A to Z, because i'm bored...

A is for All Saints - Chick Fit (Kissy Sell Out's Excellent Adventure)

B is for Bat For Lashes - The Wizard (Should win the Mercury remix)

C is for Crystal Castles - 1983

D is for DJ Dimitry - Lohan's Revenge Vs Dudun-Dun

E is for Eels - It's A Motherfucker

F is for Fancy - What's Your Name Again? (Busy Penis remix)

G is for Girl Talk - Bounce That

H is for Hiem - Tweak

I is for Iggy Pop - Nightclubbing

J is for Johnny Flynn & The Sussex Wit - Brown Trout Blues

K is for Karen O - Hello Tomorrow

L is for Lismore - Come Undone

M is for Metric - Monster Hospital (acoustic)

N is for Nick Drake - Cocaine Blues

O is for One-Two - O-Hot Brain

P is for Product.01 - Heart Ov Glass (Original Mix)

Q is for QOTSA - Lost Art of Keeping a Secret

R is for RZA - Chamber of Fear

S is for Supersystem - Born Into The World

T is for The Black Ghosts - Any Way You Choose To Give It (Boy 8-bit remix)

U is for Uffie - Pop The Glock

V is for Venetian Snares - Breakbeat Malaria

W is for Wiley - Gangsters

X is for Xzibit - At the Speed of Life

Y is for Yelle - A Cause Des Garcons (Riot In Belgium remix)

Z is for Zapan - Activate

Click this for A - M in a Zip file from Z-Share

Click this for N - Z in a Zip file from Z-Share

Artwork by Edward Gorey.

Reactions, etcetera?

Put on, put down, come on, come down, bring down...

Beatsmithery. I like that word regardless of whether it’s officially a word or not. What we have here is some fine beatsmithery from Swedish artist/DJ/producer Staffan Ulmert aka Mojib, who is set to release his debut album proper ‘Whimsical Lifestyle’ on Canada’s Non-Existent Recordings on October 16th.

With beats reminiscent of Shadow’s best stuff, Mojib’s influences can clearly be heard in his work, but he manages to avoid falling into the category of ‘If I wanted to hear something sounding like Unkle then I would just listen to Unkle’ and also brings new shit to the table. Sampling film soundtracks such as Donnie Darko (My Love), Sigur Ros (Break Of Dawn), and remixing Kings Of Convenience and The Go! Team, his music never gets dull. The album looks like it could be a great soundtrack to the coming autumn.

Mojib – My Love

Mojib – Swamp Monster

Mojib – Break Of Dawn

Mojib – Learn the Put Down

The Go! Team – Grip Like a Vice (Mojib remix)

There is plenty to make and do on Mojib’s website: www.mojib.net. Along with snippets of the new album you can download his web-only LP ‘The Class of ‘00’, loads of remixes including a cracking Ian Brown rework, an Unkle megamix mashup and a great Avalanches mix.

All in all Mojib is a welcome addition to the experimental/beats/downtempo genre and sits happily alongside peers Unkle, DJ Shadow, RJD2, Four Tet et al. In fact I wouldn’t be surprised if he comes to outshine those dudes in years to come, seems like they’ve fallen off a bit lately. The outsider? No ta.

Pre-order Whimsical lifestyle here.

M.I.A.? Eh? Eh?

Seems I’m the only blogger in the West who hasn’t done a M.I.A. post, so check this remix she did of Cornershop’s Topknot. The first and last time Cornershop will ever feature on Eclectic Hermit. I hope.

Cornershop – Topknot (M.I.A. remix)

Get Kala here.

Fileden is for gays...

They've suspended my account without warning so it'll be z-share from now on and you can't download any old songs. Bummer.

The Monday Chiller #16 - Jackson C. Frank...

Catch a boat to England, baby
Maybe to Spain…. Wherever I’ve been
and gone….
the blues are all the same.

Jackson C. Frank - Blues Run The Game

Click over to Motel De Moka who earlier this month did a feature on Jackson.

The Monday Chiller #15 - Fug...

Fug - Fairweather Friend

Downtempo orchestral beats with loping bass and piano loops to ease you through a post-festival/post-weekend/post-holiday Monday. Try if you like: Zero 7, Feist, Morcheeba, etc.

Since when has weather been fair though? It's been miserable in Yorkshire for the past three days when i've had nothing to do and now the weekend is over we've got bluebird skies. Gutted.

Incidentally this is the only record I ever bought from the now defunct Fopp shop. R.I.P. Fopp, Musiczone, Tony Wilson.

Electromawhat?...

I saw Daft Punk's Electroma for the first time last night and well... it amazed me. Forget about the lack of dialogue and/or Daft Punk songs, because once you've witnessed 70-odd minutes of stunning cinematography, beautiful soundscapes, and the ambience of the piece has seeped into your very being, it won't matter. Just don't expect anything even faintly resembling "normal".

Bringing to mind the oppresively wide shots of Kubrick and the creeping unease of Lynch, the Punksters continue their journey of creative experimentation and push themselves into wholly new realms of audio/visual entertainment (Thomas Bangalter read over 200 back-issues of American Cinematography in preparation for the shoot).

The film tells a straightforward story, of two robots on their quest to become human. There are moments of comedy and poignancy throughout, and a couple of times i found myself drifting off into thoughts about the deeper meaning of the story and snapped back to the robots still doing what they were doing ten minutes ago. Action-packed it aint, interesting it is, depending on what floats your boat.

The soundtrack is awesome and isn't officially available, but in a great piece of timing Motel De Moka have put the whole thing up for your downloading enjoyment. My picks are the Curtis Mayfield track (pure steez) and Jackson C. Frank's haunting ballad.

If you have drugs, take them now.

I think Electroma is being released in the next month or two, so keep an eye out for it. If you've seen it, drop me a comment saying what your reaction was.

Purely bombastic...

6 months later than everyone else... that's how i roll. I guess it's one of the problems you get from being a hermit, along with the lack of social networking.

No talk, just beats. The biggest, heaviest, neck-breakingist beats of the year, and it aint like there's no competition. Santogold what!

Santogold - Creator (Z-Share) (WMA)

Santogold - You'll find a way (Switch & Sinden Remix) (Z-Share)

I can see my speakers getting blown pretty soon.

The Monday Chiller #14 - Lovage...

Dan the Automator doesn't put many of his feet wrong, and this 2002 mixtape supports that in a big way. One of the hardest working men in music takes some time to roll out the beats and produces a seriously eclectic mix, one of the highlights of which is available for your i-pod below.

Lovage - Stroker Ace (Z-Share)

Get it off of Amazon
Monkeys available here

Tussk Tussk...

There's no need for all this secrecy and subterfuge from Rephlex surrounding The Tuss, everyone knows it's RDJ anyway and it's not like they need to work hard to create interest for new material by Mr James. I suppose if the tunes weren't up to scratch they could have continued the ruse to save face, but the EP Confederation Trough and following LP Rushup Edge (still short at 6 tracks) are simply as good as anything the Twin has ever done. In any guise.

This snippet of a review by Plan B magazine describes the music much better than I could right now:

'Rushup Edge continues the rededication to fast-paced, brain-bruising fun-fun-FUN! shown by the more recent Analords series of releases. There’s plenty of room for simplicity and repetition in music, but these six tracks reinvent themselves every few seconds, constantly refusing to get bored with one rhythm or melody. Every sound is fresh, as though each juicy synth wiggle and crisp beat were harvested from the circuit board in peak condition, Man from del Monte style. Each successive track piles on the layers, until ‘Death Fuck’ sweeps an avalanche through the speakers, leaving ‘Goodbye Rute’ in a realm of glacial relative calm.'

Check it.

From Confederation Trough:

The Tuss - Alspacka (Z-Share)

I especially dig the sample of the sound that's made when you clack your tongue off the roof of your mouth. Inspired.

From Rushup Edge:

The Tuss - Rushup I Bank 12 (Z-Share)
The Tuss - Death Fuck Mental Beats (Z-Share)

Or buy both from Boomkat if you're not down with the whole 'Amazon = world domination' thing.

Get deeper into the enigma and find other songs here, here and here. (The last two look the same but are different).

I'm using Z-Share for this cos fileden has just about filled it's bandwith boots for the month and will be resetting in 6 days.

Angus & Julia Stone @ Cabaret Voltaire, Edinburgh - 08/08/07

At the risk of sounding like one of those '100 greatest films ever made... ever' lists where No.1 is something like Hot Fuzz or Gladiator because no-one can be arsed to remember anything further back in time, i'm putting Angus & Julia Stone right up there at No.1 on my favourite gigs list after seeing them on wednesday night, and consequence be damned.

If you know anything about said extremely talented Australian duo you'll know that they're not known for being extroverts (too many knowns?). In fact Angus sometimes looks like he'd rather be anywhere else than on stage, and they walked onto the small platform at Cabaret Voltaire (imagine an elongated cave and you're there) in a grand display of meekness before kicking off with opener 'All of me'.

Sounding better live than they do on record, Julia's voice alternates between a fragile croon and powerful wail (that's meant as a compliment) and Angus's finger-picking ensures that every track has an incredible lilting melody to it. The crowd were very appreciative and gave a good old whoop and a holler after every song, and the location gave a real intimate feel to proceedings.

The set was peppered with tracks from their forthcoming new album, including new single 'The Beast', 'Horse and Cart', 'Bella', and a track that could be called 'Memories' but i'm none too sure. Highlights included favourites like 'Mango Tree' and 'Private Lawns', but the real surprise was their folk version of Chumbawumba's 'I get knocked down', which started off slowly before rising to a storming crescendo and getting the crowd all hyped-up on memories of John Prescott getting soaked.

For me though the best moment happened when they came back on stage for the encore and the bassist started the opening riff to 90s classic 'Everybody dance now'. Julia explained that they played the song at home while mucking about and practising and wouldn't be playing it as part of the set, but after some encouragement from the crowd they burst into a strange folk-dance version of the song with Julia screaming the refrain and looking at the drummer because she was too embarassed to face the audience. It was one of those off-the-cuff/you had to be there moments that makes live music so interesting.

So after all that waffle here is the video for new single 'The Beast', out on August 20th.

The Beast

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Debut album 'A Book Like This...' is out on September 8th. They're continuing to tour the UK as we speak so get some tickets and go along.

I got a letter this morning...

What do you reckon it read? That's right, it read that Eclectic Hermit was posting three different versions of Death Letter in the vain hope of a triple-threat type situation whereby countless visitors are wowed by my knowledge of said song. Well instead of that we have The Original Blues, 70s style garage-rock Blues and Dad Blues (Mellencamp = BomChicka slide guitar), pick your favourite and imagine a world where wars are fought over whose version of the song is the bestestest.

Son House - Death Letter (Peel Session)

The White Stripes - Death Letter

John Mellencamp - Death Letter

The next step in this covers type malarkey is another triple-threat (phrase of the week) meets degrees of separation type situation where three artists are featured, linked to the previous artist by a cover of their song, for example: The Whites Stripes - Jolene (Dolly Parton), Dolly Parton - something by someone else, etc.

In case you were wondering, my favourite version is The White Stripes's's. If you don't own De Stijl, do yerself a favour and cop it on the cheap thanks to this Icky Thump furore.

The Monday Chiller #13 - Nick Drake...

I'm in Edinburgh at the moment for a few days at The Fringe, but I did go record shopping today for the first time in yonks and have got 6 new albums and a couple of vinyls to pick tunes from, so expect a steady trickle of these from Thursday onwards, which is when I have to get back to Yorkshire and reality.

I got the Nick Drake Family Tree album last week and pretty much every track is worthy of being a Monday Chiller but Leaving Me Behind fits the bill perfectly.

Nick Drake - Leaving Me Behind

Maybe this feature should be renamed the Monday Melancholy Moment, most of the songs I post are quite depressing! Not to worry, upbeat electro next week.

Oh aye and if you are in Edinburgh this week then go see Hostage on Friday night @ Studio 24.

Lux Aeterna...

Lux Aeterna, the orchestral piece written for the film Requiem For A Dream by Clint Mansell and performed by the Kronos Quartet is an astonishingly powerful piece of music that has seeped into popular culture in a way that not many other modern compositions can lay claim to.

The use of Lux Aeterna has been widespread in recent years, from film soundtracks (Sunshine, Lord of The Rings) to TV shows (Charlie Brooker - check the brilliant aspirational TV rant, best line: "suburban coffee-slurping smugitude") and adverts.

In terms of head noddage it's right up there with the heaviest Neptunes beat and never fails to get me hyped. The Lord of The Rings remix in particular amps up the aggression and immediacy of the original version and makes me want to go Hooooooooooo!

Oh Fortuna, you have been replaced.

Clint Mansell - Lux Aeterna
Clint Mansell - Lux Aeterna (Full Orchestral Version)
Clint Mansell - Lux Aeterna (Lord of The Rings Remix)

This will only work if you've seen the film, but it's awesome nonetheless. Toy Story 2: Requiem