Category: Music

From February 2005 until January 2011, I did a weekly blog entry, presenting what I called “a Mixtape of the Interwebs” — a handful of tracks that I’d discovered via various music blogs, etc., presented for your listening pleasure on a Friday. A lot of people enjoyed that series (and so did I), but as 2011 continued, and I got busier, the stretches between entries got longer and longer. 2012 saw entries that were literally months apart, and then I stopped doing them altogether. I had too much other stuff to do — not just for the blog entries, but for the time taken to find tracks during the week. So I got out of the habit.

I’m starting the habit again, because I realize that I need to make time to do the things I enjoy, purely for the enjoyment’s sake. So here we go. More Friday Music!

This track from 2010 has been getting more notice recently, as the theme tune for The History Channel’s excellent drama series, Vikings. Appropriately enough, it’s by Swedish artist Karin Dreijer Andersson, half of the electronic music duo The Knife, who records solo under the name Fever Ray, pictured above. Fever Ray – “If I Had A Heart.”

I discovered this track after it’s use in a Bacardi commercial — it’s the work of Parov Stelar, an Austrian DJ who specializes in electro, acid jazz, breakbeat and house. This track is a perfect mixture of booty-shaking electro and the retro swing sound of the 1930s. Parov Stelar – “Chambermaid Swing.”

I heard a track via the soundtrack to EA Sport’s FIFA 13, and tracked down the band, who sounded to me a lot like Duran Duran. Young Empires are a Canadian group who describe their music as “World Beat Haute Rock” — World Beat referring to the Latin and African percussion they use, and “Haute Rock” being, in the words of bassist Jacob Palahnuk, “tracks that make you feel wealthy, attractive, powerful; a soundtrack to your haute life.” Which pretty much describes Rio-era Duran Duran pretty well, too. I mean, listen to this — it’s not just me, right? Young Empires – “Rain of Gold.”

From the neo-80s to the actual 80s: I’ve been listening a lot recently to The Ultimate Collection, a Best-Of collection from The Fixx, who were a group whose songs I always really liked, yet I somehow never managed to buy an album. I’ve picked two tracks for your Friday listening — one pretty well-known, one slightly less so (at least in the US).

The well-known track: The Fixx – “Red Skies.”

…and the lesser-known earlier track, a slice of Cold War pessimism: The Fixx – “Stand or Fall.”

Long-time readers will be aware that I’m big fan of hip-hop — and have a special interest in international varieties, where the idea of DIY music, using samples, is filtered through the local culture of the underclass specific to a region (French hip-hop that mixes North African music, for example). Here’s an example of Romanian hip-hop, from Bucharest: Skizzo Skillz – “BINIDITAT (feat. Karie).”

Lastly this week, for no other reason than it’s been noodling around my head a bit, I’ll leave you with a track from perhaps the best Canadian singer-songwriter in the history of Ever. Gordon Lightfoot – “Sundown.”

Enjoy, kids. Back here for more next week. (F’reals, yo.)
 
 

Long-time readers will recall that from 2007 through 2010, I would post (as part of my “Friday Music” series) a collection of Christmas music — not the usual stuff you heard on the radio, but stuff that I found odd or interesting.

I really haven’t done much in the way of Friday Music posts in 2012. It’s something that I’d like to get back in the habit of doing in 2013 — I enjoy pointing people at cool tunes.

With that in mind, I decided to go ahead and do a Christmas collection for 2012, as a sort of promise to myself that I’ll get back to doing Friday Music again in the coming year. If you click on the album artwork above, you’ll be taken to the rapidshare link of the zipped album.

This year’s tracks:

1: The Futureheads – “Christmas Was Better In The Eighties” : 21st century post-punk band from Sunderland, telling it like it is.

2: Bryan Adams – “Reggae Christmas” : Early viewers of MTV will remember this one, with a video filmed in the old MTV studios, featuring the original VJs and Pee-Wee Herman wearing a dreadlock wig. Somehow, we managed to ignore just how minstrel-show the whole thing was.

3: The White Stripes – “Candy Cane Children” : Jack and Meg White do their low-fi strangeness that barely has anything to do with Christmas, or maybe it does. Who can tell?

4: Donny Hathaway – “This Christmas” : One of the best male voices in Soul doing a classic. Enough said.

5: Fort Knox Allstars – “X-Mas Dub Time” : Take Vince Guaraldi’s “Christmastime is Here” from the Charlie Brown Christmas Special, and warp it into a chilled bit of dub electronica. Very nifty.

6: Sting – “I Saw Three Ships” : Gotta love English traditional carols. “We’re a sea-faring power — let’s do a nautical song about Christmas!” “But what do ships have to do with–” “SING, DAMN YOU!”

7: KITT, The Car of the Future – “A Knight Rider Christmas” : A 1983 holiday 45, featuring Michael, KITT and an uncredited rapper. You’re Welcome.

8: I Break Horses – “Winter Beats” : Swedish indie band that produces what The Guardian calls “heady, sumptuously textured soundscapes.” Definitely the case here.

9: Judy Garland – “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas (Torkelsen Mix)” : Judy Garland’s take on the Christmas standard, folded, spindled and absolutely mutated by Norwegian beat producer Torkelsen. Revelatory.

10: Peace – “All I Want For Christmas Is You / Creep” : Brilliant mash-up of the two songs, performed live in a BBC Radio studio — and recorded from a BBC6 broadcast (hence the DJ at the beginning).

11: The Primitives – “You Trashed My Christmas” : Best known here for “Crash”, the UK indie-pop group does a good take on the traditional “Christmas Breakup” genre.

12: Julie Roberts – “Who Needs Mistletoe” : Raunchy country juke-joint holiday cheer, all about being naughty, and isn’t that nice.

So there you go. Merry Christmas to all.