Fresh from producing for Britney Spears on latest album Circus, Canadian electro pop group Let’s Go to War are back with Life We Live.This is to be the first single from new album Karmegeddon and it sets the record up perfectly with this hip hop infused party gem.
Although Let’s Go To War could be described broadly under various electronic subgenres, perhaps what makes this track work so well is its wide-ranging influences. Whether it’s the gritty Ed Banger inspired electronics, or the heavy sounding boom bap drum beat; it’s all coated in an Andrew WK-like party positivity that makes it perfect for the club.
Perhaps the bands recent remix work for the likes of The Whip and The Music has helped them re-connect with the dancefloor, yet there’s something natural and instinctive about the track which suggests that the two have never been far apart. Here’s hoping for more of the same when the full length drops in March.
Check out the house-party vibes in the video for Life We Live below.
Sleekly Brian.
Not too long after the overwhelming success of the Dangermouse produced Demon Days in 2005, Gorillaz, the virtual band many of us have become slightly attached to, went into hiding, probably somewhere amongst Jamie Hewlett’s many discarded sketchbooks. Now, Damon Albarn’s animusical creative outlet is back with a whole host of new collaborators to moisten your bloomers over with Plastic Beach due in March. This time however, the focus is turned away from the two-dimensional characters with multi-dimensional personalities and gives room for the music to speak louder than ever before.
Riding the wave of the recent surf pop revival are West Palm Beach, Florida’s Surfer Blood. Bad puns and genre tags aside, though, Surfer Blood have crafted one of the year’s first great rock records and marked themselves out as one to watch for 2010.
It’s easy to get carried away when you finally get to hear an album you’ve been waiting on for literally years. You build up the hype in your head for so long that invariably you get let down by the final product and then you spiral into a whirlwind of disappointment. Well, maybe not that far, but you get the drift. Thankfully, that isn’t the case with A Badly Broken Code. In fact, quite the opposite – we might only be in the third week of the year, but I can safely say if there’s an album that tops Dessa‘s debut full-length, it will be perfect.
If you’re fan of angular dance punk and are eagerly awaiting the new album from These New Puritans, prepare to have your horizons expanded somewhat.
Our friends at Kill Rock Stars are reissuing Elliott Smith‘s Roman Candle and From a Basement on the Hill in April 2010 and they’ve also made a previously unreleased track available for free download!
Comanechi have been on the gigging circuit for a while but with singer Akiko Matsuura’s numerous other bands (Pre and more recently and famously, The Big Pink) taking the lime light, only now have they managed to throw together an album.
It isn’t often that an album like Blakroc works. When rockstars try their hand at being hip hop or when rappers try to be rock [Weezy, I love you man, but c’mon now] it usually induces cringing and head-shaking, but when The Black Keys teamed up with Damon Dash and brought in luminaries such as Mos Def, Billy Danze, RZA and Ludacris, the signs weren’t as bad as first thought.
Regular visitors to Crossfire will know we’ve been repping the Minnesotan Doomtree crew for years now and they’ve done it again, bringing out a fantastic eight-track CD to co-incide with this year’s Blowout, their crew show in hometown Minneapolis.
OK, on paper, to the uninitiated listener, the idea a 30 track (1 hours and 40 minutes long!) double disc Live Recording by the Fifty-something former singer of one hit wonder ’77 punks The Adverts, playing solo to a crowd in Germany… just him and his battered six string… might not instantaneously sound like it’s going to do set your world on fire…