Released in 2003, Rounds presents a palette of sounds designed to satisfy the experimental music lovers out there, but yet not entirely alienating the occasional listener.
Experimental music is a niche genre, and its often perceived as just noise to non-listeners. However, Four Tet has managed to package and deliver songs that, in their entirety, seem palatable to people outside of this niche circle. Combining glitchy, staccato samples with twinkly-toe melodies, this album can be viewed as an entry album for people who are starting out in this genre.
Stumbled upon this morbidly beautiful video on YouTube, set to the enchanting melodies of Four Tet’s My Angel Rocks Back And Forth. We remain puzzled as to what the video exactly means, but we interpret it as the journey after one’s death, in a dark, fantasy-like manner.
PS: We’ll be doing a review soon on the amazing album, Rounds, that contains My Angel Rocks Back And Forth. Look out for it soon!
When this music plays, everything in my room takes on an intangibly beautiful sheen. Suddenly its sunset at Café Del Mar, a salty breeze through my hair; Then it’s a sudden calm, resonating through a New York apartment, high above the bustle of traffic.Damn, if only life had ambient music playing in the background all the time.
Honeyroot is Glenn Gregory and Keith Lowndes, and Sound Echo Location is their first Just Music album, released in 2005. I’ve taken a particular liking to Track 06, Falling. It has a twinkly, dreamy quality, reminiscent of white flakes slowly drifting down a snow globe. Track 07, Sound Echo Location, comes in a close second for its unique driving sound and brave beats. Definitely not your run-of-the-mill. I’m happy with Track 05, State Of Mind, too.
Verdict? Makes a good companion for a quiet night.
So this album isn’t exactly the latest thing on the market, but hey, that doesn’t mean it should fade away right? Seeing as we’ve never actually reviewed it, and the fact that it still remains as one of our favourite albums thus far, we decided to take action and give credit where its due.
Essentially, this album is arranged like a mix. The songs flow from one to another, without an actual start and end to each song. Some like it (we love it!), some loathe it, its subjective. The album’s songs are remixed in some way, or are collaborations with other artistes. Hence, you can find old songs by DJ Krush presented in a different manner, somewhat of a re-hashing of old songs.
Just a minor update, we have added the mixtapes to the mypodcast.com directory, you can visit it at http://radioeclectica.mypodcast.com. In addition, we have added RSS feed links in the right column to facilitate listeners to subscribe to our mixtapes.
The first RSS is for the Eclectica Mixtapes. Simply click it and use iTunes, or any other media player capable of reading feeds, to download them. When we upload a new mixtape, they will be automatically downloaded for you in the future. Hopefully this will make it easier for listeners to grab the mixtapes off the web.
The second RSS is for this blog itself, Radio Eclectica. For the lazy ones out there who prefer to have updates automatically received.
In replacement of the live radio broadcast, we have decided to post up mixtapes instead. This will allow readers to download the mixtapes and listen to them at their own time, as well as being able to put it into their mp3 players. Currently, we are looking at posting a new mixtape every fortnight. Without further ado, we present you with our very first mixtape, Eclectica Mixtape 001!
Tracklisting:
1. Azure Ray - Sleep
2. Modest Mouse - The World At Large
3. The Honorary Title - Stay Away
4. Kate Nash - Merry Happy
5. I Am Kloot - Over My Shoulder
6. Minus The Bear - Pachuca Sunrise
7. The Secret Machines - Faded Lines
8. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Cheated Hearts
9. Kings Of Leon - Molly’s Chambers
10. Mocca - Life Keeps On Turning
11. Psapp - Hi
12. The Southland - Miles
13. Rhett Miller - Come Around
14. Feist - Mushaboom (K-OS Remix)
15. Grand Theft Audio - As Good As It Gets
We’re back! After a long hiatus, Radio Eclectica is back on its feet! The past almost-a-year has been eventful, what with Broken Social Scene popping by the Esplanade to perform (and they’re awesome, even without Feist!), Zoukout 2007 was a blast, The Rakes at Zouk (shame I couldn’t go), Sean Tyas at MOS recently, and many more! Anyway without further ado, here’re the 10 songs that we can’t seem to get out of our heads the past week!
In no particular order:
The Delays - Long Time Coming
The Brunettes - If You Were An Alien
Maximo Park - Our Velocity
Maximo Park - Books From Boxes
Pizzicato Five - Baby Love Child (PICK OF THE WEEK)
Sally Crewe & The Sudden Moves - Drive It Like You Stole It
White Rose Movement - London’s Mine
Butch Walker And The Let’s Go Out Tonites - Bethamphetamine (Pretty Pretty)
Lustral - Solace (Vorontov & Dorohov Remix)
Activa - Remember (Original Mix)
The Delays and The Brunettes come in with perfect, lush evening rock songs. If You Were An Alien just begs for the listener to join in the chorus and sha-la-la-la along with them. A definite must listen.
Maximo Park’s Our Velocity fuses an electronica synthy riff with traditional rock guitars to rock you off your feet! I find myself screaming out “OUR VELOCITY!” in sync with the song whenever it plays, while Books From Boxes complements it by providing a slightly softer touch.
White Rose Movement’s London’s Mine just screams New Order through and through, but hey, we all love New Order don’t we? Blue Monday anyone?
Lustral and Activa represent the electronic segment for the week. Solace is of course, a song from back in 2005, but this breakbeats style never fails to get us feeling all introspective, setting our minds free and conjuring up various figments of imagination where we confront all the what-ifs that we’ve always shoved to the back of our head. Remember is, well, as what it says, a song for reminiscence. Generic sounding perhaps, but that doesn’t matter if it makes you feel a certain way that sticks with you, don’t you think?
Pick Of The Week:
Our pick goes to Pizzicato Five this week! They come in highly recommended by us, and check this, this band started off in 1985! Baby Love Child comes from their album This Year’s Girl back in 1991, which means this song is almost 2 decades old. Which makes it even more amazing, as it still sounds relevant and fresh today. Combining elements of jazz, hiphop minimally, and pop, this japanese electronica indie-pop group has got everything right in this song. They’ve since disbanded in 2001. Shame.
The site hasn’t been updated in awhile, and the live listening link has been dead as well. Time and bandwidth issues have been troubling, coupled with Mika’s really tight schedule for the past year (medical students have it real tough), and my further foray into other interests has caused Radio Eclectica to fade away. For this, we sincerely apologise. There have been encouraging comments on what we’ve done when Radio Eclectica was active, and as such, we have decided to re-open Radio Eclectica, but with a different format.
The toll on my personal bandwidth while hosting the server for the live radio means that we probably can’t restart the live radio, and response was lukewarm at best. Hence, we’ve decided to do away with the radio section for the time being.
We will continue with the Weekly OMG song list, with the same concept that we’ve applied previously. Basically, we’ll post 10 songs, regardless of whether they’re old or new, across various genres, that we’ve been digging.
Reviews will be written, in the same manner as before. We will post links to electronic mixes done by local DJs, across all dance genres. This is, of course, dependent on the mixes that the DJs churn out, hence it won’t be a regular feature, but rather one when the mixes are available. Another feature we might add on are links to various budding producers, such as their MySpace links. Hopefully readers can check out their sites and listen to their productions.
If Juno is bidding for his modules and Mika’s preparing for the freshman camp, it must surely mean something. School’s starting!!.. again. Here at radioeclectica the seasons move in time with the school timetable. The radioeclectica year starts with Pensive Autumn, and thats when we first trudge back to school and think, ‘Hmm. This may not be as bad as it seems. Though the leaves are withering, they’re still beautiful.’ Then Blustery Winter begins as the assignments and exams pile up, and we get covered under the drift. Stupid Spring follows and we’re still swimming around in the meltwater of winter. Then its Wonderlaladilly Summer and its the VACAAATION!! which is, alas, coming to an end.
But the Top 10 winners never end. Here are this week’s:
Peter Gelderblom - Waiting For
Three6 Mafiam - ‘Stay Fly’
Gossip - Standing In The Way Of Control [Nu-Sense Mix]
Discoboys Feat. Manfreed Mann - ‘For You’ (Freemasons mix)
Unknown - ‘Promises’ (Summer Guitar Mix)
Fabio Stein - Tran 4
Mandy vs Booka Shade - Elektro Language [DJ Luk Mix]
DJ Dero - Dero’s Balearic
Kill Hannah - I Wanna Be A Kennedy [Kue Mix]
Alex Gaudino - Destination Calabria
Mika confesses that her new love is now Judge Jules. Nothing like music from BBC Radio One’s Saturday Warmup to go home to, regardless of the day of the week. We’re polygamists, not hypocrites.
Ah, the seduction of Trance.. Haunting breakdowns & driving beats make it so difficult for you to even focus on something else, such as typing this entry.
Mika can barely think, she’s getting entrapped, she’s getting pulled in..
Aly & Fila pres. A&F Project - Uraeus (Frase Remix)
Amadeus vs. Aly & Fila - A Dream Of Peace (John Askew Remix)
Stoneface & Terminal - Super Nature (Giuseppe Ottaviani Remix)
Chicane - Saltwater (The Thrillseekers House Mix)
Thomas Datt - 2v2 Rework (Sean Tyas Remix)
Aly & Fila - Eye Of Horus (Ronski Speed Remix)
Mike Foyle vs. Estuera - Beautiful Skies
Kimito Lopez - Sub Runner
The Blizzard - Kalopsia (Original Intro Edit)
Carl B feat. Breaking Benjamin - Diary Of Jane (Sean Tyas Remix)
There’s something about the riffs at the start of Monster that gets me. What is it? Its a subdued techy gravelly pulsate-y sound that just grabs my ears’ attention. It interrupts my ho-hum journey on the bus and makes me go, ‘Hey what’s this?’ Wish I could reproduce the sounds at home too.
And so our top 10 for the week will start with..
Monster by You Say Party! We Say Die!
You Can’t Have It All by Ash
No Answers by Aeon Spoke
Get Up And Get Out by The Rosebuds
Cold Hearted Business by Polytechnic
23 by Blonde Redhead
Why Won’t You? by The Roger Sisters
Robin Hood by The Rifles
and how could we not add…
ASOT 300 (Aly & Fila + Sean Tyas’ sets)
Can’t wait to get them into my ipod. We’re hunters, not gatherers.
Kazu Makino, Simone and Amedeo Pace make up the indie band Blonde Redhead. Their sound’s a dreamy airy, almost eerie yet uplifting kind of music. Makino’s voice has a big part to play in this.
Every morning when I head off to work, Silently’s playing on my earphones. Its beautiful. <Silently, I wish to sail into your port.. I, the sailor. Quietly, I drop my weight into your sea.. I, drop my anchor. > The lyrics are almost poetic. I imagine its about how love that was never meant to be, as much as both would have tried and wanted it.
The melodic and almost quirky guitar riffs lend the song a drifty, misty feel. You know that feeling when you’re having a terrible day, lots of things weighing you down and yet, when you look out of the window, a little smudge of happiness just settles in your stomach somehow? Bittersweet.
<You’ll die a little in my arms, before you even taste my love.. I realise now.>
Ps: 23 from the same album is wonderful stuff too.
This week we dig indie big time! We’ve got lonesome Fat Cat, twinkly Safe As Houses & Cheer Me Up Thank You’s contemplating in the fields of corn.. Blonde Redhead’s Silently’s been so run-ragged over the week, it shivers when I scroll onto it in my ipod.
Presenting the final 10…
Silently by Blonde Redhead
Fat Cat by The Rifles (Bonus Track from Narrow Minded Social Club)
George Romero by Sprites
Shivers (Rising Star Mix) by Armin Van Buuren
Cheer Me Up Thank You by New Buffalo
Hallam Foe Dandelion Blow by Franz Ferdinand
Juliet by Royal Wood
Orphans by Wooden Stars
Safe As Houses by Mew
Silver Dollar by Less Pain Forever
Even the humidity’s kewl when you’ve got great music. We’re the never-fail weathermen that the news station’s missing out on.
A mix of genres will do you right. Ever wondered why indie bands always have such strange names/ song titles? Take Modest Mouse for example. Is a mouse ever modest? I doubt it, seriously. Mice squeak with pride.
Presenting our 10 fave songs of the week:
Proper Education by Eric Prydz Vs Pink Floyd
McFearless by Kings of Leon
Box by Tokyo Police Club
Video Killed The Radio Star by The Feeling
Love You More by The Hours
Ankh (Original Mix) by Aly & Fila
People As Places As People by Modest Mouse
La Ti Da by The Icicles
Fake Empire by The National
Lips Are Unhappy by Lucky Soul
Trust us, they’re good. We’re the classic imperialists, not wannabe democrats.
Genre: Experimental / Folktronica
