Category: music

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A Post: Mining the (80’s) audio motherlode*

No references to how bad good bad good Rick Astley was or ironic reappraisals of T’Pau in this post – just pointing you in the direction of an overwhelming amount of fantastic music made during the 1980’s, some of which you may have never come across before.

1.  A Reference Of Female-Fronted Punk Rock: 1977-89

Not exclusively (but predominantly) 80’s. One person’s quest to archive, well, female fronted punk rock. From the relatively well known (Penetration, Plasmatics) to the fantastically obscure (Jo Squillo Eletrix? Wilma & The Wilbers?). Always slightly uncomfortable classifying music as “female” but with 325 songs spread across 12 volumes, all available to download for free, we’ll have to let that slide.

2. Bedroom Cassette Masters

An ongoing archive of homemade 80’s electronic music released almost exclusively on cassette. Warning – some of these tracks (especially in later volumes) may possibly have been made in another decade, as revealed in an interview in Louder Than War.

3. FACT’s 100 Best Albums Of the 1980’s

The Queen Is Dead? Too obvious. Three Feet High & Rising? Never heard of it. Stone Roses? Ttrttpt

A list packed full of metal, hip hop, dub, electronic, dance and pop that has, quite possibly, never made any top 100 list before. We’ve compiled a spotify playlist of some of the albums that passed us by first time around.

4. And if that’s not enough…

Splash some cash and treat yourself to both of the following new but exhaustive 5 CD compilations:

Cherry Red’s “Scared To Get Happy – A Story Of Indie Pop 1980 – 1989”

Harmless Record’s “Terry Farley Presents Acid Rain: Definitive Original Acid & Deep House 1985-1991”

*Thanks to WFMU’s Mining The Audio Motherlode for the title inspiration

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Uneasy listening

You are listening to
WARNING: You are listening to is quite addictive.

Due to work commitments (The Herb Whisperer) and general faineancy (Fraserhead) there was no action packed instalment of The Joint on RDU yesterday.

If you need some way of filling this void in your life please allow us to recommend some uneasy listening to get you through today, Christmas, and the New Year.

You are listening to combines real time police and emergency services scanner audio from various US cities with ambient and drone tracks from Soundcloud. More comforting and soothing than voyeuristic it’s the brainchild of Eric Eberhardt (read the IndieShuffle interview here). For me it’s the aural equivalent of a movie scene showing the city at night from a helicopter. Very nice to fall asleep to, whether in a sunny backyard or late at night in bed.

And if that’s right up your alley my workmate Tim recommends the following SomaFM channels:

  • SF 10-33 – Ambient music mixed with the sounds of San Francisco public safety radio traffic.
  • Mission Control – Celebrating NASA and space explorers everywhere. A mix of ambient and experimental music mixed with the historical sounds of the space program.

xox

Fraserhead

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The Show: D.I.Y.

No representation from us this week. Instead we left you in the dexterous hands of Mr. John Ussher from Hauswerk, who enthralled us with dance tunes with squeaky toy rhythms and made us swoon with a trip down The Pharcyde memory lane.

If you were pining for our usual playlist, feel free to create your own by mixing and matching from the following three Joint staple ingredients.

1) Disco

Courtesy of Giorgio Moroder who keeps uploading unreleased tracks, spanning his entire career, to Soundcloud

2) Noise

Courtesy of Alec Empire with a mix he did for Dim Mak records. If we’re not mistaken Max Keiser and Stacey Herbert, old friends of The Joint, make an appearance at some point.

3) Offence

Courtesy of Die Antwoord who are continuing their recent track record of making the most unsettling videos since the heyday of Chris Cunningham.

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Julien Dyne “Glimpse”

Too much music. Not enough time. Hence the new Julien Dyne album “Glimpse” passing me by.

Luckily, whenever I visit my brother in Dunedin I always have a look at his CD collection. This is because my bro wins a copy of EVERYTHING that the mighty Radio One gives away on air. This means I always have the perfect opportunity to listen to a bunch of local releases that I may have missed.

Lo and behold, on my most recent visit I saw the Julien Dyne album. So I nicked it and finally listed to it today. Don’t tell my bro.

Good things come to those who wait. Mr Dyne makes fabulous beats. Recommended to you nuts who like Pete Rock, mellow Prefuse 73, Mr Chop, Ta-ku, Fly-Lo et al.

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Twin Shadow “Five Seconds”

One of my favourite moments at the 2012 Laneway Festival in Auckland was seeing Twin Shadow on stage. I’m not usually starstruck but I was captivated by the charismatic George Lewis Jr. The whole band was tight but Mr Lewis was positively dreamy, a modern crooner who seemed to slow down time. My bromance moment I guess.

The new Twin Shadow album “Confess” is out early July on 4AD and sounds like, if the new single “Five Seconds” is anything to go by, a moody affair.

Here’s the video for “Five Seconds” – quite hypnotic and one that looks like it could have been directed by David Lynch. And because “Five Seconds” was a real earworm and reminded me of some guilty pleasures from the 1980s I’ve included those videos below too…