Bye Bye Battles

I turn my back for a second, well two months, and something bad happens.

Tyondai Braxton has left Battles. It's amicable as it always seems to be. Battles aren't gone but kinda are.

I always assumed Tyondai was the main guy. With his big hair, doing the Smurf thing on Atlas and almost being called Toni Braxton.

There'll still be a new Battles album in 2011 and solo stuff from Braxton too, but Tyondai! Can't you rejoin and un-break my heeeaaaaart (arf!).

mp3 ---> Battles - Leyendecker

Always thought Dirty Projectors kinda ripped this track.

Moskow Diskow

It had to be something special to drag me back. Past couple of months I lost heart. I heard nothing to match Castro Boy or Shari Vari. I got worried.

I returned to my CDs and tapes. In the back of my mind was the half-remembered fact I read somewhere that states that your music tastes are set by 24. I turned 25 a few weeks back.

But it was through CDs that brought me back here, got me back trawling blogs, got me loving music again.

There it was buried on disc three of an EMI compilation of "New Romantics". The inverted commas are there for a reason. Devo are many things but New Romantics is not one of them.

For the past couple of days I've wondered how I've gone so long without hearing this.

Moskow Diskow is a stupendous piece of dead-pan futuristic electronic disco music... from Belgium. It's the four-four handclap/fingersnap sound. It's the vocoder. It's the French (or Flemish, whatevs). It's the synths. It's the train motifs (the sister of Kraftwerk's bicycles?). It's the everything.

The mp3 is a remastered version from 2004, but I don't think it's been altered too much.

mp3 ---> Telex - Moskow Diskow

The video is worth a nosey too.