Austin Improv

Been waiting for this album to be released for awhile. Love this guy forever.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pzbkhu-798[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8awOWKGfdB0[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEsAenYS0eQ[/youtube]

I've fallen in love with every song on Alice Russell's last CD. Funk, jazz, soul, techno, rock, pop, a bit of everything.

Love. Love. Makes the working softer. This Mortal Coil, Song to the Siren.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mUmdR69 ... re=related[/youtube]

In preparation for September:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nahUZAoZw-Q[/youtube]

Listening to this album. Here's a song from it:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyfr9cLB ... re=related[/youtube]

Jastroch wrote:Somewhere in the shuffle between moving offices, apartments and then evacuating, I lost an entire book of CDs. Mostly low circulation CDs--shit I listened to in middleschool--but it still hurts cause I'm slightly obsessive about my books and records.

It mostly hurts when I want to rock out to "A Kind of Magic," Queen's soundtrack for the movie Highlander. I'm looking into replacing some of these albums, but it appears "A Kind of Magic" is out of print. Does anyone own this? I'm not joking.

Jastroch, you ever get hold of this? I do in fact have it.

I've been digging these guys Real Estate from NJ. Their two 7"s out so far are great, and there's a tour cd-r and some other scattered stuff that's just as good. I can't get the "Fake Blues" song out of my head at this point.

......... Suburban Beverage 7" ............................... Fake Blues 7".................


(all of these tracks at their myspace page)

I've been listening to a lot of Ingrid Michaelson but I've found that her original album "Slow the Rain" is more sophisticated musically then her newer ones.

I also am obsessed with "The Wood Brothers." Their album "Ways Not to Lose" is brilliant.

Wayne's (of The Flaming Lips) nephews band.

Lips and Stardeath have a video together for borderline (Madonna) somewhere on-line. Great stuff.

The more I hear this band, the more I like them.

2009's been a great year for new music, no? I've been keeping bi-monthly playlists of my favorite new songs, which I condensed into the soundtrack for an Independence Day party—here's what made the cut:
Camera Obscura, "French Navy"/Neko Case, "People Got A Lotta Nerve"/Phoenix, "1901"/The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart, "Young Adult Friction"/Metric, "Stadium Love"/Ocote Soul Sounds, "Revolt Of The Cockroach People"/Dirty Projectors, "Stillness Is The Move"/Suckers, "It Gets Your Body Movin'"/Grizzly Bear, "Two Weeks"/A.C. Newman, "Like A Hitman, Like A Dancer"/Wilco, "Wilco (The Song)"/The Thermals, "Now We Can See"/Titus Andronicus, "Titus Andronicus"/St. Vincent, "Actor Out Of Work"/Animal Collective, "Summertime Clothes"/Here We Go Magic, "Tunnelvision"/P.O.S., "Savion Glover"/God Help The Girl, "Funny Little Frog"

Here's the appropriately awesome video for "Stillness Is The Move," current frontrunner for Best Song Of 2009.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMPF6lpM0XM[/youtube]

PS An open question to all frequent posters on this thread: If I was in love the guitar textures of the last two Dirty Projectors records (which I am), what African recording artists/compilations should I seek out?

i don't know dirty projectors stuff, but that track you posted above sounds like some of the modern tuareg style that you hear in groups like Group Bombino, Group Inerane, and Tinariwen. The Group Bombino record is one of my top ten for the year, and Group Inerane's is great as well. I don't know as much Tinariwen, though they are to have popularized this style of electric guitar playing, having been around a bit longer than the other two. Check out the label Sublime Frequencies if you like this stuff (run by one of the guys from Sun City Girls and two other guys -- great lps and dvds of all kinds of music from around the world.)

Group Bombino:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u204vdQvAWk[/youtube]

Group Inerane:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cv3BDgxuXh8[/youtube]

short doc on Tinariwen:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOu4fdlPiWI[/youtube]

ErikAdams wrote:Here's the appropriately awesome video for "Stillness Is The Move," current frontrunner for Best Song Of 2009.

Definitely a frontrunner. As much as I loved the song already, seeing it performed live on Wednesday brought my appreciation of it to an even higher level. It's kind of hard to tell from the video, for those of you who haven't seen Dirty Projectors before, but Amber (the lead vocalist in this song) is really tiny. So when she busts out the Mariah Carey-esque vocals and starts dancing around, it's quite hypnotizing.