so he just used bullet time to fling things at the screen.

Anyways.

So with that in mind, I was pretty pumped to find this video. MTV News got the actors of Afterlife to act out some of the classically brutal lines from the series. Any dork worth his weight in Claire Redfield cosplay can quote these lines. Sadly. So what is the greatest thing in life? Getting the shitty actors to quote shitty lines from Resident Evil. There’s some sort of righteous meta-commentary going on here, because there are countless lines from the movie which are actually worse than these lines.

Keep giggling, Milla Jovovich. You can’t act nor are you the Master of Unlocking like Jill!

(more…)

“He’s the producer, I’m the vocalist” is probably the best way to describe AC & Dell, a duo from Brooklyn and Atlanta respectively. AC also known as AC Slater (of Trouble & Bass), a globe trotting dance music producer and DJ who’s music is supported by superstar DJs like Moby and Diplo, is the man behind the controls. Dell “o8o” Harris is the charismatic former front man of TKatz (Thunderkatz) signed with Irv Gotti of The Inc Records/Universal. A multi-talented rapper fusing indie dance music and hip hop, Dell has made a home in the underground, rocking parties week after week.

Brought together by a chance remix and brief meeting at a party in Atlanta, the two talked about future collaboration which came to existence on UK’s national BBC Radio 1 when Toddla T asked AC & Dell to put together a remix for a segment on his show. The results were exciting and the reaction was supportive and positive. The two decided to continue in the studio with the goal of a mixtape, which turned into an album of all original material.

All photography by Ellen Stagg.

On Right Now, AC & Dell invite the listener into their world of late night underground parties, girl troubles, and jet setter antics. Combining the sounds of hip hop, electronic, and indie rock, Right Now features guest spots from Telli Federline of Ninjasonik, Drop the Lime and Megan Thomas amongst many others. The record caught our attention and it’s something we wanted to distribute. So we’ve produced produce a limited run of physical CDs (which are available at our shops) to go along with a digital download of the album.

We’re also trying something new out with this release and distributing it FREE via Bandcamp. All you need to do is input an email address and “Viola!” it’s yours.  Download it, share it, embed it on your blog. Have we ever let you down with a release? I thought not.

Phillips de Pury is having its Latin American Contemporary Art Auction again this year, and Carlos has two pieces in it. You may remember last year, when they auctioned (and sold) his 9ft tall Vagina Monster! This time Carlos has two smaller pieces, including the Flesh Flower, as well as the Hermaphrodite, both pictured above.

The auction is tomorrow and starts at 6pm. If you are true baller for real you should go and buy one of them, or both!

Phillips de Pury
450 West 15 Street
New York, NY
212 940 1234

Restless People - S/T (2010) [IAMSOUND] // Grade: B

Static-y synths-mimicking-steel-drums form the opening of “Days Of Our Lives”, the first track of eight on Restless People’s self-titled debut. Sun-glinted, and tropical meets tribal in sound, if you weren’t driven to dance from the opening notes alone, the airhorn blasts at 10 seconds in serve as the formal statement that the short album is intended to be a full-on state of party.

Restless People joins Tanlines (Jesse Cohen and Eric Emm) with Tony Blankets and Michael Bell-Smith of Professor Murder, who’ve put together a charged romp of structurally solid guilty pleasures. Drawing heavily on ska as influence, Restless People take the genre’s danceability, amp up the pacing and inject elements of electronic instrumentation, repackaging ska with an attitude of nowness. “Constant Panic”, amidst a minimal, shuffling African beat line and whirring synth funk conjure up instrumental similarities to Major Lazer, a moment wherein Reckless People display a shrewd marriage, placing their own spin on in vogue sounds.

The wide-ranging, worldly instrumental influence provides the both the fuel and backbone of interest for the album, but it is in the vocals that Restless People drive their agenda of sun-drenched positive vibes and good times. Like the instrumentation, the vocals are structurally built around repetition, the “hold me/hold me/hold me”, “let’s start today/let’s start today” of “Basic Needs” worms down into your head infectiously, until it’s wiggled its way into your body and got your feet dancing. Vocal structure takes precedence over lyrics and for the most part, you don’t pay much attention to what’s being said; the vocalizations sink into the instrumentation, another shiny steel drum effect in Restless People’s arsenal.

This is an album built on sounds, rather than theme, or sentiment, which surrounds Restless People with the stigma of style over substance. But you can get your fix of deeply moving music elsewhere. You won’t find many other albums of recent note that make you want to move this much.

Salem - Asia

Cccandy – Second Love

Zola Jesus – Sea Talk

Greatest Hits – Danse Pop

Former Ghosts – New Orleans