Total DEVOtion

I work for a website that has an 11-25 remit. Though our readerships seems to be mainly 13-17. Aware of this I decided to litter a piece about a community arts festival with as many Devo song titles as possible. Petulant but pleasurable.

Guardian readers may recognise where I stole this idea from wholesale.

Anyway, during my research I noticed just how good this oft-overlooked track is.

mp3---> Devo - Be Stiff

Four Tet's Fact Mix

This week has been a good week. Why? Because on Monday, FACT queefed out a brand new mix by Four Tet which has been on heavy rotation all week.

Closer to his DJ Kicks mix than the seminal Late Night Tales mix, it's a good guide to where Kieran Hebden's head is now at and where it has been.

Taking in the garage flecked bass pressure hinted at by the inclusion of So Solid Crew on the aforementioned DJ Kicks mix, the more dancefloor directed inclination of his latest LP There Is Love In You, the polyrythmic complexity of jazz drumming from his work with Steve Reid and the genre-switching googlies he like to bowl (check the last track on the mix), this is another essential mix from one of the most progressive producers around.

FACT mix 182 - Four Tet (Sep '10) by Sammyfax

Tracklist:

1. Rocketnumbernine – Matthew and Toby (Four Tet remix) [Text Records]

2. Pheeroan Ak Laff – 3 in 1 [Passin' Thru]

3. Soul Capsule – Seekers (Ricardo Villalobos remix) [Trelik]

4. Mount Kimbie – Blind Night Errand [Hot Flush]

5. Grevious Angel – Move Down Low VIP [Soul Jazz]

6. Ro 70 meets Move D – Untitled [Source Records]

7. Floating Points – J+W beat [Planet Mu]

8. Ramadanman – Glut [Hemlock]

9. JD Robb – Canon in Percussive Sound [Folkways]

10. Index – Starlight (break) [Record Shack Records]

11. Four Tet – Nothing to see [Soul Jazz]

12. Falty DL – St Marks (Cosmin TRG remix) [Rush Hour]

13. Luke Abbott – Holkham Drones [Border Community]

14. Oni Ayhun – OAR004A [Oni Ayhun Records]

15. Bob Holroyd – African drug (Four Tet remix) [Phonica]

16. Lata Mangeshkar – Too Mere Saath Rahega Munne [EMI]

Breezeblock Burial

Burial and Kode9 sent off Mary Anne Hobbs' Experimental Show née The Breezeblock in some style.

Now while I haven't tuned in for a while (the preponderance of grime pushed me out) The Breezeblock, alongside The Blueroom and Fabio & Grooverider, kick-started my odyssey into the synthscape, and for that I will always be grateful.

The mix is what I imagine a trawl through the FM spectrum in Hackney on a Tuesday night would sound like, snatches of garage, funky and jungle swathed in static, rain and isolation.

The whole show is up for a couple more days, but below is a link to the mix.

mp3---> Burial & Kode9 - Mix For Mary Anne Hobbs Sept 10 (via mediafire)

Tracklist:

01. Speedy J – Tesla

02. Zomby – Natalia’s Song

03. Brandy – Never Say Never (El-B version 1)

04. Brandy – Never Say Never (El-B version 2)

05. Brandy – Angel (X-Men vocal mix)

06. Laurie Spiegel – Voices Within – A Requiem

07. Alena – Turn It Around (Hard House Bantons Mandy Mix)

08. Cooly G – Him Da Biz

09. Theo Parrish – Soul Control feat. Alena Waters

10. KMFH aka Kyle Hall – Girl U So Strong (Wild Oats)

11. Terror Danjah – S.O.S.

12. Darkstar – 2 Chords

13. Prince – Condition of the Heart

14. Erykah Badu – Telephone

15. Foul Play – Being With U Rmx

16. A Guy called Gerald – Silent Cry

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.