The Second Rebirth

Hark the herald angels sing, for this doth be Beats And Pieces 3.0.

Erol Alkan & Boys Noize - Waves / Death Suite EP

Salt n' Pepa. Mel and Kim. Diplo and Switch. French and Saunders. Jigga and Bouncy.

How I enjoy a famous coupling. How's about everyone's favourite electro-tech wizard Boys Noize and seminal scene establisher Erol Alkan? Although their working relationship goes a long way back, this EP is the first time we've seen them go fully beat to beat on production duties together. Suffice to say, it's an absolute monster.

What with the ever increasing prevalance of harder edged tech-house slowly swooping in and brushing more commercial electro to the side, these leaders of the scene have put together a release with an almightily rugged kick.

Death Suite is marginally less strong than Waves. Seemingly taking their cue from The Chemical Brothers 'Electronic Battle Weapon' series, it's a rough and ready acid techno number. Utterly relentless and completely unforgiving it ploughs on despairingly with acid squiggles, tiny vocal snippets, occasional snares and even a little bit of cowbell. If this is what to expect from death, I'm quite excited.

Waves is the big one from this EP. Clearly destined to be whipped out by all sorts of DJs in all sorts of scenarios, I can see it being highly auspicious in the Bestival dance tent come September. Although still pretty tough, it has a little more melody going on, mainly built around arpeggiated synth patterns. The track also brings in some pretty gnarly tribal disco percussion before dropping out to nothing around the 3 minute mark. From there we get a gradual ascent into more synths, drum patterns, the sound of jumping into the ocean (no, really) and lasers zooming by in the background. Fantastically overblown and somewhat ridiculous, it seems we have an anthem in the making.

Exciting news too, Bristol's very own MonkeyKnifeFight! will be hosting an album launch party at the Thekla for the new Boys Noize album 'Power'. For those not in the know, The Thekla is the-best-boat-that's-also-a-club the UK has to offer and puts on all sorts of amazing parties all the time. Check the facebook event HERE.

And finally, check the video below of Erol and Alex rocking Germany's Melt festival with Waves.

BACK FROM THE DEAD

IT'S TRUE.

WE ARE ALIVE ONCE MORE.

WATCH YOUR BACK.

MEN - Simultaneously

MEN are not men. Well, mostly not. In their first incarnation, MEN were primarily a DJ collective dabbling in a little bit of remixing and production, comprised of JD Samson and Johanna Fateman, two thirds of cult lesbian dance-punk band Le Tigre.

MEN have now expanded to a full live band with their own original songs, no longer featuring Fateman (although she's helping out behind the scenes) and including Ginger Brooks Takahashi and Michael O'Neill. The music they're producing isn't especially groundbreaking, being punk-funk and slotting in comfortably alongside much of Le Tigre's back catalouge, as well as similar bands like LCD Soundsystem, The Rapture and !!! (Chk Chk Chk). However, since Le Tigre were so good at what they did, the production on MEN's material is top notch.

Of the several tracks the collective have released into the blogosphere, Simultaneously is the clear stand out. It's a combination of gently pounding beats, touches of tropical percussion, restrained strummed guitars, and a melancholy melody that shares alot in common with 80's post punk. All the different elements of the song are quite subtle, and it's the way they interplay with each other that makes the song so special. At six and half minutes long it's fairly lengthy, but due to a gradual build and a lovely vocal, it flies by.

Check the brilliant Ohh! Crappp... blog HERE for a free download of the song along with two others. MEN's newest track Make It Reverse is also to be featured on the forthcoming Kitsune Maison 7, a trailer for which can be watched below.

Salem - OhK

Somewhere in the void between My Bloody Valentine, Burial, The Knife, Three Six Mafia, Mazzy Star, Flying Lotus, The Cocteau Twins and Prefuse 73 lies Salem. Whilst that might seem like a far too disparate list of artists to place a group in it's the best I can offer you. Salem make dark, distorted and disturbing pop music. Still sound a bit wrong? Well it is. Incorporating various genres (Shoegaze/Electronica/Goth/Instrumental hip-hop/dubstep) and mashing up terrifying waves of feedback, spooky snythesizers, delay effects, crunk beats and vocals digitally altered to sound like Satan himself they've created a sound that is wholly their own. "That's not pop music!" you scream. Well, lurking beneath the surface of the majority of their songs are very beautiful melodies, breathy vocals and solid song structures. So not pop music in any traditional sense, but it's there all the same.

New track OhK is, appropriately, the poppiest track they have unleashed upon the public. It shares more with disco than any of their previous numbers, with more regular and faster beats, a tangible bassline and (relatively) straightforward vocals. It's not dissimilar to semi-odd electronic popsters Telepathe, their closest musical contemporaries. It's very good too, and might gain them some exposure outside of Muso circles. Interestingly a previous single, Redlights, closed Sinden's recent Fabriclive, a long running CD mix series.

The Salem EP is available from all the usual places, including iTunes where it retails at a very bargainous 1.99 for 4 tracks. Check them out on myspace HERE, where there are a number or tracks in their player. Also, watch a frankly quite terrifying garage-cum-strip-club-cum-sci-fi-film video for their track Dirt below. If I had to sum Salem up in a sentence, I think it would be something like 'The wrongest, whitest, darkest hip-hop you've ever heard'. But I'm not sure that's even getting close...

Beats and Pieces - Back on air tonight!

The easter eggs have been eaten, most of the hardcore deadlines have been reached or are within touching distance and the sun is shining gloriously over London town. Was there ever a better time for Beats and Pieces to return to the airwaves of Smoke Radio? No there wasn't! I've acquired an abundance of shockingly brilliant music in the last month, so expect a particularly rambunctious show this evening as we go into the home straight before the summer holidays. On between 7-8pm (GMT) and featuring music from the likes of:

Altern-8
(as part of the 'One For The Aging Raver' - likely to blow the bloody doors of your room / house / building)

Peaches
(new material where she's gone all soft in the centre)

Grace Jones
(Given a very alluring dubstep makeover)

Dusty Kid
(Melodic techno producer takes a trip through the Pyrenees and picks up a renegade Spanish folk band along the way)

Sound good? Of course it does. Add into the equation some delightful banter, ALL-NEW beds, shout-outs and love to the listeners and much more music than just that mentioned above and you're well away. The best hour of music you're likely to hear for....the hour it's on at the very least. Do it, you know it makes sense. Listen live at Smoke Radio's homepage, HERE and be sure to get on the shoutbox during the show. You have until this evening to prepare yourself for the party onslaught...

Major Lazer - Hold The Line

Major Lazer is the new project from Dave Taylor and Thomas Wesley Pentz, AKA dance music demi-gods Switch and Diplo. To say that they've got the hype machine buzzing is something of an understatement. All loosely in the genre of dancehall (with some more dancey and world influences), they've been working with people including Elephant Man, Mr Vegas, Amanda Blank, Crookers, Turbulence, Ms. Thing and Vybz Kartel. On friday evening the UK's very own Annie Mac had the worldwide exclusive play of the first single Drop The Line.

Drop The Line features Mr Lexx (dancehall legend) and Sanitgold (still continuing with her very unnecessary name change) on vocals, and a 'surf rock ragga thingamajig' instrumental, in the words of Diplo himself. What this means in slightly more detailed terms is that they've taken Dick Dale's Misirlou, probably the most famous surf guitar song ever, chopped and screwed it to a fragment of it's original form, then raped it with some devastating dance hall beats and sounds of vibrating mobile phones. I'd never claim to be very knowledgable about dancehall, beyond really enjoying the handful of tracks I'm familiar with, but this is the kind of stuff I can get very excited about. With it's slick production, clever sampling and the presence of Santigold on vocals it's likely to be bothering dancefloors worldwide this summer.

Diplo's giving the track away for free (along with accapella and insturmental versions for all you bedroom DJS) over at the essential Mad Decent blog HERE, so make sure you head on over to collect it for yourself. Major Lazer are touring their live show internationally this summer, including to Bestival where I'll be in the front row dutty windin' like the best of them. If footage of their recent show at SXSW is anything to go by (check that HERE), it's going to be quite a spectacle.

One thing to remember troops, GUNS DON'T KILL PEOPLE, LAZERS DO!