September 2009
19 posts
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Sports Metaphors
Portland, OR-based indie dance band Hockey released their debut album Mind Chaos this week. And, despite Oregon not having a national hockey team, there are quite a few similarities between the album and the sport.
These songs are:
* Fast.
* Hard hitting.
* Slinky. Everyone knows hockey players are extremely slinky.
* Hooks everywhere — and no one is calling a penalty...
4 tags
New Band Alert! The Hoof and the Heel!
Listen, we’ve all wanted to be in rock bands. We’ve harbored little fantasies about shaking our hips and spilling our souls that never came true. Eventually most of us grew up, graduated high school, and put those embarrassing four-track recordings away never to be listened to again. Of course, we’ve also had those friends who refused to...
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Watch
Last month, we visited A-Trak at his NYC stop on the 10,000 lb. Hamburger tour. This month we’ve been featuring tracks from Duck Sauce, his new collaboration with Armand Van Helden, every Sunday in www.loudcrowd.com. Check out his blog post about us, here.
Watch our video from the tour above; we’ve embedded links to fun facts on our Duck Sauce feature. Mouse over the...
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Jock Jamzzz
I recently went to a Dodgers game and was amazed by the music that was played there. We live in a world where indie rock has become both mainstream and marketable, but there is no sign of this at the stadium. It’s not uncommon to hear Spoon, Modest Mouse, or MGMT on modern rock radio, Gossip Girl soundtracks actually make for sweet mixes, and ad execs know the best way to reach their target...
Have a listen to Kid Cudi feat. Kanye West and...
9 tags
Damon Dash
This week Damon Dash announced that he is coming back into the music biz with a bang—or rather a sultry, bluesy twang—with the arrival of Black Roc, his new production outfit, a partnership with Ohio’s Black Keys.
Black Roc celebrates the late 00s tradition of genre-fucking by featuring a melange of Hip Hops finest from underground heavyweights like Mos Def and Pharoae Monch to...
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PICK OF THE WEEK: “Girl in Love” by the Smith + Westerns
For my first pick of the week, I have to go with a song that also gets my pick for song of the summer. The honor goes to the Smith Westerns’ lo-fi glam wonder “Girl in Love.” While most of you will be packing away the shorts, sandals, and twitchy dance jams for more contemplative autumnal selections, my recent...
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A great compilation makes sense of a world that rarely does. Wait, that kind of sounds over-the-top. But I mean it, which I realize makes me a giant dork but I’m none too worried about that. Whether it was made for you personally on a Maxell C90, burned onto a CD-R, or manufactured and pressed as a ready-made object, a great mix usually has two requirements: It should make connections...
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SONG OF THE WEEK: Jay-Z Empire State of Mind (feat. Alicia Keys)
I have two things in common with Jay-Z: we’re both from Brooklyn and have the same birthday (Dec 4th). I’ve always really liked the HOVA—his unplugged album is still one of my favorites—though I have to admit that the love was a little lost with this new work, Blueprint 3. His voice isn’t what it once...
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A September Top Ten For Anyone Following The Moons, Planets, Stars And Such
Last week I djed for the good kids at Judy here in NYC. They set the theme this round to astrology with a heavy focus on Freddie Mercury. And as we find ourselves in the midst of a massive retrograde of technological battlefields this month, I found it fitting and decided to make it a point to keep my music choices...
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San Francisco, CA-based trio the Nodzzz lay down these stripped-down, half-in-tune garage pop ditties that stick in your head for days. Their stumbling mini-anthems have hooks and smarts without being twee. And while they totally rock out, their cocks are most likely zipped.
The Nodzzz cross the whimsy of the Television Personalities and sublime brattiness of the Angry Samoans with the...
8 tags
REWIND: ‘HAPPY SNACKS’ FEATURING A-TRAK
Every Friday, we hit rewind to visit one of our older playlists. The following is one of our favorites from the Loudcrowd vaults.
The other month I visited A-Trak at Webster Hall as part of his 10,000 lb. Hamburger tour. Backed by talent like fellow label mate Treasure Fingers and his own imported $50,000 light show (our estimate), he put...
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Some visions of the future never lose their scary, edgy, futuristic-ness, like Hugo Ball’s frenetic music/performance experiments in the ’20s or the stripped-down, confrontational synth-punk sounds made in the ’70s by Suicide and the Screamers. The Screamers, who I come here today to praise, had an odd lineup, especially for the time: two synths, drums, and one of the most...
10 tags
REWIND: GENTLEMEN’S CHOICE
Every Friday, we hit rewind to visit one of our older playlists. The following is one of our favorites from the Loudcrowd vaults. Max and D.A., AKA soon-to-be-crazy-famous Chester French, dropped by our office in Cambridge, MA to play the site and chat last month. Max made some online friends while D.A. asked a lot of questions — as you’ll see in the...
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New Loudness Tuesday
Every Tuesday we roll out rad new songs. This week, we’ve got some saucy and succulent new songs. Dig, you must!: The Bangs deliver heart-racing excellence with “Scorpi-oh.” Cheap Time mixes their pop with their punk on “Falling Down”and the result is enough to make you scream. And finally, Love Is All give us some beautiful and poppy garage funk with “Early...