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by Sean

Franz Ferdinand - "Take Me Out (Daft Punk Mix)". Thanks to stx, I managed to get my hands on this terrific remix off a new French 7". The song is surprisingly untouched, but what Daft Punk have done is to transform Franz Ferdinand into the band I wish they were. As usual, Pitchfork gets it totally wrong:

"The efforts of Daft Punk, unfortunately, add very little to a perfectly realized song, and prove deeply disappointing. Much like slapping bright-orange lipstick and green eyeshadow on a naturally beautiful girl, their electro-squelch additions simply seem detrimental to the original package."
See, the problem with Franz Ferdinand, for me, is that its dun face needs some make-up. The album hops and struts, but it feels like rock'n'roll in a big ole' gymnasium - the sounds dissipating in the air. It's a lotta noise that's pretty easy to ignore, one man on the piazza, flailing in a leather jacket.

It's true that Daft Punk haven't done much here, but what they have done is brilliant. Instead of reimagining the song, they've simply fixed it: they've squeezed the walls, knocked the light-bulbs out. The song's got that same dandy spring, but coming in round the shoulders is a heavy analog synth, a dark pressure in the peripheral vision. Suddenly there's some real danger in the white flashes, the snaps of guitar. It's not just boys getting hip and bothered - there are wolves in dem walls. The stakes are raised; Alex Kapranos sings in those opening lines that he's "just a cross-hair ... just a shot, then we can die," and those kind of lyrics finally kinda make sense. This is the thrill of a chase, of a fight, of a long and strobing night.

Chad Van Gaalen - "Clinicly Dead". A favourite of both Monica and Annette, they saved me the trouble of having to figure out which song to share from Infiniheart. "Clinicly Dead" is smashing bedroom rock that comes at you from all directions; Flaming Lipsy lyrics and noisy Modest Mouse pop. Reminds me most of all of Grandaddy, albeit without any of the noodly synths. It's too bad VanGaalen's vocals are buried so deep in the mix: I'd love to hear them toe-to-toe with the chorus' blooming buzz. The rest of the album is charmingly eclectic, heart-on-sleeve balladry knocking up against electroacoustic instrumentals. [buy]

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I like lists. Totally silly, but there's some grim satisfaction to nailing things down at a particular moment. Inspired by Aaron, then, here are some ho-hum lists for 14/07/04. the year's been pretty mediocre for albums, so far, but my cup runneth over with singles. and, uh, i indulged.

fave 5 albums of 2004 so far
jolie holland - escondida
joanna newsom - milk-eyed mender
kanye west - college dropout
les mouches - you're worth more to me than 1000 christians
william basinski - disintegration loops 1


fave 30 songs of 2004 so far (one song per artist)

1. modest mouse - "float on"
2. arcade fire - "tunnels"
3. wilco - "at least that's what you said"
4. britney spears - "toxic"
5. joanna newsom - "bridges and balloons"

6. kanye west - "family business"
7. one-t and cool-t - "magic key"
8. royal city - "jerusalem"
9. sufjan stevens - "Seven swans"
10. camera obscura - "keep it clean"

11. the streets - "dry your eyes"
12. fiery furnaces - "straight street"
13. divine comedy - "our mutual friend"
14. wheat - "i met a girl"
15. rza - "grits"

16. avril lavigne - "my happy ending"
17. jolie holland - "do you"
18. usher ft. lil jon & ludacris - "yeah"
19. rachel's - "last things last"
20. the killers - "indie rock and roll"

21. new year - "disease"
22. mase - "welcome back"
23. counting crows - "accidentally in love"
24. feist - "mushaboom"
25. mouse on mars - "wipe that sound"

26. the bees - "chicken payback"
27. mf doom - "doper skiller"
28. mocky - "mickey mouse muthafuckers"
29. eamon - "fuck it"
30. hidden cameras - "builds the bone"

by Sean

Sixteen Horsepower - "The Partisan". A google search for sixteen horsepower informs me that it equals 11,931.1979 watts. Which is interesting, albeit not pertinent. This is a soft-but-shrieking version of the Leonard Cohen classic, sent to me by Matthew. Sixteen Horsepower are at their best when David Eugene Edwards is bellowing from a flaming field, so it's not till the song's smouldering bridge that this track really shines. Before that it's too shrill somehow, too bare. We need the flutter of acoustic guitar, the flutter of french, with the crashes and electric howls set far in the distance. While Leonard's lull is gone, Sixteen Horsepower make this song much more clearly about war - about raw death. The snarls of guitar are like bomb tremors, the hard consonants like artillery fire. All eyes are black. And as soft as the song is, it's trying very hard to shake you, to unsettle the patted earth over graves. Frightening, intense, Chiron's folk music. (From the French release of Low Estate.) [buy]

Candypants - "I Want a Pony". As promised, a song for any newcomers who have joined us from Metafilter. It's sassy sugarpop transposed from the early 60s into the late 90s. Lisa Jenio's sour voice is at once a plaint and a challenge - demanding and flirtatious. Drums and synths hammer things into a sparkly confetti box-fight, while Jenio stamps her foot in time. "I want a pony / I want a pony / I want a pony / now." It's when your cute girlfriend turns out to be a disaster, and an equestrian. Courtesy of Aurélien. (Also, Candypants' website is on Geocities, which is cool.) [buy]

by Sean

A happy Monday to all. Ju-ly ju-ly.

SJD - "Superman, You're Crying". SJD is Sean James Donnelly, a laptop songwriter from Auckland. Yeah, I know, 'laptop songwriter' is an idea that's about eleven months stale. Hold on, though, and give this song a try. Give it a feel. Because it's wonderful - it's got a melody that takes you by the tuxedo lapels, that sings to you eye-to-eye. It has rippling strings and teeming electronics, a black matte bass-line and, like an unexpected homecoming, the lazy murmur of a harmonica. Donnelly's got Elbow's backup vocals and David Bowie's falsetto; he's got Sea Change's melancholy and his own earthbrown pulse. Better yet, it's the best Superman song we've heard in years: on snowy nights at the Fortress of Solitude, Kal El won't be turning on Coldplay. (Thanks so much, Adele.) [buy]

Hui Ohana - "Ulupalakua". Mike passes on this summer sweet track, taken from Hui Ohana's 1972 debut. It's so wonderfully gentle, harmonies like the nestling of clouds. They perform without any formal musical training, just the natural affinity of their voices, the play of fingers on slack-key guitar. Hui Ohana - Dennis Pavao and twin brothers, Led and Ned Kaapana, - was at the forefront of the 70s Hawaiian folk renaissance. As with Iz, their music is soft without being insipid; there's a hope, an open-heartedness to it. Maybe even a little sadness, there in the end of the phrases. [buy]

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Download an entire Tilly and the Wall record at their website. Yes, they have a tapdancer instead of drums.

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I'm always the last one to a party. I've long held Neil Young in esteem, but I can't say that I've much enjoyed his music. "Heart of Gold" is a scourge upon the earth, and the rawk side of his persona is not really my cup of tea. But thanks to the wise recommendations of my friend Jordan, I've been dipping a toe into Neil's back catalog. (Bob Dylan is next.) What do I discover but the bluegrey pleasure of Comes A Time: it's a magnificent little album, surprisingly reminiscent of Leonard Cohen's Songs From A Room and bits of recent Wilco. While I'm sure that you're all way ahead of me on this one, if you were an ignorant fool like me, well - i've done what i can. :)

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Gramophone business:

Starting at the end of September, Said the Gramophone will be on hiatus as I go travelling in Europe. I'll be backpacking and hostelling with my good friend Julian, visiting slightly familiar haunts and the colourful unknown. We really hope to get a feel for the places we visit, rather than being limited to museums and tourist traps. We're both E.U. citizens; when the train-hopping's done, we'll be finding somewhere we like and settling in.

If anyone out there lives in one of the following cities and would be willing to say hello, I would be absolutely delighted to hear from you. We want to meet people and listen to music, to find good conversation and magical places. We're both 22 and although he's got a distorted English accent, I assure you that we both possess a Canadian good humour.

Anyway, if you think you can help us out or meet for a pint, drop me a note. Human beings know the best haunts, I'm sure.

Our September-December itinerary includes (but is not necessary limited to): Brighton, London, Oxford, Cambridge, Glasgow, Dublin, Galway, Cork, Tampere, Helsinki, Tallinn, Riga, Prague, Bratislava, Budapest, Zagreb, Sarajevo, and Ljubjlana. After that, we'll hang around Italy or sweep up through Spain/Portugal/France; whatever our bank-accounts permit. And then live somewhere.

As always, thanks for reading. Tomorrow - a special tune for any MeFites who decide to stick around.

by Sean

The Monks - "We Do Wie Du". Jason passed on this track of sloshed and lurching surf-rock, from 1966's Black Monk Time. After being discharged from the army, five bored G.I.'s took to wearing cloaks and monks' pates, playing rock music for 6 hours at a time in Hamburg clubs. The product is a lumbering and beat-heavy song, thumping drums and a frankensteinian organ line. "We do / it all / all the day." Doo-bee-doo-bee-dooing backup singers, a precursor to Pelle Almqvist on main vox. Like real-life Leningrad Cowboys, or simply guys in black clerical duds, trying to find some bluesy American soul among the drunken german hipsters. Loose, wet, disoriented, and very glad. [buy]

Tranquility Bass/Low - "Over the Ocean (Low Owl Remix)". A truly remarkable remix of Low's "Over the Ocean," off of owL, an album of such things. What makes the Tranquility Bass track so noteworthy is that it's such a enjoyable, full-fledged song - not just a few bars of mormons-with-dancebeat, repeated ad nauseum. At first it recalls Four Tet, knocks and pats, clicks and brief synth flowers. The vocals - Mimi Parker and Alan Sparhawk - lap and overlap in more interesting ways than anything that Low's done on its own. "Over the ocean," they sing. We hear water. Then - horns! Melodic, coordinated, spirited horns, a mellow fanfare for the stutterflow reappearance of vocals. Tranquility Bass find room for dynamics and progress, new sounds that flutter out of familiar patterns. It's exciting, enjoyable, and totally surprising - who knew Low could be so much fun, so reassuringly human? Who knew that a laptop guy on an island off Washington state could better the work of slowcore royalty -- and by stripping away the slowcore! Who knew- Aw, forget it it; let's dance! (Tuwa again - thanks!) [buy]

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Mewsic's a new mp3blog with a dose of fine&strident politics, as well. Check: Selfish Cunt and Bran Van 3000.

Pop (all love) has posted a brilliant track by "A Girl Called Eddy," aka Erin Moran. It's called "Golden" and it's like Jesse Sykes + Jem, smoky country songwriting and then a stormfront rise of guitars. Bowled me over on first listen - utterly unexpected, altogether great. (While you're there, grab the second leaked song off the held-back Fiona Apple album, "Better Version of Me." You will not regret it: punchdrunk love!)

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see you all on monday! more exclamation marks!

by Sean

Arvo Pärt - "Psalom," performed by the Quatuor Franz Joseph. I realize that two classical pieces in one week is rather unusual in this hip-pop-and-go mp3blog world, but we here at Said the Gramophone say: fuck that, let's rock! And by "rock", I mean listen to moving, ghostly music by a contemporary Estonian composer. While StG readers continue to send me terrific songs (hooray! please continue!), I've gotta admit that much of the past few days has been spent listening to a new, Canadian recording of Pärt works. My dad picked it up and it's really, really wonderful - "Psalom," "Fratres," "Es Sang Vor Langen Jahren," two versions of "Summa" (strings and choir), and the centerpiece, "Stabat Mater." The performances - by the Studio de musique ancienne de Montréal (cond. Christopher Jackson), Quatuor Franz Joseph, and countertenor Daniel Taylor, - are exceptional. It's all so beautiful, and yet aches so hard.

Even if you're not one to seek out classical music, do download "Psalom" and tell me what you think. The cello line grows and shifts, meeting the other strings at every step, their dark feet leaving fiery impressions. Long silences, yearning reaches; then, with the bass, the sound of an unmoved acknowledgement. Something hears you but says nothing in reply: the monolithic, (re/un)assuring presence of the old testament god. Beautiful. Terrible. Blind eyes trying to see through the fog. [buy]

I recently but two and two together and realized that since Pärt's from Tallinn, and I'll be visiting Tallinn in November, there might be something related for me to check out... Anyone know?

The New Year - "Disease". I know I'm way behind the ball on this one, but this track from The End is Near retains everything I like from the Kadanes' old band, Bedhead. It stumbles sort of sleepily along, filled with that summer immobility: "106 degrees. The air was hot water, there was no motion in the trees." And then in comes that other guitar, doing chordal things I don't understand for a minute, but the result is that it feels like the skylight's pulled open, that there's suddenly cool air flowing in. Then lurch, we're back in that hot slow place, but then this time when things change the whole place breaks apart, wind flowing everywhere - it's in our hair, the creases in our clothes, the wrinkles of our smiles. Electric guitars surge up, a sound to fill your head; it's a beautiful noise, gentle and strong. "And dis-ease / has found us again." Everything's chiming and ringing and me I don't want to sit down. (Ooh, music video.) [buy]

by Sean

Computer troubles mostly fixed, but it looks like I'll stay stuck with OS 10.2.8 for a while yet.

The Weakerthans - "My Favourite Chords". A sweet, deceptively drab song from The Weakerthans' 2001 Left and Leaving. Fingers pass over strings like a comatose John Darnielle, nothing but voice and acoustic guitar till the drums, electric and lap steel appear in those last minutes. John K. Samson is as good a poet as Winnipeg's produced, and this is an urban love song that invents all sorts of new cliches; that paints new scenes instantly familiar. A pair descend upon an empty construction site. She brings her "swiss army knife" and "a bottle of something"; he, "some spraypaint and a new deck of cards." They write "notes to tape to the heavy machines." "'We hope they treat you well.' 'Hope you don't work too hard.' 'We hope you get to be happy sometimes.'" It's beautiful, soft and strong, full of treasured moments for the glow of dawn. While the Weakerthans often tend toward a sort of folky emo, this is a plain open hand, a slow waltz, an honest smile. [buy]

Brown Feather Sparrow - "Shadow Queen". This wonderful Dutch band was introduced to me by Sjaak. Brown Feather Sparrow do blippy folk-pop, reminiscent of Lali Puna or a female-fronted Notwist. "Shadow Queen" is deliciously light, like sun through leaves. It lifts into your ear and then flickers away. Organ synths wander about Lydia Wever's voice, horns calling from down the street. The band exercises terrific restraint, letting the emotion be expressed in the mutedness of the notes, the quick fade. Why wail and flail when there's nostalgia in the pauses between words, passion in the gaps? [buy]

by Sean

Abigail Lapell - "Self-Sympathy". Girl and guitar, sure, but really it's a bare and windy street, clumps of cloud falling from the sky, landing on the dry pavement. The wind blows the little packets of fog around; they collect by storm-drains, in the grafitti-smeared entrances to tenements. A raw ache that's been wined and dined, enlisted for use by a sweet voice. Lapell's guitar-work isn't anything special, but there's beauty indeed in the smoke that flows from her lungs, the way her words disperse storms, set the sky to gently falling. Like a sort of Sandy Denny, Natalie Merchant or Beth Orton, but Abigail lacks the twinkly eyes; instead, round dark things. She's from Montreal and this is from her EP. She has a new album I haven't heard. [buy direct from her]

Nas vs The Knife - "You Take My Nas Away (Barbaro edit)". Via Martin comes a superb mash-up from Barbaro, a Stockholm dj. Nas makes belligerent rhymes over the The Knife's high heaving electro-pop. (The Knife is a Swedish group and Fluxblog golden-boy.) Everything fits together like a chalk jigsaw-puzzle, glittery blackcopper left on your fingers. A steel drum leaves a wistful mark, girls sing like a disconnected Greek chorus. Nas hates the game, hates the game, hates the game... But we play on.

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Over at Teaching the Indie Kids to Dance Again, Keith's posted an outstanding song called "The Ratatat remix of Dizzee Rascal's 'Fix Up Look Sharp'". I refer to it as such because it's in that elite class of remixes; it recreates the song as something altogether new, a full-fleshed beginning-middle-and-end. Gone are the barren ghetto whoops, replaced with a wheeze of synths and the flickerflash beats of a predicted nostalgia. Instead of standing solidly over the production, Dizzee's drowning a bit in it, a victim of circumstance, swallowed up like one little kid in an enormous brushed metal city.

#644 is a brilliant new musicblog with mp3 updates, written by my friend (and StG commenteer), Andrew. He's my go-to man for smart hip-hop, downtempo electronica, and Edinburgh pop. Better still, he's funny. (Yes!) And he's off to a great start with thinky criticism-and-accolade posts on Aidan Moffatt (he doesn't like), Grandmaster Flash and Roots Manuva (he does), and Blue States (he wishes they had been hit by a bus, after Nothing Changes and before The Soundings). Do visit..

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