Mickey Mickey Rourke - M M R

I went for a round of bingo last night. Last time I went bingoing it was awesome, I was victorious and left with some brilliant alphabet fridge magnets and an equally awesome plastic stick full of glitter.
This time I was less victorious and was left sipping my ridiculously strong belgian beer and licking my wounds thinking about all the prizes that didn't go my way this time. A Robocop VHS, multiple "best of the 80's" casettes and a faux supersoaker. All in all some really great shit.

The beginning of this post is quite irrelevant to the actual subject of this post.
Yeah, that's right "Mr. I Can Read The Title" this post is about Mickey Mickey Rourke

I've written about Mickey Mickey Rourke on here before but that was about previous album Festival Bummer.

Now Miller's got a new album out and it goes by the name of M M R



M M R is more of the same dreamy stuff as was Festival Bummer and that's all fine and dandy because as the ancient Romans used to say:

why fix summit' that ain't broke?

M M R is a really lovely spaced out collection of tunes that are worthy of your invaluable eartime and like Festival Bummer, M M R is also a free download that you can get here

Mickey Mickey Rourke - M M R

Cosmic Sound

Hullo.

Stumbled upon this lovely 80's revival act called Cosmic Sound and his awesome downloadable album VHS Vision.



It's 8-bit touches and pulsating synths a-go-go here. Groovy basslines bringing da funk, recycled samples getting you in the mood and soaring vocals adding that extra high.

Highly recommended!





Get VHS Vision as a free download here.
VHS Vision

Emay

Once upon a time I saw a film called Where The Wild Things Are.

It was good. The film itself was hugely entertaining and the soundtrack perhaps even more entertaining.

Karen O and the Kids - Where The Wild Things Are soundtrack on Spotify

So get this right, when I put my ears towards Canadian rapper/Mc Emay's take of the WTWTA soundtrack, it damn near blew my ears off.

Keeping a lot of the Karen parts and adding some ridiculously tasty beats to it is a working formula. Here's CAPSIZE to get you into the gist of what I'm saying.



The whole she-bang can be downloaded for no money whatsoever right there on Emay's Bandcamp site. Check it out

emay.bandcamp.com

After well getting into that album, I thought I might as well check out his other stuff too. Well glad I did that!

Listened to his collab EP with Ivan Ice called Sounds Like and straight off fell for the Grizzly Bear sampling Get Ready!.



I'm not going to start comparing the sounds to other hip hop acts as to not expose my obvious lack of knowledge in that music department, but what I will say is that Ze Drums (feat. C4) is shit hot! Ok maybe C4 sounds a wee bit like Chali 2 na. How's that for a comparison?



Laterz

Kah

I made it through midsummer without dying. Hopefully you did too.
I'd probably prefer to do the dying thing any other day then midsummer. Especially if it were by drowning.

Such a cliché.

Morbidity aside, I thought it best to either talk about everything I ate during the weekend OR stuff that I listened to recently.

Maybe I'll do both.

We recently installed a pizza oven into our bar in Sauvo. This installation not only seems to be the main attraction making everyone fat over here, but also turning me into something Mr. Edmonds would be proud to have at his house party.



Now food and Mr. Blobby aside, let's talk about Kah.

I've been listening to Kah's debut album More Than Dawn quite enough to say that I'm fond of it.



Kah's bedroom antics have produced this quaint album. She's orchestrated everything you hear present here, which makes it all the more impressive.
What first struck me is that she has such a wispy breathy voice which, while listening with headphones, is hugely penetrating. It feels like everything that is happening is happening right there in the area behind my face. Slightly unnerving, but also effing great.
Many of the songs on More Than Dawn are basically vocals over whatever mallet-instrument with maybe a little guitar in the mix. But she can however whip out a mean funky beat as evident with Fugitive

Fugitive by Kah London

Anyway. More Than Dawn is also on Spotify now so you don't have to deal with all the Myspace/Youtube/Soundcloud hassle.

Kah - More Than Dawn on Spotify








HOLD ON JUST THERE!!

I need you to check out this cover version of The Boss' Dancing In The Dark

Springsteen's 'Dancing in the Dark' by Kah London

Aight, now we're done.
Goodnight!

Midsummer

So it's that time of the year again where hundreds, maybe millions of drunken finns go out, get drunk, drown and then die. Happy Midsummer. Hyvää juhannusta.

Today i've been rocking it out in our shop selling some crazy amazing sauságe and beer to wannabe dead by drowning people.

Anyway. tonight we're off to a summer dance! Hopefully they play something I might like.



or



Probably not though. Probably more this.



Happy Midsums peeps! Don't die or anything.

Laterz

Atlas Young

Something really tasty tonight!

Not to be confused with a certain Atlas Sound, Atlas Young are an act of which I know nothing about. I guess he actually is from Japan because that's what the Myspace says.

Atlas Young on Myspace



Anyway, Atlas Young has been pumping out so many awesome tracks chocker with airy synth leads and distorted drums that someone (FLA Records) decided to turn them into a 5 track album called The Mystery Lover.

Check out Breath In Newcastle.


It had me whistling and whistling and whistling and whistling and then getting told to shut the hell up.

Great stuff!!

none

I'm not really running a tight ship here am I?

One month I'm writing shit-loads of posts and the next month I'm not writing ought.
This is of course a bad way to be, if you want to be mega-cool blogger type.

So today I'll ease my way back into the game by just pointing you in the direction of a couple of "my mates' bands". No literally, they are. But I still like what it is they're doing.

I've already quite stated my fondness of Markus Perttula's tunes, so I won't delve deeper into that. Just give him a listen if you haven't yet.

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But I'm pretty sure I've never mentioned Sludge Turkey before. Sludge Turkey are brilliant. Brilliant noise-lovers who can also put together a really tidy groove as can be heard on their track Muff Beat

I love Muff Beat. I love Piers.

Sludge Turkey on Myspace

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Eating Paper With Butter is well cool. Putting together sounds that one wouldn't think to go well with one another, but making it like work real nicely. Churning it into some freaky ambient disco.
Eating Paper With Butter on Myspace

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Call this a real post or not. This is music that me likes. aight.

brief return

Shit. Where have I been lately?

Well obviously not on Blogger would be the correct answer. I've mainly been doing all the same stuff as I normally do (ie. hating reggae), but for some reason updating the blog hasn't been happening much of late. My sincere apologies are offered here. Anyways I'm back now. For at least a tiny bit so let's get on with it.

My apologies for not having much to write about here. No obscure bands you might never have heard of this time as I've been too damn busy reabsorbing older releases and also checking out some ace bigger releases from bands you probably HAVE heard of.

By these releases I mean Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti's more than brilliant Before Today. Now when Round And Round came out as a single, it was a must get for purely two reasons.

1)It IS fecking awesome
2)It's got the coolest, most disturbing cover art you might ever see.
When I showed it to my mum she said she'd always known I was a freak.
Oh come on mum! I'm hardly a freak for finding bestiality a fine album art concept.
Especially in this day and age when zoophilia seems to be the norm. Everyone goes around town with animals as lovers.

Freaks. (The art for the back of the single is just as great if not greater than the front.) (hint: instead of a man and a dog. It's a woman and a cat)



Anyway, there is more to Before Today than Round and Round. In fact there is a whole lot more. What I'm thinking of is a neo-soul Beatles who really enjoyed the Beverly Hills Cop movies whilst working at a circus. No hang on. That's a stupid description.
I can't can't be arsed with descriptions. If you want one, do it yourself.

Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti - Before Today on spotify

Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti on Myspace



another stonker is Thieves Like Us' tight little package Again And Again.
Thieves Like Us make music that I like to call "Electronic Dance Music". I think I've penned a new term there, so if you want to use it you can ask my permission. In comparison to other "electronic dance music" makers Thieves Like Us are rather downtempo. Their secret lair is in France so obviously some French/thereabouts comparisons are in place here.

Phoenix?



Digitalism?



At the end of the day, who cares if it sounds a tad similar?
If you do, then you can always imagine that you are listening to the new Phoenix/Digitalism album.

Thieves Like Us - Again And Again on Spotify
Thieves Like Us on Myspace

There we have it. My (welcome) return.
I'll be back whenever with a slightly more obscure release.
Thanks for having me.
xoxoxo

England

I just want to use this moment to say COME ON ENGLAND!





Bring on the Americans.

laterz

Hooray!

Yet again Beko DSL hasn't disappointed.

Well known in the area around my head, Beko DSL have been churning out ace FREE! releases at a steady pace.

This time the one that has caught my attention is Hooray!'s single, with the tracks I Guess..., Jimmy, Grow Up and Kyle's Having People Around.



Yet again not very danceable (This seems to be becoming the norm from me) but this should make your head spin with its swooning world of sound. Ambience is my new drug. It's great!

Soon to have an actual physical release under Wonder Beard Tapes is Hooray!'s first full lenth recording Bedroom Adventures. Here's a cheeky taste of it called Homee

Homee by Hooray!

Mixtape #2

Howdy howdy.

The last time I compiled a mixtape it turned out kinda decent. I'm happy with decent so I thought the time was right for mixtape #2. So once again I've put together some cracking little tunes that I've been listening to and that probably most definitely won't make you dance, but will quite possibly make you go: "Hey, that's kinda good". Well that was my reaction anyhoos. Make your own mind up and then show the artists in question some love.

El tracklistos is:

1. Fiction - To Stick To
2. Houses - Endless Spring
3. Jai Paul - BTSTU
4. Kurt Vile - Ocean City
5. Teen Daze - Shine On, You Crazy White Cap
6. Aaron & The Sea - I Wanted You
7. Foxes In Fiction - Snow Angels
8. Melodica, Melody & Me - Diamonds On The Soles Of Her Feet
9. Mickey Mickey Rourke - COZE
10. Bronze - Horses
11. Neon Canyon - Libra
12. Ambassador Engine - Niigata (July 16, 2007)
13. Memory Screen - NLF
14. Ears In The Wall - Things We Forgot
15. Blackbird Blackbird - Sunspray
16. Coma Cinema - Flower Pills

Download it now. Go ahead. It's alright.

Blackbird Blackbird

Blackbird Blackbird are very high in my top-whatever list of stuff that sounds very NOW and very GOOD.



Formerly known as Bye Bye Blackbird (changed due to copyright issues), Blackbird Blackbird aka. Mikey S. has been a busy man. Not long ago he was giving his Happy High Ep away for nought, and already he's out with the next set of tunes. This time it's the Let's Move On EP also available for downloading.



And as if that wasn't enough he's also already got one additional new track called 'Hawaii' available on his blog.
http://byebyeblackbirdmusic.tumblr.com/

Here are a few select moments of quality.

Crystal Castles - Suffocation (Memory Tapes remix)

Ok so when two smaller awesomes combine, the ending results can only be a larger, more fulfilling awesome.

This is what happened when Memory Tapes went a did a remix of Crystal Castles track 'Suffocation'

Here's the original



and here's the tidy new reworking of it. Tis a wee bit less Crystal Castlesy (I guess that's the point with remixes) and more vocal orientated.



Now what you do now is go to Memory Tape's blog and download it.
Wierdtapes Blog

Summer Hits: DOM - Burn Bridges

I found myself singing this in the shower this morning, so I thought it had definitely warranted a place on here.

DOM's track Burn Bridges is just the perfect piece of summery sing-a-long pop. It's just so ridiculously fun and catchy. Hot dog!

Fair Ohs

I know I've mentioned these guys before on here, but I feel as though Fair Ohs can't get enough mentions on this here blog. It feels like this here blog was founded to praise the Fair Ohs and their mighty tropical summery punkpop.

So what I've gone and done now is got myself their new 7-inch 'Eden Rock/La Madrague'



What it is is another two awesome tracks. One of which (Eden Rock) is yet again a fine sunshine jam while the other (La Madrague) is an ace cover of this Brigitte Bardot song:



Now all I need is somewhere to play all these records I've been accumulating.

Eden Rock by fairohs

La Madrague by fairohs

Foxes In Fiction

Today's other fiction involving band is Foxes In Fiction. Not exactly a band, but more just Warren Hildebrand's musical vision.



Now we're on the ambient side of the music spectrum. Sometimes mellow, sometimes pure Twin Peaks soundtrack and sometimes we might get slightly excited and stick a beat in the midst of the delayed synth and guitar. Foxes In Fiction are a great soundtrack for just hanging about and maybe writing about Foxes In Fiction.
If yous want to just hang, chill or write about Foxes In Fiction I'd suggest downloading his Swung From The Branches album here
Foxes In Fiction - Swung From The Branches

Fiction

Fiction.

It's great innit?

Facts and the real world are just so boring that you just sometimes wander off into your own little world where you have to save the mushroom-man from a giant fucking eagle with its face covered in diazepam. The images of this are sometimes so shocking that you can't even come back to the boring real world, full of all its facts, even if you wanted to. So stuck in your imaginary in-your-head-world you start giving yourself titles such as Lord Emperor Honeymilk to stop you falling off of chairs. I WISH I HAD SOME NAPKINS BECAUSE MY FACE IS HOT. HOT & WHITE. WHITEHOT. You walk around on stilts made out of jelly beans because the ground's too damn near and too damn solid-looking. Greeting your friends is sometimes terrifying because they've got like knives and frying pans for faces and limbs. Scary.

That was an excerpt from my New York Times bestseller. 'Honey, I shrunk the will to live'

Ha you get it? Ha!
All of that was fiction. I love the world. I love me. There is no such book as HISTWTL.

There are two bands I'ma gonna write about today, that have the word fiction in their names. The first one is plainly Fiction.



Fiction are a London-based quartet who sound like an 80's freakout lead by the Horrors' singer who's listened to Foals. In fact they quite remind me of 70's/80's Australians Whirlywirld. Their songs are heavily bass-driven but that ain't all y'know!
To Stick To is possibly one of the purtiest tracks I've heard this year.



Anyway Fiction have released their debut single Curiosity on Offset Recordings and it's sounding goodgoodgood.

FICTION - Curiosity by tomrobinson

Yous can also Spotify that bitch right here.
Fiction - Curiosity on Spotify

Saturday night's not party night it's 100th post night

G'day.

I thought it best to celebrate writing my 100th post by showing you this pic.
I'm not sure what the hell it is. But it sort of resembles this blog.
I'm down to two options as to how it resembles AndygoesdowntoChinatown:

1) A butt-ugly piece of shit freak surrounded by beautiful, wonderful, diverse flora (aka the rest of the blogosphere)

2) A lovely little quaint hand-made magic sock-dog-thing living in symbiosis with it's surroundings with just the tiniest of cheeky smiles on it's crazy sock face.


LALALALAAAA.

Obvs I can't come on here being all like "I've hit triple figures in writing stuff on virtual paper" without also writing about music. Because, when it comes to the crunch, that's what this little outlet is all about.

Today is about Babeshadow. Yes they have (not universal opinion, just mine.) a shit name, Yes, they may be named after a T.Rex song. Who knows? But me thinks thems is still in my good books.



Babeshadow have just released their 4-song Sea Serpents EP and are already getting quite some radio time. (not here in Finland, of course).

Sounding like a mixture of Cold War Kids, Starsailor and Delta Spirit this perhaps isn't anything incredibly groundbreaking, but shit off if I still think it's ace.

It also seems that myspace have got a new music player that enables some sort of new embedding function.

Trying to use that, here's some of the tracks.

Sea Serpents by BABESHADOW

Every Heart (demo) by BABESHADOW

And just to be on the safe side here's the spotify link too. Oh I do treat you, you know.

Babeshadow - Sea Serpents Ep

Not To Worry

Yesterday's Owen Pallett gig didn't go quite as planned.
Due to my companion's sudden bout of sickness we thought it best to leave early.

Luckily I'd seen Owen/Final Fantasy before at last years Flow, with him being the last performer of the weekend. Last year he was phenomenal. Yesterday he was that and more.
A smaller, more intimate venue seemed to suit him better.
Oh yeah and of course we'll see him again at this years Flow.

He's a bit like the David Copperfield (The one who walks through colossal walls, not the poor street urchin one)of contemporary violinists. Watching him build up his layers of sound is mesmerising in the sense that watching a magician perform his illusions is too. The climax of this "illusion" was left unseen, as we begrudgedly walked out during 'The Butcher'. one of my favourites btw..

.

I'm not really going to write about much else now. Except that I've started an ever-growing spotify playlist that I'm going to keep adding to whenever I feel the need to.

Thomas' ever-growing Spotify playlist.
Give it a listen or subscribe or whatnot.

Laterzz y'all

Effi Briest

Effi Briest are a new acquaintance.

As with new acquaintances in the real-life people world, I'm usually rather restrained. I try not to say too much, and just sit there with a silly half-smile and listen politely to what they're saying. This of course seems to have the adverse result. Instead of seeming polite and maybe a tad shy, I just come across as the most boring guy you'll ever meet.



Luckily no need for polite half smiles with Effi Briest. Invoking the spirit of The Slits, but talking more modern-times, Effi Briest are an all-girl seven-piece who've just released their debut album Rhizomes. My inept guess is that Effi Briest will appeal to fans of Zola Jesus and Esben and the Witch



It seems the world has been hiding this ace secret of a band from me, because they do have quite the fanbase. "Haha world, you can't keep secrets from ME"

So you there mister reader man/miss reader miss. Go forth and listen and do not be part of that group of people who have free will and walk their own paths.

Effi Briest - Rhizomes on spotify

Album title track Rhizomes, which are fyi the laterally growing roots of plants. Ooh!



And perhaps the most awesomest of awesome: Mirror Rim