The Bug + Dis Fig

UK producer and electronic musician The Bug just launched the "LADYBUG" singles series on his PRESSURE imprint label, and is starting the whole thing off with a trippy and transcendent collaborative track with Belgian electronic artist Dis Fig.  Check out "Vanishing" below and download it, along with four remixes, here.

SONS OF ZÖKU

Australian psych rock group SONS OF ZÖKU dropped a great new track a few days ago, with the trip-hop-tinged "In You."  It's awesome.  Take a listen below and download it here from the band.

Daily Jam - Billy Bones

Here's a trip-hoppy track from Peter Hook side project Monaco.  Listen to "Billy Bones" below, our Daily Jam.

Massive Attack & Tom Waits

I don't know about the rest of you, but i certainly wasn't expecting to hear a collaboration between Massive Attack and Tom Waits this morning.  But it's here, and it's really damn good.  "Boots on the Ground" simmers with equal parts anguish and anger, a visceral sneer and middle finger to the powers that be, and the first new work from either artist in quite a long while.  Check the track out below and get it here from Play It Again Sam.

Daily Jam - Angel

Good morning.  Here's some Massive Attack.  Listen to "Angel" below, our Daily Jam.

Moderator

Greek artist Moderator trades in the sounds of trip-hop, electronic, and more on upcoming new album "Silent Cinema."  True to the title, the LP carries a cinematic aesthetic that can be heard in all its noir-ish glory on album opener "Dark Art."  Check it out below and pre-order the album here from Melting Records.

Daily Jam - Re:Percussions

Here's some cool, under-the-radar, instrumental trip-hop from the early '00s to help you all find your groove this afternoon.  Dig on "Re:Percussions" by Hint below, our Daily Jam.

SPC ECO

Bandcamp Friday was yesterday.  Hopefully you all bought some music from your favorite artists.  Here's a couple of new tracks from SPC ECO that should make your list next time...or now, whatever.  Listen to "Watch Me Fall" below and get it along with "Lights Out" here from the band.

SCALER

Bristol band SCALER make a dark and cold mix of trip-hop, IDM, alt-rock, and experimental techno that feels akin to the kind of stuff that would have rocked my headphones in the late '90s.  Check out "Mirage" featuring an assist from Art School Girlfriend below and get the "Endlessly" LP here from Black Acre Records.

Life in Mono

Here's some dark, brooding, moody music from Bristol's Life in Mono.  The band takes elements of goth rock, trip-hop, alt-rock, and ambient and creates an atmospheric, cinematic, noirish vibe.  Check out "In the Cold Dusk" below and download the new "If I Could Wake" EP here from the band.

Georgia Knight

Australian artist Georgia Knight has a real '90s trip-hop/alt-rock/electronic pop thing going on new tune "Desire" that i just can't help but be into.  Check the track out below and download it here.

Daily Jam - Just Like You

Here's a little chilled out '90s trip-hop from Locust for what has turned out to be another rainy day here in Central Texas.  Listen to "Just Like You" below, our Daily Jam.

Milkweed

Here's some very cool and strange new music from UK band Milkweed.  "Exile of the Sons of Uisliu" sounds like something from another planet, a warbly mix of UK folk, trip-hop, and general otherworldliness.  I'm not sure if there's anything else out there that sounds quite like it.  Dig on the track below and pre-order the upcoming "Remscéla" LP here.

Daily Jam - The Number Song

It seems insane to me that DJ Shadow's game changing album "Endtroducing...." is quickly approaching its 30th anniversary.  Just wild stuff.  Here's a cut from it.  Listen to "The Number Song" below, our Daily Jam.

Daily Jam - Hunter

So far this year, we've gotten two amazing albums from Portishead alumni Beth Gibbons and Geoff Barrow (with his band Beak>).  It would really be a cherry on top of all that if we could somehow get the elusive fourth album from Portishead.  It's been 16 years, and i think we all need something like that.  Anyway, here they are from 16 years ago with "Hunter," our Daily Jam.

Daily Jam - Life in Mono

Time and time again, I seem to find myself trading in nostalgia on this website, caught up and forever wading in all of my personal memories, stories, and emotional detritus like so many pop culture writers before me. And that’s okay I guess. Write what you know, or whatever.

But lately I’ve been dwelling on why nostalgia is what it is. Why it’s so dear to us, its drug-like and euphoric mental-caressing providing temporary comfort and soothing us like a proverbial teat. Memory narcotics. I think that a part of it has to be some kind of subconscious desire to return to the way things were, when everything was exciting and new, a whole world of possibility ahead of you. Youth. Innocence. A time before the future became the present…or even worse, the past. That would certainly explain the often contemplative or even existential melancholy that accompanies it. But there may also be a part of nostalgia that goes even deeper than our childhoods and hopes and dreams. In some ways, it’s a longing for what we used to be, a kind of subtle mourning for an us…a you…a me that simply does not exist anymore. On a mental level. On a biological level. On a cellular level. I am not who I used to be, and neither are you. As our bodies grow, and age, and change, we are not what we were, just a collection of old thoughts, moods, and memories within an ever-evolving flesh sack. So maybe we’re not just missing our pasts, yearning for what might have been, maybe we’re also missing our old selves who molted away or were sloughed by the wayside. And nostalgia provides us a time machine of sorts to revisit or remember it all again, be it the movies, books, and music we grew up with, or old family pictures gathering dust in shoeboxes and photo albums. They provide a return, or an escape, or a chance for introspection. And that’s important, even if this whole memory train can be a little annoying sometimes, that rehashing of old tales, old loves, and old obsessions thwarting our personal growth and future selves. You just gotta ride that time machine conservatively. Don’t get stuck on it. To paraphrase Sick Boy in T2 Trainspotting, don’t be “a tourist in your own youth.” Take the time to live something new. Keep evolving.

Now, of all the songs that have that hypothetical time travel ability to transport me back to whatever era my heart, mind, and soul associate it with, wetting that nostalgia whistle like so much methadone, none do so with quite the all encompassing zeal as “Life in Mono,” the quasi-hit from British trip-hop duo Mono. But it’s all so random.

Appearing on the band’s 1997 (’98 in the States) album Formica Blues, as well as the soundtrack to the 1998 version of Great Expectations, the song makes me recall nothing of any significance whatsoever. There are no long, lost loves or life turning points. No memories of fun times or great friends. No overlaying personal story arc to at least inspire within me some kind of diary-level gab fest. Instead, it’s all inconsequential bullshit. It’s me walking down 21st Street in Austin in front of the fountain at the bottom of the south mall at UT in late 1997, clouds greying, an old, green Toyota Corolla driving by me, contemplating going to see a midnight revival ‘70s porno screening* at the now defunct Dobie Theater. It’s me driving home to Midland one weekend during spring semester of my freshman year, the sun setting near San Angelo, the hunger in my stomach making me pull over to eat at a Subway. It’s me watching Much Music (Canada’s answer to MTV) in my dorm room, willing myself to nap between classes on a warm Friday afternoon, my focus zeroing in and out on the gaping holes in the knees of my blue jeans. It’s me rifling through CDs at the also now defunct Sound Exchange by campus. It’s me studying for a government exam that I failed. It’s me with insomnia as my roommate breathes slow and heavy on the other side of the room. It’s me at 18. Just being bored. Just existing.

For whatever reason, all of that comes flooding back in a tsunami like surge whenever I hear “Life in Mono.” And it will stay with me forever.

*The porno in question was 1978’s The Disco Dolls in Hot Skin.**

**We totally went to see it.

Blockhead

New York producer Blockhead was given access to the extensive KPM music library by UK label Def Presse, and the result is the sublime mix of trip-hop and hip-hop of "Luminous Rubble."  Groove on the sounds of "Dork Crystal" below and get the LP here.

Daily Jam - On the Horizon

When perusing through my CD collection, one may notice several discs with radio station call letters on them…call letters from the station I deejayed for in college…promo discs distributed to the station…radio copies. So I stole some CD’s from the radio station I worked for. So what. I guess I’m a bad person, but I totally discovered some wonderful tunes whilst being said bad person. And one of those tunes is “On the Horizon,” the trippy, Neil Halstead-assisted album closer from Locust’s 1997 LP, Morning Light.

Though it never became quite the cultural juggernaut that maybe it could have been, trip-hop was a fairly prevalent music genre in its day, specifically the late 90’s. And while acts like Portishead, Massive Attack, and Tricky lead the proverbial charge, there were plenty of smaller artists that fit the mold too. Combining chilled electronica, hip-hop beats, mellow instrumentation, and some well placed samples, Locust was one of those oft overlooked artists. Morning Light is a pretty solid effort from start to finish (there’s even a wonderful Karen Carpenter sample in the mix), but it’s the finale, featuring Neil Halstead of Slowdive and Mojave 3 fame on vocals, that really cements the deal. “On the Horizon” begins with some off kilter orchestration, vibraphone and reverb, an array of different instruments both live and synthetic, and Halstead’s soft, dreamy vocals. It takes a couple of minutes before everything begins to come together, the string section and a haunting beat forming like dark clouds in the distance. Melancholy reigns.

The song has always made me think about an old friend of mine who endured an unreal familial tragedy when we were in college, and her subsequent emotional distance that was the result. Over the following years, we grew apart and eventually lost touch entirely. And that has always made me sad. “On the Horizon” encapsulates that feeling perfectly. I still love her dearly, and I hope that she’s all right wherever she is.

“She’s fixing her wings just to fly…”

Listen below, our Daily Jam.

Daily Jam - All Mine

It never ceases to amaze me the way that particular songs can instantly take me back in time, reviving old memories, and inducing nostalgic pangs like some sort of weird aural sixth sense. They can paint pictures of times past or reignite old feelings, a whole series of moods, tones, and colors. I’ve written about it before (multiple times), and it just serves as evidence of how powerful music can be and the effect it can have on one’s subconscious and ability to recall.

It’s kind of beautiful really.

The opening horn blasts and trip-hop spy-movie beat of Portishead’s “All Mine,” from the band’s 1997 self-titled record are so intrinsically wrapped up in my first semester of college, that it’s difficult not to think about laying around in my dorm room, or smoking cigarettes with my roommate on the dorm’s outside steps, or exploring the campus or the city, nervous energy abounding as I find myself far from home among a sea of new faces and experiences. When Beth Gibbons joins in with her throaty siren’s call, I’m a teenager again, a whole future wide open in front of me, fear and excitement and exhilaration and joy all swirling around together in one big, kind of naïve mess of an 18-year old.

All nostalgia fever aside, the song is just a real wonder in its own right, a sexy and grainy amalgamation of colliding musical forces. It’s like some alternate reality Bond theme* that we’ll never deserve to get. Or like Lalo Schifrin making magic with The Wu-Tang Clan. Or like some piece of transcendent art that could maybe, sort of exist in any era, and be appreciated by any generation, if not for some far-out, exotic sound within that pulls it back to another. It’s gorgeous, and haunting, and like so much of the band’s output, can continue to challenge and seduce me over 25 years later.

So cheers to Geoff Barrow. Cheers to Beth Gibbons. Cheers to Adrian Utley and Dave McDonald. And cheers to me feeling like a young man again.

Or a stupid kid…depending on your perspective.

*It’s a goddamn shame that Portishead have never graced us with a Bond theme. My heart swells just thinking about it.

Listen to "All Mine" below, our Daily Jam.

Daily Jam - Cowboys

I hold on to the hope that one day we'll get a fourth Portishead album.  If we're lucky.  Here's a track from their second album.  Listen to "Cowboys" below, our Daily Jam.