Almost a decade after forming in their home town of Durham, North Carolina, MCs Phonte and Rapper Big Pooh (collectively known as Little Brother) have announced that their upcoming fourth album, LeftBack, will also be their last record together. Read more »
Don't sleep! Read the new issue of XLR8R online now! From Latin playboy Matías Aguayo's creative take on house to Londoners L-Vis 1990 and Bok Bok holding it down with their club and label, Night Slugs, to a full-on survey of the unnameable scene that encompasses Washed Out, Pictureplane, Toro Y Moi, and Neon Indian, this issue of XLR8R is packed with heat! Read more »
XLR8R's Patrick Sisson, writer of last year's Vapour Trails: Revisiting Shoegaze piece, informs us via an email from guitarist/vocalist Stephen Patman that the UK's Chapterhouse is set to reunite for a US tour this spring. Read more »
Of all the new producers to pop out of the London underground, we must admit that there's an especially warm place in XLR8R's collective heart for Cooly G. Not only do her dark and techy beats sound like no one else's, but her sexy vocals subtly turn up the heat while maintaining a totally cool vibe. Plain and simple, we love the girl, which is why we've been hounding the UK's funky queen to put together an XLR8R podcast ever since she graced the cover of our magazine last fall. Read more »
When the Unsound Festival kicks off in New York next week, many people will flock to see heavy hitters like Carl Craig and Vladislav Delay or buzzworthy up-and-comers like Untold. Yet the festival curators have taken special care to invite all sorts of artists to participate, and the man traveling the farthest to perform is none other than Belarusian dub-techno producer Pavel Ambiont. Although his name may not ring out quite yet, the analog pulse of "Error Asking Thread to Dub" is proof that you can never can be sure exactly who is going to blow your mind at festivals like this one. Ambiont will be performing on February 13 as part of the Bass Mutations showcase alongside Untold, 2562, TRG, Pole, and FaltyDL—not a bad introduction to the United States.
Crafty producers have been churning out upbeat, analog-synth-powered dance tunes for decades now, but the infectious nature of a good arpeggio is practically undeniable, especially when paired with a solid backbeat. Amsterdam's Rimer London, who also spends time in electro-disco outfit Le Le, has learned this lesson well, as "Intercity" is a delicious dose of spacey-yet-danceable electronic pop. You know, the kind that vaguely recalls the early '80s when people loved/feared technology in a totally naive way and everyone couldn't wait for someone to invent a robot that knew how to love. That's what 1983 was like, right?
A few years ago, some San Francisco DJs and music enthusiasts happened upon a stack of unreleased tape reels featuring collaborations between gay disco icon Patrick Cowley and multi-instrumentalist Jorge Socarras. Shockingly, Catholic was not a Hi-NRG disco album along the lines of Cowley's production for Sylvester, but a multi-genre concept work that hardly contains any typical disco elements. Read more »
This April, the Rocky Mountain State is going to get a taste of unadulterated New York techno with the Brooklyn-based dance club The Bunker transporting itself out to Boulder, Colorado for the third annual Communikey festival. Read more »
Sounding something like a lush combination of Hudson Mohawke's stuttering productions and Top 40 radio's sugary hooks, "Ceja De Carnival," from Spain's BFlecha, is a surprisingly brilliant original track to be coming from such a young artist, especially one whose native stomping grounds in Galicia aren't exactly known as a hotbed of wonky beats. The talented female producer seems to not only know her way around a solid hip-hop beat, but also the kind of synth work that makes those kinds of productions flow so well. You can grab "Ceja De Carnival" along with its B-side, "Kosmic Lovers," from Arkestra in February.
At the bottom of the flyer for last October's edition of Night Slugs, the London club night run by Alex "Bok Bok" Sushon and James "L-Vis 1990" Connolly, it simply states: "house/bass." Compared to the convoluted descriptions you see on most rave handbills and posters—full of buzzwords trying to tempt floating punters inside the door—it's simultaneously simple and all-encompassing, and gives the first clue to the policy of what London's best party is all about. Read more »
XLR8R Downloads Player
