Audio Absinthe

AIR’s new album, Love 2, will be released in just a couple of days.  The French duo wrote, performed, and produced the album and are joined by drummer Joey Waronker (Beck, REM, Thom Yorke’s new band) for 9 of the 12 tracks.  The ethereal guitar pop wins me over for several songs but not throughout the entire album.  ”Love” and “African Velvet” are two that stand out for me, along with “So Light Is Her Footfall” which has a fuzzy, psychedelic feel.  All of the songs on the album have that warm, ambient pop sound AIR is well known for, but some of the tracks are just too soft for me.  ”Heaven’s Light” and “Sing Sang Sung” are two examples; they are great electronic pop tracks but a little too sweet sounding for my taste.  Love 2 has lot of fun, cool parts that I enjoy but for the most part, it stays too clean and too light for me to really love it.

MP3: AIR – “So Light Is Her Footfall” (Download)

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MP3: AIR – “African Velvet” (Download)

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Love 2 (October 2009)

Band of Skulls‘ debut album Baby Darling Doll Face Honey ias released in April on iTunes.  My friend got me a copy last week and I now can’t stop playing the 2nd and 3rd tracks, “Death By Diamonds and Pearls” and ”I Know What I Am.”  The songs combine the qualities of the White Stripes and The Black Keys; edgy, bluesy hard rock at it’s best.  At first, I only really liked these tracks.  Now I like the whole album, a lot.  The album as a whole is original and progressive and that’s what makes Band of Skulls great.  ”Patterns,” Hollywood Bowl,” “Impossible,” and “Blood” are all great, distinctive songs.  ”Dull Gold Heart” is a great track that, like the album, took me a couple of listens to realize how much I truly enjoy it.  It’s definitely going to be considered one of the best albums of 2009.

MP3: Band Of Skulls – “I Know What I Am”
MP3 Link: Band of Skulls – “Death By Diamonds and Pearls”

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Mocky – Saskamodie

I liked to check out the KCRW DJ picks of the month.  I usually find something I didn’t know about before like Saskamodie, the new album from Mocky released back in April.  The variety of genres and eras of music blended together on this album is seriously impressive and even more enjoyable.

MP3: Mocky – “Birds Of A Feather”

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Nickodemus – Sun People

Nickodemus’ new album Sun People was released last month.  You can listen to the whole album for free at Nickodemus.com where I got the cool widget below.  They’re letting people embed the widget so now you can listen to the album right here.

MP3: Nickodemus – “Sun Children (Ft. The Real Live Show)”

Air – Love 2

Air’s upcoming album, Love 2 is due October 6th.  The band released the track below, “Do The Joy” via their website, Aircheology.com.  Check it out here:

MP3: Air – “Do The Joy”

I am a huge fan of SoundCloud.com.  I’ve used the file sharing website to embed songs in a bunch of different posts.  I really love the design and the content.  I even wrote a post entirely about SoundCloud.  If you like internet radio, try searching SoundCloud.com and listening to some artists you may or may not have heard of.  Check out the playlist of remixes below that I found through SoundCloud.com.  These were posted and put together by Mr. Squirrel.

There are a lot of cool ways to share music with your friends.  I used to make a lot of mixes and I still have a lot of my old playlists.  The iLike Playlist Editor let’s you make and share your playlists with anyone.  You can send a link for your playlist to your friends or you can put your playlist on any website page like facebook and myspace or like I did below.  Unfortunately, you can only choose up to 8 tracks and you can only play 30 second samples of each song.  But it is a fun way to share mixes you’ve made.  The one I did below is 6 tracks from an old mix I used to fall asleep to, Epic Nightscapes.

MP3: Billy Cobham – Heather

I’m going out of town for a few days.  I wanted to post a little something to hold you all over.  Everyone seemed to really enjoy the last ‘covers, remixes, and mash ups’ post so here’s another.  Drink up.