Category: review

Tom Cosm – heaps good strong board [song review by Thom]

Posted on by Dr Hitchcock


www.tomcosm.com

‘Heaps Good Strong Board’ is the latest offering from Christchurch musician Tom Cosm, a man well renowned for his musical mana, his grippingly interactive website and all round willingness to give you a great big musical backrub. Not only does this wee number come free of charge from his website (www.tomcosm.com), but it is accompanied with a barrage of tips and advice on how to get behind the decks yourself. This track is unmistakable Cosm at his foot stomping best, and while he has laid the foundations of the cut with his distinctive glitchy, yet water tight electro inferno, he keeps up the interest by painting over the ‘Tom-foolery’ with a number of inter-textual pop culture references, sound bytes and alarmingly recognisable voiceovers. For a man who puts TV on par with doing dishes or filing tax returns, I was blown away by how many of these I recognised. Simply put, this track is as hooky as a tackle shop, and takes the listener on a dance ridden journey, from the opening Animal Collectivesque intro to the ‘four to the floor’ final stanza. At price that will set you back about as much as air does these days, it is guaranteed to make your toes move. Get it now!

The Starlifter.TV Manifesto [Revealed by Dr Hitchcock]

Posted on by Dr Hitchcock

 

The Starlifter.TV Manifesto
The purpose of Starlifter.TV is to bring creativity into the collective conscious by encouraging artistic and creative expression as well as promoting dialogue between individuals within and beyond the community.
We believe in the freedom of ideas and expression, although we do encourage people to say more positive things than negative.
There will be little emphasis on “making money” and “increasing profits”.
The concept of copyright and intellectual property is replaced by communication and respect between individuals, artists, and organisations. Copyright and intellectual property implies ownership of ideas. NO ideas are owned.
All beings, whether they describe themselves as artists or not, are creators, but are better described as revelators. They convey ideas from the unknown into the known.
Recognition of a being, artist or organisation as author, creator, or revelator is an acknowledgement of the evolutionary path of the idea as opposed to an indication of ownership.
And so I ask you, how cool is a piece of string? 
Only Sophia knows…
Revealed by Dr Hitchcock
Monday, 24th November 2008 CE

The Enright House – Remixes and Collaborations [Review by Thom]

Posted on by Dr Hitchcock

 

Mark from ‘The Enright house’ is like the new character on Home and Away. He’s dark, a little troubled, generally misunderstood but has a heart of purest honey. And much like these characters, who warm and sprout and blossom into best friends over careful weeks and repeat encounters, Mark’s music reveals itself slowly, maturing like an aging palette with every listen.

His latest release ‘Remixes and Collaborations’ is a collection of silk-smooth, post post rock, electronic glimpses into the musical brotherhood that Mark has nurtured with the likes of NZ bolters A Flight to Blackout, Fiveandahalfminutes, Misfit Mod and Coterie.

From the coalblack, brooding opener ‘3’, to the delicate and feather-heavy finale, ‘Darkwave = MC squared’, ‘Remixes and Collaborations’ is well paced and varied, delving briefly into the industrial, introspective, baroque and oblique, while never straying from character. While the collection shines light on all sides of Mark’s talent, it is the remixes of others’ tracks that stand head and earphones above the rest. Mark knows the production desk like an old girlfriend, and he liberally anoints these tracks in bucketfuls of mastery. A clear standout on the album, A Flight to Blackout’s ‘Fly your Arc’, hulks and grinds its way through a soundscape not unlike the war torn scenes of The Lion King, when Simba returns to a ravaged pride rock, though with computers glitching and convulsing in the fading light.

While this album may not have the grip on teenage girls that Home and Away does, it certainly has weight. Available as a free download (quality of your choosing) from the beautiful and friendly Enright House website (www.theenrighthouse.com), it is definitely worth a listen or ten.

Kitsune Tabloid – Various Artists, Mixed by Digitalism [Review by Sixtyten]

Posted on by Dr Hitchcock

 

This is really not what I was expecting from a Digitalism DJ set. Instead of cutting edge electro, this compilation is mixed bag of white boy space disco, indie crossover and raw rock. In fact, this sounds like it could have been mixed by any number of random local warm-up DJs… To top things off, a lot of the mixing is as ruff as guts. While this sound has been saturating the Australian club scene for a few years now, perhaps it’s a sign that it’s just starting to infiltrate Germany? I probably would have shelved the disc if I wasn’t reviewing it, but after overcoming my initial disappointment – and with some repeated listening – I managed to find a soft spot for some of these ‘ugly duckling’ tunes.

The disc kicks off with a Sweaty remix, which improves significantly on the Muscles original by replacing his strained vocals with a chorus of cheerleaders. The first few tracks dwell in spacey disco and spastic funk territory, with Hercules & Love Affair, Holy Ghost and a surprisingly fresh sounding Human League dub, which could have been given a bit more airtime. The Midnight Juggernauts show why they own the scene with the glammed up End of an Era, then some hella 80s b-boy shit is represented with Space Cowboy by the Jonzun Crew. Calvin Harris’ simple and catchy Colours is thrown in and The Presets rent out the one of their weakest tracks, Yippiyo Ya, before CSS donate a trashcore remix of the B-52s.

The final section kicks it off with the Daft Punk-esque If I Was Wonderwoman by Hey Today. The main vocal sounds suspiciously like someone saying “I’m stoned already” in repeated falsetto. Hmm, I’m starting to wish I was too… The highlight of the album, however, is an absolute storming electro track called Dance in Dark by The Proxy. They ingeniously hijacked some evil basslines of doom from the drum n bass community and foil with it with a beautiful vocal from some Edith Piaf-style songbird. This tune is gonna be massive all over the shop. Relentless!

After overcoming my initial knee-jerk reaction to this compilation, I’ve realised there are some tracks on this album that I actually really enjoy for their camp and trashy wrongness. The Bears Are Coming (Metronomy Mix) is a great Prince-on-LSD impersonation, complete with spooky keyboards, cowbells and a vocal line about “acid rain”. This mix also exposed me to WhoMadeWho (where have I been hiding?!), with their catchy contribution The Plot. Elsewhere, The Kills’ Cheap and Cheerful is an instantly familiar piece of trash rock, like something you’d hear on a sexy Levis ad.

Overall this is more of a party warm up than the main event. There are some sleeper hits between the disco filler, but many of the songs could have been cut altogether. If you’re into the Cut Copy Fabric mix you might like this, but if you want some hard and dirty electro, try the Boys Noize’s Bugged Out instead.