18 years ago.

These New Puritans - We Want War

Quite brilliant. These dudes have taken a mighty step forward since I last heard them. To be honest, I've avoided them since reading that they do things like soundtrack Christian Dior fashion shows - but I have to admit this is pretty amazing. Maybe it's the drums. Maybe it's the spectacularly ambitious structure and production. The horn-section breakdown towards the end. Like all good music, it's probably just a lot of things combining to smack you round the head.

If I was to throw three bands this song reminds me of into the post, I'd say Pink Floyd, Trans Am and Massive Attack. Listening to it reminds me of the first time I heard "Atlas" by Battles. It's something new and you have to admire them for that if nothing else.

Their new album "Hidden" is out on Domino in January. Hope it lives up to this.

Roxy Music - Roxy Music (1972)

hxxp://www.mediafire.com/?2yhldzn3xmg

So What - Miles Davis (w. John Coltrane) (1959)

Beach House - Norway (new song live)

My most anticipated album of the next few months is Beach House's Teen Dream, which is coming out on Sub Pop/Bella Union on January 26th. According to Victoria Legrand, "There's a different kind of intimacy, a physicality on Teen Dream." Which probably just means "faster tunes". Introducing this live version of possible single "Norway", , Alex Scally deems it their "spiciest" song. I trust this pairly implicitly to deliver the goods once again, whatever the tempo. They haven't put a foot wrong yet.

Edit - the band have now released this song as a free mp3 teaser for the album.

Norway mp3

The Flaming Lips + Stardeath & White Dwarfs - Borderline

What a fantastic cover. Really looking forward to the Lips' upcoming double album Embryonic, judging by this and the few tracks I've heard from the album they seem to be firing on all cylinders again.

www.mediafire.com/?1kjygj0qude (mp3)

Rachel's - Water From the Same Source

The Beatles Remasters (Stereo/Flac)

Not my uploads. These remasters are incredible, the hairs on the back of my neck have been on end all day.

http://tinypaste.com/d8fa0

Jack Nitzsche - One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest OST

Hawaiian-edged melancholia, with several haunting compositions. One of Jim O'Rourke's favourite albums.

hXXp://rapidshare.com/files/124620128/1975_One_Flew_Over_The_Cuckoo_s_Nest_-_Jack_Nitzsche.rar

Nick Drake - Don't Think Twice, It's Alright

I don't know where this recording came from, but I'm picturing a teenage Nick sitting in his bedroom doing endless amazing covers for his own pleasure.

I don't know if this really is Nick Drake or not (there is no known footage of him), but I can't stop watching this clip

Polvo - Beggar's Bowl (new song)

Wow.

Polvo return after more than ten years on hiatus with a mouthwatering taster from the upcoming album In Prism, out in September.

This is Polvo in HD, all jagged shiny guitars and pounding, lean drumbeats. They sound like a new band, oozing belief. If the rest of the album is as good as this, it will be something special.

mp3 available here

Don't Fear the Reaper

Sky Saxon R.I.P.

The Seeds - The Seeds (1966) - hxxp://www.megaupload.com/?d=S7VRD8TQ



Michael Jackson R.I.P.

Off the Wall - hxxp://rapidshare.com/files/113201472/1979_-_Off_the_wall.rar.html

Thriller - hmjp://www.mediafire.com/?aldmdjwgsk2

The Pretty Things - SF Sorrow (1968)

Recorded in Abbey Road in the same period as Sgt. Pepper and Piper at the Gates of Dawn, by Norman "Normal" Smith, this is top-notch British psych with just as much warped imagination to it as the two aforementioned masterpieces, yet done on a far smaller budget.

I just bought the 2003 remaster today and its wonders are still sinking in. I can't believe I've missed out on it all these years. In my ignorance I always had The Pretty Things down as Stones clones, but this is way better than Mick n' Keef's psychedelic efforts.

It came out belatedly in 1968, was barely promoted by EMI, and duly bombed. A big pity.

hxxp://www.megaupload.com/?d=yjtb4igk

Wire - Outdoor Miner

I love Wire, but I really love this song.

mp3

Agitation Free - Malesch (1972)

Agitation Free came from the same late-Sixties West Berlin commune scene as Ash Ra Tempel and Tangerine Dream but never gained the same level of recognition outside their native city as their contemporaries. This, their debut album, was partly recorded on a 1972 tour that took in Egypt, Cyprus and Greece and crackles with inventive, eastern-tinged psychedelia.

Underneath the duelling guitars and spacey, snaky synth-lines of Malesch, trance-like desert rhythms and taped sounds of humid dusky cities weave in and out, leaving you with the feeling you are right there in the smoky, smelly tour van with them.

Parts of this album really remind me of Tortoise's kaleidoscopic, genre-bending Millions Now Living Will Never Die (1996). Gifted musicians having fun, but not at our expense.

If you like this, show them some love on Myspace. There's a good bio there too.

hxxp://rapidshare.com/files/142952148/556-agitationfree-malesch.zip.html


Here's "First Communication" from their follow up album, 2nd.

The Clean : News

After an eight-year silence since their last opus Getaway, one of my most treasured bands of all-time The Clean are returning in September with what is only the fifth album of their stop-start 31-year "career". It is released on Merge, and is titled Mister Pop.

You can download an mp3 called "In the Dream Life You Need a Rubber Soul" here.

Here's a blast of classic Clean, from Unknown Country called "Twist Top".



P.S. Singer David Kilgour has released some damn fine solo stuff over the years, A Feather in the Engine (2001) probably being the high point thus far. His most recent album, a collaboration with poet Sam Hunt, Falling Debris came out in April and is streaming here.

The Clean Myspace

David Kilgour Myspace

Kaki King

Oh my aching sides.

Halfset - Another Way of Being There

Sweet n' lowdown guitar/electronic interplay with perfectly laid back vocals from seemingly happy-under-the-radar Dublin act Halfset.

Myspace

Isan - Gunnera (2006)

If Peter Pan and the Good Fairies were around in 2006, they might have sounded like this.

Peter Pan & The Good Fairies - Kaleidoscope (mp3, 1967)

Discovered this fantastic psych-slice via the ridiculously great music blog Office Naps. This is what DJ Little Danny said to draw me in and make me click that button...

Welcome, strangers, to the chilly, rarified reaches of the stratosphere. There’s no oxygen up here, just the shimmering cosmos and harpsichords and fuzzboxes criss-crossing like satellites.

There are no guitars here, either. As a pure studio concoction, the question of what a group named “Peter Pan & the Good Fairies” might have looked like in performance is gracefully eliminated as well. The futuristic “Kaleidoscope” was in reality the brainchild of Jim “Jimmy” Gordon, a session bassist (I believe) who recorded a few other ‘60s instrumental freakouts on the Challenge label.

This gem was released in 1967.

There's a wealth of rare madness on Office Naps, I strongly advise a rummage.

hxxp://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=822231c7499f15481f8e0fff488e27e0e04e75f6e8ebb871

Evie Sands - I Can't Let Go

Like Dusty Springfield pinning Phil Spector to the floor for 2 minutes.

MP3;

hCCp://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=822231c7499f15481f8e0fff488e27e0e04e75f6e8ebb871

The Darjeeling Limited (OST)

Some fantastic Indian sounds, a few lesser-known Kinks gems, The Stones...and Peter Sarstedt.


hxxp://www.mediafire.com/?0f70omj3ydz

Grand Pocket Orchestra - Ballet Shoes

Ballet Shoes - Grand Pocket Orchestra from Luke Franklin on Vimeo.

I know I keep going on about GPO, but they're deserving of far more attention than they're getting, in Ireland and elsewhere. Hope 2009 is good to them. "Ballet Shoes" is the lead track on their new ep, Make Happy War and is produced by Mario Thaler (The Notwist, Lali Puna). It reminds me of the fast, freewheeling hooks of Boces-era Mercury Rev.

Visit their Myspace to buy their stuff.

Pavement - Watery, Domestic (1992)

Oh, only the best ep of all time.

hXXp://rapidshare.com/files/136611861/Pavement_-_Watery__Domestic.rar

(cd rip @320)