Finally an official video is released! Sexy sax is back.

Directed by Fleur & Manu. ‘Midnight City’ is off M83‘s latest album Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming.

Jump for joy because it’s the end of week and you’ve earned the right cut loose. This week see’s a me indulging a bit on my love of emotional shoegazing psychedelic tribal synth pop house music. yes, as you may have gathered, that isn’t really genre… Anyway, this week’s faves and download links are after the jump.

Gypsy & The Cat – Jona Vark

“Her name is Jona. Jona Vark…”

Ah, some more indie synth pop goodness! After listening to this track I can definitely feel a bit of Empire Of The Sun (the guitar riff = a little bit of ‘We Are The People’), M83, anything from a John Hughes movie, but a lot more Fleetwood Mac. Yes, I like Fleetwood Mac. Not just like, probably love. There I said it… There are definitely elements of ‘Little Lies’ and ‘Dreams’ in this track, especially in the chorus.

While most of the major blogs, Mark Ronson on his East Village radio show and even the late DJ AM were all over the local duo from the middle of last year, they’ve only now started to get a little more radio airplay and more importantly, gotten themselves ingrained into me! Head over to their MySpace and give the rest of their stuff a listen. Hanging out big time for this LP release…

Caribou – Odessa

Now this is an interesting bit of music, quirky and haunting at the same time. It’s fairly heavily layered, so you’re ears will have fun deciphering all the sounds here.  I swear when I first heard the vocals in this track I thought that perhaps Erlend Øye of Kings of Convenience and the Whitest Boy Alive fame had contributed. So if you like that kind of minimal-esque type of chill-house you’ll probably like this latest offering from Caribou.

Breakbot – Baby I’m Yours (Featuring IRFANE)

Unadulterated disco pop funk fun! When you hear this track you can’t help but bounce and boogey. If you’re a fan of the works of Shazam, Cassian, The Twelves etc., I think you’ll did this track.

The Jezabels – Hurt Me

“C’mon evil hurt me, hurt me, hurt me…”

Wow. What a track. Powerful and achingly beautiful at the same time. The track sucks you in with Hayley’s haunting vocals/lyrics, complemented by the frenetic drumming and strumming from band members Sam and Nik respectively, intertwined with Heather’s graceful piano work. Don’t forget to add a bit of reverb and swooping strings for effect during the bridge and chorus.

Throw all of this together and you get a rolling wall of big sound that builds and builds till it smacks you right in the face and just like that, disappears as quickly as it arrives. I’m not surprised to see that the Arcade Fire are listed as an influence to the Jezabels on their MySpace page.

Might as well add the music video here since it was just released last month:

Unfortunately there appears to be no Victorian shows lined up in the near future but if you are in Queensland or NSW you can catch them this month at the Playground Weekend festival February 21st or at the Enmore Theatre on the 24th supporting Placebo.

Yeasayer – Ambling Alp

A nice pysch-alt-electro-pop ditty here from NY group Yeasayer. Like any good song (or at least the ones that I like anyway…), it’s instantly catchy and just downright fun. The little synth solo breakdown at the end is just freakin’ awesome!

Douster – King Of Africa

Yes, this track has been floating around the interwebz for a while now, and yes, Douster is no n00b to the scene. These “weekly” posts however are purely an avenue for me to write about the songs that I like at a moment in time and why they got me hooked that first time.

So pretentious rant aside (hehe!), this track features some great sampling from the Lion King’s opening, the powerful ‘Circle of Life’. What you’re left in store for is five minutes of catchy, fun afro-funk-house. I could see this being a nifty opener to a set or bridge/tone shift for all you wheels of steel traders… Speaking of which, Douster is playing at the Espy on February 20th for us local kids wanting to catch him in the act.

So that’s it! Another week done and only one more away till Classixx are in town… Did I mention that I CAN’T FUCKIN’ WAIT TO SEE CLASSIXX?!?!

Have a good weekend folks and we’ll see ya next week where I guess I could try and make it a lovers themed tunage… Or a happy new year to all the chinky readers out there haha! Peace out!

Welcome one and all to another week of music from your truly. It’s looking like this week’s post is gonna skew towards the electronic side of my musical tastings. I promise that’s it’s all gonna be accessible! Alternatively, I could mention my obsession over Radiohead’s back catalogue but you’ve all heard of them before anyway…

Ryskee – Leave Me Amor (The Bloody Beetroots Remix)

Ryskee have got your shoegazing needs covered

First cab off the ranks is Ryskee, a duo comprising of Frenchman Paul de Homem-Christo (aka Play Paul aka Guy-Man bro’s from Daft Punk) and Danish vocalist Leslie Ming.

I’m so confused by this track. The Beetroots are supposed to suck me in, chew and spit me out in a grind of chunky bass and ripping synths. They produce the stuff that gets you hot and sweaty on the d-floor. This track… Ummm… This track is nothing like that.  I’d expected to hear this on the soundtrack to a John Hughes 80s teen flick or heck even off an M83. It’s dreamy. It’s cheesy. It’s wispy. It’s shoegaze. It’s FUCKING FANTASTIC.

MSTRKRFT – Heartbreaker (Featuring John Legend)

MSTRKRFT - Look good in leather and hockey masks

I have to admit that the Fist Of God was a little bit of a letdown for me, it was kinda scattered all over the place. I do really dig the tracks “1000 Cigarettes”, “VuVuVu” and of course this one though so it’s not all doom and gloom. “Heartbreaker” stands out more me because it blends the catchy, uptempo feel that the music offers and gels together the lamenting croon of John Legend. What you get is an interesting mix of a track where you kinda want to jump around but figure it might be too painful to do so…. Awww!

Anyway, here’s the video to the track featuring hipsters/cool kids, a love story, disapproving father and a convenience store. Wooo!

Jamie T – Sticks ‘N’ Stones

"Aye! Check out my new mixing board!"

Yeah this track has been out a while but with “Chaka Demus” getting a bit of a flog on the radio of late I thought it’d be good to visit old faithful… Anyway, I just really dig the cocky vibe and bravado the track extrudes… It’s just damn cool. Video below for those interested and yes, the same vibe aurally is transferred visually:

“Sticks ‘N’ Stones” will appear on Jamie’s forthcoming album Kings and Queens which is due out in early September.

So that’s it, a very small post this week. As always, if you dig the artist/music the go buy it whether physical/digital and go see them live. Your conscience and the artists will love you more for it!

Thankfully Melbourne delivered only an overcast and slight chilly day for V Festival. All good considering some forecasts were speculating 30km/h winds and rain. Now that would be typical of Melbourne. Anyway, first act to be seen was Elbow which has been getting a little bit of airplay on Triple J. Apart from that I can’t say I know much about them apart from that they’re from Manchester and they sounded alright. If anyone can suggest on where I shold start my Elbow discography journey, let me know.

Halfway through their set, the gang and I made our over to the Shed for the highly anticipated set by locals The Temper Trap, Robert Van Winkle aka Vanilla Ice and Children Collide and we weren’t disappointed. The Shed was packed, hot and loud. Hard to believe considering the forecast I just gave above but yeah, a rocking set from all involved. First off was The Temper Trap and wow, all the hype about them from SXSW and NME was definitey justified as they were freekin’ awesome! The crowd definitely got jumping and singing when they played the tracks “Sweet Disposition” and current single “The Science Of Fear”.

Next up was Vanilla Ice and to be honest I would’ve much rather have seen M83 instead but by this stage the Shed was absolutely packed with people cramming in to hear Vanilla. So I was stuck there and as I had expected he played his two only well-known songs, “Ice Ice Baby” and the “Ninja Rap”. Yes I know he played “Play That Funky Music”, but that’s not really his song… Mindos, first it was Daft Punk and now Vanilla. Not quite the same league though…

Last act to see on the stage was Children Collide and while it was a smaller crowd compared to Vanilla/Temper the energy and intensity was definitely up there. Lots of long interludes, jumping around, mad swinging of guitars, “Social Currency”, crazy jumps, and of course the sing-a-long to “Farewell Rocketship” were definite highlights.

The rest of the night was spent camping out on This Stage to catch the Kasier Chiefs and headlines The Killers. We did manage to catch a glimpse of The Kills and Al and Disso a bit of Wolf & Cub inbetween but of course the mission was front row for the Ks. Didn’t get front row but 4-5 metres away wasn’t too bad. Anyway you look at it it was going to be a fuckin’ sardine can for the next 2 hours. So first off were the Kaisers and Rick and Co. delivered an energetic set with tons of crowd interaction, sing-a-long, cross country sprints across the stage, rock-off on stage trucks, climbing scaffolding… The works…

Last act of the night was The Killers and compared to the last time I saw them this aset was by far the best they’ve played. The guys seemed to be having a good time and made an effort to interact with the crowd as opposed to banging through their setlist. Speaking of setlist, it was a nice collection of tracks from all of their discography and was definitely a blast to see the crowd get into their new tracks also.

So yeah, that’s the wrap up. Click the pic above for the full gallery or HERE. Enjoy!

I guess I should’ve seen the signs sooner when the festival started late (a mixup between organisers and council apparently…) which meant Tame Imapala’s set was shortened to a misely 15 minutes. A quick glance at the set times quickly showed that clashes were going to be a serious issue compounded by the stage traverse/line up issue. This meant I missed out on seeing The Temper Trap, John Steel Singers, Hold Steady and Port O’Brien just to name a few in exchange for Canyons, Hermitude, Born Ruffians, No Age and Cut Off Your Hands. But that’s the sacrifice you have to make to see Girl Talk. In hindsight I should’ve seen him at The Prince… On the upside I’ll be able to see The John Steel Singers when they play with Sparkadia at the Corner Hotel later this month. As for The Temper Trap, they’ll be playing at this year’s V Festival alongside M83, The Killers, Louis XIV and the Kaiser Chiefs to name a few.

And now, onto the woe that was Girl Talk… By about 6pm organisers were locking people out of Little Lonsdale which meant we pretty much missed The Drones and only caught the arse end of Architecture In Helsinki’s set. Shout-out to Hally for getting us back into the lane after we decided it’d be an awesome idea to chill and go for a quick bevvy at QV…  FAIL! Thankfully we got corraled into the lane by security before the fuzz came down and set up barricades and shit.

For the unfortunate many (and I mean many), they were left with the option of trying to get back into the Lonsdale Street stage and catch the Hold Steady (which I told were freeking awesome) or forced to camp outside the State Library lawn and listen to the set via improptu PA setup. I’m told this was actually a fantastic setup as the sound was better than in the lane and you could actually see the stage.  I guess we were the suckers for paying $100 to get crammed in a laneway to experience shitty sound and Girl Talk stopping his set every 15 mintues to berate wankers climbing up roofs and scaffolding…

So to summarise, St Jerome’s was too big, oversold, underestimated and a damn right frustrating day. Anyway, click on the pic above for the full gallery.