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wow it’s been a long time since my last update. there are so many good tunes i want to share and have been meaning to make a mixtape but for now…some tunes that will definitely keep you warm and lift your soul in the winter. these are tracks that i’ve been repeating NONSTOP for the past little while. some MONTREALÂ representation too with JACQUES GREENE. watch out for him, he is going to be big. he’s already done remixes of radiohead and the weeknd which are super dope. NEON INDIAN‘s new LP is a fantastic listen, though not as good as their first. APPARAT as always is on point and the track i featured from him is off his new LP Devil’s Walk which is very dark, moody, yet spiritually uplifting despite the depressed tones throughout his production. worth listening to though. NEW LOOK, another up and coming CANADIAN group from Hamilton (who woulda thought?!) are making some great pop tunes. MIGUEL CAMPBELL‘s track “something special” is one of the tracks that DEFINED burning man for me. it was dropped when everyone had not eaten, slept, or stopped dancing in over 36 hours at least. toronto’s ART DEPARTMENT through this track down and it lifted us up high…high high high up. campbell is off the HOT CREATIONS label. he’s gon be massive. truth. lastly, i threw in the most wonderful TENSNAKE remix of little dragon‘s CRUCIAL and probably one of the most remixed tracks of the year, “ritual union”. enjoy.
mp3: Jacques Greene – Another Girl
mp3: Miguel Campbell – Something Special
Mp3: New Look – Janet
MP3: Neon Indian – Polish Girl
MP3: Apparat – Goodbye
MP3: Little Dragon – Ritual Union (Tensnake Remix)
OK so end of school is here and the best part is…COACHELLA IN 12 DAYS! OK. So, like promised ages ago, mixtape is on the way…for real this time. Expect it within a week. It is pretty awesome. So this post is a quick recap of all the shows I went to in March. It was such a ridiculous time for concerts and I discovered some pretty great new bands. Jump ahead for recaps for Neon Indian, Braids, Silly Kissers, Air, Beach House, Bachelorette, Joanna Newsom, Flying Lotus and more!
I’ve already been exposed to such great music this year and it’s not even been a full two months! And now that I am home for two weeks I’ve caught up on a lot of music as well as posts I’ve been falsely promising for months. Oops! Anyways, by far the best LP I’ve heard this year is without a doubt by the wonderful Four Tet a.k.a. Keiran Hebdan, the Londonite who perfected his album while having residency at Plastic People. His first single “Love Cry” remains one of my favorite songs released last year and on his recently released LP, There Is Love In You. So, this mixtape is named after the awesomeness that is Four Tet but is not fully composed of Four Tet themed music. This mixtape is full of everything, the Balearic, in a sense. The lo-Fi hip-hop goodness of Gonjasufi all the way to the classic tunes of Billy Idol. As with all my mixtapes, it’s gonna make you groove =)
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Download: ATM’s Mixtape – Love Cry
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Playlist after the jump!
***Finally I am posting these decade end lists. Gaaah I love and hate lists. They enlighten me towards new music yet at the same time they’re ridiculously subjective. From one point to the next an album can be the best and not depending on the season, the weather, my emotions, whether I’m under the influence, yada yada yada. Because of all this, the numbers on my list aren’t a ranking system of worst to best—because I think they’re all equally fantastic—they’re simply a form of organization. But, a few times on the lists I will put a clear marker on the artist/album that I feel truly outranks the rest. It’s only here where I exercise a bit of hypocrisy.
I know I’ve left hundreds and hundreds of artists out. Making a “Top 10” list per sub-genre for the decade is trifling, I know. It really should be “Top 100” per sub genre. Every day I keep remembering ones I should add but I have too much music and too little time. I did my best with what I had and what I remember and the time I had! You’ll notice that a lot of the artists are from the last 5 years and that’s because my mecca of music is back home. Home home. Like where I was born jaja. So…sorry for the lack of early 2000 albums. =)
I also dislike one shot lists! You simply can’t compare down-tempo artists to dubstep artists, etc. So, I tried to organize artists into the genres I felt fit them best as opposed to putting them all in the same pool. But obviously some artists mix into the other genres or were put there even though they have a very specific genre of their own (avant-garde, balearic, etc etc). Gaaah and genre is so subjective as well. Bear with me and keep all this in mind! A lot of these artists are featured in my NYE and NYD mixtapes or have been blogged about! So check the mixtapes out or do a quick search on ATM if you feel like more sampling.
Other than that, happy reading and stay tuned for Part II and Part III!
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Ambient, Chillout, Lounge, Down-tempo, Lo-Fi
10. Flica – Nocturnal (2008)
09. MĂąm – Yesterday Was Dramatic Today (2000)
08. Emancipator – Soon It Will Be Cold Enough (2006)
- MP3: Emancipator – Anthem
07. Seba – Return to Forever (2008)
06. Röyksopp – Melody A.M. (2001)
05. Ocuban – Behave Decently (2009)
04. M83 – Before the Dawn Heals Us (2005)
03. Telefon Tel Aviv – Immolate Yourself (2009) ♥
02. Air – Walkie Talkie (2004) ♥♥
01. TĂ©lĂ©popmusik – Angel Milk (2005) ♥♥♥
Mentionables of 2009:
Eluvium – Life Through Bombardment
Hauschka – Snowflakes and Car Wrecks
Napoli is Not Nepal – Napoli is Not Nepal
Nosaj Thing – Drift
Nordlight – A Deep Dive
Printempo – Printempo
Tosca – No Hassle
***So I have my top lists compiled, I just haven’t been able to fully write it out yet. And since I will be in New York for New Year’s, my top lists will not be out until I get back. Super sorry! I am super excited for y’all to read it still! And within my mixtapes which I DID finish (phewf) are a lot of my favorites of the year and of the decade! Have a great new years and enjoy the mixtapes! Stay tuned for my top lists within two weeks!***
Alright y’all. This mixtape is pretty sick. Not gonna lie. In it, lies some favorite tracks of mine throughout the decade as well as constantly looped tracks of this year! Unforgettable club hits, street bangers, and undeground smashes! This is a mixtape meant for pre-party, pre-drinking, and pre-PAAAAAAAAAAAAIN! I hope your home/car/headphones has a lot of BASS (how low can you go)!
You will need it.
GET READY TO DANCE BITCHEEEEEEEEEEEEEES!
Download: ATM’s – New Year’s Eve Mixtape (Link 2)!
*sorry for the bad link! i was away and didn’t have time ’til now to replace it! enjoy!*
Playlist after the jump!
I have been in love with Frankmusik ever since I heard his mini EPs In Step and 3 Little Words which came out some time last year. Ever since, everybody wanted more of Vincent Frank but, nothing came out except a few remixes and a few singles. This full length album has been long awaited! He does everything, from the instrumentals to the vocals. Interestingly, before becoming a music maker, Frank was a beatboxer known as Mr. Mouth. It’d be super cool if he would loop some beatboxing and integrate it into his music like Random Recipe or Dub FX do. Next endeavor? Anyways, Complete Me is Frankmusik’s first LP and it is a really, really good pop album. Really! More after the jump!
I just want to rant a bit first before actually writing the review. I was going to do this last night but decided to sleep on it and calm down a bit. But, turns out, I still feel the same way.
Yesterday was a great day. I saw great bands. It was lovely weather. Coldplay was absolutely magical with the fireworks, and the paper butterflies and the big yellow balloon and the various other shenanigans going on. But what do I remember most about last night?
HOW I HAD TO WAIT FUCKING 1.5 HOURS JUST TO GET ON THE METRO. Yeah. It effin’ sucked.
Perhaps you’re thinking, well it would have been a good idea to leave before the show ended, or right when the show ended to hustle your way to the metro to avoid the rush. BUT WHY SHOULD I? I wanna see the encore. I paid for a ticket so that doesn’t mean that I should leave early because Osheaga organizers and the STM couldn’t get their shit together. NO OTHER FESTIVAL, for crying out loud, not even HOCKEY GAMES in Edmonton have this poor organization.
It is not possible to up the speed at which they’re leaving? To run as if they were in rush hour? I get that there are only a few trains that can run max because of the way the tracks are organized, fine, that’s great. What about alternate methods off the island. For example, shuttle buses. Those can fit at least 50-60 people per bus, have 20 some buses going back and forth off the island to alleviate the stress on the metro. Maybe this is too expensive? Maybe this is worsening the carbon footprint? So, fine. don’t have the shuttles.
BUT AT LEAST FUCKING COMMUNICATE WITH US. No one knew WHERE to go. I was one of the unfortunate ones that went to the other fork in the path and ended up coming into the metro on the side, and not the other fork, which would have been directly towards the metro doors. Why weren’t there signs telling people to go the other way, or at least staff? Our side took at least 3 times longer to get to the doors than the other. And probably made the other line much more inefficient as well. Why not group everybody in the line that matters? And if this isn’t the case, still! Why not tell us how many trains are going, how many people can get on per train and how long it takes? Perhaps this isn’t they’re job? Communication is the key to from disgruntled, tired, pissed off people, to disgruntled and tired people who accept what is going on. We’ll still complain but at least we’ll know what’s going on. And that’s better than keeping us in the dark.
Osheaga is a festival that is about to terminate. Organizers even said that if this one doesn’t go well, they might not have another one (once I find the source, I will post it). Shit like this, where thousands of us, with our feet literally so brittle from having been on them all day, bodies tired from the sun and from dancing, and our moods utterly in the deep depths of hot pissed off fiery hell, were complaining our asses off and really frustrated in having to wait over 1.5 hours just to get on a train!
Osheaga, it’s great that you organized free transportation for people who have tickets on the metro, but this is fucking shite. Surely, you learned from the previous three years?! That tens of thousands of people waiting for one fucking metro line will take eternity and piss off a lot of people and doesn’t leave us happy? At. All?
I can only imagine all the people behind me…who must have waited 2+ hours…and I don’t know if the train extended their hours either, as the metro usually stops running until 0100. People were running to different connecting lines when I got off at Berri around that time. You would think that they extended the hours, they HAD to, otherwise thousands of people would have been stuck on an island, or at Berri. See? No communication. Where are the posters saying that there would be extended hours on these days so people don’t freak out and panic that they can’t get home without having to pay for an extremely expensive cab ride or have a long walk home?
I am still pissed off. Mainly because I was exhausted yesterday, and standing in the middle of the crowd like that, inching forward a few feet per 20 minutes on feet that were about to crack from overuse, was getting claustrophobic, and required even more energy (barely any left), just to survive brinking anarchy. I am sure I was not the only one.
So fuck you Osheaga and STM for not having organized a way of getting tens of thousands of people off an island. You suck. And I have more things to complain about like how they were taking the caps off the bottles of water (making them unreuseable), having barely any garbage cans or recycle bins on a vast amount of space (making your grounds super dirty, bottles in the garbage and garbage in the recyling, and not to mention extra time and money in clean up crew), and having so little vendors that the line ups for food and drink took a fucking long time (except for Dagwoods, they knew what was coming and prepared. Probably the best organized thing about this festival). But you know, it’s a four year old festival, but you would think they’d learn from their mistakes, learn from the bigger festivals or even MJF…why do people go back to those festivals all the time and don’t have much to complain about? Because it’s well organized. If Osheaga stops next year, or even the next few years, I won’t be surprised if it keeps going the way it’s going.
But you know what, enough negativity. Though the experience wasn’t as good as it could have been, the music was. I feel better now that I have all of this off my chest. I can’t complain about the shows, they were great, they were wonderful. So come back later today for a full review of the first day!
Edit 05 08 09: Sorry this came so late. This ended up being the only day of the two Osheaga days I went to because the second day was full of bands I’d already seen, and plus, I just didn’t want to deal with the metro at the end of the night. In the days between Osheaga Day 1 and now, I’ve been dancing to industrial, learning how to speak Jersey courtesy of my couchsurfers, and reading in the park. But I realise I gotta get this done before anything else. I HAVE SO MUCH MUSIC TO SHARE WITH Y’ALL. But first, the review of the Osheaga Day 1…after the jump!
It’s been a long time (long time), I shouldn’t have left you (left you), without a dope beat to step to. Freaky freaky! A’ight folks, these are reviews I’ve been meaning to do for a LONG freakin’ time. I mean it. Some of them I’ve been wanting to get out since March. Damn my laziness! I’ll be doing a super quick opinion piece of bands that are getting lots of attention like Passion Pit, Miike, Snow, Neon Indian, Bell Orchestre, the Prodigy, and a few others. Not that “mainstream” isn’t cool, well to hipsters it’s probably not ’cause it’s SO last year Vampire Weekend HYUK HYUK!, but I wanna cover artists that are less mainstream in the blogosphere like Zee Avi, Ebrahim, Flunk, Trickform, and a few others so that they get a bit more exposure…that’s what we’re all here for, right!?! But let’s hope it’s not too much at once so that we can avoid a Wavves disaster. More after the jump!
Sexual harassment. Panda! That was a South Park reference. Tee hee. This photo is part of a Zoo series for one of my favorite photography websites, The Big Picture. Anyways, I have finally finished the mixtape I have been meaning to get out with all the stuff I have been obsessed with for the past three hectic months. Some of the artists I have already reviewed, some of them I will end up doing a more in depth review on AtM, and some I am not! This will also be posted on Ca Va Cool, another fantastic music blog I contribute to, but I figured I’d give you guys a sneak peek. This mixtape is almost a week old now, but it’s all be zipped up so I couldn’t make the changes I would have by now. Oh well, it still rocks! Go after the jump to see my to-be-posted post for CVC!
Hmm not gonna lie. Not too impressed with this cover at all!!! But you know what, WHO CARES IT’S DEPECHE MODE!!! I could say a bit about Depeche Mode but definitely not as much as my friend G-tej who lives breathes eats and sleeps Depeche Mode. Yeah he’s an uber fan. So much so that he’s inspired me lately to get back into Depeche Mode…a band that I’ve had on hiatus on my media player. Their new single “Wrong” is a definite reason to re-enter the realm of Depeche Mode who prove they’ve still “got it” after 30 some years of making music. More after the jump!
acquiesce to... 