It’s been a major weekend for Daft Punk fans. A sneak peek teaser for their upcoming album Random Access Memories debuted at Coachella, offering fans more than a minute of new unreleased material, the fourth episode of the collaborator series featuring Pharell offered even more behind-the-scenes insight, and to top things off, a full version of their song “Get Lucky” has presumably leaked, however critics are still debating its validity. We know, we know. Now, amidst all the excitement, May 21 couldn’t feel farther away. [Source]
Bryan Ferry, never averse to a re-make/re-model (as his lifelong parallel career as a covers-crooner of “ready-mades” has established), has cooked up something completely unexpected and unprecedented here. Not least because he doesn’t sing on it. The Jazz Age is an instrumental set in which numbers spanning from Roxy Music’s Virginia Plain to Reason or Rhyme from most recent solo album Olympia are radically reimagined. Some are only faintly recognisable. His hits and cult items are fashioned as they might have been in the Paris of the Roaring Twenties, or the Gatsby ballrooms of F. Scott Fitzgerald (a poster-boy of doomed romanticism to whom Ferry has never struggled to relate). Names like Louis Armstrong, Bix Beiderbecke and Duke Ellington will be bandied around. In fairness to Ferry, this isn’t a dilettante detour: he has always, since the time of Roxy’s 1972 debut, when it was far from cool to do so, named these artists as influences. [Source]
Two French producer acts connect here on the Breakbot remix of Birdy Nam Nam’s great “Defiant Order” single. If you recognize that name, chance are you checked out A$AP Rocky’s full-length debut, LongLiveA$AP. Birdy Nam Nam and Skrillex have production credits on the EDM-heavy “Wild for the Night.” This melodic remix will appear on the French quartet’s new Defiant Order EP, which drops tomorrow with additional reworks from Block Beattaz and UZ. [Source]
Team Ghost’s Dead Film Star EP is a perfect example of all the potential for greatness on their upcoming debut album that the group has. The brainchild of co-founder and former M83 member Nicolas Fromageau, Team Ghost’s new EP effortlessly blends the diverse worlds of traditional indie-rock and modern electronica. [Source]
Poni Hoax are bringing their punk influenced italo-disco to BBC’s ears this morning via their new single, “We Are the Bankers”. The Parisian group’s hi-energy dance grooves and mutant pop are the newest unveiling since their previous 2008 release, Images of Sigrid. The song’s ridiculously infectious bassline will grab you immediately and the nice array of punkish guitars give it that repeat value. On remix duties are Renaissance Man, a up-and-coming DJ and production tandem from Finland, Mustang, from Brussels and The Living Islands. [Source]
‘Doom And Gloom’ marks the first time that Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts and Ronnie Wood have been in the studio together for seven years. The single was recorded in Paris and produced by longtime Rolling Stones producer Don Was, who has worked with the band on five previous albums (Voodoo Lounge/ Stripped/ Bridges To Babylon/ Licks Live/ A Bigger Bang), with the radio mix produced by Jeff Bhasker.
Matricidal sons of bitches was conceived and produced by Matthew Friedberger in Paris, where he now stays, and inspired by the films of Poverty Row. The production values and narrative techniques of these films became the basis for Matricidal sons of bitches. [Source]
Superwise was written on a day off in Italy on tour a couple of years ago. It was going to be on a compilation album, that never happened. Essentially I had to write a song that day, if I wanted to be a part of it. So, I sat down at a cheap home organ in the studio, clicked on the drum machine…started playing those chords that open the song. In fact, since the tape was rolling, the drum machine and organ chords, plus organ bass pedals, are a live performance, which happened once and only once, and conveniently that’s the take. I preserved that performance for the album version, I just added new stuff over the top of it. Lyrically, it’s about transformation, transubstantiation, reincarnation. The interconnectedness of all things. And that Nirvana might be the point where you simply remove the last blocks that have cut you off from what you are vestigially connected to at all times–everything. In life, your ego, the I, conceives you as a unique item in a world of foreign objects. And therein lies the flaw in your perspective. Of course, I didn’t want to write this as new age sounding things, so I try and work in a lot of scientific-sounding mumbo jumbo. You can say it’s BS but in fact, I trust my subconscious very much. I let it write everything!
Sierra Casady’s a trained opera singer, but the Paris-dwelling American traded Figaro for freak-folk in 2003 when she reunited with her estranged sister Bianca to form CocoRosie. The musically adventurous duo’s lo-fi debut La Maison de Mon Rêve (Touch & Go) gained them a fervent following that included TV on the Radio’s Dave Sitek, who produced this year’s beat-happy “We Are On Fire/Tearz for Animals” single as a one-off for Touch and Go Records. [Source]
