By Esmail Hamidi
All the CDs in my car skip now.
I bought earbuds so I could listen to music on my walks home, but I maxed out the data on my phone. Dead hard drive in my old iPod Photo, dead batteries on my old iPod Nano, dead batteries on my cassette Walkman. YouTube blocked at work. Mouse chewed through the cable on my kitchen speaker. No time. Obligations. Bad radio. Wack DJs. The rat race.
All these forces seek to destroy my relationship with new music. I’m feeling closer to 33 every day. Especially deep in the dusty record bins on Toilet Radio.
But no! At WKDU, I am still capable of falling in love with new music of all kinds. This list is proof. Enjoy.
- Girlpool – Ideal World
This cut off of Girlpool’s debut really impresses me. Minimal production, rock-solid guitar tone, and their growing aptitude for harmonies make this song an ear-perking jam. Heroin, anyone?
- Blacksage – Basement Vows
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Soulful triplet feel on Baltimore’s Friends Records. Cool.
- TT the Artist – Gimme Yo Love (Prod. Schwarz)
So positively jubilant. Get ready for this.
- Mr. Oizo – MASS DOOM
A wonderful (if less recent) complement to the omnipresent solder fumes at work. Blame the brain damage, but that’s all I got for ya.
- Pile – Live in Orleans, France, Jun 7th 2015
“Les 4 membres de PILE sont les héros incontestables de la scène rock de Boston. Porté vers les guitares mugissantes, les PILE ont un talent de composition certain et une large palette d’influences allant du folk au noise rock en passant par le grunge et le post punk.”
Despite being a little weirdly broken up, the sound quality is A+, and with Matt Becker on guitar again, the performances are excellent.
Héros incontestables? Certainement.
- Panda Bear – Crosswords (Pete Rock Remix)
Serendipitous, this one – I was at Making Time a few weeks ago and Dave P opened his set with My Girls by Animal Collective. On a club soundsystem at 1am instead of alone in headphones, it was presented in a whole new way.
And yet it was perfect. Similarly, this remix adds a whole new dimension of swing to an already sweet track.
- Black Knights – Venus Scroll [Produced by John Frusciante]
When someone mentions John Frusciante, I normally think of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and along with that, the guitar noodles in the first 3-5 seconds of Californication (thanks to a certain someone- you know who you are). But this jam might just jockey for my brain’s top search results now – the ex-Peppers guitarist has been busy in his solo career, most recently producing for LA duo Black Knights. This is a hot one with weird guitar tones and square waves.
- Todd Rundgren – Collide –a-Scope (Fernando Perdomo Remix)
Hoo boy. The wizard’s at it again with a g-funk yacht banger. Catch him at World Café Live in August.