Mixtape, sir?

Guess who's back?


YER MAM!'S BIG SUMMER MIXTAPE BLOWOUT! VOLUME TWO

1. LCD Soundsystem - Freak Out/Starry Eyes (Proof, if it were needed, that James Murphy & co. can do no wrong, this excellent, percussive, two-part disco jam was passed off as a b-side. Check the drum solo intermission for added freaky vibes.)
2. Tracey Thorn - Raise The Roof (Beyond The Wizard's Sleeve Re-animation) (Easily one of the year's best remixes so far, BTWS rewire the chirpy ambient pop of the original in a discoid style with lush, slyly insistent synths and that certain rustic charm that Alkan and Norris give all their makeovers.)
3. Matthew Dear - Elementary Lover (feat. Mobius Band) (Winningly odd afro-pop from this year's renaissance man, Dear. Distills Talking Heads circa Remain In Light, TV On The Radio and King Sunny Ade in one small, perfectly-formed package.)
4. The Honeymoon Killers - Histoire A Suivre (High-tensile but strangely floaty, thanks to Yvon Vromman's sweet vocals, new wave from the forgotten Belgians, currently undergoing somewhat of a rebirth following their appearance on Prins Thomas' Cosmo Galactic Prism. Not with this track though, 'Histoire A Suivre' was their first single and takes cues from the likes of Gang Of Four, The Slits and Contortions but with a Blondie-esque pop sensibility.)
5. Talking Heads - Making Flippy Floppy (From Talking Heads' last great album, Speaking In Tongues, 'Making Flippy Floppy' is the sound of a great art-rock group playing at being a pop band and it's as thrillingly fractured and strange as the band's pop forays ever got. Forget 'Road To Nowhere', this is the one that should have been massive.)
6. New Young Pony Club - Hiding On The Staircase (After showing so much promise, NYPC's debut album, Fantastic Playroom is a bit of a letdown, but the chicken-scratch guitars and reggae-lite beat work together so well with the semi-dispassionate vocal from Tahita Bulmer here to hint that they might still have greatness in them.
7. The Tough Alliance - New Chance (I can't get a handle on whether TTA are just having a big old laugh at our expense. That doesn't matter for shit though when songs like this one and pretty much every other on their new album are as imperviously effervescent and summery. There's something sinister going on under that good time facade though.)
8. YACHT - Platinum (feat. Bobby Birdman) (This sounds like a mini-pops version of LCD's 'Get Innocuous' (Murphy is an admirer too, apparently), but the pay-off comes around a lot quicker with this one, making it an instantly gratifying little mover. It's also just as addictive.)
9. Shahrokh.SoundOfK - Chicago (An undiluted sugar-rush of sample-heavy tech-house from Compost Records' latest Black Label release. A promising start from the future stars.)
10. Kelley Polar - Rosenband (Magic Tim's Instrumental Version) (Magic Tim (Who he?) strips the original of all vocals apart from some breathy bits, allowing the impressive sonic layering to come to the fore. Can't wait for Polar's new album later in the year.)
11. Lindstrom & Solale - Let's Practise (Dub Version) (In which the slo-mo Italo blinder gets slowed to an even drowsier crawl and heaps of echoey effects dumped atop the groove. Elegantly wasted.)
12. Matias Aguayo - New Life (I've recently gone back to Aguayo's 2005 release, Are You Really Lost and it's better than I remember it to be. Interesting to note how many other producers around seem to be following his lead these days too. Both the recent Kalabrese and Matthew Dear albums seem to act as distant cousins of that record, which means it should be interesting to hear what Aguayo releases next. What we need more of is sleazy techno.)
13. Solomun & Stimming - Feuervogel (One of the biggest techno tunes of the year, this one probably owes more to deep house as it does to minimal with those fat synth stabs and the chiming melodics. Whatever it is, it ticks all the boxes and pushes all the buttons in such a pleasing manner that genre definitions fly out of the window.)

Yer Mam!'s Big Summer Mixtape Blowout! Volume Two, all ripped, zipped up and mediafired

In other news: Read my review of that there Prins Thomas mix CD that I keep banging on about over at High Voltage.