Music Updates - Free Music Related News

Gogol Bordello are now officially everywhere: slaying at festivals, preventing global climate change with Madonna, intoxicated with wanderlust. And they're bringing it home with the "Wonderlust King" vid, Eugene high-stepping his way across Europe, getting the locals to dance, charming the cam. And where do you go after kicking up dust all over the globe? NYC, where else. Bring us your poor, your tired, your huddled gypsy punks, longing to be free. Or at least, longing to pay more in rent than anywhere else in the world.

Lidell Townsell - “Nu Nu” (YouTube)

Not enough words… this song never gets old. Neither do Starter jackets.

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Mr. Oizo is bringing back the orchestra and I’m loving it. First he made us fiend for saxophones in patrick122 and now he’s giving the flute some facetime. Let’s hear it for some real instruments. Everyone gets so caught up in synths and beats that they forget about the real shit. Anyway, Mr. Oizo took Calvin Harris’ ‘Merrymaking At My House’ and put his own little French spin on it which i think is more suitable to the vocals than the original version. Travis posted the video for the original in case you missed it….i almost like it better….almost.

Then Deadmau5 comes out of nowhere with a f’in bangin’ remix, too. Where did this guy come from? (Toronto, i guess)

Calvin Harris - Merry Making at My Place

Calvin Harris - Merrymaking At My Place (Mr. Oizo Rmx)

Calvin Harris - Merrymaking (Deadmau5 Rmx)

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It's been an interesting Canadian tour for Jack and Meg, and last night they ended their shenanigans on a good note. An "F," to be precise. We'll let reader Colin Ryan explain...

The White Stripes finished up their Canadian tour (covering every Canadian province and territory) tonight in St. John's, Newfoundland, with an amazing set. But the afternoon was just as interesting, seems Jack and Meg had a bit of fun with the fans here.

Since every Canadian date prior to St. John's was preceded by a 'secret show' somewhere in the town where the show was taking place, lots of Stripes fans in town were sniffing around all day for rumors and clues as to where the show was... a radio station leaked that Jack and Meg would be showing up at a downtown bar at 4pm, and when I arrived around that time about a hundred fans were waiting for them to show (in the pouring rain). But the bar was closed, no sign of the Stripes. The same radio station then reported about a half hour later that they were going to play at another bar, about a 15 minute walk/run away, which was met by a horde of 20-somethings sprinting through the streets of St. John's... upon arriving, still no Jack or Meg, with the owners of the bar confused. After most people had gone back to the original bar supposedly housing the Stripes, another tip came via radio: Stripes playing at a particular downtown hotel. Again, a hundred or more Stripes fans running through the streets, blocking traffic, into the lobby... again, very confused hotel staff not knowing what was going on, and no Jack or Meg.

Folkmote is Donny Hue's debut effort with the Colors, a band assembled to execute his take on psych-spilling chamber pop. After a few spins this week, we found "Mountain Piece" cruising to the top of our playcount (awesome listening for when you're next stuck sitting on a Jet Blue runway for an hour on your way out to Chicago), with lush, organ-infused folk by turns slow-building and soaring. Should find a happy home on your PMP, next to Okkervil River and E6 bands of yore.

Donny Hue & The Colors - "Mountain Piece" (MP3)

Folkmote is out 8/28 on The Kora Records. Hear more on MySpace, and jump for Donny Hue's fall tour dates.

Shortlisted for the Polaris Music Prize, the Besnard Lakes are enjoying a well deserved breakout year, and watching this vid will help the unconverted understand why they're on our shortlist for Act '07 (see also: Deerhunter, Battles, Of Montreal). "For Agent 13" has the band getting slowcore 'n' Spiritualized, climbing emotional soundscapes, and the clip's cinematographic treatment has a man shouldering a house of painful memories to an apex, burying his past at the track's climax -- just when a flashback recalls a whitewashed memory to show why the climbing's been such a struggle. Pull up a Kleenex and enjoy. Absolute love it. Jace and Olga are adorable.

The synth-and-jangle "Sci-Fi Kid," from the ever-killer Wild Mountain Nation, gets straight club-kid raver treatment here on remix Tuesday, with Principal Participant building a different sort of synth-and-jangle from beat-long snippets of Blitzen's flat-EQd acoustic, mutating the tune into a glowstick-worthy club beast.

Blitzen Trapper - "Sci-Fi Kid (Principal Participant Remix)" (MP3)

After the jump, another sureshot seizure inducing clip from Portland's finest genre-benders along with the band's summer show schedule.

Between a mix of tipster emails and Pitchfork Festival gossip, we cobbled together a slice of news that NME beat us to, citing an ateaseweb forum member. 'the king left,' as he's known to the Radiohead online nerd community, offered this nugget from his encounter with Colin and Ed at the secret GaGaGaGaGa listening party at Hi-Fi last week:

The poster wrote: "They're in the city mastering the album. Then they're going to listen to it, see what they think. So, we're almost there, maybe."

The poster's friend Marty also asked Greenwood if one of the much mooted tracks would make it onto the release.

Mirah Yom Tov Zeitlyn is always up to something interesting. Whether on her great LPs or inventive side projects, Mirah writes and performs music that is creative and refreshingly organic - songs generally sound acoustic, even though they often have electric guitars. There's just something about her performances that sound homemade and piecemeal, in the best possible way.

Mirah recently teamed up with Lori Goldston and Kyle Hanson of Spectratone International to set music to some short films by Britta Johnson. I don't know much about this performance piece, but Goldston's website says Share This Place is "Based in part on the writings of the influential French scientist/poet, Jean Henri Fabré , the show explores the tender, dramatic, sordid, tragic and triumphant lives of insects." Awesome.

Mirah and Spectratone International - Credo Cigalia.

My Tuesday was going just okay, and then I heard "Credo Cigalia," and it improved significantly. Coincidence? Probably not.

Share This Place comes out August 7 on the always excellent K Records, and you can pre-order it from Amazon.

And continuing on the Kitsune interview tip, here’s my conversation with Johnny Love from Guns ‘n Bombs who came over and sat on my lap to answer a few questions…

The Teenagers - Homecoming (Guns N Bombs Rmx)

‘it was dirty…just like i like it’ (more…)

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