Phantogram - 16 Years (2009) / As Far As I Can See (2011)

Two swirling pop tracks from upstate NY, the former from the band's last LP Nightlife, and the latter from their only album Eyelid Movies. Get hold of both releases if you can, they get quite addictive.

 

-N.

The Cars - I'm Not the One (1981)

p

DJ Snoopadelic - Loose Joints (2012)

Yeh ok it's Snoop Dogg. Fresh from his Snoop Lion revelations he's now dabbling in electronic music: here's a pretty cool compilation of Euro techno and dance he's put together (well some of it's not the best, but hey). He's calling himself DJ Snoopadelic. Is there anything this man won't do?! That's the kind of question I never want to have to answer.

Stream it below or download it here:

-L

Major Lazer - Carnival 2012 Mix

Notting Hill Carnival is on the horizon, hurtling like a furiously vibesing cat towards hoards of loose-hipped Londoners. P.S. The cat has dub-sirens instead of purrs.
To get you in the mood, Diplo & Switch have released a banger of a dancehall mix (downloadable). So crack the red stripe and get MASH UP.

For more info click here.

-L

Free School - Tender Administration (2012)

Warning: Bumper blog & interview with an awesome band. Read the intro or skip to the interview. 

This post was rudely interrupted by my holiday – so it’s not quite as timely as I would have liked!!

Anyway, I recently went to the awesome Mostly Jazz Festival in my hometown of Moseley in Birmingham. It’s in Moseley Park – a smallish local park where I whiled away much of my youth. How ace is that?

So that makes it doubly amazing that it now plays host to a couple of great festivals – in addition to Mostly Jazz there’s also Moseley Folk Festival which is definitely worth checking out – it’s on in a couple of weeks!

It was pretty surreal standing watching Roots Manuva tear it up in the same place where I used to play football and goad swans.

Anyway. As well as some great big names like Roots Manuva, Ghostpoet, Gilles Peterson, George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic (yep!), there were some ace bands I hadn’t heard before. I loved Free School and their unique brand of chilled, animal-masked electronica. So I gave em a shout to see what they’re all aboot…

Free School is Steve Alcock and Andy Porteous. They enjoy skinning animals and making music out of their faces. Photo credit: Jack Spicer Adams

Why not click play here and then listen to their music while reading the interview below? Hmm? Why wouldn't you DO THAT?

Fucking Chill: So - who are Free School and how did you guys get going?

Steve: We were described recently as Birmingham’s finest romantic electric duo. Can I just state for the record that we’re not romantic together in the slightest and that anyone who says we are and that Andy often cooks for me is lying. We’ve been playing together in bands since 2004 but we decided to start a new thing 3 or so years ago and here we are.

Andy: Steve never cooks for me.

FC:  Mostly Jazz Festival was ace! D'ya have a nice time?!

Steve: It was swell as hell, thanks! Did you? George Clinton and Fred Wesley in our local park! I mean, it doesn’t get much better than that. It was great to hook up with Gilles Peterson again and to finally see Troumaca who we’ve been meaning to catch for a while.

Andy: Loved it, Soweto Kinch and Roots Manuva tickled my fancy, and we met some nice people who dug our stuff, what’s not to like?

FC: I had a banger, thanks. Who was the dude tambourining through the crowd during your final song? That was a nice touch. Panaudio shit!

Steve: Ha! That would be Señor Greg Bird, our flamboyant and sensual singer. He likes to party.

Andy: Check out his Greg Bird & Flamingo Flame outfit, sexy Prince-style vocalising over classic, filthy house. It’s fantastic, his ‘Black Tableaux’ EP is coming out soon on Speech Fewapy.

FC: Filthy Prince? Hello. We like our singers flamboyant and sensual here at Fucking Chill. What else have you been up to recently?

Steve: We’ve just played the Garden Festival in Croatia which was spectacular. What a festival! We hooked up with Andrew Weatherall and Sean Gorham, Mr Weatherall in particular looking splendid on the beach in his Victorian attire. Prior to that we played a great show with Editors and PEACE at the HMV Institute here in Birmingham. And we just played the ‘Off The Cuff’ festival, also in Brum. We’ve just put out the 14th episode of our podcast, this episode being the second part of our interview with Mark E. 

Andy: We’re also organising our ‘TenderAdministration’ night at the Bulls Head, Moseley. The next one is falling nicely on Sunday Aug 26th bank holiday, meaning everyone can stay up and no excuses. We’ll be playing live and we’ve got some amazing headline DJ’s to perform, namely Adam Regan from Leftfoot and the legendary DJ Dick from Rockers Hi-Fi. There’s also been a bunch of production work we’ve been doing for some awesome local talent; Victories At Sea, Sam Redmore and Big Tent & The Gypsy Lantern. It’s been a busy studio chez Free School.

FC: Jesus it's all popping off - that's great! Now for a shit question: how would you describe your music?

Steve: Uplifting, elevating, melodic plus drum fills

Andy: I wouldn’t. I’d just say I’m in love with it.

FC: Nice. Who are your main influences?

Steve: I like what Luke Abbott said recently about influence in that you can’t control it. Therefore you can’t discuss influence with any certainty because your creativity channels your ideas from a place we can’t access. Also, bad music can influence you as much as good music in that it helps you to avoid making certain decisions in the studio etc. Buuuuut, our new stuff nods to The Field and Fuck Buttons. The main influence for the album was Lindstrom, Depeche Mode and a little bit of LCD Soundsystem.

Andy: Orbital.

FC: Hadn't heard that Luke Abbott bit before - that's cool and I'd agree. What have you released so far and what have you got coming up?

Andy: A couple of 12”s through Tirk, ‘Ranting & Raving’ and ‘Unravelling After The Lottery’, a couple of remixes, one through local House label ‘Out Of Bounds’ and another on Disco label ‘Nang’. But this week sees the release of our debut album ‘Tender Administration’, through Tirk, which we’re very excited about, we’re really proud of it. Coming up we’ve got a very exciting remix of someone already mentioned in this interview, but we can’t say just yet! Also there’ll be stuff out through London label ISM records. More to follow…

FC: Juicy. Although if you expect any more coverage on FC you better email me that mix gossip. Last one - any gigs soon we should know about? Time to plug now!

Steve: The aforementioned ‘Tender Administration’ night at the Bulls Head, keep an eye out for the glitter-covered posters! 

Listen to Free School's Tender Administration above and then buy it from Tirk Recordings!

-L 

XX - Angels (2012)

i'm 1 month late with this, it doesn't matter: there's a new xx track.

their last album was mind-blowing, track after track, and i was wondering whether they'd be able to produce anything as coherent and solid. 'angels' leaves me undecided. pre-order the album here



p

Hot Chip - Look At Where We Are (Four Tet Remix) (2012)

Brand new remix from the maestro. Linked by @FourTet on Twitter last week, listened to on repeat by me this week...

 

-N.

Randy Alvey and the Green Fuz - Green Fuz (1969)

beautiful garage/cult classic recorded in a deserted roadside cafe. instant flashback to a time when bands still had theme songs and rock n roll was pretty fucking cool.



Here we come, we're coming fast
All the others are in the past
Jump to your feet, let us catch your eye
We're the green fuz

We're not too fast, we're not too slow
Come along baby to see where we go
Jump to your feet, let us catch your eye
We're the green fuz

p

Joey Bada$$ - Waves (2012)

If you keep up with contemporary hip-hop you'll probably already know about this guy, who released his first mixtape a few weeks ago, stream or download it here. Early 90s flavour, and with J.Dilla, MF Doom and the one and only Mr Lewis Parker involved in production I was expecting quite a lot and it delivered...then you discover the kid is only 17. Wow. I've posted what is likely to be the 'single' below, but other personal favourites include 'Don't Front', 'Hardknock' and 'Righteous Minds'. 

 

-N.

Osier Bed - Do You Think I'm Spooky (2012)/ I'm ok. - Fuck Everything (2012)

Double post! These two releases are both emo EPs from my home state, CT. Unlike many of the bands I see around, these are not simply friendrock for me (that being a band you support simply because you like to support the members as their your friends).

The first is the second release from Osier Bed, a band which I upped to FC a while back. They've developed their sound a bit on this one, with more 90s emo influence, and better recording quality than the last release. Riffs on this is fucking awesome. You can download this for what you want here:
http://osierbed.bandcamp.com/

I'm Ok is up next. Very noodley guitar, yelling, songs about quitting your shitty job at the grocery store, what more could you want? If you follow contemporary emo at all (I realize this is a shot in the dark), this band includes members of The World Is A Beautiful Place And I Am No Longer Afraid To Die, a more post-rock/twinkly/pop brand of this CT sound. Get their EP here: http://imok.bandcamp.com/




Until next time.

- A

Joy Division - Atmosphere (1980)

was watching 24 hour party people and realized how epic/gentle this song is.



p