radioSpin

SURKIN
USA

French producer Surkin is about to release his debut full-length, named USA: it’ll feature guest vocals by Detroit’s Ann Saunderson and Chicago’s Kevin Irving (the voice of house blueprint Move Your Body by Marshall Jefferson), and two collaborations with longtime friend and labelmate Bobmo, whom with Surkin works as High Powered Boys.

ARTIST: Surkin
TITLE: USA
LABEL: Marble Music
RELEASE DATE: November 7, 2011
TIME: 52:52 min.
WEB: http://www.myspace.com/surkin

01. Intro [01:46]
02. Lose Yourself [03:49]
03. Love Shot [02:53]
04. I.N.Y.N. [03:06]
05. Fireworks Hotmix [02:33]
06. Silver Island [02:53]
07. White Knight Two [04:54]
08. Rock It [01:50]
09. Harry [03:51]
10. Never Let Go [03:40]
11. Fan Out [03:51]
12. Gold Island [01:58]
13. Ultra Light [04:05]
14. Quattro [04:42]
15. Silver Spring Anthem [03:40]
16. End Morning [03:22]

Surkin – Ultra Light

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VIDEO OF THE WEEK – #79
as seen on radioSpin

ARTIST: Big Charlie
TITLE: Here Comes the Mobster
ALBUM: Too Little Too Late
WEB: YouTube

directed by Annarita Milella

BIG CHARLIE
Too Little Too Late

Are you ready? Rabbits are coming back. Are you sure to be ready? We don’t think you can be really ready, ready for such a perfect little album, we mean. And you know: a good album never comes too late. So, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Too Little Too Late, the full-length debut by Italian duo Big Charlie (following last year’s That Really Hurts EP), maybe one of the freshest and coolest releases of the year. Big Charlie are Matteo de Ruggieri (best known for his experimental project EraSer) and Stefano Milella (the rhythmic and electronic mind of Fabryka), two sounds-mashers and syles-mixers, with a wide-rage background that goes from pop to rock, from electronics to circuit bending. All these influences merge into Big Charlie, a crazy project, a band with a rabbit-head and into these 8 tunes loaded with beat and melodies that mess-up and re-build standard pop music rules into something really original that you won’t be saved from loving.

And here come the teasers!
A video trilogy by Fab-Design to introduce the album’s release and to make your mouths water for the next week.

ARTIST: Big Charlie
TITLE: Too Little Too Late
LABEL: Snowy Peach
RELEASE DATE: November 9, 2011
TIME: 27:37 min.
WEB: http://www.bigcharliemusic.com/

01. Haunted [03:27]
02. The Sun [03:33]
03. Here Comes the Mobster [03:36]
04. Morphine [03:24]
05. Ask Quietly [03:16]
06. What If [03:32]
07. Headache [03:03]
08. Wait ’til the End [03:46]

Big Charlie – Here Comes the Mobster

removed by request

ATARI
Can Eating Hot Stars Make Me Sick?

The debut album Sexy Games For Happy Families was Atari‘s last indian summer of the carefree childhood, a time to be spent in front of a console without thinking to much about the rest. This new release Can Eating Hot Stars Make Me Sick? is the natural evolution of a man who sees himself reckoning with adulthood: the second album of the Naples-based duo moves away from the happy 8-bit electronic of the first one to a more mature and self-consistent form of art, without, anyway, losing spontaneity and, on the other way, earning more than a bunch of songwrinting refinement.

ARTIST: Atari
TITLE: Can Eating Hot Stars Make Me Sick?
LABEL: SuoniVisioni
RELEASE DATE: October 16, 2011
TIME: 43:39 min.
WEB: http://www.theatari.com/

01. Take Me to Venus [04:18]
02. White Dreams [03:34]
03. Jack You Are A Scientist [03:26]
04. If My Brain Was A Program [04:22]
05. Becomes A Whale [05:23]
06. Orbital Station [04:14]
07. City Lights [04:10]
08. Overlight [02:57]
09. Black Ink [03:19]
10. Ants Marching [03:16]
11. Casually [04:44]

Atari – Overlight

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COLDPLAY
Mylo Xyloto

Here’s Coldplay‘s fifth studio album, Mylo Xyloto (pronounced my-lo zy-letoe): produced by Markus Dravs, Daniel Green and Rik Simpson, with enoxification and additional composition by Brian Eno, it follows 2008′s Viva La Vida, and states the band’s status of pop-kings.

ARTIST: Coldplay
TITLE: Mylo Xyloto
LABEL: Capitol
RELEASE DATE: October 24, 2011
TIME: 44:13 min.
WEB: http://www.coldplay.com/

01. Mylo Xyloto [00:43]
02. Hurts Like Heaven [04:02]
03. Paradise [04:38]
04. Charlie Brown [04:45]
05. Us Against the World [04:00]
06. M.M.I.X. [00:49]
07. Every Teardrop Is a Waterfall [04:01]
08. Major Minus [03:30]
09. U.F.O. [02:18]
10. Princess of China [03:59]
11. Up in Flames [03:13]
12. A Hopeful Transmission [00:33]
13. Don’t Let It Break Your Heart [03:54]
14. Up with the Birds [03:48]

Coldplay – Charlie Brown

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WALLS
Coracle

Following the release of their 2010’s lauded debut album, Walls return to Kompakt with their second album Coracle on which the duo take a more dance-orientated stance. But Walls is not just your ordinary electronic music act and that’s why Coracle is another envelope-pushing tour de force of 8 wonderful “nebulae of sound” (shoegaze electronica if you will) with the result being an extremely enjoyable listening experience.

ARTIST: Walls
TITLE: Coracle
LABEL: Kompakt
RELEASE DATE: September 27, 2011
TIME: 40:51 min.
WEB: http://www.myspace.com/walls_band

01. Into Our Midst [07:21]
02. Heat Haze [05:57]
03. Sunporch [06:21]
04. Il Tedesco [03:36]
05. Vacant [04:46]
06. Raw / Umber Twilight [03:47]
07. Ecstatic Truth [04:30]
08. Drunken Galleon [04:33]

Walls – Raw / Umber Twilight

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THE WAR ON DRUGS
Slave Ambient

On their debut, the life-affirming Wagonwheel Blues, and the follow-up EP, Future Weather, The War on Drugs seemed obsessed with disparate ideas, with building uncompromised rock monuments from pieces that may have seemed like odd pairs: electronic and instrumental reprises precede songs they’ve yet to play, and Dr. Seuss becomes lyrical motivation for bold futuristic visions. Granduciel has done it again, better than before: Slave Ambient, their proper second album, is a brilliant 47 minute sprawl of rock’n'roll, conceptualized with a sense of adventure and captured with seasons of bravado.

ARTIST: The War On Drugs
TITLE: Slave Ambient
LABEL: Secretly Canadian
RELEASE DATE: August 16, 2011
TIME: 46:53 min.
WEB: http://www.thewarondrugs.net/

01. Best Night [05:30]
02. Brothers [04:29]
03. I Was There [03:50]
04. Your Love Is Calling My Name [06:01]
05. The Animator [02:16]
06. Come to the City [04:31]
07. Come For It [00:28]
08. It’s Your Destiny [04:49]
09. City Reprise #2 [03:05]
10. Baby Missiles [03:33]
11. Original Slave [03:11]
12. Black Water Falls [05:10]

The War On Drugs – Baby Missiles

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TOM WAITS
Bad As Me

Throughout his career, Tom Waits has created milestone albums that serve both to refine the music that has come before, and to signal a new phase in his musical path: Rain Dogs and Mule Variations are both counted by fans as among these pivotal works. Now comes Bad As Me, his first studio album of all new music in seven years, which finds Tom Waits in possibly the finest voice of his career and at the height of his songwriting powers, working with a veteran team of gifted musicians and longtime co-writer/producer Kathleen Brennan. Like a good boxer, these songs are lean and mean, with strong hooks and tight running times and there is a pervasive sense of players delighting in each other’s musical company that brings a feeling of loose joy even to the album’s saddest songs. Bad As Me is a Tom Waits album for the ages.

ARTIST: Tom Waits
TITLE: Bad As Me
LABEL: ANTI
RELEASE DATE: October 24, 2011
TIME: 44:42 min.
WEB: http://www.tomwaits.com/

01. Chicago [02:15]
02. Raised Right Men [03:24]
03. Talking at the Same Time [04:14]
04. Get Lost [02:42]
05. Face to the Highway [03:43]
06. Pay Me [03:14]
07. Back in the Crowd [02:49]
08. Bad As Me [03:10]
09. Kiss Me [03:41]
10. Satisfied [04:05]
11. Last Leaf [02:56]
12. Hell Broke Luce [03:57]
13. New Year’s Eve [04:32]

Tom Waits – Get Lost

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VIDEO OF THE WEEK – #78
as seen on radioSpin

ARTIST: Plaid
TITLE: 35 Summers
ALBUM: Scintilli
WEB: YouTube

directed by Richie Burridge

JUSTICE
Audio, Video, Disco

Justice (the wildly celebrated project between parisians Xavier de Rosnay and Gaspard Augé) are digging into surprisingly fertile influence soil with their second studio album, Audio Video Disco. A leap of evolution that borders on abandonment from their 2007 debut album Cross, the album’s greatest strength is in its refusal to adhere to old rules. It’s prog rock on the dance floor, a roaring return from a four-year recording moratorium that’s just as entrenched in rock riffage as electronica: a bizarrely successful marriage.

ARTIST: Justice
TITLE: Audio Video Disco
LABEL: Ed Banger
RELEASE DATE: October 24, 2011
TIME: 40:45 min.
WEB: http://www.myspace.com/etjusticepourtous

01. Horsepower [03:39]
02. Civilization [03:39]
03. Ohio [04:01]
04. Canon (interlude) [00:27]
05. Canon [03:39]
06. On’n'On [04:31]
07. Brianvision [03:12]
08. Parade [04:02]
09. Newlands [04:15]
10. Helix [04:28]
11. Audio, Video, Disco [04:52]

Justice – Newlands

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ZOLA JESUS
Conatus

In three years Nika Roza Danilova went from being an outsider experimental teenage noise-maker to a full fledged internationally celebrated electronic pop musician. It was a huge feat to accomplish, and despite her age (young), her geography (mid-western, desolate), her accelerated scholastic requirements (high school and college were completed in three years each) and her diminutive physical size (4″11, 90 lbs) she has triumphed. She has emerged as a figurehead: Zola Jesus, a wonderful self-produced, self-designed, self-taught independent woman. Conatus is her new shout of rebellion.

ARTIST: Zola Jesus
TITLE: Conatus
LABEL: Alternative Distribution Alliance
RELEASE DATE: October 4, 2011
TIME: 40:13 min.
WEB: http://www.zolajesus.com/

01. Swords [01:04]
02. Avalanche [03:21]
03. Vessel [04:42]
04. Hikikomori [03:48]
05. Ixode [04:14]
06. Seekir [03:45]
07. In Your Nature [03:28]
08. Lick the Palm of the Burning Handshake [04:27]
09. Shivers [02:54]
10. Skin [04:22]
11. Collapse [04:08]

Zola Jesus – Vessel

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MOGWAI
Earth Division

Scottish experimental-rock institution Mogwai follow up their Sub Pop debut album Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will with the Earth Division EP. This new beautiful short release highlights a more subdued side of Mogwai, with three quietly plaintive piano-and-string-infused tracks, plus the fuzz-drenched haze of Drunk and Crazy. New Mogwai, the same beauty.

ARTIST: Mogwai
TITLE: Earth Division
LABEL: Sub Pop
RELEASE DATE: September 13, 2011
TIME: 16:34 min.
WEB: http://www.mogwai.co.uk/

01. Get to France [02:26]
02. Hound of Winter [03:54]
03. Drunk and Crazy [05:29]
04. Does This Always Happen? [04:45]

Mogwai – Get to France

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ALTRICE
Stem

Nearly a year ago, Caribou challenged fans to a remix contest and the winner was a go-getter named Altrice, who went beyond remixing the requested cut Sun and actually remixed the entire Caribou album. Caribou’s Dan Snaith had this to say about him: “for me Altrice’s entry stood out quite a distance from all the others: his version of the track was focused and distinctive, dramatically different from the original and the other remixes we received”. Altrice’s music is beautifully simple, focusing on only a handful of elements but ingeniously reinventing them to make each song very much his own. It’s this confidence that makes Stem so coherent: it doesn’t sound like an album of remixes but an album in its own right.

ARTIST: Altrice
TITLE: Stem (swim remixed)
LABEL: self-released
RELEASE DATE: April 30, 2011
TIME: 41:37 min.
WEB: http://www.myspace.com/altricemusic

01. Siphon Away [04:40]
02. Only What You Gave Me [03:26]
03. Peace of Minds [03:58]
04. Modern Song [04:08]
05. Abe [05:17]
06. We Are Not Forever [06:22]
07. House Feels Empty [04:07]
08. Elsa [02:44]
09. The Man [06:55]

Altrice – Siphon Away

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… AND SO I WATCH YOU FROM AFAR
Gangs

Truly, there’s never been a more clear or concise way to describe Belfast four-piece … And So I Watch You From Afar than as a “gang”. As anyone who bears witness to their live show can testify, theirs is a synergy, an understanding that binds so strongly together that in their frantic motion (with limbs thrashing instruments like birch on flesh) it forces the resulting sound to rise taut and athletic, a monstrous proposition that has to be so in order to meet its makers head-on in masculine conflict. And so Gangs is that: the sound of a band who’ve never been tighter, and a postcard of their journey that couldn’t have captured them at a higher peak.

ARTIST: … And So I Watched You From Afar
TITLE: Gangs
LABEL: Richter Collective
RELEASE DATE: April 23, 2011
TIME: 44:40 min.
WEB: http://www.myspace.com/andsoiwatchyoufromafar

01. BEAUTIFULUNIVERSEMASTERCHAMPION [05:52]
02. Gang (starting never stopping) [05:26]
03. Search:Party:Animal [05:18]
04. 7 Billion People All Alive at Once [05:44]
05. Think:Breathe:Destroy [04:43]
06. Homes (ghost parlor KA -6 to…) [02:47]
07. Homes (… samara to belfast) [09:50]
08. Lifeproof [05:05]

… And So I Watch You From Afar – BEAUTIFULUNIVERSEMASTERCHAMPION

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VIDEO OF THE WEEK – #77
as seen on radioSpin

ARTIST: Fabryka
TITLE: The Good Insight
ALBUM: 5 Days
WEB: YouTube

directed by Marco Castrovinci

FABRYKA
5 Days

Fabryka is a band from Bari (Italy), formed by Tiziana Felle (singer), Stefano Milella (drums and electronics), RaffaeLe Stellacci (piano and synth), Agostino Scaranello (bass/baritone guitar), and Alessandro Semisa (guitar). The band releases its first EP Testing Toys in 2006, to debut later with its LP, Istantanea (2009). 5 Days is their new work: five songs combining acoustic and electric sounds, melancholic and romantic melodies, dreamy mood, expanded and energetic rhythms, drowning its roots in the world of indipendent folk rock and international pop. There’s a good songwriting round here, and although everything about their surfaces could be considered soft, all of these songs boast remarkably strong bone structure: you’ll find yourself singing (or even dancing) without even realizing it.

ARTIST: Fabryka
TITLE: 5 Days
LABEL: Snowy Peach
RELEASE DATE: October 24, 2011
TIME: 20:27 min.
WEB: http://www.wearefabryka.com/

01. Day In Day Out [03:50]
02. The Good Insight [04:08]
03. Silence [04:31]
04. Young Signals [04:03]
05. Ometti l’Ego [03:55]

Fabryka – Day In Day Out

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