NASTY MCQUAID’S NEW MUSIC ROUND UP

South Rakkas Crew – The Stimulus Package
It may be a couple of weeks late, but this entirely free album from the lazy Santas at South Rakkas still stakes a claim to be my favourite Christmas present of the year. Tracks explode all over the shop with an digi dancehall sound that comes on like The Bug making Benny Benassi electro bass without any trace of dank English misery, or indeed, irony. It’s a big dumb party with guests and genres popping up, smashing together, and staggering off to the dancefloor, limbs and pigeon holes all akimbo. Vocalists include Toddla T cohort Serocee, bashment legend Capleton and, somewhat bizarrely, indescribable San Fran freakniks Deerhoof. The tracks range from the undisputed dancefloor smash ‘Double Up Riddim’ to the dubstep meets Under Mi Sensi bass bubbling of ‘Rise’ to ‘Hands Up’s pure classic techno chords and steppas baile funk. Listened to in one sitting, the full set can be a bit wearying in its relentless party action, and personally it all gets a bit too much for me on stinking Mylo riddim -can you guess which Mylo track gets sampled …?— but the exuberance of the other songs on here more than make up for this, and the sheer fucking weirdness of the Deerhoof collaborations is worth the (free) entry alone. Download here — http://maddecent.com/stimulus/

SCNDL – Need To Know
I’ve got a super soft spot for gay US dark house anthems with a sarky queen talking over the top. Bam Bam’s ‘Where Is Your Child’, The Horrorist’s ‘One Night In New York City’, bangers every time. This track is carrying on this proud tradition, and does a fine job to. Creepy descending acidy riffs, piano break downs, grinding nasty bass lines and crucially, a big queen asking if ‘you wanna get in’. It’s all a bit Berlin sex dungeon and, to be fair, conjures up the image of a sweaty middle aged pervert with a very very serious face wearing a leather apron and dancing with an accountant who’s told his wife he’s out watching ‘the match’. Kind of. But that’s not a criticism.

Skepta – Bad Boy
Ridculously Tiesto sized massiveness. I know progress is good and everything but when did Skepta decide to turn into Haddaway ? I literally don’t understand, I do not understand. How do we find ourselves a decade away from the birth of grime stuck with this nonsense ? Skepta has been responsible for some bonafide classics- Duppy and Too Many Men spring to mind, but shitting hell he can pull out some strange old decisions when we wants to. This little number kind of lifts the chorus from Underworld’s Born Slippy and that’s basically all you need to know. If you think Skepta doing that sounds like it’s going to be a good thing you may like this. If, like me, you find the staggeringly woeful creative blind alley that half of this countries formerly great MCs have leadenly pranced down a sad and depressing event it’s probably best to steer clear. I guess it’s catchy enough and the track isn’t irredeemably bad, but then again, neither, necessarily, is the Cheeky V, the cocktail Charlotte Church invented containing 3 bottles of Blue WKD and a shit load of port. It is however, very pikey.

Fiction – To Stick To
Fiction are 4 piece based in South London. They channel a bit of Postcard records with elements of Orange Juice and Josef K coming through the jangling guitars and fey vocals, and this year promises to be a big one for them. This track has dreamlike whispery vocals with a hint of celebrity racist Morrissey creeping into the languid swoops of lines such as “When you last checked you didn’t like the taste// Hunger could persuade you// Since it was suggested I was taking shape// A shape will take you”. The backing ‘aaaahs’ and tambourine hits add to a sensation of a cosy, particularly English forlornness, making this an ideal piece to listen to whilst pressed against the radiator, drinking a milky cuppa and staring out at the white expanse that has swept January.
Download here: http://offmodern.com/news/index.php/fictiontostickto/

Maxwell D - Blackberry Hype
Finally getting a full release after knocking around on the underground for half a year now,
this is the former Pay As You Go MCs official entry into the brave new world of UK Funky,
and while he may have pissed off Lil Silva by riding one of his beats unbidden, and while the
lyrics are bollocks nonsense about phones most hoodrats had 5 years ago, this definately works.
After the skank craze of 2009 vocal funky is here to stay and a splash of personality on a genre that skates the big bottomless rink of deep house is a breathe of fresh air. It’s not big or clever but it bangs in the club, and if what the kids think counts for anything I had 15 teenagers request it this week alone.

Joensuu 1685 - Im On Fire
Big throbbing mother ship drums. squeals and drones and retro future synths . Mary Chain vocals swoop in a cathedral of gaze and it’s kind of like Muse if they werent a four letter word. This band have a stupid name and a great sound, somewhere between the stadium and the underground, prog in a good way, and beholden to single notes of bass playing skunkbucket riffs for heavy heads nodding until the levy breaks and guitars crash in. Best seen live, the vinyl, sick as it is, just whets the appitite for the show. A joy, pressed in 300 copies. Buy it now and feel smug hating em when they get massive

http://www.myspace.com/joensuu1685

Miike Snow - Silvia
The new single from Swedish Britney Spears producers Miike Snow opens with a very serious, very portentious piano line, and continues in the same poe faced manner throughout. Hyper polished and anemically epic, this has drivetime anthem written all over- big synth arpeggios, marching drums, and insipid lyrics combine to make, well, nothing much really. Perhaps a faint impression of a neatly made wet bed. Onto the remixes then, and it seems Sinden’s managed to perform the finest turd sprucing with a skippy carnival mix that avoids his more clownish tendencies and delivers a hypnotic bass line underpinning choice vocal cuts and nice touchs of melancholy. Emalkay hands in a dubstep mix that can only disappoint after the might of recent killer ‘When I Look At You’. Here he just whacks a load of sub under the original to make the kind of palatable dubstep, one eye coldly cocked towards daytime radio, that has been flooding out since Skream’s La Roux rework. And finally, Felix Da Housecat comes along like its 2003 with a big electro rock banger which would probably sound great changed off your nut in a Miami mega club, but just sounds annoying on a freezing afternoon in Blighty.

Lindstrom & Christabelle - Lovesick
With bass and horns lifted straight from Bobby Byrd’s 70s rarity ‘Headquarters’ Lindstrom’s new project sees him putting the space disco to one side and instead focusing his considerable studio chops on remodelling squelchy electro funk. Opening with breathy spoken vocals, Lovesick benefits from the Norwegian producers’ understanding of the importance of space, with the track being given plenty of room to do it’s thing without ever being swamped by uneccessary fussiness. The signature disco guitar chugs along carrying the beat, pianos stab in and out and Christabelle’s vocals fit in perfectly. Cruically ‘Lovesick’ pulls off the tricky maneouveur of wearing it’s influences proudly on it’s sleeve without becoming a pale imitation of them, managing to sound both retro and relevent. On this form the album should be a winner.

These New Puritans – We Want War
God bless you Puritans. The most under rated band in England have returned to the fray with a 7 and-a-bit minute claustrophobic neo classical opus the likes of which these ears haven’t heard since Radiohead’s misery opera heyday. We Want War kicks off all grimey DavincHe style discordant brass, marching gulf war drums, mutant voices and vicious little whispers before switching half way through to a sprawling choral freefall. Veering between the towering and terrifying, this tune has you wondering why more doom laden orchestral epics don’t pepper their epiphanies with sword drawing sound effects, because they’re pretty fucking amazing sounding here.

Hot Chip – One Life Stand
One time back when the internet consisted of a single big computer called HAL 57 and the only people who had mobile phones were dickheads or criminals, we tried to put Hot Chip on in a small pub in New Cross. They didn’t show up because the drummer had the flesh eating disease that everyone got for a week in 2002, and as a result the fairly ropey band I was flailing away in headlined, getting to play to hordes of screaming girls and sweaty palmed teenage boys. Since then I’ve always loved the ‘Chip, so I’m happy to say that this tune, even though it’s not really as big as Ready For the Floor and certainly won’t have the same all conqueringness as Over & Over, is still 87% brilliant, with skanking bass, warping carnival steel drums and the inevitable heart-rending chorus where Alexis Taylor sings so mournfully and so beautifully that you realise that Hot Chip are a genuine national treasure whom we should all cherise forevermore.

The Count & Sinden – Strange Things (Remixes)
My wife hates drum n bass in all its forms and she would definitely hate this record. I however am an ORIGINAL JUNGLIST and go fucking mental for it. Therefore, whilst the original of Strange Things is kind of a shit reimagining of ’98 dull and bass, the High Rankin remix is a massive and ridiculous amen feast that’s making me bounce up and down in my (junglist) swivel chair. It’s got a dubsteppy speeding up breakdown half way through and loads of ragga shouting and stooopid snares and sounds like High Rankin genuinely loves Congo Natty and Remarc and probably knows all the words to Original Nuttah, including the indecipherable ones UK Apache made up when he was taking a break from inventing jungle.

Chelley – Took The Night
‘Sassy’ is an unfortunate word. Does anyone actively want to be described as sassy ? To be honest I thought no one ever really, truly wanted to describe themselves as ‘bonkers’ but ooo-eeee it turns out I was wrong on that count. So I’m going to say that this is sassy. Its got a kids playground chanty vocal and an RnB beat at a house tempo similar to the type Pitbull likes to deliver his wisdom over. It starts off with some haters bitching in a manner not heard since ‘Baby Got Back’ then kicks in with the big club drums and general sass. And it really really gets stuck in your head which isn’t either a good thing or a bad thing; it’s just a thing.

Eminem – Drop The Bomb On ‘Em
I’ve never understood why Sting’s ridiculous Jamaican accent has been allowed to pass entirely unmolested. It’s the great unspoken shame of a nation. For example: “Giant steps are what I take // Walkin on de moon” What was he thinking ? And how has he slipped it under the radar for so long ? Richard Madeley does one shonky Ali G impersonation and is hounded from our screens. Sting builds a career out of an ability to pronounce ‘bacon’ as ‘beer can’ and makes millions. Bewildering. Still, it seems Eminem was taking notes, as he kicks off this new banger with a few stinking cod dancehall “bambaclaarts” before thankfully sacking off the crap accent and settling down to prove that he’s still one of the illest MCs alive. The beat is one of the standard piano chuggers that Dre could knock out in a coma, but it allows Em room to lyrically dance over the bars, tossing out references to a host of his favourite fictional characters, from Freddy Kruger to Stringer Bell via “Captain America on a ferris wheel”. Tis good to have him back.

Gramaphonedzie – Why Don’t You
If you’ve been looking for that elusive bridge that’ll link your love of burlesque (you naughty devil) with your propensity to ‘get on one’ down Shoreditch of a Saturday night, then this slickly produced bag of shit ensures you need look no further. Coming from a fine lineage of songs that cock about with a 40s swing band sample and some pointless house beats, this is essentially ‘Doop’ for a new decade, and set to be just as huge. I don’t know, maybe I’m just being a curmudgeon. No. Hold on, I’ve just listened again and it’s total gash. Possibly a number one come the new year. Jesus. The bloke who’s responsible also wrote the theme for Serbian Big Brother, which makes him the Balkan Paul Oakenfold. Make of that that you will.

POPO – Knife Iz Yung
Pallet cleansing garage punk that makes everything better and lasts for 1 minute and 27 seconds. The twinned vocals swoop lysergically up and down, the guitars explode, sound scratchy and broke, and the whole thing is brilliant and grimy and melodic and then over. It’d be weird if this review took longer to read than the song does to listen, so I’ll just mention that Mad Decent are putting out POPO’s album sometime early 2010 and leave it at that.

Nouveau Yorican – Boriqua
OK, well this came out a week or so ago, so I’ve slept on it a touch– pretty dumb on my part seeing as it’s come from the Sound Pelligrino, the label responsible for a mini tsunami of tropical fresh dancefloor hits throughout ’09. This time the increasingly omnipresent Laidback Luke joins forces with Gina Turner (who I’ve honestly never heard of) to turn out the JACK. Between them they offer up an ace slice of bompty house conceived in a sweatsticky warehouse located some mythical place between noughties Holland and eighties Chicago. The tune doesn’t piss about too much, instead staying nice and tracky, riding on a pitch perfect 303 bassline that wobbles along just fine until the synth stabs leap out of nowhere in a dirty great popper rush that’s 8 parts hands-in-the-air; 2 parts pull-a-techno-face. The whole thing pulls off the tricky task of sounding like classic house with all the shit bits taken out, like watching Stephen King’s It but without the bit where Pennywise turns into a cretinous 70 foot formica cockroach. Oh, and extra marks to the Harvard Bass mix for stripping the track down to a sinuous, jerking bass skeleton…