Happy Holidays out there. See you in 2012.

After another long hiatus, we’re back! Thanks to the two fly shorties Lisa and Lindsay for submitting two new tracks this week!

It’s that wonderful season once again- the one in which you just wanna ruin some fools with concentrated laser-beams. Here’s your anthem. Download it over here.

Deadmau5 has released a cover of Radiohead’s Codex from their latest album ‘The King of Limbs’, choosing to replace Thom Yorke’s haunting vocals with a wash of synths and reverb. According to …Hang the DJ, the cover contains no samples from the original recording. Surprising choice for a cover from the popular DJ but manages to stay quite close to the original track while putting his own fingerprints on the track. A remix this is not.

Man Man’s latest video for Piranhas Club depicts a particularly badass group of kids taking a stand against bullying. Inspired by Johnny Depp in John Water’s Cry Baby, the kid’s grease up, rock some leather, win the hearts of some shorties, defenestrate eggs from an overpass, abuse a dead cat, destroy a car and generally just rock the F out. This is my feel good video of 2011.

Happy Halloween weekend! 7 spooktacluar new tunes! That’s actually not true at all but enjoy regardless!

Oh hey guess what it’s the weekend and we’ve got a smorgasbord of new tracks for you to feast on. Stay safe out there amigos!

Radiohead, who could easily sell out Madison Square Garden in a matter of minutes (if not seconds), recently performed two shows at Manhattan’s Roseland Ballroom, capacity 3500. Our pal Gunner and his magic fingers were somehow able to score 2 tickets via Ticketmaster for the second show, and it was confirmed: we were going to see Radiohead at what will most likely be the smallest venue of our lifetimes. Needless to say, we were both incredibly excited to see our favorite band in such an intimate venue, and it was a show I will surely never forget.

Their setlist (which you can see below) may not seem like the greatest Radiohead setlist of all time, especially on paper. But it was pretty clear, the band is warming up for a much larger tour in 2012, and they set out to play a lot of their newer material, particularly from their last few records and The King of Limbs. They also made it a point to play three new songs, only one of which has been released in some form (Supercollider). Keep on reading below to get some of my inpressons of the show, see some of my photos from the night, and watch the whole entire concert if you so please (just click each track in the setlist).

I’m not sure what you thought of The King of Limbs when it first came out. I’ll admit, I wasn’t amazed by it. Initially it didn’t move me like In Rainbows did. But then the Live From the Basement special aired, and I immediately rediscovered some of the songs from the album that I really wasn’t feeling at first. Like Feral, for instance (thanks Gunner). Hearing the songs performed on Live From the Basement, it finally started to click. Actually seeing the band on stage, up close and personal, performing these songs added a whole new dimension to it all. I thought Live From the Basement was better than The King of Limbs, and now I’m convinced seeing Radiohead perform these songs live and in person is the best possible way to take it all in. The opened their set with Bloom, which on the album felt like it was lacking a certain something… whatever that certain something was, they found it and jammed it into the live performance, and it opened my eyes and ears to what that song could actually sound like.

Some of my personal highlights from the night were their infectious new track Staircase, a damn near perfect rendition of Subterranean Homesick Alien, standing there mouth agape when Thom started perfoming True Love Waits on the piano as the intro to Everything In It’s Right Place, getting down and weird to Lotus Flower, and an absolutely killer performance of Reconker. They ended their first encore with Bodysnatchers, and the climax in that song also made me almost lose my mind. It was a such an excellent show. I’ll do everything I can to see them again next year in an undoubtedly much larger venue. I’m just so thrilled that I was able to attend the very exclusive preview of what’s to come in 2012.

Thanks to Youtube users godieinhell2 and hellspawn3000 for their awesome videos. Click each track in setlist below to watch a corresponding video from the show. And click to enlarge each photo, taken by yours truly with Gunner’s camera.

01 – Bloom

02 – Little By Little

03 – Staircase

04 – The National Anthem

05 – Feral

06 – Subterranean Homesick Alien

07 – Like Spinning Plates

08 – All I Need

09 – True Love Waits / Everything In Its Right Place

10 – 15 Step

11 – Weird Fishes/Arpeggi

12 – Lotus Flower

13 – Codex

14 – The Daily Mail

15 – Morning Mr. Magpie

16 – Reckoner

ENCORE

17 – Give Up The Ghost

18 – Myxomatosis

19 – Bodysnatchers

SECOND ENCORE

20 – Supercollider

21 – Nude

Paul Basic is one of the latest DJs on the Pretty Light’s label, and he is well suited for it. His downtempo electro hop keeps you grooving from the start of the album to the finish, just like Pretty Lights producer Derek Vincent Smith originally does.

Pulling sounds from many other of the electro-hop/glitch-hop/whatever-the-hell-people-are-calling-it-hop artists while mixing in his own dusty samples and hard beats, Paul Basic is easily able to draw you into the music, and does an excellent job at setting a mood. Interestingly, he still very clearly uses a verse, chorus, and bridge structure, which gives each track clear highs and lows.

My favorite tracks of the album, Daydream and Daylit, are below the break, and download the whole album here.

DJ Shadow is out with a new album, The Less You Know The Better. Check out the video for the first single, Border Crossing.

 Charismatic.  The word which should be used to describe the genuine duo from Sheffield, Slow Club.  However up until 18 days ago, the prominent word floating around used to describe the pair’s sound was twee.  Their edgy and memorising performance at Lancaster Library was far from the dainty and sugary descriptions previously used in conjunction with them, however.  Their debut album “Yeah, So” was the initiator of these comments and the time between this and their new album “Paradise” has seen them grow not just with age and as people but in regards to their music too.  In their own words:

“We’ve done so much since the first album. Like some of the songs on the first one we wrote when we were like sixteen, and you’re not writing the best thing you’ve ever done when you’re sixteen! So it’s good to take what you have learnt emotionally and everything and it’s kind of capturing what we always wanted.  I always felt like “I wish we’d done that on the first record” and it was a chance to do that this time.”

Their new album has received much praise, with Rebecca’s ardent and passionate voice twinned with Charles’ equally strong yet warm sound showing off their musical compatibility.  Harmonies flow, interweaving throughout the album creating interesting dimensions, meaning boredom and repetition is avoided.  Catchy beats and heartfelt lyrics lead the way, particularly in “Beginners” and “Where I’m Waking” with energy and passion at the forefront.  However there is a nice mixture with more mellow, caressing tunes such as “Hackney Marsh” or “Gold Mountain.”

We caught up with them to see how they felt about their new album and our interesting venue.

MMB: So what made you two decide to start making music together?

Charles: Well we were in a band together. Beccy played drums and I played guitar, and we had done stuff together with different bands, and then we just kind of fell into it really.  We didn’t decide to do it, it just happened, and then we just kind of carried on doing it!

Rebecca: Yea and then we didn’t go to uni and we didn’t get jobs, and now we’re twenty five and in Lancaster!

MMB: Tell us about your new album “Paradise”.  There’s been lots of talk of it showing a growth in both your characters and song writing, is that what you were trying to represent in the album?

Charles: Yea, I think we are just a bit better at communicating the point we’re trying to make these days. When we made the first album, there was less of an aesthetic quality to it, it was more about just doing it and it being done.  But we spent a lot more time thinking what we wanted it to sound like.  We’ve probably just been able to communicate our ideas more clearly this time.  Because last time, I think we thought it was one thing but it might have sounded like another, because we were so involved with it.  But we’ve had a bit more distance with this one because we weren’t producing it so we had a bit more space, so I think that’s really helped.   Working with a producer has been really amazing.

MMB:  I know you’ve played here before with Noah and the Whale, were you excited to come back?

Rebecca: Yea it’s lovely, especially because the last few gigs have been quite rowdy and we just know it’ll be quiet and a nice atmosphere which we definitely need! And it’s really cool and for bands its quite novelty and nice.

Charles: It’s nice not to be in a room with like black sweaty walls and stuff.  I really like those stages as well, the ones that aren’t permanent.  I don’t know what it is but I always enjoy playing rooms that aren’t gig venues.  Like if there’s just a stage in a room, they’re normally a bit more exciting sounds for us to play in.

MMB: Yea definitely.  So… any weird phobias?

Rebecca: Cat’s! I really don’t like Cat’s like the way they move, I feel like they are going to tell Satan what I’ve been doing! And just general dying.  What about you Charles?

Charles: Erm, I don’t think I have any really.  I don’t like falling asleep in the van when someone else is driving.

MMB: Ok and final question.  You’re on a desert island with three things, what are they?

Charles: Probably a hammock so you wouldn’t get ants in your pants, some swimming trucks and…

Rebecca: A hot babe?

Charles: A hot babe. Actually three hot babes!

MMB: Well thank you very much for speaking to us, it’s been lovely to meet you and good luck with the rest of the tour!