Filtering through the mailbox, inbox and sandbox to bring you the best FREE music, hand-selected by the discerning members of the ChinaShop editorial staff each and every month. Hit the jump to commence downloading. Hope you’ve got more space on that hard drive…
“Used, abused without clues. I refused to blow a fuse. They even had it on the news. Don’t believe the hype.”
These immortal words, spoken in 1988 by the venerable Chuck D, could not ring truer in an age where Twitter followers and YouTube video views are looked at as a definitive measuring stick for talent. Buzz is, more often than not, a four-letter word. So it was with mild trepidation that we investigated Rhye, an LA-based duo who’ve chosen to keep their identities a secret in the midst of releasing a svelte, super sexy EP called Open that has the interweb, well, buzzing… and rightly so. (Check the slightly NSFW video for the title track after the jump.)
It’s not often a remix album gets some shine in the ChinaShop, but Bonobo’s latest is such a stellar reinterpretation of his 2010 full-length that we needed to dig a little deeper into the project. Simon Green, the one-man-show with the apish alias, has been releasing music through Ninja Tune since 2001’s Animal Magic, and his latest remix collection gathers together some of the brightest production minds around, including Lapalux, Machine Drum, Mark Pritchard and Brighton newcomer Banks. Green’s also thrown in two new original tunes, “Ghost Ship” and “Brace Brace,” both of which elaborate on the ethereal, jazz-inflected goodness he mined on the original album. The venerable DK has created a special Black Sands Remixed “mini-mix” that you can download from Soundcloud, or you can check out Green in action during his recent Boiler Room set. We caught up with Green for interview before he embarked on a string of Colorado DJ dates in support of the new album.
Jesse Thomas is a coffee-loving, bourbon-sipping, redheaded Leo with Kentucky roots. These facts alone were enough to pique our interest. Then we popped in War Dancer, her 11-song LP released last week on Red Parade Music. Now we’re hooked. It’s one of the strongest debuts by a singer/songwriter we’ve ever heard, and apparently we aren’t the only ones who feel that way. “Fire” has been featured as iTunes’ Indie Spotlight Free Download, and War Dancer is currently receiving the coveted “New & Noteworthy” treatment, getting top billing in the singer/songwriter category alongside artists like Ingrid Michaelson and Leonard Cohen. Not bad for a gal who, just a few short years ago, was “horrible at guitar” and moved to Los Angeles to pursue an acting career. Thomas stopped into the ChinaShop offices to rap about her new album, LA relationships, and why she’s not as sad as she seems.
Read the interview and check out her video for “Sidewalk Ends” after the jump.
Sometimes what happens in Vegas doesn’t stay in Vegas. Just ask DJ and producer Dani Deahl. One night, while DJing at the Artisan Hotel’s afterhours, she was chatting with a friend in the booth between mixes when she heard her effects being tweaked out. Heavily. When she turned around, she noticed a familiar face manhandling her mixer: Diplo. They chatted for a bit, and true to form, Diplo snapped a pic of the two of them. The next day, Deahl received an email with the picture attached. The subject line: diplo hates you.
Here’s what I love about the Grammys: everyone wins. When Robert Plant and Alison Krauss took home Album of the Year in 2009—or when Bob Dylan beat out Radiohead’s OK Computer in 1998—tuxedoed traditionalists got to poo-poo the upstarts who had come challenge the status quo. Then last year, indie rockers everywhere gave grandpa the business when Arcade Fire beat out chart toppers like Gaga, Katy Perry, Eminem and Lady Antebellum. And even if you’re cynical or tragically hip or “don’t really care about the Grammys except for Best Instrumental Arrangement because it’d be really funny for a song called ‘Nasty Dance’ to win an award,” you can always pour a drink, tweet yourself into a #coma and get your jollies the good, old fashioned American way… by being unreasonably judgmental while trying to guess who wins. Here, let me get you started.
Of all the accolades Theophilus London received for his debut album, Timez Are Weird These Days, none was more highly regarded by the artist himself than the #7 spot he received on ChinaShop’s Best of 2011 list. Of course we can’t prove this, and there’s absolutely no evidence to substantiate the fact that he was even aware we had a list, but his swagged out, fashion-forward, post-hip-hop panache would lead us to believe that our fashion conscious and musically savvy blog is somehow resonating through the fabric of his trademark LVRS ball cap and limited edition, signature series, triple blue suede Cole Haans.
Filtering through the mailbox, inbox and sandbox to bring you the best FREE music, hand-selected by the discerning members of the ChinaShop editorial staff each and every month. Hit the jump to commence downloading. Hope you’ve got more space on that hard drive…
Little is the new big. At least that was the vibe when alternative dream rockers Angels & Airwaves stopped by the Red Bull Sound Space at the world famous KROQ in Los Angeles to play a handful of songs and answer questions from fans. Known for breaking some of Southern California’s biggest rock acts, the radio station formed a partnership with Red Bull last year to create Sound Space, an intimate stage on which some of the world’s best bands could perform for 150 of their closest friends and fans. Following Falling In Reverse, The Fray, New Found Glory, and Sound Space debut performers Coldplay, Angels & Airwaves ripped through a five-song set that included songs like “The Adventure,” “Anxiety,” “Everything’s Magic,” “Hallucinations,” and fan favorite, “Surrender.” Lead singer Tom DeLonge waxed poetic about the end of the world, making doodles of naked superheroes, and why Angels & Airwaves and Blink-182—the multi-platinum pop-punk group he’s fronted since 1992—are two sides of the same coin. After the set concluded, ChinaShop got some extra time with DeLonge in KROQ’s luxurious mail room to dig a bit deeper into the mythology, beauty, and DIY DNA that is Angels & Airwaves.
Worldwide by way of Chicago, Tony Arzadon has brought his big room crossbreed of deep, punchy house and infectious pop to the masses via some of dance music’s choicest labels, including Juicy Music, Movement, and System Recordings. Like many of his contemporaries, it was his success with bootlegs that ignited his approach into the mainstream, having produced unofficial rerubs for Justin Timberlake and One Republic that caught fire with other DJs and across the Beatport spectrum. Though he’s no stranger to nightclubs in Los Angeles and Vegas, Tony is a Chicago boy through and through, raised on a steady diet of deep dish pizza and Bulls basketball. Before he departed to Aspen to DJ the X Games, Tony gave us the head’s up on his latest production project, as well as a list of his favorite Windy City spots for food, drinks, and music.
