Bruno & Michel are smiling and Skipperrr

Bruno & Michel are smiling skipperrr make rather brutal electronic-chipcore-noise. Or as they say on MySpace: “the slick gentleman and the breathtaking showgirl dont play any instruments, they play on your nerves. The pomo melange between sampling and collage, digital and guitar hardcore kills any rhythm as soon as you discovered one.”

Refreshingly they do this with reference to aesthetcs, politics and Adorno. They even have a manifesto (of sorts) on their website that transcends the usual vacuous name-dropping and shallow grasp of philosophical concepts:

“Bruno & Michel are smiling does not regard itself as serious music, to say nothing of great art. The music of Bruno & Michel are smiling is pulled through by numerous contradictions. Like thus for example the contradiction between spontaneity on the one hand (in music it can be present as improvisation) and cool abstraction on the other hand (for example mathematical composition techniques). This contradiction is decided in favour of the latter one. Composition at the computer already brings this imbalance structurallywith itself. In addition, the author has dislikes to side with authenticity, because it is considered as bare ideology, in the way authenticity is desired today. The public does not reflect over the condition of authenticity, which is mediated by society, already. Finally, the longing after authenticity led in Germany to Auschwitz .

A steady oscillating between conflicting moments during the creation process is a more complex, but fruitful component of composition, which comes down to indecision and fragmented pieces. In this way Bruno & Michel are smiling reflects the conditions again, without going beyond them. Bruno & Michel are smiling creates thus entertainment music that remains stuck to the conditions. The only contribution it could give to emancipation is its reflexive moment that can make the listener attentive on his own internal contradictions.”

How Do You Want To Pay for a wee and the Big Millipede are available for free download on MySpace.

CFCF

I don’t really know much about electro artist CFCF other than that he’s remixed tracks, by amongst others, Crystal Castles, Justice, Hearts Revolution and The Teenagers and is Canadian.

His own tracks occupy a space somewhere between the aforementioned artists and the Chromatics with hints of Goblin, Ennio Morrcone and other giallo-esque elements added to the mix. He has quite a lot of stuff available for free download on Last Fm and MySpace. Of which my particular favourite is Sogno Rossi.

Links below:

MySpace

Last.FM

Chromatics

I saw Chromatics last night. Surprisingly they were a lot more muscular than on record. A good thing, as despite being lovely and delightfully languid on record, I feared that in a live context this could have translated as boring and anaesthetising.

Despite being more dynamic live, this didn’t detract from what makes Chromatics so great. There songs are still enthused with emotion and the general ambience of the night: seventies horror films; glitter balls; speeding cars in the desert; darkness and neon.

That said the venue was a bit brightly lit and lacking in atmosphere for my liking and this being Brighton there were too many self-obsessed hipsters, but a large proportion of people were dancing by the end of the show. The sound quality, I have to say, was pretty amazing and when they finished their set with a slow building version, of their cover of Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill, it met and simultaneously confounded the audience’s expectations, being quite different to the version on Night Drive IV.

There are still plenty of free Chromatics tracks available for free from the bands MySpace.

If only they’d bring a live record out now…

Chromatics – In The City

Theoretical Techno: All That Is Solid Melts Into Air

de/V/oid has released the first track of the conceptual Theoretical Techno record on Last FM. A new track will be added every couple of days and will feature snippets of text from prominent theorists, novelists, philosophers and thinkers of the Nineteenth/Twentieth Century and techno beats made in a budget DAW. The first track All That Is Solid Melts into Air is a reference either to a line from Marx’s Communist Manifesto or the post-modern text by Marshall Berman.

Lazy!

I’m getting a bit lazy with this blog. Hopefully in the next weeks I’ll start to be a little more proactive. In the meantime Cutting Pink with Knives have a free track to download on there Myspace page. Fuck You I’m The King Of France, it is entitled, and is nice enough in an ADHD, shouty bleepy kind of way. They have a record out on Kate Moross’ Isomorphs label right about now too, if I’m not mistaken.

In Canada!

I never knew that there was a video for BJ Snowden’s In Canada until I came across this yesterday. It is, frankly, GREAT! I especially like the bit where the mounty appears above BJ’s shoulders.

sLEepY!

Now I’m back in glorious Littlehampton I’m having to spend an hour and a half commuting. This is going to take some getting used to. In the meantime my brain is mush. On the plus side nobody reads this so it doesn’t matter….

While I sit at my desk dribbling and looking blankly at the screen I’ve been listening to Buttonhead’s Weetabix Gigabyte demo. It’s quite nice, and free from here.

Synchronised dance can see off an assailant

Bye, bye Brighton

I’m moving out of Brighton this weekend. I suppose my feelings on this are mixed. There are downsides to living there including yuppies; ridiculous levels of gentrification; cliquey hipsters and ridiculous living costs, but at the same time I am attached to the place. Still life goes on, and to be honest I’m never going to get on with my life, get the things out of it I want to and be the person I want to if I stay in Brighton…

I’ll give my thoughts on the place properly some other time…

Free Bjork covers album

Stereogum has a whole tribute album to Bjork’s Post album available for download on there site.

Notable covers include Liars doing Army of Me and No Age doing It’s Oh So Quiet.