Apparently the Temper Trap juggernaut keeps rolling along; funny to see that this Guardian article appears to owe a certain debt to my post here after seeing the band play in London in October.
“These hopefuls are being talked up as the best band to come out of Australia in 10 years”
Which seems to rather miss the point that it was their manager talking them up, but anyway.
From the Northside mailing list:
- RESPECT - Jake Mason, who made the Melbourne Meets Kingston 2LP comes out with the FIRST EVA AUSSIE RIDDIM!!!!! Pressed on three different 45’s and pressed in JAMAICA!! All featuring a little Kangaroo on the label!! The riddim is called the Fire Dragon but it is essentially the Drum Song riddim (rhythm) with some extra keys and dope samples through it!!. Vida Sunshine is a local girl who sang with Jake on his record - here she tears it up. Man she’s got soul!!…also Burro does he bit on the flip!!
While I must confess, I’m not mad about the riddim itself (which sounds a bit like the kind of stuff that was coming out circa-2003 with Oochie Wallie-esque “eastern” string sounds like the Egyptian riddim and Coolie Dance, etc.) and I think the kangaroo on the label is a bit twee… but nevertheless, this really is a fantastic step for the nascent Australian dancehall scene.
I really hope this record does well and that we can see some more Aussie/Jamaica pairings in the future. It’s sold out at Dub Vendor but Ernie B’s has copies… Good on ya Mista Savona!
MGMT, “Time To Pretend” (Diplo Remix)
Update: Apparently MGMT’s MGMT are trying to bury this.
On Mon, Jan 12, 2009 at 6:18 PM, Bill H <billh@xxxx.com wrote:
Hey there, Bill here, I handle online stuff for MGMT. The band’s management were wondering if you could take down the Diplo remix as it was not authorized. Any help on this would be greatly appreciated.
I replied:
Hi Bill–I’m actually not really that inclined to take it down, I must confess.
What’s MGMT’s management’s rationale? How could a free remix by Diplo circulating on the blogs possibly be a bad thing…?
To which I got back:
The fact that the band’s management are asking it be removed is a decent enough reason but in addition to that this is an unreleased remix which only Diplo owns, meaning that it was likely obtained illegally.
It’s not necessarily about whether or not it is a “bad thing” but rather a case where management are asking you to remove it as a courtesy, in much the same way that you would want something of yours removed from a blog if it was something you didn’t want shared.
By the sound of it, they commissioned this, weren’t terribly happy with the way it turned out and now that it’s leaked, the MGMT powers-that-be are doing their darndest to suppress it.
This may be neither Diplo nor MGMT’s finest hour but uh, good luck guys!
I had planned to write a reasonably erudite post here about the time distorting, world-flattening, democratising nature of the televisual ‘celestial Jukebox’ that is Surf The Channel and other (predominantly Chinese) video aggregating sites. As it stands, I can’t really be bothered going much further than that, so instead, I intend to summarise my various points in bulleted form:
Busta Rhymes, “Arab Money” (Download)
This is here.
