Yes, I've Been Black But When I Come Back

To begin with, I was a firm supporter of Frankmusik and tried to force his early Frankisum EP release on anybody that crossed my path.

However, the majority of his releases since then have fallen short of that standard, with the exception of his excellent collaboration with Computer Club, 'Losing Streak'. When his debut album, Complete Me, finally surfaced, the magic from his early demos was strangely absent and the whole project seemed a little overcooked.

Earlier today, however, he unleashed his 'Long Live Frankmusik' EP, which you can download free of charge here.

The EP's four tracks remind me of the reasons why I first took to his music so enthusiastically and suggest that album number two might be the one that changes everything:

Frankmusik - Warrior by thebubbleboy

Frankmusik - Our Discovery (Tribute to Daft Punk) by thebubbleboy

This is an older track I stumbled across in my iTunes today. Probably not to everyone's tastes, but I kind of dig it.

Frankmusik - Rehab (Amy Winehouse Cover) by thebubbleboy

All Of Us, Up In The Clouds...

Hype Machine struck gold again this week when it introduced me to French duo SomethingALaMode.

Classical musicians fed on club culture, Thomas Roussel and Yannick Grandjean team big beats with sweeping strings to craft a distinctive brand of electropop. I'm especially enamoured with their recent single '5am' and its New York ramble of a video.

SomethingALaMode featuring K.Flay - 5am



The gorgeous LaTourette remix was what initially caught my attention and I also like the more club-friendly Valerna remix:

SomethingALaMode featuring K.Flay - 5am (LaTourette Remix)



SomethingALaMode featuring K.Flay - 5am (Valerna Remix)

Chuunes

I'm determined for Novemember to be the busiest blog month to date and can think of no better way to kick things off than with an introduction to my current obsession, Muchuu.

Muchuu (pronouced "Moo Chew") are George and Milky, an impossibly cutesy brother and sister combo that produce beautiful, shimmery synth-pop. According to their rather excellently designed web-site, 20-year-old singer Milky "writes lyrics about dreams, things she sees on her adventures, imagination and escapism; appreciating the real things, the little things that make you smile", while 18-year-old George provides the synths and harmonies on a keyboard he bought for £29.

I'd describe their stuff as sounding a bit like Frou Frou crossed with Ellie Goulding but it's probably best you decide for yourself:

Somebody Tell Me



Coral and Shell



Patchwork



Adventure We Go



[Image: Jason Dare]

Too Good To Be Troux

I'm positively salivating at the prospect of the La Roux album after hearing their latest track 'I'm Not Your Toy'. Also, isn't the sleeve for their equally amazing forthcoming single just wonderful?

Check out 'I'm Not Your Toy':



Yum.

La Roux To You Too

La Roux continue to deliver decidedly killer tracks. The wonderful 'In For The Kill' is currently storming the charts and has become their first bona fide hit. The follow-up single, 'Bulletproof' has now materialised and it's fairly brilliant.

The stuff I heard from the pair prior to this has been great but not exactly varied. This track is different enough to suggest that La Roux are no one-trick-pony. It's not due out for a couple of months but I can see this being a Summer hit and a half.

Ch-ch-check it out:



[Image: Myspace]

Frankmusik vs. Wino

I had kind of lost interest in Frankmusik until his recent 'Live and Lost' project, whereby he hitch-hikes his way from one end of Great Britain to the other, performing along the way and documenting his exploits on Myspace and Twitter.

Now comes a fantastic cover version of Amy Winehouse's 'Rehab', which you can download from here courtesy of Pretty Much Amazing.

I realise 'Rehab' has been done to death and appreciate that anyone averse to electropop will despise this but I, for one, think it's marvellous.

About Annie

One of the first posts I made when I resurrected this blog last July was about Norwegian popstar Annie.

Annie was a darling of the blogosphere back in 2004 when uber-cool music site Pitchfork took a fancy to her debut album 'Anniemal'. The album was moderately successful but its follow-up, 'Don't Stop' was shelved last year after it's lead single 'I Know UR Girlfriend Hates Me' failed to make an impression on the charts.

It's a pity the release was scrapped because there were some fine pop tracks on 'Don't Stop', most notably 'Songs Remind Me Of You', one of my favourite songs of 2008.



Annie subsequently 'parted ways' from Island Records but, perhaps anticipating such an eventuality, Annie had stipulated in her contract that she would retain ownership of the master recordings. She intends to release the album, after some re-working, at some stage this year but it's unclear how exactly she'll go about doing that.

In the meantime, we can look forward to her new single 'Anthonio', which is being released on Richard X's independent label 'Black Melody' next month. A snippet of the track appeared on her myspace today and it's pretty promising. It reminds somewhat of Sally Shapiro's Italo Disco-influenced grooves and suggests that Annie is more at ease without the pressures of a major label on her shoulders.







[Images: Myspace]

Frankly, My Dear...

I've been an ardent supporter of Frankmusik ever since Popjustice brought the lovely Vincent Frank to my attention about eighteen months ago.

Since then, he's signed to a major record label, released a couple of EP's, and been shortlisted for the BBC 'Sound of 2009'. In recent months, he's worked with producer Stuart Price on tracks for his imminent album release. Price rarely delivers anything short of brilliant but I can't help but feel that many of the re-recordings of the Frankmusik tracks that have begun surfacing on his Myspace are a little over-cooked and inferior to the original demos.

After hearing the Frankmusik remix of Lady Gaga's 'Eh, Eh', which manages the difficult task of making a dud of a track even worse, I was beginning to suspect that Frankmusik had gone off the boil. Then I stumbled across this video for his next single 'Better Off as Two' today and it has allayed my doubts somewhat.

The track is relatively untouched from the original demo and the video is a lot less cringe-inducing than his last effort for 'Three Little Words'. (Frankmusik: Human. Definitely not dancer.)



If the team behind Frank have any sense at all, they'll follow this release with the Boys Noize remix of 'When You're Around'.

We're Running Down The Street In Our Underwear

Kudos to Helen for the discovery of FM Belfast. Despite the Northern Irish connection suggested by their name, this zany quartet actually hail from Iceland.

Their electrofied version of Rage Against The Machine's 'Lotus' (AKA 'Killing in The Name Of') is genius but my favourite track is 'Synthia', mainly because the lyrics reminded me of this:

Jake Shears meets Royksopp? Decide for yourself:



[Angelica image: TV Acres]

Disco Stickin' It To 'Em

The Lady Gaga backlash has begun. Most of the reviews I've read in the Irish press have slated her album 'The Fame' and many of the cool kids that championed her eight or nine months ago when ' Just Dance' first surfaced on the web have abandoned her now that she has been embraced by mere mortals.

If the bizarre choice of 'Nothing Else I Can Say' as a single and generic video that accompanies it tempted me to jump ship quicker than you can say: "The Ting Tings", the Love Game video that materialised yesterday has convinced me to go back below deck. 'The Fame' is definitely weighed down by some duff songs and Gaga's music is hardly cerebral but there are a handful of tracks in her arsenal, including this one, that border on pop perfection.

I'd recommend you click here to view the video in HQ ('Embedding Disabled By Request' strikes again) over watching this disastrously out-of sync version:



Cheers to Eimear for the tip.

Finntastic

Back in third year of DCU, I was obsessed with CSS and more or less played their self-titled debut album on loop. Their follow-up album 'Donkey', released last year, was a big disappointment though.

Finnish trio Le Corps Mince De Françoise's tunes are exactly what I hoped 'Donkey' would sound like. I'd recommend checking out their tracks 'Rayban Glasses' and 'Cool and Bored' but my favourite track is probably 'Bitch of the Bitches', which sounds like an update of CSS's 'Meeting Paris Hilton'.


[Image: Myspace]

Mystic Megs

Brooklyn-based trendies Telepathe have been stalking me for some time. No matter where I wander on the interweb, they're waiting for me.

As a result, I'm not sure if this track 'So Fine' is extremely brilliant or just very familiar. It's probably a little of both.



If Nialler 9 is to be believed, their whole album is great. Also, aren't those new titles on the Youtube videos kinda gaudy?

[Image: Jeremy Liebman]

Tips For... Er, 2006

I've got so much time for Last FM. The music website "scrobbles" the music you listen to on your MP3 player or computer and then recommends artists you might like based on what people who share your musical tastes are listening to.

Yesterday, it endorsed UK electropop outfit Temposhark, whose duet with Imogen Heap on 'Not That Big' I quite enjoyed back in 2007. Turns out the whole Temposhark album is pretty decent. Thanks Last FM!

Better yet was the recommendation of Dangerous Muse, a campy New York-based duo whose synthy anthem 'The Rejection' bypassed me completely back in 2006 but still sounds fairly awesome almost three years later:



Their debut album is due out in the next few months and news that the record is being produced by Bloodshy & Avant is very promising indeed.

You Can't Make Someone Want You

True that.

But enough about my love-life. Here's a new track from Swedish oddities Lo-Fi-Fnk. Their 2006 album 'Boylife' is a favourite of mine but they've been fairly AWOL since then. I happened upon a new track by them on the latest Kitsuné Maison Compilation.



It's called 'Want U'. Not sure if it's part of an upcoming release or just a once-off. It's fairly awesome though.

Lady in Red

After yesterday's 'Sound of 2009' post, I went to the effort of listening to efforts of the various hotly-tipped artists.

It has to be said that most of them rank quite highly on a scale of one to brilliant. Empire of the Sun, White Lies, Florence and the Machine and Dan Black were all pleasant discoveries and I shall be illegally downloading making legitimate purchases of their music.

Pick of the bunch though is probably La Roux.

Signed to Polydor (although her first single was released by uber-cool indie label Kitsuné), La Roux is 20-year-old Brixtonite Elly Jackson. Popjustice has this to say about her: "File this one under pop music that sounds like dance music/dance music that sounds like pop music, alongside Little Boots, Frankmusik and Lady Ga Ga, although La Roux's own influences include Michael Jackson, The Knife, Human League, Talk Talk and CSS."

Here's the video for her new song, Quicksand. If it wasn't so amazing, Prince would probably sue.

Am I The Only One Who's Insane?

Anyone who's come within a ten-metre radius of me during the past couple of weeks has probably had the music of Ladyhawke forced upon them. I do apologise for my excessive zeal but I genuinely believe that people's lives stand to be enhanced by the inclusion of this Antipodean beauty's eponymous début album in their CD collection (or Itunes library, if you must.)

Pastiche of 80's synth-pop is very 'in' at the moment but I think few can pull it off quite as convincingly as Ms. Hawke (real name Pip Brown.) Originally from New Zealand, Brown is a sufferer of Asperger's Disorder and was previously in a band with one of the member's of electro outfit Pnau, with whom she recently collaberated.

Included below in youtubular form are:

1.) Biggest hit to date 'Paris is Burning'.

2.) The aforementioned collaboration with Pnau

3.) Forthcoming single 'My Delirium', which I believe could be the track to convert the masses to the cult of Ladyhawke.

It's Curtains for Siobhán

Siobhán Donaghy has been dropped from her record label, Parlophone, following the 'poor commercial success' of her sophomore album, 'Ghosts'.

The former-Sugababe is hardly a household name but I think it's a shame that she hasn't enjoyed more success with her quirky brand of avant-garde electro-pop, influenced by the likes of Kate Bush and The Cocteau Twins.

Here's hoping she gets picked up by an independent record label.

The Swedest Thing

Lykke Li in typically stonking form.



Probably my favourite track from her awesome début 'Youth Novels'. Here's hoping it helps to garner her the attention she deserves.

The Jury's Out

Lady Gaga: pop saviour or fraudulent poser?



You decide.

Great Danes

I'm an Alphabeat fan and not ashamed to admit it.

I concede that there's something very 'Ace of Base' about the Danish sextet but I can't help but love their unashamedly joyous pop ditties. Quite often their lyrics make no sense and I recently described them to a friend as 'like The Chalets but without the irony' . However true this might be, the band seem to really enjoy the music they're making and, as evidenced by their stonking performance in Whelans on Tuesday night, they're well able to cut it live.

Alright, I'm babbling.

Behold the band's new single 'Boyfriend'. I challenge you not to tap your feet to the (alpha)beat.



Alphabeat myspace