Red Bull Music Academy Radio | ChinaShop

Music The School of Seven Bells: Highway to Heaven

September 16, 2010 - 10:26 am

Like a lot of proto-punk/shoegaze acts, The School of Seven Bells‘ members were at a Fugazi concert when they witnessed what they knew was gonna be the next big thing. But it was at that show that guitarist Ben Curtis also stumbled onto an act he wasn’t expecting to see: Bedhead, a Texas-based indie electronic/shoegaze/Velvet Underground-ish sort of act whose ‘droning, relentless’ sound inspired him to pick up that first guitar. His own conception of ‘space rock’ was subsequently born, and he formed the famous Secret Machines, and steal the moniker from bands like Hawkwind and other prog acts who owned it in the 70s. It was on tour that SOSB was formed with the help of Alejandra and Claudia Deheza, identical twins who sung in beautiful, perfect harmony and made his vision complete. The 3 of them caught a big break opening for M83 and a couple of other big name acts, ditched their respective separate bands, and move in together to write music. According to the band’s site, their name is built around the concept of a ‘mythical South American pickpocket training academy.’On Red Bull Music Academy Radio, Ben Curtis talks about some of the acts that initially inspired him, particularly Simple Minds, Lush, and some of the other big names of synth-based new wave/shoegaze bands. Some great stuff here.

Music Dopplereffekt : Dirty Weather Ahead

by Shop Keeper

September 15, 2010 - 10:45 am

Headed by the incredibly busy Gerald Donald — formerly of Drexciya and one-time partner in crime with the late James Stinson – Dopplereffekt may hail from Detroit, but their sound is still unmistakably auf Deutschland. If you remember any of a number of classic scenes from The Big Lebowski, a few of them are probably tied to the Nihilists, those inept thugs who peed all over Lebowski’s rug and ran in place with huge pairs of scissors to German techno music. You might even remember the vinyl LP for that band AUTOBAHN, one of several Kraftwerk-inspired Krautrock electronica records that Jeff thumbed through at Maude Lebowski’s loft. Dopplereffekt would probably have been somewhere in one of Maude’s crates. Don’t get the wrong idea — most of that German influence probably resides in the lyrics, spoken matter-of-factly, yet in a very German, Dieter-From-Sprockets kind of way: In “PornoActress”, a digitized, modulated voice speaks “WATCHING YOU ON THE SCREEN”, followed by a girl who murmurs her own robotic cadence: “I want to be…a porno star…” ad infinitum. The theme continues with “Pornoviewer”: “I love to watch…pornographic moo-vies…” Which makes me think of another Big Lebowski scene. Don’t think of this as perverted, so much as just German, yet brimming with the best of the best Detroit has given us. It’s all in the funk, the beats, the rhythms. You get the idea. Now get a listen on Red Bull Music Academy Radio.

Music Ginga Beat Asks: What is Ginga, Anyways?

by Shop Keeper

September 14, 2010 - 12:18 pm

If you’ve ever seen the Jim Jarmusch film Broken Flowers, one of the first things you first notice is how much Ginga Beat sounds like the band that Bill Murray kept playing while driving around looking for lost lovers. That guy is actually Mulatu Astatke, aka the “Father of Ethio-Jazz”, and his music bares an uncanny resemblance to the sounds of Ginga Beat, a showcase of DJS and musicians who are actually from Portugal and derive their sounds from Astatke, DJ Mpula and Violet, and a bunch of other DJs from all over the world. And sure enough, ginga is not so much a name as it is a term, almost slang, for ‘any word that has any groove to it — everything, energy, good vibes, is imbued with ginga.’ (Or so says one of the group’s many members in the video we’ve posted below.) This clip in particular features Ginga Beat live at Red Bull Music Academy Radio, drawing on the sounds of African Roots and inspirations, (a somewhat nebulous term) and the rhythms which they themselves confess they don’t even know the names of. Here they are, talking about what they do best on Red Bull Music Academy Radio. For an added bonus, check out the video, which features the show highlights.

Music Mission of Burma Are Here to Convert You

by Shop Keeper

September 13, 2010 - 10:39 am

With their rollicking basslines and disco-dance drum beats, Mission of Burma is yet another band that seemingly came and went in the late 70s and early 80s, only to be largely forgotten in the New Wave/eighties uber-pop explosion that surfaced a couple years later. But MOB is a perfect example of how and why you should stick to your guns, even if you’re not signed to Geffen or whomever: here’s a band that has gone through countless incarnations and lineup changes throughout their storied career, and still remains defiantly and unapologetically unmelodic, at least for the most part, all the while playing a brazen mix of different kinds of music. Think of it as ‘punk, pop, art rock and avant-garde experimentation’, all rolled up into one bizarre conglomeration of catchy guitar riffs and just weird sound effects. “It’s okay to dance!” frontman/guitarist Roger Miller reminds you during their set on Red Bull Music Academy Radio, a helpful tagline when listening to their brazenly anti-pop rhythms, which call to mind a mix of Dead Kennedys and the MC5 at times. You know a band’s not in it for the fame or fortune when they include amongst their members an official ‘tape manipulator/sound engineer.’ It’s a strange turn the group took long ago.

Music Telepathe Already Knows What You Like

by Shop Keeper

August 23, 2010 - 9:05 am

Another in what seems to be a legion of 80s-influenced electronica/DJ/synth duos from Brooklyn, I’m starting to realize that really all these bands are doing is conjuring all the sounds of that decade, including all those over-produced synth samples and drum machines, minus the loud colors and Trapper-Keeper designs and cliche lyrics. Okay, maybe just the cliche lyrics. But Telepathe (pronounced Telepathy, kids) seeks to control your mind with more of a minimalist sound, one that flies in the face of everything the 80s did wrong. It helps that the lyrics are unabashedly tongue-in-cheek, poking fun at what made so many of the bands of the 80s so laughable. These girls are clearly a couple of goofy weirdos (as the awesomeness that is the video for “So Fine” proves) and great at not taking themselves seriously, which makes this all the more fun to listen to, and even enjoyable in the onslaught of uber-nostalgic eighties-worshiping electro-DJ/dance/post-disco groups all over the place today. Things will be looking up with this whole vicious cycle, provided we start getting more groups who are self-deprecating and less self-aggrandizing. Go to Red Bull Music Aademy Radio now and get yourself brainwashed.

Music Memory Tapes: An Analog Kid in a Digital World

by Shop Keeper

August 20, 2010 - 10:38 am

For whatever reason, The Memory Tapes is one of those groups a bunch of us at ChinaShop all sort of stumbled upon separately and just decided that we loved. And for whatever reason Dayve Hawke’s mad and eclectic genius has garnered the attention of a lot of famous players, including Britney Spears and Phoenix — and he’s ended up doing quite a bit of remix work for all of them, so whatever he’s doing, I guess it’s working. I can’t point out exactly what it was about their first single, ‘Bicycle’, that had me so hooked, but I guess that’s what a great musician does — manages to tap that mainstream pulse and get your blood boiling for some indiscernible reason. On this particular episode of Fireside Chat, Hawke sorts through some of his main sources of inspiration: Aphex Twin, and Lindesfarne, Black Sabbath, and lo and behold — The friggin’ Cocteau Twins is his favorite band of all time? If anything, Hawke proves that he’s got an eclectic mix of genres that influenced him — many of them from the days of vinyl and cassette, which he presents on this episode remastered and re-formatted for a new era. In this case, it’s downright confusing, perhaps adding to the mystery heaped upon him by the indie media (not helped by the fact that his wikipedia page says Hawke is “known to be a recluse and is hesitant on touring, due to a fear of airplanes”). Go figure. You can get a peak inside his warped mind now at Red Bull Music Academy Radio.

Music Little Dragon, Big Kick in the åsna!

by Shop Keeper

August 16, 2010 - 10:18 am

Comprised of 3 rather pillaging-prone looking Swedes and an even more badass tiny Japanese singer, Little Dragon has eschewed the death metal-friendly territory of their hometown of Gothenberg in favor of some truly strange sonic textures. There’s certainly a dated sound to a lot of these synth samples, which a lot of critics keep labeling as ‘icy’, I guess because they’re from Sweden — though if you’re going by geek 80s record references alone, you might even recall some of the exact same effects being used on a Kate Bush or early Hyaena-era Siouxsie and the Banshees record. And yet still others sound a lot like stuff you would of heard from some flavor-of-the-week synth band like Nu Shooz or Tiffany, only a bit more tinkered with as far as delay, pitch, reverb, etc…whatever it is, it works, and to surprising effect — though it’s curious to hear sounds and samples that were considered hack 25 years ago which have now been recycled with more panache and class by new groups being revered as the Next Big Thing. I guess Baja Men have about another decade and a half to go before they start hearing the influence “Who Let the Dogs Out” had on aspiring rock stars still in their musical infancy who later ascended to greatness. Rambling aside, these guys are weird, and in a more infectious, shake-yer-ass sort of way than the aforementioned. All the more reason to get to the parti now on Red Bull Music Academy Radio…

Music Chromeo: A Time Warp in Funk

by Shop Keeper

August 13, 2010 - 11:57 am

Posing by a Delorian seems like a fail-safe marketing move – you see Marty McFly’s car, and you’re probably interested in what’s being offered. In this case, it’s also quite appropriate, as Chromeo consists of a couple talented guys (David Macklovitch/P-Thugg and Patrick Gemayel/Dave 1) who’ve immersed themselves in the electrofunk and R&B pop of yore, and whose own brand comes so close to sounding exactly like Klymaxx or Tito Jackson that one might believe they really did fly back in time to steal their sounds. But it’s not only a devotion to that old sound, but a duo whose hard work remixing a variety of artists — everyone from Lenny Kravitz to Hall and Oates, the latter of whom they’ve even been compared with — is finally getting them some exposure. (Though to be fair, one of them being the brother of the one-and-only A-Trak, winner of the 2007 DMC World Championships, surely can’t hurt their chances). Throw in that unmistakable reverence for 1980s/early 90s radio-R & B and pop like Tito and Rockwell, and Chromeo proves all it takes is that love for rehashed music, and maybe a little patience as you wait over a period of a decade or 2 for the musical cycle you’re in to repeat itself, to get yourself noticed. The right amount of work and the right timing is everything. Enough lecturing; Red Bull Music Academy Radio can school you best.

Music Mudhoney: What Doesn’t Die

by Shop Keeper

August 12, 2010 - 10:47 am

As their bio pretty much sums up the importance of this incendiary Seattle band, I’ll just paraphrase that while it may have been Nirvana that moved all eyes towards the Northwest, Mudhoney were the original originals. A notably garage rock-influenced, fuzz-addicted furious four that put out a little gem of an EP called Superfuzz Bigmuff, and ended up inspiring Cobain to dream of Nirvana. You might have even heard the guys gave birth to an early incarnation of Pearl Jam. I remember even as a wee lad hearing my friend’s teenage brother blasting Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge in his room, and proclaiming that they were the next big thing. Damned if he wasn’t rather prescient for a pimply-faced punk, as EGBDF ended up being the one that got them signed by Reprise. Though the group undeservedly got some backlash for putting out an album so soon after Kurt Cobain’s death, as if they were somehow responsible for it (even though they admittedly did make a remark about some anonymous musician blowing his brains out on “Into Yer Shtik”), they’ve been touted for years as one of the most important groups to ever come out of Washington, and one of the 2 or 3 that really gave birth to the Seattle Scene. You get the point; they were important. And for more on this seminal punked-out, garage-grunge quasi-metal outfit, head over to Red Bull Music Academy Radio, and listen to Mark Arm, Steve Turner, Dan Peters, and Guy Maddison give a Fireside Chat on their legendary exploits in and out of Seattle.

Music Karl Hector and The Malcouns: Bathe in the Funk!

by Shop Keeper

August 6, 2010 - 11:29 am

As far as musical devotion, Funk is certainly the shrine at which Karl Hector and The Malcouns worship first and foremost. But their musical palette is a diverse, chaotic one, and muddled with a mosaic of different musical tastes. So…don’t start running for your predictable verse/chorus/verse pop yet: this is an anarchy of the good kind, a delectable kind of disorder that even the most hard-assed funn-duddys will find it impossible to resist (more likely if under the influence of illegal substances and/or alcohol). Listening to the somewhat tried-and-true reggae and boogie stylings of Hector, however, the more middle-eastern flavor that’s really the centerpiece of the band’s sound could go entirely unnoticed. It goes without saying that they’re extremely talented, weaving in and out of that vaguely Ravi Shankar-esque-pseudo-sitar-sounding melodies, with some acid jazz and psychedelic riffs and what sounds like a nodding off Buddy Rich behind the skins. But again, I might emphasize that the more you listen, the more you appreciate them. It’s a hundred-miles-an-hour impromptu free for all, but also an afrocentric-tinged party that sounds like The Animals or even a Grateful Dead style jam session at times. And well worth listening to should you have the patience. Sample yourself some now at Red Bull Music Academy Radio.