Acid Casuals

Today's music is ACID CASUALS, who are a Welsh techno group related in various ways to the Super Furry Animals. Their CD Omni has some beautiful electronica tracks, chilled like a Winter hobo, great to keep your mind going at four in the morning. This tune is just the beginning:



As perhaps a reward for listening Omni ends with a 3 minute pop song that will stick in your head for the rest of the day.

Bonus video: Gruff Rhys from the Super Furry Animals talking to some American guy while as baked as a muffin. "We're good at doing things ... you know, we often get quite a lot done". Perhaps the highlight is the interviewer trying to pronounce his name, in what sounds like a Swedish accent ..

RokkaTone

One of my favourite bands ever are The Stingers ATX who play tasty well-matured ska music, and through them I found a smaller group named ROKKA TONE. Now this outfit is a five-piece acoustic roots group, with some steel drums and some melodica, ideal for a summer evening in a place like the one they are based ...





Timeless music, I can't wait for the second album.

You can get the first three tracks of the album free at their website as an extra bonus!

Big Rig

In the late 80's, the SF Bay Area fostered a number of great bands around the Gilman Street club. Some made it big, some deserve to, and one great band imploded after one all-out tornado of an album, twisting up and spitting on everything in its path. This isn't about Op Ivy though (i have seen a couple people younger than the album wearing this hoody, one on the streets of Shrewsbury so it can't need too much more exposure). It's not about what Tim and Matt, the guitar and bass players did next either. And in fact it's not about what Jesse (the singer) did ten years later, although Common Rider are a kick ass band and you should definitely check them out. I actually decided to write that whole introduction for a track off a four song EP made by Jesse Michaels and some other guys in the early 90's, under the name BIG RIG.

So this track is called EXPANSIVE HEART, the EP is a tiny diamond fragment in all the stuff that's grown from OPIV but it's worth checking out if you find it somewhere.



As a extra special bonus, Jesse has a new outfit as of 2009 called CLASSICS OF LOVE (named after a Common Rider song you'll note), now they haven't made many waves yet but i'm sure that there is a storm brewing

The Moldy Peaches

I made this post because I really love this song and I love sharing things, it never ceases to amaze me how the Moldy Peaches put such genius writing in such an unassuming shell. I saw a question once on how antifolk you are, the question was "if you are recording a song and your phone rings, do you do another take?"

Here it is with a random music video which has some surprisingly good moments as well!



People are shiny like a brand new book, but if you get a closer look there's
shit on every hand you shook, if you don't believe me - look at your hand


If you like downloads here are some.

Also, I have heard that Kimya Dawson's band The Bundles are putting out an album which sounds like good news!

Telephone Jim Jesus

I discovered this fellow from the SXSW Showcasing of I think 2007 .. these contain about 1000 MP3's of mostly generic rock, but with enough gems to make it worth having a look through. One man who definitely is not a generic rock artist is Telephone Jim Jesus, who comes from a place called New London in New Hampshire, of course. The music he makes is some loop-based electronica, it has a bit of an instrumental hiphop feel to the whole thing: odd-shaped beats, granular cutups, dancing samples and borrowed words.

You can hear most of his music on last.fm and also on his myspace. This tune from 2004 is the track I first heard, it is distinctive and sonorous as a great mythical bird from another world



It all makes slightly more sense when you realise he also plays with restiform bodies who play hiphop a bit closer to home.

The Moon Invaders

Today I would like to point out Belgian ska band The Moon Invaders (myspace). They have made some timeless summertime records, the quality is impeccable which is no small part down to Victor Rice at the controls ! (on the newest CD they turned to the other Victor, i haven't checked how that has worked out yet)

Some tracks hit and some miss, you can always trust them to have some thick horns and organs though and it's hard to argue with this track SUBWAY TRAIN from the second album Breaking Free:



as a bonus here's a heavy VR dub called HOUSTON DUB from the first album:



A few of their tracks are up for free on their website. Enjoy

The Young Gods

Today we visit Switzerland for The Young Gods (myspace). They are old and influential and it seems that sometimes they play guitars, sometimes they get a bit industrial, and one time in 2004 they made an awesome ambient album called Music for Artificial Clouds.. The sounds are amazing, it washes over like a warm lake but there's always something happening if you look beneath the surface - little traces of glitch, techno and soundscape .. real ambient music

Here is Iwasi from Music for Artificial Clouds:



The whole album is of equal quality and beauty and each track has a strong character (some ambient producers don't seem to think this is important).