Feel This: Deerhunter - Microcastle

Highly recommended! Bigger and brighter things are on the way for these BS favorites who are continuing to push the beautiful--noisy axis to it's ends. Pre-order here! Released early December.

Dick Around!

"All I do now is dick around, All I do now is dick around, dick around" - these are words from the profound and mighty Sparks. This song taken from their 20th album, "Hello Young Lovers."

Please take some time to "Dick Around" with Sparks, one of our favorite things at Bananaspam headquarters. Happy recession Tuesday!

Bend an ear to The Morning Benders!

If you haven’t heard Talking Through Tin Cans, the last album by the East Bay’s finest, The Morning Benders, then you need to grab it asap. It’s on the Plus One Music label, was released in May and contains a coupla two or three kicky tunes, including the notoriously infectious opener “Damnit Anna.” Also the Oakland/Berkeley, Caleeforniaaaay four piece have an i-tunes session coming on the 11th of November and they are playing their final show of the year at Rickshaw Stop on December 5th.

And go here for some rather inspired cover versions that these young men have crafted. The set is called the Bedroom Covers and they’re not half bad or fully shabby at all. You have been warned, aiight?

Orr

New School of Seven Bells Album On The Way!

School of Seven Bells, the new band comprised of former Secret Machines member Benjamin Curtis, and sisters Alejandra and Claudia Deheza once of On!Air!Library!, has a new album dropping next Tuesday, the 28th of October. It’s called Alpinisms and it will be released on the fine and very awesome Ghostly International label.

Orr

James Lavelle at Mighty Tonight!!

Mo Wax founder, trip hop innovator and legendary dj James Lavelle graces the decks at SF’s best club, Mighty, tonight. Lavelle is known for his role in UNKLE, bringing DJ Shadow to the world’s attention and for playing banging ass, eclectic sets that get crowds hyped and the parties rocking.

Should be a fucking good one!!!

Orr

New Unabombers/Electric Chair Mix Out On Tirk.

The UK label, Tirk has just released a banging mix by Manchester’s Unabombers, the resident djs at the infamous, but sadly defunct Electric Chair party. The CD is called Electric Chair Saved My Life and it celebrates the club’s thirteen year run from 1995 til January of this year and includes some of the biggest tunes played by the Unabomber djs, Luke Cowdrey and Justin Crawford. The boys plough through eighteen of the tracks that defined the Electric Chair’s long history. These include, “Beau Mot Plage” by Isolée. “Let’s Be Young’ by Quentin Harris and NY Gospel/dance classic “Stand On The Word,” by Joubert Singers.

Cowdrey and Crawford deftly mix the electric with the soulful and bring you through the emotional changes that any good mix should manifest. The inclusion of classics like “I Need You Now,” by Sinnamon, “Gabrielle,” by Roy Davis Jr. Feat Peven Everett and Daniel Wang’s Sleeque sampling “Like A Dream I Can’t Stop Dreaming” will delight the trainspotters and groovers alike. Unfortunately, Electric Chair banger and boogie monster “Heat You Up (Melt You Down)” by Shirley Lites isn’t included. 

Back in 2000 when this classic was reissued by Paradise Garage founder Mel Cheren’s Westend Records label, my recent magazine write up on the track was chosen for the sleeve sticker by kick ass label manager turned kick ass publicist, Andy Reynolds. In it I gave the Unabombers big love for being champions of this song, the first record I ever bought on American soil, in Vinylmania on Carmine Street, NY in ’95.

But they do close their set with the Frankie Knuckles dub of Rufus and Chaka Khan’s “Ain’t Nobody,” another fave that I’ve been firing on mix tapes since the mid ‘90s. Electric Chair Saved My Life dropped on October 6th so go get it, it’s great.

Orr

Robin Thicke, disco, soul, electro funk and painting the White House black

A few days ago I wondered what had happened to R&B? When I say R&B I mean commercial or commercial leaning modern soul music, it’s top 40, you can dance to or chill to it. It kinda got caught up in the materialist cluster fuck that this decade became. Whereas some artists found their soul in the cell, R&B as a whole has lost its soul in the sell, a hard sell at that. But I just had a quick listen through Robin Thicke’s new album, Something Else and it does hold some promise and maybe indicates where R&B could go next…back to the 70s to trawl for ideas and inspiration.

I’ve a feeling that the next, post-Bush, era will be harking back to the ‘90s and by default to the ‘70s because the ‘90s were another disco era — remember early ‘90s house, De La Soul, Brand New Heavies and Deee Lite. Just as Aaliyah’s “Try Again” was an indication that Timbaland was aware of the burgeoning electro/new wave revival in 2000, Thicke’s album is a shot across the prow of this era, telling us that the next will be less about some of the noisy, empty and glitchy nonsense that exemplified this era’s music (not that this era didn’t have some jams too).

Bust out your Barry White, but remember the spectre of Kraftwerk looms, bringing in a soft machine music to ease the bumpy ride of the end of this bust, broke and bruised decade. We do like some soul in the machine don’t we? It’s the spirit of electro funk (boogie), Chicago, NY and New Jersey house/garage, when the beats and the vocals were on, and when you’d pick up that Ice Cube joint with the phat Evelyn Champane King sample.

So if Three 6 Mafia sample Zombie Nation’s “Kernkraft 400,” T.I. uses Crystal Waters and Mary J Blige can cover Salsoul classics, then what is next, who will — as PM Dawn said back in ’91 — thank Todd Terry? Rob Base and DJ EZ Rock already did it with their “Get On The Dancefloor” smash, will the Neptunes sample Gypsymen’s “Hear The Music?” Robin Thicke’s album is a subtle indication that the next disco era is on the way and if the white house is painted black, George Clinton’s visionary funk will be in there too, the perfect fusion of butt and machine. Whoever stole the soul, can you just hand it back, we need it for a paradigm shift we’re having. Thanks!

Orr