People Press Play - People Press Play

So you arrive at a party late, really late…as your eyes adjust to the dim light you hear smooth dub beats with swirling chords and the angelic voice of an unknown nonchalant lady singing….music that is the perfect wind down from what must have been a massive party. Except you arrived late. Me too. I arrived late to this 2007 release, almost a year late.

People Press Play are a Copenhagen foursome and ‘People Press Play’is their surprisingly accomplished debut album. Equal parts the Postal Service, Brian Eno and Death Cab for Cutie, they are a band in the traditional sense that they also play analogue instruments. Sara Savery’s lush vocals are equally at home over the dub infused athmospherics of opener ‘Girl’ as they are over the‘New Order-esque bassline’ of ‘Hanging on’. People Press Play is a down tempo album by a band rather than an ambient album by producers, and that’s an important distinction. The songs are carefully crafted, where melodies and electronic sounds progressively entwine around the vocals, or leave it hanging in mid air, unaccompanied. For silence is a rhythm too.

People Press Playwill suffer from some classifications imposed upon them. If I read ‘trip hop’ I’d think 1997, and move on. Down tempo can translate as ‘lacks excitement’, so I’ll settle in electronica ( despite the ‘band’ diatribe above) when I say that ‘People Press Play’is one of the best electonica albums that I have heard in a while. Check it out.

THINK: Plej meet The Postal Service in a jazz lounge.
READ: People Press Play’s myspace
WATCH:The vid for ‘These days’
BUY: People press play at inertia

Tom Waits - Glitter and Doom Tour

Hey guess what Kids - we love us some Tom Waits round these here parts. But then again, I guess that’s hardly news. ( If that is news then I gotta tell ya buddy, you need to get out less.)

As the Glitter and Doom Tour draws to a close in Dublin this weekend, those kind people over at NPRhave managed to finally harness the power of the interweb for good, and recorded the 2 and a half hour show at Atlanta’s historic Fox Theater on July 5 and made it available for all.

The set contains tracks that Waits hasn’t tried out of the studio, including “Hoist that Rag”, “Anywhere I Lay My Head” and triplejaysus favourite “All the World Is Green”. Backing Waits is a five-piece group featuring Seth Ford-Young (upright bass), Patrick Warren (keyboards), Omar Torrez (guitars), Vincent Henry (woodwinds) and Casey Waits (drums and percussion).

“They play with racecar precision and they are all true conjurers,” says Waits. “They are all multi-instrumentalists and they polka like real men.”

You can get the entire show here.

Dizzee Rascal covers The Ting Tings.  

They call me black,
the call me rude boy,
they call me mate…
That’s not my name!

Tops!

G

Not content with a No 1 album in Amerikkka (Thanks Ice Cube) containing the track ‘Sly Fox’, Nas was on a small podium in front of Fox News headquarters in New York City protesting what he sees as racist attacks against Black Americans and presidential candidate Barack Obama. In a brief prepared statement, the multi-platinum rapper pointed out examples of what he and ColorOfChange see as a long racist smear campaign against the Obama family: The onscreen graphic that referred to Michelle Obama as the Senator’s “baby mama”; Bill O’Reilly casually using the phrase “lynching party” to refer to attacks on the Senator’s wife; referencing to the couple’s infamous fist thump as a “terrorist fist jab.” Said Nas, “Fox poisons this country every time they air racist propaganda and try to call it news. This should outrage every American that Fox uses hateful language to talk about the person that may be the first black president.”

The rapper stood next to 19 neatly stacked cardboard boxes, with the number 620,127 taped to the side of each one — over 600,000 signatures gathered by ColorOfChange demanding that network president Roger Ailes “find a solution to address racial stereotyping and hate-mongering before it hits the airwaves.” Fox rejected the petitions, but Brave New Films says that Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report will accept them instead.

ColorOfChange reached out to Nas after seeing the lyrics to “Sly Fox” posted on the Brave New Films website. “We looked at it and said, ‘This is exactly what we’re talking about,’” ColorOfChange deputy director Andre Banks tells Rolling Stone. Just two weeks later, Nas was here speaking to fans, protesters and press spilling out into 6th Avenue, some even holding homemade signs markered with lyrics from the song. When asked if there was a response to “Sly Fox,” Nas rebutted quickly with, “Nah, they’re scared of me.”

Via RollingStone

Hear what he has to say:

Metallica - Death Magnetic

Metallica confirmed the tracklist for their Rick Rubin produced September release ‘Death Magnetic’. The hirsute cover image was unveiled weeks ago at Mission Metallica (!) and is supposed to be iron filings in magnetic fields - presumably death magnetic fields. ROCK!

In a world first, songs from Death Magnetic will be available to download and play on Guitar Hero III the day the album is released. DOUBLE ROCK!

You can even buy a cool box set, shaped like a coffin! That’s less ROCK than I’d hoped. Really should have thought that one through. Anyway, the Tracklist:

“That Was Just Your Life”
“The End Of The Line”
“Broken, Beat & Scarred”
“The Day That Never Comes”
“All Nightmare Long”
“Cyanide”
“The Unforgiven III”  (TRIPLE ROCK!)
“The Judas Kiss”
“Suicide & Redemption”
“My Apocalypse” 

The thing is, I’m quite happy that they’ve gone all out 80’s. That whole ‘work through your anger’ nonsense has no place in ROCK!. Only ROCK belongs in ROCK!

So lets ROCK!