Penguin Prison
Pop music is a fickle thing. As soon as someone becomes popular, or well regarded, or critically acclaimed, the next artist is hot on their tails, ready to snatch the proverbial crown straight off their heads. Contrary to popular opinion, being a pop star puts quite a strain on one’s creativity. Pop artists constantly have to declare themselves one step ahead of the curve, if only to survive the next culture-gripping trend wave. New York-based outfit Penguin Prison churn out brilliant, scintillating, ’80s-inspired pop hits with the edge of an indie band whose been honing their craft for years. The songs burrow into your brain and hatch into a million earworms, feeding off your endorphins until you realize you’ve memorized every lyric and you’ve been dancing for a solid hour. (More …)
Tensnake
The rise of Hamburg’s Marco Niemerski, aka Tensnake, has been slow but sure. And to anyone familiar with his work over the years, it is also more than a touch inevitable. This year has seen “Coma Cat”, with its irresistible conga melody, vocal hook, and jacking rhythm, explode in clubs worldwide. Originally released in January on the small, Munich-based Permanent Vacation imprint (a label that has become something of a dance connoisseur’s choice with a string of consistently excellent Balearic/disco releases), it was picked up by the mainstream crossover vehicle Defected in June. Meanwhile, his remix of Azari & III’s “Reckless (For Your Love)” has become one of the most hotly anticipated of 2010, based on just a minute-long snippet on Tensnake’s Soundcloud site with what seemed to be a sample from C&C Music Factory’s “Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)”, of all things. (More …)
Azari & III
Azari & III seemed to emerge from nowhere last year: fully formed club iconoclasts with an aesthetic both sonically and visually arresting. Their two singles, “Hungry For The Power” and “Reckless (With Your Love)”, reveled in sleazy sexuality, both dangerous and alluring: these were songs that prowled like predators on night time city streets. Flamboyant male diva vocals, courtesy of Fritz Helder and Starving Yet Full (née Cedric Gasaida), sung lyrics that flirted with S&M and nodded at the specter of AIDS. The accompanying video to “Hungry For The Power” was an American Psycho-meets-Paris Is Burning fantasia explicit enough to be banned by YouTube. The classic Detroit feel of the crisp hi-hats, sexily bumping 808s and judicious synth melodies were enough for the songs to be mistaken, on first listen, for lost ’90s house classics, but they were also far more than mere period pieces. Remixes for the likes of Booka Shade, Voltage and Mano Le Tough followed; and, after a superb set at the London Electronic Festival on a damp day in East London’s Victoria Park, the two men behind the project – Christian Farley, aka Dinamo Azari, and Alphonse Lanza, aka Alixander III – sat down to uncover some of the mystery behind the band. (More …)
Night Slugs
London has been a breeding ground for dark and definitive electronic music for what seems an eternity, but has only recently seen musical scenes shift at a seemingly record-breaking pace. The evolution that took place between grime and dubstep had solidified itself into a dark, spacious sound in which anything could happen. (More …)
KISSES
We first met Los Angeles natives Jesse Kivel and Zinzi Edmundson of Kisses when they said HELLO and introduced themselves in ’SUP MAGAZINE Issue 22. (More …)
Bridezilla
Bridezilla make music somehow laced with the same aesthetics and traditions that have made Australian guitar groups sound like Australian guitar groups: narrative, dirty and sprawling. Dancing endlessly through complex violin and saxophone melodies are vocals inflected with a Hope Sandoval hush, guitars grinding and sparkling in the background. At times it all reminds me of the Moody Blues back in the late-’60s; “Visions of Paradise.” (More …)
Oneohtrix Point Never
Oneohtrix Point Never is Daniel Lopatin, a bearded gentleman who lives deep in the ever-de-wilding area of Bushwick, Brooklyn. OPN is a glittering landscape of aural technology, with different fevers and moods depending on the track. His latest record, Returnal (Editions Mego, 2010) features cover art from Sunn O)))’s guitarist Steve O’Malley and opens with “Nil Admirari”, a track that has screaming and crunching and a loud violence that turns all around you and rotates your brain on a rototiller. It then moves into the beat-free next track, “Describing Bodies”, leaving you below the soil, all smoothness, tonal harmony and oneness. (More …)
Ben Frost
Thirty-year-old musician Ben Frost lives in Reykjavík, Iceland with his girlfriend and young daughter. There he works in Greenhouse Recording Studios with his friend and mentor Valgeir Sigurðsson. When he’s not making an album of his own, a task that Frost says takes him up to three years time, he stays busy composing music for contemporary dance performances, soundtracks, and to accompany the work of fine artists from around the world, as well as for his own visual arts collective Cicada. He is part of the record label/collective Bedroom Community, Sigurðsson’s record label, which also includes Nico Muhly and Sam Amidon. The label is home to Frost’s two most recognized albums Theory of Machines (2007) and By The Throat (2009) – both of which are critically acclaimed. (More …)
