LCD SOUNDSYSTEM -- All My Friends
Music for thirty and forty somethings reflecting on dwindling glam encounters through the prism of Roxy modernist piano and Ziggy Alauddin insanity. A life measured in pop music and its rituals. I wonder if 45:33 would have fitted on to one side of a C-90 cassette for the old exercise walkman.
SHACKLETON -- Hamas RuleBrooding orientalist dub disco more like. Will there be no end to sampling the drums of the other. Chopped and screwed. Headless in Gaza. The producer with the same name as a Brit colonial era explorer has made some precise cuts, dubplates and remixes this year.
GYPTIAN -- Guns And Guns
(Seed Weed Riddim)
Sixty thousand and 70. That is the price it takes to kill you and me. Brothers, sisters, cousins, friends and foes alike. Kingston counts the numbers. Wrapping the tongue around the figure in a supple singjay style and the concrete accounting of the market make this a great conscious ragga track. Plentee-ee--eee for sale.
AMY WINEHOUSE -- Love Is A Losing Game
(Truth & Soul Remix)
Remembering a love affair with a short-haired Godard extra from Wisconsin. Sixties retro back in faux black. Stax of Bacharach. Bond theme for the Shirley Bassey rehab centre. Black-water rafting through a tunnel darkly on this Manhattan Research Inc. soundalike version.
GRIZZLY BEAR -- Knife
Later remixed by Girl Talk and covered by CSS. Can't you feel the knife? Quicktime quicksand video by Alexander Turvey. The sinking hopes of US in Iraq's oil lands?
PANDA BEAR -- Bro's
got the 12" at the tail end of 2006, but its velvety beach trance lingered longer because of its presence on the top long player Person Pitch. It's like The Velvet Underground's White Light White Heat and the noisier bits of the eponymous third album fed through a sampler of Brian Wilson harmonies and ex-Spector-ated. I'm a sucker for reverb and echo. The Pasifikan sleeve (I could be misplaced with the ethno reading?) adds to the tribal shamanism of the groove.
