Zero 7 is well known for clean electronic, sonic-landscapes. Their new album Yeah Ghost is like cake; it’s warm, rich, and sweet. Soothingly downtempo beats are always accompanied by beautiful melodies (listen to “Pop Art Blue”). The duo blend together electronic and contemporary rock influences to create their own unique sound complete with serious pop sensibilities. ”Everything Up (Zizou)”and “All of Us” are more electronic while “The Road” and “Swing” might have a more mainstream appeal yet all are perfect examples of the kind of genre blending Zero 7 is known for. ”Solastalgia” and some other tracks are more ambient and atmospheric, something that might be boring to some. What makes the album great is that it mixes together radio friendly songs like “Mr. Magee” with ambient and off-beat, electronic ones like “Ghost Symbol” but all the while Yeah Ghost manages to keep it’s momentum and doesn’t really miss a step.
Zero 7 recently announced a new full length titled “Yeah Ghost” due on September 8th. The track below is the first I’ve been able to check out. It’s a great track with a warm, fuzzy electronic pop sound- classic Zero 7 material. It’s what you might expect from Zero 7 after their last, grammy nominated album The Garden which came out in 2006. These guys are great.
This next track has become an indie rock hit of sorts over the last month or so. It’s “Percussion Gun” by White Rabbits out of New York. The song opens their May 2009 release It’s Frightening and features heavy percussion behind a big pop hook. It’s their most popular track, by far, with over 100,000 more plays than any other track on their myspace page. I’ve only heard a couple of tracks so far but I’m curious to hear a full album of their material, although, I am a little suspicious that an album by another indie dance rock band with one big hit might not do that well in terms of sales. Great track though…
Remember right after the explosion of gangster rap, when some artists made hip hop fun again? In the 80’s hip hop was party music, and then it happened again in 2000 with DJ Quik’s “Pitch In On A Party”. DJ Quik’s talent for blending gangsta rap with quality party beats established the emcee/producer as one of the best party hip hop producers of the last 2 decades. Dj Quik’s June 2009 album and collaboration with Kurupt is another example of the blending of gangsta rap and party beats that Quik mastered over a decade ago.
I had to change what wrote in one of the old weekly doses about Wilco’s latest album, Wilco (The Album), because of how much and how fast it’s grown on me. I think it’s such a great album and I’m really upset that my first impression of the album wasn’t as great as I feel about it now. It’s happened in the past with a couple of albums but for the most part it’s not that common. Anyway, I think I like the new album more than Sky Blue Sky now and “Solitaire” might be my favorite Wilco track of all time.
Wilco – Solitaire
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Erik Mongrain- amazing guitarist, plain and simple. Just wanted to share this video. It was posted back in 2006 and it’s not that crazy but “Thin Mint” by Keller Williams came up on my iPod the other day and I got into this kind of percussive guitar playing again.
Here’s another pretty awesome music website that let’s you create playlists you can share with you friends. It’s called GrooveShark.com and it’s got a pretty big library of music. It allows you to upload your own songs so you can login from anywhere in the world and have all of your music. It also allows you to search for and play full songs and albums. The way this works reminds me very much of Napster (the original Napster) since it seems like the search results are based on what people have uploaded. This is probably why GrooveShark has a very respectable library of music to find. There were a bunch of songs I wanted to add to the playlist below that I couldn’t find in their library but it’s still got much more than I expected. The site also has a great custom widget builder that allows you to embed songs and playlists on any website. The one I made below is a poor example because I’m colorblind so you can’t really see how fancy you can make it look. The playlist is based on a mix I made a couple of years ago called Beat Juice.
I really had this Pete Rock track on the mix instead of the one included above but GrooveShark didn’t have it. And it’s too good not to link here… MP3: Pete Rock – Pete’s Jazz
Copy and paste this into your browser if the link above isn’t working:
http://www.flexx.org/blog/pete%20rock%20-%20pete’s%20jazz.mp3
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.
I know I’ve already posted a bunch of different covers, remixes, and mash ups but… doesn’t everybody love them? I think when people hear a song they recognize combined with something they haven’t heard before- something new and unfamiliar- it makes the experience more memorable and sometimes even more enjoyable. Here are some more covers, remixes, and mash ups for you to enjoy…
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Remixes
Covers
