The world isn’t flat. Writing about grime – a musical form inherently and intrinsically British – while living across the Atlantic can be maddening at times. You can catch the tracks and peep the videos, but that boots-on-the-ground intel and visceral experience will always be missing.

That’s why grime needs Mixclique, the duo comprised of DJ/producer Neon Beats and DJ Ethic. A couple of grime heads from Ipswich, Mixclique have been making waves in the scene for about a year now. With major DJs supporting Neon’s instrumentals, and Ethic’s steady hand keeping the trains running on time, Mixclique aims to touch every part of the grime scene – from production and DJing to music and mix releases.

Their most exciting project is Mixclique Vision, a series of interviews, freestyles and DJ sets that the guys are recording for a global audience. They’ve already interviewed heavyweights like the Butterz crew, Dexplicit, and Spooky (of Keep Watch mix infamy). For grime fans outside of the UK, Mixclique Vision is quickly proving itself to be an essential resource.

Sonically, Neon Beats is coming into his own as a grime producer, building off last year’s Ahead of Grime and Just in Grime EPs. His bootleg mash-up of Teddy’s “Afghan” and Darq E Freaker’s “Cherryade” blends two major grime tracks into one banging instrumental. Here’s P Money doing his thing on the beat:

Neon Beats – Afghan Cherryade – Elijah & Skilliam Ft P Money, Royal-T, Starkey, Swindle – 14/07/11 by Neonbeats

Neon Beats’ hottest track yet “Too Much,” a collaboration with Lady Leshurr, who spits like a machinegun over the hyperactive riddim. Here’s hoping Neon has some more of these beats in the queue. If he does, Mixclique will have the tracks and the vision for a true grime experience. Even if you’re not there with them.

Nero – Welcome Reality (2011) [MTA] // Grade: D

With Daft Punk and Basement Jaxx recording soundtracks for sci-fi epics, it was only a matter of time before an act took it upon themselves to do the same, without the benefit of a film to score. On their debut album Welcome Reality, UK duo Nero aim for such orchestral grandiosity, adding a dubstep flair to the electro leanings of their predecessors. The result is a bloated companion piece for a Michael Bay flick that doesn’t exist.

Welcome Reality is over-the-top and formulaic, as if Nero took every stadium-friendly electronic music trend and simply added dubstep’s wobbly low-end to it. “Doomsday” is Bloody Beetroots’ mosh-pit electro; “Guilt” has the diva vocals and synth stabs of big room trance. Throughout the album, soaring guitar and synth lines battle four on the floor beats in a “cock rock vs. dance music” race to the bottom; the title of the plodding “Scorpions” has to be a hat-tip to the German glam rockers of the same name, right?

Du jour dance styles aren’t the only territory that Nero mines for Welcome Reality. Towards the end of the disc, there’s a suite of songs that rip mid-eighties pop without a sense of irony. Samples of the Jets’ “Crush,” Carmen’s “Time to Move,” and the coup de grace, Hall & Oates’ “Out of Touch,” prove that even your parents can enjoy dubstep!

Released more than a year after lead single “Innocence,” Welcome Reality has little in common with the sparse, luvstep romanticism promised on that track. “In the Way” is the only other time we get something that isn’t obnoxiously cranked to 11, its reverb-laced snares a brief respite from the album’s relentless synthesized explosions. The pair of tracks showcase how an act can combine dubstep’s aggression with poppy, mainstream sensibilities; it’s a shame Nero didn’t do more of the same elsewhere.

Listen, I’m a little hesitant to do a Curb re-up today. It’s nothing about you, really, I just don’t know if today’s the day for one. It seems like maybe today is, in fact, not the day. Whatever. Never mind. Let’s do this.

“Car Periscope” is great. It doesn’t reinvent anything or bring the show to new heights, and is in fact a little short on dialogue bits, relying more on visual jokes, but it’s a good, funny episode. The plot is pretty lengthy so let’s try and summarize this quickly. Things start off with Larry getting upstreamed while hailing a cab. He calls her out, which is a pretty good bit, and then things move on, but don’t forget about the upstreaming, because in typical Curb fashion, it will return eventually.

From there we see Larry working out with a personal trainer, in what eventually turns into the C plot of Larry recommending his trainer to guest Wanda Sykes who then steals Larry’s slot. It’s an alright bit but doesn’t concern the other two plots that much so I’m not really going to mention it any more. Don’t be mistaken, however, there are some good scenes involved in the C plot.

After working out, the A plot gets underway as Larry and Jeff visit the home of an inventor hoping to raise money for what turns out to be a Kramer-esque car periscope. Neither one are totally sold on the inventor and willing to invest, until, on their way out, they meet the man’s wife who is more homely than her husband. With a strange sense of logic, a gag that continues throughout the episode, Larry decides that the inventor is a man of integrity and agrees to test drive the periscoped car. The various test driving scenes are pretty funny and eventually Larry and Jeff, and even Susie too, decide the invention is helpful and worth investing in.

The B plot gets begins when the three friends attend a party hosted by their friend Henry. He reveals to them that his senile father, the former Judge Horn, is now living with him, and on a whim that has so often proven unsuccessful, Larry announces “I am going to do something nice right now!” and goes to say hello. Larry finds the elder Horn playing scrabble with a one-armed man, who, after some David-initiated riffing about the pros and cons of having one arm, leaves Larry to entertain the judge. Larry tells the judge how much his father loved his show, to which he replies, “Lotta kikes liked the show. Jiggaboos, too.” Then, while Larry is shocked and silent, Henry comes in and sees that the scrabble score is skewed in LD’s favor and kicks him out of his party for taking advantage of his demented father. Larry has but one option: track down the one-armed man.

The plots converge when Larry is injured by Ira the inventor’s wife after accidentally revealing that he thinks Ira is a good man because he married someone less attractive. Now in a sling, Larry runs into the one-armed man who upstreams him (told you it would come back) for a cab, simultaneously knocking down the elder Horn. Henry runs out form the coffee shop he and his father were in and asks his father who knocked him down. “A one-armed man!” growls the old judge. But there is no one armed man to be found, only Larry, who currently has only one good arm. Full circle!

Like I opened with, “Car Periscope” does not shuttle Curb to a new plateau of comedy (of which it is already positioned at the peak), but rather, is just a fun, goofy episode. Similar to the episode earlier this season, “The Smiley Face”, “Car Periscope” takes the unconventional route of using visual gags. Between the whole car periscope bit, and the one-armed man, the episode relies on less spoken jokes than usual, but it’s still great and funny, so whatever. And hey, the entire episode come full circle, which is expected, but they even talk about perfect circles at the beginning! Are you kidding me? It’s wonderful!

Check out my favorite bit from “Car Periscope” after the jump.

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Being the faithful Mopster that you are, I’m sure that you are well-aware of Japanese webstore, Essense, and often head over there at the beginning of each season to see our new product before it typically hits American shores. I mean, I know I used to do that before being recruited by Satan to write for the Bloglin.

Anyway, we recently got together with Essence to produce a special, limited-edition tee in honor of their ten-year anniversary. Featuring Psycho Simon emblazoned on a pair of crossbones and a sticky, cyrillic Мишка hit, this shirt is sick. Go grab one over at Essense… that is if you can read Japanese!

Introductions: they are a part of life from beginning to end. “Hey this is my pal, Mikey.” “Kent, meet Susan, she’s new in the office.” “Tommy, this is my fiancé, Jayceon. What? Yeah, we started dating right after you and I broke up.” People are always introducing friends to other friends, co-workers to co-workers, pets to pet-sitters, and that’s great; people need to meet each other. Unfortunately, as we have come to expect at this point, there are also noobs out there being introduced to innocent bystanders and, similarly, noobs facilitating these introductions. This leads to disgusting instances of malpractice concerning basic “hello”s: weak handshakes, lack-of eye-contact, preemptive hugs — and those are the least foul of the noobisms!

Before we get into it, allow me make a brief aside in regard to the introduction-requirement, “Nice to meet you.” This stipulation is said at the beginning of ninety-nine percent of introductions (I presume). It’s said out of courtesy and in an attempt to be friendly, however, it is a little presumptuous. Sure, it may turn out that meeting the person with whom you are speaking is a nice occurrence, but it also might turn out that this person will be responsible for your eventual demise. Perhaps this person will end up sleeping with your wife, or stealing your dog, or burning down your house. All I’m saying is that we should think about maybe reserving “Nice to meet you,” for a later point in a relationship, a time when it is safer to say that the initial meeting was indeed nice.

Now, onto noobs. When first meeting a noob there are many flubs and fumbles made by these individuals. None, however, as atrocious as the New Acquaintance Assoiation. NAA, as it often abbreviated, is the reaction a noob has to meeting somebody who looks like somebody else they know. In traditional noob fashion, they are compelled to tell their new acquaintance about the similarities they exhibit with the other, not currently present person. Observe:

Ken: Hey Diane, this is my friend Ron.

Diane. Hi, Ron! Nice to meet you. Wow! You know what? You look just like my friend Petrey!

Now the outcome of this already feeble encounter depends on the noob status of Ron. If he is not a noob, his response to Diane’s ridiculously pointless remark should be something along the lines of, “Oh…cool.” However, if Ron is similarly a noob, he will likely be fascinated by the bizarre occurrence that Diane knows someone similar in appearance to him, responding with something abhorrently mindless like, “Wow! Really? What does Petrey look like?” Ron might also throw in a noobish joke after that last question like, “I bet he’s pretty good looking!” That is, if he is truly a noob.

This type of interaction is a tell-tale sign of a noob, and stems directly from their core. What prompts such a divulgence of information? This is what we must figure out. There is no reason Ron should know that he looks like Petrey. This information will in no way benefit him or be of any interest.

In a similar vein, noobs often straight up mistake people for other people. This isn’t so unforgivable, after all, mistakes happen. The true noobishness of the error comes out when the mistaken noob carries on with the mistake, insisting they are correct. This particular installment of our investigation into the noob mentality was in fact sparked by a recent encounter involving myself and a noob who would not believe that I was not someone else. The scene was as follows: I was standing in front of a real estate office looking at the pictures of properties they have in the window, because sometimes that can be fun, when a woman who quickly revealed herself to be a noob, exited the office. The encounter proceeded like so:

Noob: Um, excuse me? Hi. Are you…Yeah! Hey! I I know your mother!

Me: You do?

Noob: Yeah! She and your brother were just in here! Gosh, you and your brother look so much alike!

Me: What? No, sorry, I think you’re mistaken. I don’t have a brother.

Noob: No, you do! He was just in here with your mother!

Me: No, I don’t. And my mother doesn’t live here, so that’s not possible.

Noob: No! She does! She was just here! With your brother!

Me: You serious? She doesn’t. You think I’m wrong about this?

Noob: Yes! Your mother and your brother were both just here and I sold them a place upstate!

Me: No, none of that is true. What, you think I’m just not correct about the size and whereabouts of my family?

Noob: You know, you may look like your brother, but you are nothing like him! So rude! Don’t think your mother won’t hear about this!

Me: You don’t know my— You know, never mind. You go tell my mother that.

Noob: I will! Goodbye!

Now, there is simply no way this woman knew my mother. I could provide an abundance of evidence such as my mother does not often leave the house, and when she does it certainly is not to travel three-thousand miles to visit a real estate office, but I refuse to dignify that female noob’s claims. There is simply no way that woman was correct. But she insisted she was, therefore revealing herself to be a noob. A non-noob would quickly admit their mistake and continue about their day, but not a noob. She held onto that sinking ship much like a noob would do were they to find themselves on a sinking ship. I can only imagine how her next interaction with the woman she believed to be my mother went.

And so we delve deeper into the noob psyche. Aside from very specific situations where noobs noob it (bus rides, train rides), today’s study suggests that there is something fundamentally different in their brain patterns, and perhaps DNA, that is leading them to noob very simple social interactions as well. Now that we are really getting into the psychology of things, I suspect we will soon need to call in some scientists to aid our endeavors. But rest assured, Reader, I know plenty of scientists. We will get to the bottom of this; we will discover the defect in the noob biology.

Blood Orange – Coastal Grooves (2011) [Domino] // Grade: B-

For Dev Hynes, less is more. Or rather, it is now. Though he’s spent the past several years skittering from the amped-up Test Icicles to woozy Lightspeed Champion — not to mention writing for the likes of Florence Welch and Solange Knowles — the British musician’s channeled all that freneticism into a moody, stripped and maniacally focused new project. Introducing Blood Orange: You might very well hate it.

Not that you should. It’s just a very different day for Hynes, a new era of ambiance over hook. Debut Coastal Grooves certainly has its stormers — first single “Sutphin Boulevard” especially erupts with so much sexy, after-hours swagger — but more than not, the album thrives on texture and mood. The retro-pentatonic “Can We Go Inside Now,” like something out of Wong Kar Wai’s In The Mood For Love; the quietly epic “Complete Failure” prancing around on spaghetti western bends; Hynes’ vocals smooth as silk, crooning, whispering, hushed when you’d expect them to be anything but. Hynes told NME he wanted to write songs a drag queen could sing, and that drama all but boils over the edges.

Still, for better or worse, there’s not much singalong exuberance. It would’ve been easy for Hynes to make so many of these tracks a solid hit, the sound of late-summer 2011, but you have to wonder: Would that have been too easy? Even with its mid-album energy slump (which seems more a pacing issue than anything), Coastal Grooves is most memorable for the world it creates. The sultry surf guitar, that balance of post-punk grit and mid-century sheen; you may not want to jam these in your car on the way to the beach, but you could easily hear them in a smoky, red-lacquered bar, coming from the lips of the coolest crooner you’ve ever seen. So embrace the minimalism. Enjoy the ambiance. Hynes’ less, first-album kinks and all, is on its way to being just the right more.

Let’s go to Russia. Yekaterinburg specifically, the heart of the Urals Federal District, where buried beneath the concrete and city lights is a nightmarish collective spinning toxic, primal yarns. They’re called 4 Pocizii Bruno — or The Four Positions of Bruno/4PB — and their entire back-story is based on a mistruth.

Okay, maybe it is. No one’s totally sure. According to Far From Moscow, this trio-sometimes-quartet claim their name comes from a distinctive Romanian polka created in the 1930s by one Bruno Radulesco — a story (and person) neither FFM nor Google are able to substantiate. It’s become a bit of a mystery for 4PB, this strange tale that’s either joke, myth, miscommunication or some combo of the three.

Which, when you get down to it, pretty much encapsulates the group’s whole thing. This is electronic music mired in false reality, in smoke and mirrors, an undulating sense of disorientation. Take too many Percocet, drink a bottle of wine and this is what you’ll hear: 4PB’s night noises, all dubbed out and faraway, leading you trance-like, by the hand, straight to the torture chamber.

Steel Communion(Stal`noye Prichastiye) by 4 Pozicii Bruno

But it’s only the past couple releases that’ve locked into this particular groove. The fellas of 4PB have a history of alternate sounds behind them, from the melodic free-form of 2009’s Very Tasty Man EP to the jerky, wit-infused hip-hop tendencies that mostly reside now with concurrent project Ptitsu Em.

And though the just-released (and downloadable via Blogspot) Sixth Position is the best example of 4PB at their most poisonous, give all the records a go. Nearly all of ‘em are available at the afore-linked blog — 4PB’s a prolific bunch; live collection Fifth Position and the Centipedes & Heartbreakers EP dropped in the first half of 2011 alone — and each is an integral piece of the collective’s mythology. That surreal and filmy thing marked with moments of techno, endearingly awkward rap, noisy interludes and terrifying hyper-rave. A soundscape as ever-changing and elusive as the fabled Bruno Radulesco himself.

Parasite(Parazit) by 4 Pozicii Bruno

Sewed Up And Hungry(Zaschitye I Golodniye) by 4 Pozicii Bruno

Fright Night is awesome! For real. I don’t care what Casper says. It might be the most fun I had at the movies this summer. And not in a “this movie is dumb but I enjoyed it anyway” kind of fun…more like a “this movie rules, best $10 bucks I’ve spent in awhile” kind of fun. It just has a lot going for it. The script, the performances, the action… all solid.

The story is yes a remake, but not really.  All it really uses is the concept of a vampire living next door… from there it is a whole new animal. The story is about Anton Yelchin finding out that his neighbor Colin Ferrell might be a vampire while trying to protect his girlfriend and his mom.  The screenplay was written by Marti Noxon, who wrote many of the best episodes of Buffy The Vampire Slayer as well as Mad Men and ton of other great shit. The dialogue is sharp and funny and quick… just like I like it.

The performances are great as well. Most of the stars do a good enough job, like Anton Yelchin and Christopher Mintz-Plasse.  But there are two standout performances…those of David Tennant and Colin Farrell.  David Tennant, ex-star of Doctor Who, brings the heat as Peter Vincent.  Peter Vincent is a Vegas Cris Angel type…a burnt out philandering wannabe monster-hunter.  Every scene with Tennant is enjoyable and memorable.

Then we have Colin Ferrell who is practically iconic as the evil vampire Jerry. He is the badguy but he is so good that you will find yourself rooting for him. He’s actually that badass.

Another thing I dug about Fright Night is how it is actually rated R so expect actual violence from this horror/action flick.  I think you should see it.  Yes the original was cool but it’s not Citizen Kane like Casper says, it was a fun 1985 vampire flick and this a fun 2011 vampire flick.  So unless the original was your favorite movie ever I doubt you’ll even care that this is a remake…you will be too busy enjoying yourself.

I am not sure why, but I follow Soulja Boy on Twitter (guilty pleasure I guess) and he had tweeted something in the vein of “Who is this persons Twitter name” and link to the video.

I find the video pretty funny, not in the making fun of the kid kind of way, but just as in a whole other level of what a teenager has to deal with in this day and age. I am pretty sure if I was in middle school, and following the “Weird Al Fan Club” twitter, and they were following then un-followed me, I would be pretty upset as well.

Don’t cry much longer dear Candace looks like your hard work has paid off, and THE REAL Soulja Boy is actually following you!

Hey, let me tell you something. This Monday, August 29, Mishka is getting together with New York art collective, Motiongraff to present a screening of their eighteenth episode featuring artwork by our very own Nick Gazin. With music by Cerebral Ballzy and special guest DJ, Mike Gallo, not to mention no cover fee, this event is about to be sick!

Motiongraff, initially started as an art project, has since become a show striving to capture the creative process through transmedia storytelling. As opposed to using video images, the collective opts still images only, utilizing multiple cameras and angles. As explained on their website, their goal is to, “showcase talent and techniques, while conveying a message.” The show starts at 8pm at St Vitus Bar in Brooklyn. Get there.

Monday August 29th, 8pm-11pm
St Vitus Bar
1120 Manhattan Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11222
21+ to Enter | No Cover