Fujirockers: The official Fuji Rock Festival blog

Jul

In Praise Of Great, Lesser-Known Works: Take Me Back To Your House

Artists

This song and video first came to my attention when I got a text from my Serbian friend Sasa that said something like “Basement Jaxx! OMG U gotta hear this!”. I’m not as big a fan of dance music as Sasa, but he was right of course, just like he was about Royksopp. So what makes this tune so great?

Partly: Banjos. BANJOS MAN! Also, it’s a club song about wanting to get the hell out of the club and go someplace warm and cuddly. Being that clubs tend to just piss me off at about the 3 a.m. mark after the alcohol starts to wear off, I can relate.
And the cartoon Siberian Soviet Russia in this video is of course priceless.
Judging from these two blog posts, many of the hard core don’t quite get it, expressing surprise that this was the choice for a single. But that’s what makes Basement Jaxx the club group even for people who don’t like clubs (apparently there’s been more grumbling from the fans about their new single Raindrops; see Coglione’s previous post here). As in previous hits Red Alert and especially Romeo, they usually find a way to go outside the expectations of the endless chicky thump thump thump thump of an average night out.
(See also my post on The Greatest Man That Ever Lived

-Kern

Jul

0

DJ Tim Healey

Artists

This is a pretty fantastic remix. I liked the song better when I heard it without the video on MySpace, but the video is pretty great too. I can’t figure if this newscast is real or not. At any rate, it just proves what grandma always said: white people sure are funny!

May

0

Takkyu Ishino

Artists

Takkyu Ishino is all over the board in electronic music, from chirpy pop to minimalism to the sort of dirty repetitive trance you’re supposed to space out to on a beach in Thailand. But I first noticed him for his pop music, which is usual for me since I don’t like to space out on beaches in Thailand. This one, Stereo Nights, is great electronic pop like Four Tet filtered through some J-Pop light goofiness/kitsch.

Apr

0

Röyksopp: Like Olympics And Presidents

Artists

Röyksopp aren’t the most prolific of European electronic groups; they happen to be releasing two albums this year, but they are only the third and fourth since their formation in 1998, and they don’t release a lot of rare and special edition EPs and singles in between like many of their peers. It’s been four years since their last album, The Understanding, and it was four years before that for their first, Melody A.M.