I’ve been sick for many days now and I barely have the energy or cognitive ability to even post this, but I wanted to post it while it’s fresh in my mind:

I really only listen to one radio station, and during the week it’s all talk radio - great to have on in the background while I work at my desk. On the weekends they turn to music. Not your ubiquitous corporate-sanctioned top-40, adult-contemporary, golden hits of the 60s-90s fare, but a great mix of things that weren’t exactly hip for its time (Depeche Mode, The Cure) and emerging Indie bands who are just starting to make a name for theirselves. But I digress…

While listening to the station yesterday they played a song I had never heard of by a band I had never heard of.  The lead singer’s rapping over a typical rock beat with the addition of horns and strings was catchy, and despite my usual (bad) habit of just listening to the tune and not listening to what the singer has to say, I paid attention to the lyrics. There is a strong message here and there’s a number of ways to interpret it so I won’t bias your conclusion by stating mine. One thing I will divulge is that this band, Flobots, is decidedly political in their messages. Nearly every song on their 2007 album “Fight With Tools” is easily identified as being anti-war.

Fight With Tools is the Flobots’ first album and can be purchased from Twist ‘n Shout.

For those of you fond of mashups and cutups, here is the definitive mix - A journey through the music of the 20th century, wrapped up in 59 minutes. I can’t explain it any better than the original site so please forgive the copypasta:

‘Everything Has To End…’

“On January 18th 2004, Strictly Kev premiered the original ‘Raiding The 20th Century’ on XFM’s ‘The Remix’ show in London. It was a 40 minute attempt to catalogue the history of cut up music - be it avant garde tape manipulation, turntable megamixes or bastard pop mash ups. It rapidly spread throughout the web and managed to cause a full scale server crash on boomselection.info when they hosted it due to the volume of net traffic.

Shortly afterwards he read Paul Morley’s recently published book ‘Words & Music’ and was amazed that certain chapters mirrored parts of his mix. Apart from the fact that the title, ‘Raiding the 20th Century’ was coined by Morley 20 years before for a future Art of Noise project, he also featured Alvin Lucier, who - purely by chance - was sampled on the opening track of the mix.

Kev decided to expand his idea to make the defnitive document on cut up music including many other parts, omitted by the constraints of the original radio session. After months of further research he tracked Morley down and they recorded passages from ‘Words & Music’ specially for this mix in an attempt tomarry the two and finish something that neither of them actually started. A year to the day of the original airing, the newly expanded version is ready.”

DJ Food - Raiding the 20th Century - Words & Music Expansion
(starring Paul Morley and a cast of thousands)

Massive track listing is below the cut:
(more…)

With the recent release of their EP, Nude, Radiohead has created the Radiohead Remix project - where for a modest fee you can purchase various tracks of the song for your own remixing pleasure. You can then upload your track to be rated alongside all the other remixes.

So far there aren’t too many posted - some are clearly amateurish, but then there are a few that are really quite good.. and I’m of the opinion that there can not be too many remixes of Nude.

One of the best mixes so far is the Holy Fuck version. It has a bit of a glitchy feel to it, a style I’m quite partial to.

Radiohead - Nude (Holy Fuck Remix 2)

Coming in at second a lovely synth-poppy rendition. You can hear the track and check the latest rankings at the site.

They Might Be Giants are currently making their way around the US, promoting both 2007’s The Else and this year’s Here Come the 123s, ‘edutainment’ album geared toward children. Today they happened to stop in the studio of one of the stations I listen to.. (An all-talk radio station, strangely enough.)

I managed to capture this 40 minute live studio session / interview… so give it a listen, be sure to check out their new albums, and if you’re lucky enough to have them come through your area, get your tickets now!

They Might Be Giants - Live Session at Real Radio, Orlando - March 13, 2008

The SXSW festival will be held in Austin from March 12th through 16th, featuring FAR too many acts to list here. It’s an excellent venue to discover new artists from a large array of genres or to catch your favorite bands before they get huge, sell out and you bitch about how you liked them before everyone else liked them.

If you’re like most of us, though - you won’t be able to make it. Fear not, for the SXSW event has posted hundreds of tracks for your aural pleasure - 765, to be exact. In previous years these tracks have been available as a Torrent download. For unknown reasons there was no torrent this year, rather they posted links to all files individually. However, some enterprising chap has done the dirty work of compiling all of them into a torrent which weighs in at a hefty 3.4 gigs.

So clear some space on your hard drive and grab the mother lode. As the styles range from straight up rock to world sound, country to reggaeton, you’re bound to come across tracks you don’t like and some you’ll love. And if for some reason that’s not enough, the linked page also has past years’ torrents posted as well.

Keep in mind - as many of these folks are new on the scene and trying to ‘make it’, supporting them is important.

You know that feeling, when you’ve been in a long music slump, when nothing really strikes your fancy? Weeks if you’re lucky, months or years if you’re not.

Then one day you put on your headphones, click ‘play’ on an artist you’ve never heard of before, ready to classify it as either ‘mediocre‘ or ‘please-God-never-again‘… and it is fucking fantastic. It is everything you have been looking for. It is getting steak when you ordered a hamburger. It is being upgraded to first class when you bought a ticket for steerage. It is exactly what you’ve been looking for and makes the past weeks, months or years of grinding through merely-satisfactory tracks all the worthwhile.

Behold, Walter Meego. When this indie-electro-pop-ish group performed last year at the SXSW festival, I was turned on to their latest EP (at the time) “Keyhole“. I will admit that this particular track does have a bit of quirk factor to it, specifically the vocal track. But I tend to like quirk and this track grows on me more with each listen. Nice electro beats and extra points for the use of a slightly out of tune upright piano.

Walter Meego - Keyhole

Fast forward to this year’s SXSW festival, and we learn that this trio (or duo + live performer) from Chicago is planning - finally! - a full album release called Voyager. You can really hear a progression of their work when comparing the earlier Keyhole to this new track, titled Forever. There’s more layers to their sound now and it seems they’ve really found ‘their place’. For me, it’s a perfect mix of a unique lead voice, a great beat, plenty of knob-tweaking and filters, and even a throwback to the 80’s with that guitar rift. This song has really lifted me out of my musical malaise. We need more music like this. And we will, on May 27th, when Voyager hits the shelves, courtesy of Almost Gold Records.

Walter Meego - Forever

Can’t wait? There’s a few more tracks on their MySpace page and of course there’s always iTunes.

Finally, if you happen to to be in the area for the SXSW festival (lucky!), you can catch them at the following locations:

03/12: The Parish (Almost Gold Recordings Showcase)
03/13: Creekside Lounge
03/14: Beauty Bar
03/14: Urban Outfitters

While ‘quasi-Hair Bands’ may go beyond the purview of The Beat Swamp, I feel this is worth sharing. If you haven’t heard, Journey recently got back together, sans lead singer Steve Perry. In their search for a replacement front man, they discovered an amazing cover artist on The YouTubes. A Filipino musician, Arnel Pineda, had gone through a number of local bands but was also famous for covering songs from the likes of Journey, Survivor, and Aerosmith. Pineda was flown to San Francisco, and after a two day audition was announced as the new lead singer for Journey. Below is the first appearance of Pineda with the band at the Viña del Mar International Song Festival in Chile, on February 21, 2008.

Journey will be performing 2 March concerts in Las Vegas. They begin their world tour in Europe, May through June, hitting US shores in July and touring through September.

Here are two Afro-centric tracks I’ve really taken a shine to lately. Unfortunately the African Sound hasn’t made its way into contemporary western music as much as a fan of this genre might wish. Sure, Paul Simon began exposing it to us in the 80’s and 90’s but beyond him, it just didn’t seem to catch on in any big way.

The highly regarded ‘blog-discovered, blog-made’ band Vampire Weekend released their first album on January 29th of this year. While their album (quite excellent, I dare say) delves into many succinct styles, they claim to be influenced by the African Sound as well as Classical Music. This track, Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa really lets that African Sound take front stage. Pretty good for a bunch of white boys from Columbia University, I dare say.

Vampire Weekend - Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa
Purchase on Itunes

And then we have this beauty straight out of…Berlin? Joy Denalane is a German singer/songwriter with influences of Soul, R&B and African Folk. While her first album was released solely in German, her second album, Born & Raised was simultaneously released in both German and English in 2006. She’s been making a name for herself and has been working with the likes of Lupe Fiasco and Raekwon. When listening to this track you might think it’s straight off the soundtrack to Shaft in Africa with its 70s inspired funk… and despite the upbeat feel of the beats and grooves, the lyrics reflect a darker mood. Gotta love that bassline… and her voice? Well, you know what they say: See a broad, to get that booty yak ‘em, Leg ‘er down ‘n smack ‘em yak ‘em. Cold got to be. Can ya dig?

Joy Denalane - Soweto ‘76-’06
Purchase on Itunes

So this is a track I came across about a year ago. I’d never heard it before nor had I heard of the artist, Margo Guryan. I originally thought it was actually a new artist trying to emulate that old-timey sound until I did some researching. Kind of a sad story it seems. A classical and jazz pianist, she was turned on to the hits of the Beach Boys and got to work writing songs. Take A Picture was released in 1968, but as she refused to tour, her label would not promote the album. As a result it made little impact. She then left the professional circuit and became a music teacher. There’s a definite pre-70’s, “things are starting to get psychedelic” feel to it. It’s happy, upbeat yet relaxing at the same time.

Margo Guryan - Sunday Morning

Purchase this album on iTunes!

…40 years later we find not a talented-yet-failed artist, but one who seems to get better with every album release. The latest by Goldfrapp, released on February 11th is titled Seventh Tree. This particular track, A&E gives much more prominence to Alison Goldfrapp’s smooth voice, with subdued electronics backing her. Very uplifting.. Unfortunately I see this song being used in either a commercial or some gushy montage on The O.C. where someone’s heart gets broken.

Goldfrapp - A&E

Purchase this album on iTunes!

First! (I’ve always wanted to do that.)

So here we are - the inaugural post for The BeatSwamp! Between the contributors to this blog you’ll be exposed to a wide variety of genres. We’ll be covering up and coming artists and those who are (undeservedly) long forgotten. We’ll update you on concert and events that you should be sure not to miss, with a focus on Florida and the Southeastern US. Once we’ve worn things in a little bit we’ll be working on a podcast, so stay tuned.

While we contributors share a common love for electronica, our individual interests vary widely, which will be reflected in what we post. You’ll get a taste of things like new folk music, dusty old reggae, 8-bit nerdcore, IDM, Drum ‘n Bass, minimal techno, old school Florida Breaks, Indie Rock, IndiePop, HipHop, Remixes, Mashups and more. In short, if it’s good music and they don’t play it on the radio, it has a home in The Swamp.

That being said, let’s get to work!