Jack Deezl

MF Parm & EuniQ DJ

DirtyDave

Nomster

Night Kids

Washington DC’s Protect-U make a killer brand of futuristic tribal dance music for your head. The tracks are usually very progressive in nature and involve a large array of Hypnotic rhythms and percussion. In the similar futuristic minimal house music as Two Dogs In A House, Silver Ripples, & Jonathan Kusuma. These tracks utilize a lot of IDM  and dance music elements similar in nature to many releases on Warp Records.

Papertwin – Cross

Papertwin melds droney darkwave melodies that match up against an 80s pop sensiblity. Morbid lyrics against feelgood pop music is a match made in angsty heaven, or hell. “Cross”’s Powerful sincere vocals mixed with vibrant waves of electronic programming, is reminiscent sometimes of Thom Yorke or Bjork’s production aesthetic. This is where broken lo fi tinges on what is considerably awesome dark synthpop. Also check out this remix by KnifeShow of Papertwins track Coma below.

Teengirl Fantasy is a electronic chill-wave duo out of the depth of ohio. Mixing live electronic abstraction with groovable electronic music to make a great kinda of post trance vibe to it. Utilizing Samples with their own ethereal vocals they are not afraid to blend techniques from live dj sets with the current wave of live electronic music. 7am, the acts newest release out of Panther Sounds Merok records, is a great display of their classy Dance prowess.

Los Angeles is the home to a whole collection of electronic/noise musicians, who all seem  to share a affection for the eighties, the golden era of electro. Dam-Funk takes to the essential sound of classic r&b, Nu-shooz, Zap & Rodger, the true pioneers of the genre. Joining Him is Nite Jewel, the space disco songstress, for the song ” It Goes Through Your Head”. The Funk filled bass line in this track matching Nite Jewels Dreamy Melody, this song will take you back to 1986. The song is from the It Goes Through Your Head 12”, a classic collaboration.

The multi electronica genre bending act of Laurel Halo is nothing but joyful bliss. These tracks smear lines in the clubs between pulsating Idm and Shoegaze-chill out proving theres no fear in gems. Wobbly bass lines behind shimmering synth leads tinge of all sorts of genres, utilizing Dub, Drum n Bass, and Electro techniques. Check out her video for the track Embassy above, and also her guest vocals on a track from  Games called Strawberry Skies below.

The Breaks and Slippery 80s dance that seaps through Games, Music is full fledge electronica with silk new wave production. These tracks are as catchy and playlist worthy as they are lost in time, a sound caught between the abstract beat groups of Baths, Daedelus, And Tokimonsta but still holding down the chill wave front. Synthetic textures more than likely created via analog synth capture the enviroment of the vocal arrangements in these songs. Alot of the awesome retro techniques of the presentation remind me of CFCF, and Kavinsky. Games is an act is not to be written off, truly mergin the Toro Y Moi & Neon Indian Fans With the Brainfeeder, Beat Scene fan base. Please make time in your day to listen to some of their tracks, legit production & arrangement. it takes real originality to stand out in a genre, and these guys bend the expectations of multiple genres.

Leave it to someone from England to be innovative in the world of art and design; bolding meshing it with music and the lively underground dance scene of London. Stone and Spear is the design brain child of Simon Cook, a thriving entrepreneur and creative mind. Cook has gained not only local favour for his club flyers and in-house artistic direction for clubs like Lost Boys’ Club and Your Mum’s House, he has also garnered international applause for his aesthetic in design publications. Cook’s dedication to his work is unfaltering, as he also has an exclusion Stone and Spear merchandise line he designs.

Erleen’s spacey dance pop is meant for the dance club, they need it. Her atmospheric spacey vocals overs the hard house electro beats is a serious headtrip. Audio seduction and enchanting is the key to her aesthetic, and it works. The charisma on the track is enough to make you curious what could bring from her live show. With very catchy dancefloor ready beats straight from the memory banks of Redone, Diplo, And various other quasio electro-hip hop producers, her tracks are prepared for the saturday nite crowd. Her vocals and effects add the character to this songstress, making a effect of a kind of cosmic siren. you can check out her playlist below to get ready for your weekend.

In August, indie legends !!! released another fantastic, vibrant stomp through dance rebellion: Strange Weather, Isn’t It?.  The album’s infinite ability to conjure the best of !!!’s earlier efforts has not gone unnoticed in the time since, but much question looms over Strange Weather; we talked with lead singer/funkmaster Nic Offer about the new release and the band’s other recent happenings.

SOTR: Your new album was released in August, but you haven’t released anything since 2007.  What have you been doing in the mean time?

Beggars In A New Land – The Barnyard

Techno beats have a way of really changing music. This is of course how remixes are so much more renowned than covers, and comes under how style is about instrumentation rather than lyrics.

Guest post from Jon Lemmon:

New Zealand’s Leno Lovecraft is blowing my mind right now. David Bowie meets Daft Punk. Can it get any better?! My god. Lovecraft’s music sounds like it’s coming from an alternate dimension… filled with robots, genderless humanoids, synthesizers from the 70’s… and the sickest dance parties you’ve never been to.

Aussie 3-piece Holy Balm brew heady dork-dance jams, made to be smothered on the chests of robots to invigorate their, er, circuitry, or some shit. Robots, that is, that communicate with melodicas that stick out of their giant shiny robo-domes, and clank up against one another in smoky underground bars, bleeping happily and doing shots with their little retractable pneumatic arms, of course. To clarify, check Holy Balm’s bewildering 4 year old interview with In the Raw, which consists of the band shouting ‘Holy Balm!’ at one another and gargling in unison. Holy Balm are unsigned, and only release cassettes at their shows in Australia, so good luck with that one.

Secrets- Maneater(Nelly Furtado cover)

Secrets is Fraser Austin’s solo project out of Christchurch, NZ’s. You can download his album Coverflow via bandcamp where he covers songs from artists like Ace of Base, Paul Simon, and Tricky. He puts his own twist to each track with blown out keyboard noise layered upon danceable electro-pop beats and stonned-goth vocals. Check out Secrets slow-burn industrial version of Nelly Furtado’s Maneater.

Download Coverflow HERE

There must be some occult realm of insanity that certain bands are able to tap into. Acts such as The Residents, Ween, and The Fugs have all been channeling it throughout their careers. It seems that some helpful demon has told Spurm where this place is. Hailing from the notoriously depressing city of Seattle, Spurm deliver on the insanity with a healthy dose of childish fun. Combining vintage keyboards with bouncing guitars, Spurm’s music is pop-rocks for your brain.

No, you didn’t consume too much red bull and vodka, dehydrate in a hot-tub, and go back in time; it’s just the sound of Peters house Music. As evinced by Hot Tub Time Machine, time or culture don’t seem to function in a strictly linear fashion. The fashions and trends of certain decades always seem to bubble up to the surface of whatever our present era might be, and like everything in the universe culture is endlessly being recycled– neither created nor destroyed.

Download the track “Larmes de Crocodile” from Jef Barabaras bandcamp here

Download the track “Wild Boys” from Jef Barabara here

What if love and sincerity had a taste? While some might imagine some platonic fruit, the actual truth of the matter might yield something more devastating and real- something like the heart shaped (chalky and bland) candies that one receives on valentines day. The ironic mixture of the sincere intention behind the giving of the object combined with the prosaic message and vapid taste of the candy produces a particular post modern sensation of the synthetic and the sincere.

Fresh off a couple of European tour dates with notorious weirdos Cocorosie, one cannot help but think Light Asylum would be out of place. The two share a peculiar penchant for crafting catchy tunes but not much else. Light Asylum’s tracks tend to hover in the realm of spacey balladry over anything else, heavily driven by Bruno Coviello’s synth and drum machine work. Light Asylum’s more polished aspects, on the other hand, are from experience; lead singer Shannon Funchess has lent her deep, mysterious vocals to the construction of classic albums by !!!, TV on the Radio, and Devendra Banhart. Right now, the band’s MySpace is coated in exciting new prospects (in the form of album demos and summer tour plans), making Light Asylum a prime band to watch in the coming months.

Brooklyn: check.  Danceable: check.  Guitarist from Poison the Well: check?  If you haven’t heard Sleigh Bells yet, you have been living in a hole (or even more possibly, a hole filled with Creed CDs).  After releasing their debut full-length a couple weeks back, Sleigh Bells went from Pitchfork Buzz Band to media darling.  Getting past all of the quirks and highlighted indie nuances (living in Brooklyn, wearing ray-bans, etc.), Sleigh Bells has actually delivered an effort that deserves attention. Treats, its first LP, is a bi-polar romp through uncharted territory.  The duo tackles pop in a new light, meditating on the bubblegum qualities of harsh noise and the appeal of well-toned electronic drum tracks under delicate vocals.