Foursday

Klaxons, "Atlantis To Interzone" (Metronomy remix)
Klaxons, "Magick"

I always feel like I'm giving Metronomy a bit of a shafting. I mean, by this point, I've posted - what? - forty? fifty? thousand? of his songs, but only once as the lead, and I spent most of that entry talking about how painfully unstimulating I found their debut album to be (and, for the record, still do). It just feels like an unfair way to treat a production outfit that's probably been responsible for as many year-defining tracks (or at least year-in-my-head ones) as anybody this side of Alan Braxe or Timbaland or the DFA, and it's frighteningly possible that none of them give me that charge of delight whenever I see their names appended to a MP3 - that's how consistent Metronomy have been both in sending the "Oh man am I ever in for a TREAT" premonitions down my spine and in delivering the goods in spades. The problem is that I'm not sure I see a choice; Metronomy's signature sound has the distinct double-fisted disadvantage of lacking either hip reference points to explore or a desire to push the technology demanding explanation, and unfortunately there are only so many ways you can say HEY WOW SOMEONE MADE THE FUCK OUT OF THIS HERE SONG (and that one right there's pretty much the last way to say it that I have left). Worse yet - and predictably enough - that's also arguably the main reason I like his stuff so much; I'm sure Jason Mount has a record collection fit to yank the gigantic salty tears of winsome cupidity straight out of my eye sockets, but I'm intractably confident that the brittle, bombed-out elegance that defines the way his best records sound would only reap the whirlwind if they were punctuated with reasons why people should be listening to "Warm Leatherette" or something. There's just something so alluring about that kind of confidence - it really takes a special musician to go "Yeah, there's a whole bunch of great stuff out there that you should be listening to, but you know who else you should be listening to? ME."

Well, hopefully people'll start listening up soon, because with the release of his remix of Klaxons' "Atlantis to Interzone", Mount may well have topped himself once and for all. It isn't just that it's catchy (which is kind of like saying "Ray Lewis isn't just a good football player because he's good at tackling"), but rather that, unlike large wads of Metronomy remixees, it's actually kindasorta faithful to the source material. I hasten to add that it's faithful in a bewilderingly oblique fashion; the original Klaxons take on the song is a straight-up raved-out buzzsaw of down-throwing, the kind of song that might as well have been grown in a lab to make all your obtuse metalhead friends who constantly (and erroneously) give you shit for listening to "all that faggy Connor Oberst shit" go completely off their boulder-filled heads - in other words, pretty much the exact opposite of Metronomy's aching, broken-sounding electro-sea shanty version. But the more I listen to it, the more I become convinced that it's the same kind of opposite as yin is to yang; after all, I'd say terms like "ragged" and "loosely bound" apply just as well to both versions, even if they manifest themselves in completely different ways. Consequently, I've been having a buttload of fun reading this track like a Rosetta Stone, assuming there's a correspondence between, say, Klaxons' frantic rave-siren punctuation and Metronomy's wheezing, accordian-like fever-murmurs; sometimes figuring out how musicians like to whip crowds into frenzies can be energizing enough, especially when you're dealing with an artist as bloodlessly blase on the surface as Metronomy. And quite simply, Mount's never come anywhere near this close to tipping his hand before, and now that the cat's out of the bag, I wonder if he'll ever be able to do so again. It'll be a whole hell of a lot of fun finding out, though.

Having said all that, I'd now like to do exactly the thing for which I was giving myself so much shit up top and make the rest of this entry about Klaxons, who, for a band with as well-deserved a reputation for making a colossal, world-pausing racket as they've got, sure slipped their looming debut LP into the upper echelons of Albums I Would Like Right Goddamn Now Please awfully quietly. It's certainly not like the world hasn't been trying to push Klaxons on me like an overdue rent notice; smart folxxx have been flipping out over them with such force and vigor ever since "Gravity's Rainbow" dropped early this year that by the time I woke up one day and went "Hey, maybe furious, shredding-ass disco rock might be right up my alley", I couldn't help but wonder if I'd already missed the changeover that always happens with music like this, where you go to sleep with "fun" but wake up with "affected". Thankfully, more songs of theirs are starting to show up, not the least of which is "Magick", quite possibly my favorite of their songs to have surfaced so far; in light of the way that my biggest problem with their songs lies in my inability to see the rave sounds that define their aesthetic as being nearly as endearing as they clearly do, you can't imagine how refreshing it is to finally stumble over a Klaxons rave sound (that spiraling "OOOOWEEOOOWEEOOOOO" in the background) which doesn't grate even a little bit, doubly so when it's the linchpin of such a savage ass-kicking of a song as "Magick" (basically, just imagine the most appropriate soundtrack to someone beating the everliving shit out of an Interpol record and you're halfway there). It's also, shall we say, rather encouraging to see all the cooks who stopped by to try and season the album's production - I mean, there's Who Know You! And Yr Boy! And, uh, James Ford. It's basically shaping up to be the record I've been hoping would come along to challenge the Long Blondes debut long-player which I fully expect to be among the year's least stoppable albums, only with more potential for great remixes. Uh, Q.E.D., I guess.

(Klaxons' "Atlantis to Interscope" remixes EP was pressed in ridiculously low quantities and sold out like whoa, so your best bet for tracking down the Metronomy remix that calls it home is probably eBay. "Magick" hasn't been released yet, but if you're fiending to put money in Klaxon pockets, you might consider the Digital Penetration compilation, which features "The Four Horsemen of 2012", the quite-excellent b-side to "Atlantis to Interscope" along with a king's ransom of like-minded ass-kicking tracks by other bands; click here to order it directly from the label. Needless to say, you should all DEFINITELY be buying the album when it comes out, although the line forms behind my ass [and the asses of the squillion people who beat me to 'em].)

Lindstrom, "Oops... I Got Rings Of Fire" - Some Lindstrom tracks take a while to grow on me - hey, like I said way up top, I have problems going past the whole "DO U LIKE ME PICK ONE YES OR NO" levels of liking a song when it exhibits exactly the kind of nearly-profound reluctance to, y'know, DO ANYTHING that marks so many Lindstrom songs. Not that this means they suck or anything - I've been insatiably curious about anything new that walks out of his studio since the LCD Soundsystem remix leaked last summer, and with his project to reissue seemingly every track that Us Dumbass Non-Scandinavians passed over in favor of some Hoobastankesque nonsense still ongoing, I doubt I'll have to Old Yeller my admiration for his work any time soon. It's just that a lot of his remixes just don't do anything for me in the same way Lifetime Movies of the Week don't do anything for me; I'm far past the point of expecting every chord change or rhythmic variation to catapult me onto the dancefloor in a James Brown-esque frenzy of hilarious ass-shaking, and given how single-minded a lot of Lindstrom's tracks can be, if you find yourself on the wrong side of the structural odds he's playing, you're not really in for much beyond seven or eight minutes of just-pleasant-enough bouncing. Of course, when a Lindstrom track does work, it's a marvel of bewildering simplicity, and one need look no further than the mystifyingly-named "Oops... I Got Rings Of Fire" for a fantastic example of the phenomenon. I mean, in terms of what the song actually does, it don't do shit; I guess there's a chord change around the middle, and every so often there's a drum fill, but, uh, Ferry Corsten it decidedly ain't. But LORD AMIGHTY is it ever generous with what's there; it's a song full of sounds that sound painstakingly labored over, like all those gleefully airy drum-pounds or the synth which wobbles at such a mercurially exact frequency as to be all but unmissable by the brain in your ass that tells you to SHAKE IT, MADAM. It ain't much, but what's there is way way way way way more than enough, and the fact that the same thing could be said about the catalogue of the track's producer should tell you something about the thrilling extent to which he's realizing his aesthetic. (Click here to buy Another Side of Lindstrom from Juno.co.uk)

Neatpeople, "Baby I'm Bored" - "For Christ's sake, James", you're probably saying, "there's a fucking guitar solo in this song that sounds like it could pretty easily soundtrack the opening credits to a sitcom about six mid-thirtysomethings playing a gang of close-knit, inexplicably well-off twentysomethings; have you lost your mind?" Obviously I'll take the fifth on that last point, but as for the conventionality, I'd be lying if I said that another aspect of Neatpeople's debut single "Baby I'm Bored" held me half as enthralled. It always leaves me quietly happy to hear a band up and go OH FUCK IT, LET'S MAKE SOMETHING EVERYONE CAN ENJOY instead of laboring away at something profoundly meaningful or musically articulate; bands making music explicitly intended for people other than yourself (or at least not specifically intended for your consumption) collectively remain the most underrated force in music, if for no other reason than to make stuff for you to discover rather than immediately devour with yr typical indie fan's cosmic self-righteousness. The irony, of course, is that the only way "Baby I'm Bored" would have ever slipped by me would have been if nobody ever bothered to rip it to mp3; I'd imagine that my unabashed fandom of bog-standard spiky guitar-pop played by enterprising young tie-wearing men hasn't really been the source of much discussion since I started banging the drum for the Rifles eighty centuries ago, but if you've ever had a moment of doubt, please believe me when I say that this is exactly the kind of song that might as well exist just to give me something to search out - between those squelchy, spherical-sounding synths and all those multi-part harmonies and that insanely catchy telegraphed guitar line, this speaks right to the part of my brain that's always popping up and suggesting that it might be time to play Phil Seymour's "Baby It's You" again (oh hell, have that one too). And while I'm sure that the band will inevitably check their trackbacks and send me a scathing email bristling at the suggestion that their strengths may lie in their ability to color inside the lines, I only bring it up because it seems like a virtue, even when not compared to its infinitely more-accomplished/less-listenable contemporaries. (Click here to buy the "Baby I'm Bored" single directly from Rebekat Records (click on "commerce"), or visit the band's website for more downloadable songs. Click here to buy Phil Seymour's self-titled record containing "Baby, It's You" from Amazon.com)

ELSEWHERE

- MP3 BLOGOSPHERE BE WRECKIN SHIT LATELY UP IN THIS BITCH FOR REALZ. You all need to go to Good Weather For Airstrikes, like, NOW in order to jump on the "new" Bloc Party song (thus bumping the number of songs I like related to Silent Alarm to a total of four), and then to The Rich Girls Are Weeping for Giorgio Moroder's "Baby Blue", a song which inexplicably managed to fly under my radar until last night. Yes, I'm an idiot. This shouldn't stop you from downloading.

- I honestly doubt that there's a music writer alive whose taste could possibly have less to do with mine than Ian Cohen, but I'll be damned if I'm not always chomping at the bit for him to write more stuff (although I don't know how much longer I can brace for the inevitable savaging he'll be giving Silent Shout). Case in point: the most recent edition of his record reviewing binge, which is solid work top-to-bottom capped off by one line in the N.O.R.E. writeup which literally made me howl with laughter (try and guess). I'm honestly surprised my neighbors didn't come by to see if they could help midwife the basketball-sized pinecone to which it must have sounded like I was giving birth.

- Zeg aan hallo België! Hopelijk genoot u van uw landgenoot plotseling roerend de naam van mijn website uit te leggen als diepgaand toen ik van vanmiddag genoot. Indien u niet reeds hebt, zou ik sterk u aansporen om Disco-Not-Disco te controleren, die de meest zeker de hitte brengt zoals ik enkel wens dat ik zou kunnen. En ik neukend VERTELDE u die remix Roddelt, was luid als alle hel.

(En u kan Altavista voor mijn verschrikkelijk Nederlands bedanken - misschien indien ik zelfs een woord van de taal, dit sprak, zal misschien niet klinken alsof het door de Zweedse Chef-kok werd geschreven.)