Aerobic endorphins

So for those of you who don't know I'm taking three weeks off work to travel New Zealand with my girlfriend and basically unplug from my web-based city life to get back to nature, smoke a lot of weed, and all sorts of other hippie shit.  Before I go though, I'll try to up a few posts and share with you some of the choice records that I have been purchasing over the past few weeks.

First up is a track by Erobique which is probably French for aerobic because it looks like a French person wrote it aerobic as they said it in their nasal French voice, which to be honest I wish I had (or at least the ability to speak French).  But ACTUALLY Erobique is from Germany and he makes some wonderfully poppy electro tracks that have a wonderful minimal structure that you would expect from the German scene, but sparkle with disco bits and pretty little synths. Tom Croose dropped this last Tuesday and so I figured I might as well post it for everyone to enjoy!  The track is "Endorphinmachine" from this release and contains a lovely disco sample that he fleshes out into loopy madness while chopping it up with some serious breaks and stops along the way.  I will be following more and more of this guys' stuff in the days to come, but also check out his "Yournopussymyspaceedit" on his myspace.

Erobique - Endorphinmachine

OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG

Cross-posted at Mind Grapes

Hey y’all—apologies for not posting for a month! Been busy—but OMG have I got some shit for you.

I livetweeted the first five joints on Lindstrøm & Prins Thomas’s new album, imaginatively titled II, but I didn’t get a chance to give my 140-character reviews of the rest of the tracks—luckily my reaction to those tracks, and the album as a whole, can basically be summed up with this picture:

Yes, it’s that good. I’ve only had it for about 48 hours now but I’ve listened to it a dozen times and I’m sort of floored. I don’t expect everyone to love it like me (though I do expect people to love it)—it’s just that, it’s like they made it for me: everything I’ve ever liked about the two Scandos packaged together in a beautiful little box.

I’m sure I’ll have plenty more to write about it later. But what is killin me—and I mean, really, killin me, like, I am dead from this fuckin song, is the first track, “Cisco,” and if I can be more specific, the synths that roll in at around 3:00. The whole thing is a really beautiful example of the power of layering, and it spends a lot of time building itself up—bass line, congas, guitar here, guitar there—but that synth drop (so quiet! So sinister! Like gathering clouds! Landing spaceships!) is like +1000XP—level up.

Lindstrøm & Prins Thomas - Cisco

More gems from Claremont 56

Thanks to everyone who came out last night and thanks to Tom Croose for sharing his musical selections with us!  I know I had a great time and I think it was quite the success for our first party.  Hopefully they will let us stay for a monthly and I'm already trying to find a place with more of a dance floor.  Again if you had a good time or know anyone who would be interested, join our FB group for Beards of a Feather to hear more.  We promise we will try to keep you informed in the least intrusive spam-happy fashion possible.  Enough of that though, on to the tunes.

Todays tracks are a bit of a cool down for ya if you managed to stay out late like I did last night.  First up is a track off of the new album from JAZ (the South Carolina-dwelling vinyl guru whose work on Beard Science and Claremont 56 deserves some serious attention).  I Played Sports, released on Claremont 56, is available here and from it I would like to share this shy funky mover.  I'm not sure on the original, but here is the edit he has produced.  Also check out his Leather Get Going Mix which is as close to perfect as a beardo mix can get.

Jaz - Get Some Love

Next is a track that I first heard when Harvey showed up on BIS a few weeks ago.  Most of the tracks he played are obscure enough for even the nerdiest of beards, but towards the end he drops this absolutely amazing track by Stars 'N' Bars.  Frustratingly enough the record was hard to find before, but now it will be worth a generous fortune to pay for now.  Lucky for me, Claremont 56 followed their impeccable Originals, compiled by Moonboots & Balearic Mike, with a second volume compiled by Mark Seven that features the tune along with many other dreamy gems.  For now though here is quite possibly one of best tracks I have heard in a long time, I just can't stop listening to it.

Stars 'N' Bars - Stars & Bars

The Communist Dance Party

Tonight is the night and I couldn't be more excited. To celebrate our guest Tom Croose, I've decided to share with you a track from Worst Friends' (of which he is one half) release to be due out soon. Worst Friends has created a dreamy guitar driven beach jam with "Pillows Of Wind" and the release features a strung out percussive remix by Bostro Pesopeo that sounds like an acid trip that begins under water and finishes with you dancing with natives on a deserted beach. But my favorite off of this release is the Tom Croose remix on the b-side track that is a bit more mellow and shuffles along rainy Sunday afternoon. Enjoy this and come see Tom, Jason and myself play our favorite jams tonight. Hope to see you there!

Worst Friends - AG (Tom Croose Inner Space Ski Boot Mix)

Music for a friday... on a monday

Sorry for being absent for so long, things have been busy. Just to remind our avid followers, Jason of Robots In Heat and myself will be DJing tomorrow night at Laszlo (on Mission St between 21st and 22nd) from 9-2. Tom Croose (who released that awesome, highly limited 7" edit of The Mac's "Never Going Back Again") will also be swinging by to play some tunes. So the more of you that come the more of a party this will be and we can spend a lovely Tuesday dancing into the AM. Or come by early for a drink! Either way we'd love to see you come out and say hey!

Today we have two european jams for your nights on the balearic isles or on the Mediterranean coastline. I know I fantasize about buying a yacht/time machine and cruising up and down the shores of the Spain, France and Italy, touring the balearic isles and coming into port to explore the local discotecas buried within the cliffside cities. But the closest I can come are these tracks for now. Loud-E, who has an impeccable skill for finding obscure euro disco gems and grinding them into floor-filling mayhem-ensuing masterpieces, has a new CD out. But unlike most other DJs who release 12"s for a couple years and then compile them into an "album" when their popularity is great enough, Loud-E has decided to share his wealth of reconstructed beardy jams by releasing an album of all new edits, Loudefied, in addition to the large amount of savvy work he has done for Bear Funk, Ambassador's Reception, and Objects Of Desire. It's fairly loaded with a bunch of great tracks, but my favorite is the slow-moving chugger "Granada Nights", add red lighting and discoball for maximum effect.

Loud-E - Granada Nights

Next comes an edit off of the new 12" Fly Away from Beatfanatic, the Swede who's Vangelis remix lit up Ewan Pearson's "And So To Bed Mix" on Allez-Allez. If you haven't heard this mix, you should probably download it and listen to it at least 100 times. Anyways, the new stuff from Beatfanatic is great. There are two original tracks that could be best characterized as nudisco, and both are supreme, but this track on the B-side is what really caught my attention. Enjoy this as you escape your work week or whatever whatever because it is aural bliss.

Beatfanatic - Nights On Ibiza (Edit)

Being popular is all it's made out to be

So I have some great news for those of you here in San Francisco! Beards of a Feather has found a night to play some tunes! It's on March 24th at Laszlo in the Mission (which is next to the Foreign Cinema) and we're calling it comRAD because it will be as the name indicates. It is a Tuesday night, but it's a nice space and the bartender has been friendly towards the tunes I've shown him so it should be a good party. Jaxon from Robots.In.Heat and myself will be hosting it and playing records from 9-2 so come on by and bring some friends if you can, it's sure to be fun and hopefully the beginning of much more to come! Join our FB group to hear more about events or email me at disco.horror.show(at)gmail(dot)com and we will put you on an email list for the least intrusive spam-happy updates as possible.

The UK-based Popular People's Front have been releasing funky re-edits for a few years now. I only have some of their more recent stuff (Sample Pleasures Part 3 and the Limited Series 02), but it's pretty great and the packaging always features a rad clusterfuck of animals, synthesizers and other odd images, forming bizarre collages that I'm pretty crazy about. I don't know who The Popular People's Front are but their latest release, Love E.P., has already made quite an impression throughout the nerd-web community because of the edit by Leo Zero (another UK producer/DJ who is more known for less obscure edits like on this release) of The New York Community Choir's "Express Yourself" from 1977. According to Leo Zero's myspace it also contains some Al Green, but I'm not positive on the track. Since American Athlete is already sharing the LeoZero edit dubbed "Church Love" here (I'm fairly confident you can find it elsewhere as well), I decided to share "Keep Doin' Your Dance". Not sure on the original but it sounds super familiar. This funky one has a great dubbed flavor while supplying some serious drive with horns and hats and the gospel chorus encouraging the divas voice along, let me see you move...

The Popular People's Front - Keep Doin' Your Dance


Highly recommended, buy the record here!

Twelve inches of pleasure

Horse Meat Disco is a UK-based party (now label) that has hosted some of the largest names in the underground disco dance scene (Prins Thomas, Tim Sweeney, H&LA, Soft Rocks, and more) and it's outstanding reputation has given it enough momentum to release a 12" of two edits of their own. This track get's a bit too syrupy around the chorus for my taste but the dark diva sections where Dusty really lets loose send chills down my spine and make me dream of rooms drenched in smokey red light where white shards of light reflect off of the disco ball and fall upon the throng of bodies and hands thrown to the air dancing til the morning light. Quite a classic and I hope Horse Meat continues with more choice selections. It's an edit of Dusty Springfield's classic "Baby Blue", enjoy.

Horse Meat Disco - Dusty Blue

FLEETWOOD MAC’S “HONEY HI” | CATEGORY: WAKE-N-BAKE

Cross-posted at Mind Grapes

This one goes out for my Saturday homies--

You know what the best kind of morning is? (This is a secret, by the way). The best kind of morning is the one where you get up before 9am, with enough time to have a cup of coffee and do the crossword. It’s a Sunday morning, usually, but if you play your cards right you can do it on Saturday, too, or really any day you’re not too hung over and don’t have anything to do till mid-afternoon at the earliest. You know, the kind where you make yourself a breakfast burrito, with tomato chutney and home-cured bacon, and a little bit of melted Asiago, and your chick (or your dude, depending) is chilling in the bed in her (or his) underwear, and you whip out Tusk, Side 4, and blow the dust off the needle and put on “Honey Hi,” and when it’s over you go put on again, because of those close harmonies, and the phrasing on Lindsey Buckingham’s guitar, and, come on, the sky is clear and you’ve got a beautiful day just waiting for you, and you know you’re going to have a mellow-ass day if you’ve this fucking song stuck in your head, and what, tell me what, is sweeter than that.

Fleetwood Mac - Honey Hi

Taken on a magic journey

It's been a little while since I've heard of anything by one of my faves Todd Terje, but he is back at it with a magical journey through space off the new release from Tiny Sticks Records (other releases on this label by Mark E, Mock & Toof, and Dondolo). Terje throws in some extra breathy vocals and pounds out the first two thirds of the track with a gradual crescendo as the countdown begins and the engines begin to fire until he unleashes a funky bassline that blasts you through the upper atmosphere and into stellar space. The man can do no wrong in my opinion, but I'm sure you already knew that.

Rogue Cat - Magic Journey (Todd Terje Remix)


This track bounces along like "I Wanna Be Your Lover" with a modern kick, so so sweet.

The effect of adding another zero... nothing!

So last year sometime I came across an amazing remix of a group whose name intrigued me, Principles Of Geometry. In particular the track I heard was the Joakim remix of POG's "A Mountain For President", the original of which featured Sebastien Tellier. All good names in my book and the track turns out to be an amazing epic of ambient synths laid over a mix of arpeggiated basslines, electronic humming, and tom fills. Through this brilliant sonic haze comes the stabbing vocoded vocals of an androgenous robot driving a speedboat off the coast of Miami at a sunset in 1984, pure bliss.

Principles Of Geometry - A Mountain For President (Joakim Remix)

So basically I loved the track. I loved it so much that when I saw a new release by the group on a special limited edition single sided pressing with a rad etching on the b-side, I jumped at it. But the moral here is that I should have pulled my head out of my ass and done some research on the record because it is nothing bad necessarily. Just a sadly dated sounding track. Who would have known, the original of "A Mountain Of President" was pretty dope, but slapping Beastie Boys vocals over a glitchy chopped beat with lyrics of political progress more than four years outdated - it's just not really a time I wish to reminisce on. But maybe some of you out there will like it more than me, or maybe we'll find ourselves in a nu-glitch scene within the year, and this track will be a hidden precursor to the movement, but I hope that's not the case. (Also, note to self: even if the word geometry is in the name of your group, don't go throwing a bunch of fucking math jargon in your song titles trying to sound clever). I hate to get all preachy, sorry for the bitter post!

Principles Of Geometry - The Effect Of Adding Another Zero (Principles Of Geometry's Distributive & Associative Part One)
(removed as per artist's request, listen and buy here!)

ATTN: IS IT TIME FOR A STING REAPPRAISAL, BY WHICH I MEAN, STING RULES, AND ALWAYS HAS

EDIT: WHOOPS, LOL, MP3S NOW CORRECT

Cross-posted at Mind Grapes

Here are some pretty easy jokes to make about Sting: he has tantric sex. He does not make music that would be considered “cutting-edge.” He has a healthy amount of self-regard. His music appears, sometimes, in playlists of “easy listening” music, for example, in dentists’ offices. How hilarious these jokes are! How cutting of us, to insult Sting, and those people who listen to him! What better way to demonstrate our own, personal, hipness!

LOL. As part of my ongoing effort to be mellow as fuck and also ahead of the hipster reclamation curve, I now love Sting. Hating Sting is about as boring as hating Bono, anyway (really, hating anyone is played out at this point). Why bother? The dude is soft, like butter; and the thing is, no one is even claiming that he’s, what, on the cutting edge of music, or whatever. He writes these beautiful, crisp melodies, brines them in the most impeccable production you could imagine, and serves them up like fucking Christmas hams. Some of the songs have robotically good crypto-Spanish guitar; more still have that “fairy dust sprinkle” sound that I imagine is made by some ridiculous bell-based instrument where you string up a bunch of wind chimes and stroke them with a feather. All of them are about as MOR vanilla as charged. Only, fuck it, who cares? I’m probably railing against an imaginary enemy at this point, but—I can’t think of a better dude to listen to if you are rich as fuck and coming down off some designer-only-rich-people-have-heard-of-it drug, kicking it in your austere penthouse in Dubai or wherever, sweating your ass off in your Eames chair in the dark. Plus, face it, you know this guy is next on the rediscovery tip, so get in while the getting’s good, because all of Pitchfork’s Best New Music in 2010 is going to be “Sting-influenced.”

Here's some Sting 101 to help get you on your feet. I recommend stealing the lyrics from this one next time you hit on a chick at a bar.

Sting - Shape of My Heart

And as a bonus, a song about racism (?).

Sting - Englishman in New York