The first time I ever saw Jacques Greene DJ, he spun Mya’s overlooked, Nicki Minaj-featuring slinker “Ponytail.” Throwing that out there made it clear he had been committed to pop-R&B at a young age, but is also ordained to keeping things on the dancefloor vibe sultry but still party-primed. Tom Krell, bka How To Dress Well’s work is also clearly indebted to a youthful eduction in Tevin Campbell, Whitney Houston, and the like. And while the electronic elements of his output tend toward the more experimental side, this is a union that works because it’s hinged on their shared interest in music that makes you swoon. It would be reductive to call it “Climax 2.0″ but it’s making swell my heart in the same way — with yearning falsettos, an uncertain love narrative, and luxurious electronics. Check it out below.
Jacques Greene – “On Your Side” (Feat. How To Dress Well)
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Wes Eisold describes the new Cold Cave A-side as, “Cool nihilism. Existential, groovy, psychedelia.” I think the former term fits “Black Boots” pretty well, insofar as it means anything at all. The latter, though? Sorry, but “existential, groovy, psychedelia” this is not. Maybe “DeLillo-esque, urban, goth”? Or “violent, subterranean, death-rock”? Or “pale, rigid, post-punk”? I dunno, I think I’m being thrown by the word “groovy” or something. Anyway, Eisold is back with another self-released 7″, which appears to be his chosen form for new Cold Cave material at present. It’s a good look for him: Such “bleak, focused, minimalism” is perhaps better appreciated in small doses. Listen.
Cold Cave – “Black Boots”
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The enigmatic Californian rap producer Madlib is exactly the type of person to make a new track, put it on a 7″ single, only make 300 copies of that single, and then only sell those copies to the people who show up at one specific show. His new two-track single Rock Conducta is only available at a forthcoming San Francisco show, and one of songs is “The Mad March,” which chops up a funky marching band stomp into a time-stretching ripple. Listen below.
Madlib – “The Mad March”
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As far as we know, the great inward-looking indie singer-songwriter Cass McCombs has no plans to drop a new album on us anytime soon. But this summer, he will release a split 7″ with the veteran folk-music outsider Michael Hurley. McCombs’s contribution is a warm and buoyant shuffle called “Three Men Sitting On A Hollow Log,” and you can hear it below.
Cass McCombs – “Three Men Sitting On A Hollow Log”
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Apologies for those who already know, but before “Crazy” and “Fuck You” and The Voice, Cee-Lo was one fourth of the ridiculously great Atlanta rap group Goodie Mob, whose first two albums are indisputable essential classics and whose third album is kind of sneaky-great. Last year, the group
Goodie Mob – “Special Education” (Feat. Janelle Monáe)
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You never, as a music dork, stop learning this lesson, but the truth behind it stands: It’s always, always a bad idea to dismiss an artist based on a terrible name. That rule is right up there with “horrendous rappers get better all the time, so stop believing it can’t happen,” and we break the rule just as often as that one. Case in point: Majical Cloudz. And, I mean, holy gods what an awful name. It’s name that conjures Trapper Keeper designs and rap-metal fake-toughness (that Z!) at the same damn time, and it makes the group seem, immediately, like a halfassed joke, like the sort of band whose music videos consist entirely of floating psychedelic CGI landscapes. And it didn’t help that, up until now, the only things that most of us knew about them were that they were from Montreal and that they were friends with Grimes; Grimes is turning into a pure force of cultural badassery, but she can still align herself with some
Album Of The Week: Majical Cloudz Impersonator
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If you’re heading to The Gorge for
The 10 Less Obvious Must-See Sets At Sasquatch! ’13
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