Can you keep a secret? Yes? Good. I can’t. But somebody kept Le Matos a secret from me until recently. They’re a group of three guys, who might even be cousins, and are based in Montreal. I’m guessing they’re new because I’ve never fucking heard of them, never seen them on bill for a show, on a poster or a blog. They have a facebook artist page though so i KNOW its legit. They do a tight Omnikrom remix of Prend une photo avec moi and even have some pretty fly instrumentals. Now before i run out of late 90’s french prince of bel air inspired adjectives like tight and fly, let met just stop and let the music speak for itself.

Le Matos – Like Perfume on a Pig (mp3)

Omnikrom – Prend une photo avec moi [Le Matos remix] (mp3)

If the salvation of our collective souls was based on the relative availability of catchy and inventive instrumental electronic music, then Plimsouls would be responsible for a lot of soul saving.

These British House Djs sealed the deal for me by remixing fellow Brit Get Cape Wear Cape Fly and well at that. Remixing an acoustic artist well is no small feat and save Van She Technologic’s epic Feist Remix of 1 2 3 4, most DJs tend to stay away from that territory. Check it out.

Plimsouls – Contact (mp3)

Plimsouls – Plimsouls Theme (mp3)

Get Cape Wear Cape Fly – Find the Time [Plimsouls Remix] (mp3)

The first time I saw Toronto’s Crystal Castles was this New Years with Guns N Bombs at the SAT. As impaired as my judgement may have been, I recall them being great, the girl who does vocals got really into the performance and ripped off some of her clothes. Not in a attention seeking Uffie kind of way, there was no nipple in sight, the way it should be done, the Crystal Castles way.

This Thursday they hit Studio Just for Laughs with LA’s Health, who in a way are responsible for the popularization of Crystal Castles, with their hit remix Crimewave. The Castles dropped some new tracks a few weeks ago, here are some originals to check out.

Crystal Castles – Magic Spells (mp3)

Crystal Castles – Courtship Date (mp3)

MSTRKRFT and Boys Noize on Saturday night banged Metropolis for all it was worth and it showed. When I walked out of the show and headed toward St Lo a handful of riot police equipped with shields and batons were blocking the street. Apparently some kind of reggaeton show at Club Soda sold out and people got violent trying to get in. That’s true dedication, I wonder if that would ever happen at an electro show.

Now these incidents are not necessarily related but anyone who attended the show will agree that both a riot shield and baton would have come in handy on the floor. Way too many people, but expected. Altogether a great show, we shot some footage there and threw it up on youtube. Enjoy.

A few years ago I walked into an HMV in Tokyo, convinced that i was going to walk out with some legitimately Japanese music. After twenty minutes of rifling through pseudo japanese western imitations, I came across a small rack of cds and vinyl in the back underneath a sign with Japanese characters that must have read something along the lines of Indie Japan. Just what I was looking for. I knew not much critical analysis was going to go into any of this since I had no idea what any of the bands were called or what genre they might be save what the album art may suggest, so I picked based on that.

What I walked out with was Your Song is Good, a Japanese ska band that didn’t disappoint me in any way shape or form. Most of their tunes were instrumental with some shouting in basic english or Japanese. I’ve long been convinced that ska is a dead genre – and it really still is – but these guys are so unabashed about being a Japanese ska-jazz-fusion band that you can’t help enjoy it.

They even did a cover of the little mermaid song that got put on Disney cover CD called Mosh Pit on Disney. Check out the video for the song Good – Bye Bye. I think the only lyrics in the whole song is the word Good-bye.

Here are some of the stand out tracks off the Album i bought, if you like it, try and catch a show or buy a disc.

Your Song is Good – “2,4,6,6,1,64″ Number (m4a)

Your Song is Good – Good Lookin’ (m4a)

Your Song is Good – Locomotion (m4a)

This week i’m going to behold upon the internet the lost art of the DJ mix set. We’ve got two gems of internet booty for you in Treasure Fingers mix 40 minutes in the Champagne Room and 30 minutes of the the Twelves.

Fools Gold Atlanta DJ Treasure Fingers kills this mix, its probably the first 40 minute set that I’ve actually listened to in entirety, so free up some hard drive space and right click this bad boy.

Treasure Fingers – 40 minutes in the Champagne Room (mp3)

Brazilian duo The Twelves are enjoying the fame of the internets over their highly bloggable Black Kid’s remix I’m not gonna teach your boyfriend how to dance with you. Their set proves they aren’t just a one trick pony and are definitely worth checking out if they stop by your hometown.

The Twelves – 30 Mins of the Twelves (mp3)

www.nhrb.co.uk

This upcoming week is going to leave you, me, her, him and them, universally all fucked up. In a good way. That is, in the span of seven days your feet, eyes and ears will be taken advantage of by five huge dance behemoths. The assault will be opened by parisian electro juggernauts Justice on Sunday at Cepsum, followed by a Justice afterparty at Coda Club with Busy P and So-Me – the Ed Banger visual artist – which looks like it might bring about a line to get in to rival the Steve Aoki / Uffie blowout of early 08′ fame. So get there early or you might cry frozen hipster tears.

After Justice bangs you harder, better, faster and stronger than your boyfriend or girlfriend ever could, you get monday to wednesday to recover, but only to prepare you for Chromeo at Le National on Thursday, Digitalism at Club Soda on monday, and MSTRKRFT and Boys Noize at Metropolis on Saturday. What the fuck. Shit will get real serious.

So drink your vitamin water, take extra naps, aggregate prescription drugs and stock up on bulk units of alcohol, because along with St Pattys day, sobriety will become a rarity among Montreal banger kids.

Justice – DVNO [Surkin Remix] (mp3)

Chromeo – Tenderoni [MSTRKRFT Remix] (mp3)

Digitalism – Pogo [Shinichi Osawa Remix] (mp3)

Boys Noize – & down [Siriusmo vs Boys Noize Remix] (mp3)

Brazil is more than just an Arcade Fire song. It’s also home to CSS of ipod fame and the reason for today’s post, The Twelves. A few weeks ago we posted some tracks by Jacksonville’s Black Kids and just recently The Twelves have dropped a remix of the hit song from the Black Kid’s EP Wizard of Ahhhs I’m not gonna teach your boyfriend how to dance with you. check it.

Black Kids – I’m Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How To Dance With You [The Twelves Remix] (mp3)

In addition LA Riots and Villians have teamed up to produce a Ready for the Floor remix actually worth blogging about. This Hot Chip track has already been remixed to death but trust me when i say this one is worth checking out.

Hot Chip – Ready for the Floor [LA Riots & Villains remix] (mp3)

One week till St. Patrick’s Day, so let’s celebrate our Irish heritage with some classic electronica from 1999 and one of the sexiest, freakiest, most awesome video of ever:

Window Licker by Aphex Twin.

To be honest, fabulous honeys shaking their booties in slow motion doesn’t do much for me; back-up dancers and stretch SUVs leave me equally uninspired. But this 10:35-long video gives those tired, painfully overused elements the respect they deserve…those fine sugars in those white bikinis getting their sumptuous asses doused in champagne? Damn, son.
It doesn’t even matter that they all have Limerick-born Richard David James’ permanently grinning, bearded face (so brilliant/self-indulgent). And when the girl turns around? It’s like when that homeless guy pops out from behind the dumpster in Mulholland Dr.

Amazing. (edited to get straight to the music)

Something very interesting about the track is that when viewed with your spectrum analyzer (an “instrument used to display the frequency domain of a waveform plotting amplitude against frequency”), at 5:27, you see the image of a face, his presumably.

Another hugely innovative electronic artist that likewise hides spectral images in their work is Aaron Funk aka Venetian Snares, who embedded pictures of his cats in the track “Look” off the 2001 album, “Songs About My Cats”.

True story: one afternoon, chilling at the Irish Embassy Pub after a long, hard day of testing video games last summer, the waitress asked me where I was from while I ordered a beer. I said Winnipeg, and it was like BAM. Total change. She went from a nice girl who serves business men expensive pints and Pachos (fucking $12, goddamit) to nice girl who probably gets fucked up on mad drugs and goes to underground breakcore shows every weekend.
She then proceeded to tell me about Venetian Snares, who is also from the lovely Manitoba city. She called him a genius, comparing him to Mozart even. So much passion….

I can see it when listening to the song ‘Hajnal’ (Hungarian for dawn) from the album ‘Rossz Csillag Alatt Szuletett’, which is really beautiful – classical, anxious, tragic – then breaks into drums and bass. Another song off the album is based on Rezső Seress’s ‘Szomorú Vasárnap’ aka ‘Gloomy Sunday’ aka The Hungarian Suicide Song. Urban legend has it that it inspired multiple suicides, including a boy who jumped off a bridge after hearing a passerby whistling the tune lol. Or more like song of death out loud. I’m listening to it now, and really, it’s pretty much the opposite of the other music blogged here. Got to know your roots, baby. If you’re Hungarian-Manitoban-Irish, it seems…

Back to Venetian Snares, I’ve got to talk about the album he released earlier that year of 2005, “Winnipeg Is A Frozen Shithole.” Chances are you’ll hate this album; I found it mostly unlistenable and I like abrasive, erratic jungle. However, I share his disdain for the frozen wasteland, and this album lays an incoherent hating down, with tracks like “Winnipeg as Mandatory Scat Feed”, “Winnipeg is Steven Stapleton’s Armpit”, and “Winnipeg is Fucking Over”. If you don’t know anything about the city, you’re probably thinking that it can’t be bad enough to warrant nine tracks of unbridled abhorrance. In that case I suggest the song “Winnipeg is a Boiling Pot of Cranberries”, which gives you a little explanation, or if you want something prettier, there’s always the Weakerthans, “I Hate Winnipeg”. At a (hockey) party this winter, I played some Tones on Tail, promptly to have it deemed as “too weird” and turned back to the Toby Keith classic, “I Love This Bar.” Vomit.

To end on the St. Patrick’s Day note, Steven Stapleton currently is living in County Clare, Ireland, on a piece of land with houses and caravans he hand-built and decorated.

Article written by contributing writer: CM Foxcroft

REMIX ALBUMS REMIX ALBUMS REMIX ALBUMS. yes i’m talking Boys Noize, I’m talking Oi Oi Oi remixed which is dropping march 25 and will without a doubt be as hot as the album itself. The last remix vinyl i bought was Bloc Party’s Silent Alarm remixed and since then the practice has become pretty popular. Reason to be even more anticipatory of the album is that on the album will be a remix of Oh! by Montreal’s A-Trak. And if that’s still not enough, we have that very remix here for you to enjoy at your leisure.

Boys Noize – Oh! [A-trak remix] (mp3)

Dj Topcat – Time to listen [Talib Kweli vs MGMT] (mp3)

Fiest – Well it’s Time [Feat. Kanye West] (mp3)