/am.fm.pm/

2009-11-21T00:10:00.010-05:00

Its Gattaca by way of JNCO Jeans cover art notwithstanding, I get the queasy feeling that Chris Brown's Graffiti will be moving big numbers when it ships December 8th. So take note, Ben Gibbard: if you want to beat the shit out of Zooey*, apparently six months community service and a viral wedding video is all the recompense needed to get you back in the public's good graces. The site here took a little heat when discussing the death of Ike Turner a few years back, specifically for calling into question the veracity of rape claims made in Tina Turner's autobiography. Here's the thing, though: Chris Brown is no Ike Turner. Fine for summertime pop, the boy's no innovator- and the fuck a track with paid promotion for a gum company is ever making an appearance at my wedding.

Brown, like Rihanna, is less an R&B dynamo than a vessel for timely production, and their careers will be remembered best for those they shared the studio with. Ri Ri (AAHHHH HA HA "Ri Ri") has been nothing short of a muse to The-Dream and Tricky Stewart, and Brown's output under T-Pain, Swizz Beatz, and Polow da Don will most likely be the sound imitated in bad "whoa, the 2000s" sitcom flashbacks thirty years from now.

Of course by then, television will be wirelessly beamed to the retina, music will be drinkable, and man will be forced to live in Dyna-Glass domicile pods in order to shield our minds from exposure to the man-made, madness inducing "ninth color".

Ups to P. Smitty for the Portuguese treatment. (Small catalogue, but his calm "Ice Logos" comes highly recommended too.)

P. Smitty "Kuduro Kiss" (Buraka Som Sistema vs. Chris Brown Feat. T-Pain)

*I kid. Please beat up Adam Young.

2009-11-17T06:45:00.002-05:00

I admit that for a time, I avoided The xx for fear of having another Black Kids on my hands; another blog fetishized quartet of mixed gender twentysomethings, with an ear towards danceability and an eye toward Beacon's Closet who ultimately failed to deliver in the sustainability department. Then, I pulled my head out of my ass.

Maybe it speaks to the general cynicism I've developed about "it bands" three years deep with this site, but I've begun to empathize more and more with my friend Brett (who I'm still trying to convince to write an essay about why he despises mashups so badly) when he proselytizes that no band with a single album or EP under their belt can be your "favorite band"- that you shouldn't be buying the t-shirt until you and the band have really gotten to know each other. It's sound logic in the age of shuffle, where Zutons and Louis XIVs of all shapes and sizes lurk in the shadows, waiting to be our one night stand.

So while us Brooklyn assholes (who secretly really liked The Killers for a while, LOL) may scoff the next time "Listen To Your Body" pipes through Enid's, this Roman philosophy of instant dismissal/approval becomes hugely muddled when applied to the repurposing of art in a sample-savvy culture. Hip hop has always borrowed from the hits of it's day, from the Sugarhill Gang hiring a studio band to cover Chic (both "Good Times" and "Rapper's Delight" were released in 1979) to Jay Z employing M.I.A.'s "No one on the corner..." lyric from her 2007 "Paper Planes" on he and Tip's '08 "Swagga Like Us". A track which samples an of-the-moment artist certainly can't be forever bound to the trajectory of the sampled artist's career, can it? What about mixtapes?

Isn't it easier just to like things?

Tastemakers make just that, but not without exerting an inordinate amount of energy towards a value system with completely invented metrics. I like that Black Kids EP. I like The xx's debut. In turn, I'm really liking Chicago's Jams Dean, whose unapologetic, wonderfully knowing "Chicago Girls" stops just short of reminding the listener that New Kids On The Block had a bunch of hits, Chinese food makes him sick, and he thinks it's fly when girls stop by for the summer. Will those American Apparel and Frappuccino references hit strong ten years from now? I dunno. They've got about as much chance as the sample.

Thankfully, cute girls are always in fashion.

Jams Dean Feat. The xx "Chicago Girls"

2009-11-16T07:00:00.000-05:00

Malice: ...we care about it, man. We can do everything they’re doing now. I mean, we can put out an album in a week. We can do that. But I wouldn’t be happy with it. I think our songs, our albums, singles, even the mixtapes, everything is handcrafted.

Pusha: Yeah, I think that stuff sucks too.

Malice: [Laughs.]

Pusha: All of that music I’m seeing every fucking day…all these 50,000 mixtapes. With not one gem on it. Come on…You’re ruining it. You’re pissing me off.

Malice: Then making 50 songs, and throwing away 30 that don’t make the album. It’s like, What were you thinking when you were writing those?

Pusha: Stupid! Hey, stupid!

Malice: When we make a track, we loved it from the beginning.

Pusha: Hey, dummy. What’s wrong with you, stupid? Who works like that?

Malice: What song do you make that you can throw away? What the hell is wrong with you?

Pusha: Unless…

Malice: You knew it was doo-doo.

Pusha: And they are real stupid…

Malice: And frivolous.

Pusha: Pointless, meaningless…

- The Clipse, from their Clipse x KAWS Complex interview, 11/09.

And yeah, the irony of posting a mashup in tandem with that statement isn't lost on me. Good looking to the greenhorn DJDiE.

The Clipse vs. Phoenix "Wampomania" (DJDiE Mash)

2009-11-15T01:09:00.000-05:00

Eventually discharged from the Air Force for being uncooperative and "evidencing a dislike for the service", Marvin Gaye went so far as to fake mental illness in his efforts to escape the mid-century war machine he'd so gracefully speak out against with his first post- Tammi Terrell output in 1971. Jokes to be made about the Gaye family and mental illness aside, it's a telling rebellion from artist in restless youth, one that first came to mind upon hearing the song featured in today's post.

"Get It On In My Mind" is an exhilarating meeting of mental illness (by way of a Fight Club enshrined Pixies single) and the universally acknowledged Greatest Fuck Jam Ever Written™, brought to you by French mash warrior DJ Zebra. With a percussive assist from Lee Dorsey, the track is once soaring and wounded- everything that a good, stormy love is heir to. Ups.

Marvin Gaye vs. The Pixies "Get It On My Mind" (DJ Zebra Mash)

2009-11-14T23:33:00.006-05:00

No Mas and regular collaborator James Blagden present the animated tale of Pittsburgh Pirate Dock Ellis' legendary LSD no-hitter. Flawless repurposing of audio; hugely original animation.

2009-11-14T03:46:00.004-05:00

Former Miss California Carrie Prejean visits Larry King Live, 11/11/09.

Dramatized and interpreted by Dan Chamberlain and Brandon Scott Jones; featuring Rebecca Drysdale. RRRADIO.

2009-11-12T07:00:00.002-05:00

When the BBC Sound of 2009 anointed Master Shortie's debut LP came and went with little fanfare earlier this year, most suspected that there just wasn't room for another kodachrome decked pop hip hopper here stateside. Top 40 radio only just tapped into Cudi, and four years since his debut STILL has no idea what to do with Lupe Fiasco- it just wasn't time.

I however, am of the school of thought that nobody's going to buy the authenticity of a track called "Dance Like a White Boy" when it's being performed by a guy that played Simba in The Lion King in London's west end. Sorry. But here's the thing about Shortie: dude can rhyme. So was it a label thing? Where was the cool, collected young man I hear freestyling over this Passion Pit instrumental earlier this year?

Take a cue from Drake, fellow heartthrob with a handgun- you can have it both ways. Keep to this mixtape thing for a minute, and our ears will be there for the sophomore release. Respek.

Passion Pit "Sleepyhead" (Master Shortie Re-Up)

2009-11-10T17:31:00.007-05:00

Can I tell you how much I love the backlash against Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'"? Since 2007's Sopranos finale, Steve Perry's ode to small town girls living in lonely worlds has been worked into Kanye's Glow in the Dark tour, given the jazz hands treatment in both Glee and Rock of Ages, and become go-to karaoke dynamite for a generation swaddled in faux-worn sex-pun Aéropostale tees.

The rolled eyes are understandable then, when the track comes piping through a diner's tinny PA at 2am; as if we have all tacitly agreed that "Don't Stop"s inherent optimism is somehow unearned in the moment. It's just hugely funny to reserve our groans for such an innocuous, positive song- particularly one that was first released in 1981- while we shrug off more recent (and far worse written) ubiquitous fare like Rob Thomas and Santana's "Smooth". Released the same year as "In The Air Tonight" and "Jessie's Girl", "Don't Stop" deserves no more claim of being played out than either of those tracks, particularly from anybody under 30.

This week, two DJs do their best to reclaim Journey's good name from out of line haters and lead singers found on YouTube. From the fascinating Tron: Rise of the Virals project soundtrack, Chicago's Rhythm Scholar pits the group's slightly less prevalent "Any Way You Want It" against electronics and bongos in a dynamic, polyrhythmic take, and Germany's Marc Johnce cools the track our contemporaries love to hate by way of an understated, housey Frankmusik mashup.

Journey "Any Way You Want It (Rhythm Scholar Syntax Error Remix)"

Frankmusik/Russ Chimes vs. Journey "Don't Stop Confusion" (Marc Johnce Mashup)

2009-11-04T06:31:00.000-05:00

For all the preparation that goes into a new release from an artist- writing, production, promotion, press- it's audience reception that remains the unknown variable. Fickle listeners have to be factored into any artist's plan for longevity, and the major labels are masters of manipulating this to their advantage- there's a reason Crazy Frog moved more albums than Spoon in 2005. It strikes me then, that the one thing no act can prepare for is parody. People making fun of them. Sometimes reverent (Belushi's Joe Cocker), sometimes scathing (South Park's take on the Jonas Brothers comes to mind), there's a few ways artists can deal with the satirical backlash inherent to celebrity. Citing precedent, we prove that Lil' Jon is still badass by testing which "rubber/glue" method is most effective:

1. The Vanilla Ice. In a nutshell: Change your sound entirely. When the masses began to suspect that a Floridian named Rob Van Winkle wasn't the most authentic voice of the streets available for their dollar, Ice's credibility and record sales fell in tandem like a child's science experiment with a penny and a rock. In latching on to the late 90's rise of nu-metal, Ice somehow became all the more cruel a punchline, his last grasp at authenticity deemed so transparent dude didn't even get a Vh1 show of his own in the last decade. Strategy not recommended.

2. The Lady Gaga. In a nutshell: Get famous for being so strange as to forestall any attempts at parody. If 2009 pop culture had a prom, Lady Gaga would be it's queen; Carrie White pouring pig's blood over her own head. With a multi platinum debut and a never ending parade of "OMG DIDJA SEE?" public appearances in tow, Gaga somehow remains weirdly untouchable a pop star, precisely because she's so chameleonic that it's tough to nail down any strong satiric take on her. Fresh faced enough that she ducks the claims of bullshit self-importance volleyed at fellow she-changeling Madonna, THAT BITCH'LL GET HERS IN TIME. Strategy recommended? Eh.

3. The Lil' Jon. In a nutshell: Get weirder. Post Chappelle, Lil' Jon began manufacturing energy drinks, wine, and a line of sunglasses with built in mp3 players. And he started blogging for NHL.com. These are not the actions of a man who takes himself seriously. All this while holding true to his hyper-referenced catchphrases ("what", "yeah", "okay") and still building an ever impressive production resume. Strategy strongly recommended.

The am.fm.pm approved and adored The White Panda agree, making a resounding case for Lil' Jon's continued relevancy by way of a fresh Oceanlab/Gareth Emery mash. Crunk's formal heyday may well be past, but even the champion of a fading genre is still a fucking champion. Ups.

The White Panda "What Lonely Girls Do" (Lil' Jon vs. Oceanlab)

2009-11-02T19:01:00.008-05:00

First Denny's, now Ghostbusters: What's Hoobastank going to make terrible for us next? Backrubs and good weed?

2009-11-02T17:37:00.001-05:00

By way of Washington state comes Brooklyn's Brad Oberhofer, a noise pop dynamo with hooks built to give fans of Cloud Cult and Say Hi alike real pause. Such calculated cacophony so often strays into the recherché, but Oberhofer keeps things elastic and dangerous, earning his xylophone strikes with howls of desperation and exasperation. Spin the galloping "Away From You", below.

Oberhofer "Away From You"

2009-10-29T06:36:00.006-05:00

Pluggery this morning for my boy Dan (and his compatriot Brian), aka Ninja Sex Party- your new favorite comedy band. I heard this track for the first time a few months back, and I'd be lying if I said "I Just Want To (Dance)" didn't claim some heavy earbud real estate in the following weeks. Watch, listen, love, and spread it around the internet like so much rave herpes, you little kittens you.

2009-10-28T16:00:00.002-05:00

From the Mutant Pop crew this month comes Fleetwood Mix, an 8 track mash tribute to the west coast's most cosmic, cokey Brit rock transplants. Featuring Boston's djBC, UK party kings Celebrity Murder Party, and a veritable Benetton ad of global mash contributors, Fleetwood Mix is a vital source for dead-leafed Autumn mixtape heroism.

Below, Stevie Nicks' earthy ode to simpler days shapes Plies' rhyme about the fine-assed unattainable into a fine little jam for cold night necking.

Fleetwood Mac vs. Plies Ft. Akon "Hypnotized Gypsy" (DJ Fox Mashup)

2009-10-28T04:14:00.003-05:00

Fuck the haters, 50. Trading competent production, album sales, and beef victories for Vitamin Water and being the new Damon Dash was 100% the right thing to do. Can't wait for this.

2009-10-28T03:50:00.002-05:00

At some point over the weekend, am.fm.pm's file hosters- Boxstr- permanently shut down without any notice to their paying users. All past mp3 files are gone, with no hope of recovery. Frankly, these guys were consistently total fucking failures in terms of support/user communication, and their collapse- while unfortunate- is not at all suprising.

What does this mean for you? No archived music. We're not diving back through this site to upload everything we've ever posted. Any comments requesting a new D/L link will be ignored. Every post has a link to the source artist's page; you'll probably have luck there as the music posted here was probably offered free by them in the first place. So that's that.

Lastly, suck a dick, Boxstr.

2009-10-22T16:56:00.001-05:00

2009-10-22T05:00:00.004-05:00

Making Daft Punk mashups is a lot like putting up homemade stencils exclusively in the three blocks surrounding your first apartment: you're probably not rattling the cage as hard as you think, but hey man: still super fun.

Ups to MMM.

Daft Punk vs. Bob Marley "Is This Digital Love?" (MadMixMustang Mash)

2009-10-21T00:03:00.000-05:00

As all that "Balloon Boy" nonsense unfolded in the press last week, I couldn't help but be reminded of Disney's Flight of the Navigator, a thoughtful science fiction favorite of my youth. A young boy, tangled up in time travel and government intrigue by way of a mysterious silver vessel- it's the sort of magical story I feel the nation wished came of the Heene family instead of the pitiful perversion of post-Jon and Kate reality television that came to light in the days following the incident.

Watching FotN Thursday, (which some good soul has uploaded in ten parts to YouTube), I was struck by it's frightening maturity, illuminated in no small part by composer Alan Silvestri's score. The only synthesised score in his filmography, Silvestri employed NED's Synclavier System to create an outright creepy futurescape, lush with lonely tone-poems of space travel and living in a time not your own. It's music that hearkens back to a more curious time in my life, and the first thing I was reminded of upon hearing Iceland's Bloodgroup, whose latest single "My Arms" (below) stirs just as nervous a brand of unknowing in it's listener.

With the fragility of Jamie Stewart, siblings Halez, Raggi, Lilja, "and their amazing Faroese sidekick Janus" build grim pop castles, buttressing their songs with knowing lyrics like "metal heath is all we have" to create a plucky, paranoid, and desperate world all their own.

Bloodgroup will be repping CMJ this Thursday evening @ The Suffolk in NYC.

Bloodgroup "My Arms"

2009-10-20T00:56:00.003-05:00

Man, remember when every couple in Brooklyn had a lo-fi pop outfit to go with their Jonathan Safran Foer-font canvas totes? Five year's later, mom's got a gig as a social media strategist and dad's hand painting labels for his artisan jam/jelly venture with a baby on the way; the xylophone and 808 collecting dust somewhere in Cobble Hill.

I'll bet she sneaks looks at Paste like Kate Winslet did that swimsuit catalog in Little Children.

Barsuk was good enough to send us a determined little remix of the borough's best couple band- Mates of State- this week, in celebration of the digital release of April's vinyl only Re-Arranged: Remixes Volume 1. Featuring battle weapons from DJ Sega, Flosstradamus, and more, the below stuttered thunder comes courtesy of LA punkers The Mae Shi, who clip "You Are Free"'s original Gibbard-esqe organ build into a bouncy escape jam that should earn a spot on the iPhones of Brooklyn's best dressed runaways.

Sarcastic? Maybe- but well deserved for a track this proud to wash off gross acquaintance. Mates of State's Re-Arranged: Remixes Volume 1 is available now on iTunes.

Mates of State "You Are Free (The Mae Shi Remix)"

2009-10-15T05:00:00.002-05:00

Now that Yeah Yeah Yeahs have played Radio City, the petulant teenager in me wants to bitch philosophical about waning authenticity and the pimping of once-fringe borough art for the midtown set, whereas the sensible fucking man in me knows to bless Karen O & co. for refusing to kowtow to the "Starbucks Recommends" scence, even when backed by a children's choir for this month's Where The Wild Things Are OST.

Did you see those $900 WTWTA parkas and shit from Opening Ceremony? If anybody's gonna talk about a queasily blurred line between art, childhood, and commerce, let's start there. I'm in the market for a good winter coat myself, and appreciate investment in quality apparel- but something tells me a thousand dollar Halloween costume's not gonna look so great on that Eugene Lang girl when she makes beer and xanax barfs all over it.

Below, Bootie stalwart DJ Clive$ster gives the unofficial love song of the decade the UK electro treatment by way of a little Metronomy. Additionally, I'm re-upping one of am.fm.pm's most requested tracks in anticipation of Sufjan's release of The BQE next week, a gloriously forward moving mash courtesy of Illinois' Radioface.

Metronomy vs. Yeah Yeah Yeahs "Heartbreaking Maps" (DJ Clive$er Mash)

Sufjan Stevens vs. Yeah Yeah Yeahs "Maps To Chicago" (Radioface Edit)

2009-10-13T21:09:00.004-05:00

When the Outer System Space Station Pacificus explodes, First Officer Huck Dougan (Brandon Scott Jones) jettisons in a small, damaged escape pod. His distress call has reached Earth. This is his story.

Show the love for space madness @ FOD.

2009-10-06T16:00:00.001-05:00

For all the coverage that vampires making their way back into the mainstream have received of late, few seem to acknowledge the stylistic debt owed to Joel Schumacher and The Lost Boys, the crew responsible for defining the visual aesthetic of the MTV vampire: piercings, leather, hairspray- the undead looking more like the Billy Idol fans you don't want your son hanging out with than the bloodsucking monsters they are.

I stand firm in my belief that while vampires can be sexy, they cannot be sexual, and that Twilight and it's contemporaries have more in common with The Lost Boys 2: The Tribe, a flaccid, Byron-in-Hollister dirge of a movie who's payoff is the only time you'll ever say "well, thank God Corey Feldman was in that."

As Halloween draws closer, can we stop being scared of whether or not people will accept us fucking a vampire and start being fucking scared of vampires again?

Props to Missouri's Gizmo for the Lost Boys OST love.

Lil' Wayne vs. Gerard McMann "Cry Little Lollipop" (DJ Gizmo Mash)

2009-10-04T06:44:00.013-05:00

am.fm.pm is repping Boston for a few days, and was lucky enough to catch Ben Folds with the Pops (under Keith Lockhart) at Symphony Hall on Friday night. Beautiful as expected, the real highlight of the show was a pair of songs he premiered from a project he's been working on with Nick Hornby- author of High Fidelity and A Long Way Down. As Folds described it to the audience, Hornby has been providing him with lyrics, and the two have been volleying rough mp3s back and forth since early '09.

Massive BF fan though I am, 2008's Way To Normal was a step backwards for Ben, particularly on the heels of the three phenomenal Super/Sunny/Speed EPs and Songs For Silverman- when his music slips from the personal to the introspective, it's simply not as interesting. Collaboration has always been a forte of his however, and Hornby's knack for obsessive, hyper-literate protagonists is a dovetail fit for Folds' pop reverence. Color me hugely excited for this album.

Super-'sclusive bonus demo version of one of the aforementioned tracks (lovingly ripped from a video @ Sydney Morning Herald) is below the full show set list. Here's hoping Hornby is cool with it. (* denotes songs performed without the Pops.)

1. Effington
2. Lullabye
3. Smoke
4. All U Can Eat
5. The Ascent of Stan
6. Landed
7. Zak and Sara
8. Gracie
9. Cologne
10. Jesusland
11. Not the Same
12. Picture Window (Hornby collab.)*
13. Belinda (Hornby collab.)*
14. Steven's Last Night in Town
15. Fred Jones, Part 2
16. Narcolepsy
17. One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces
18. The Luckiest*
19. Army*
20. Rockin the Suburbs*

Ben Folds & Nick Hornby "Picture Window" (Demo)

2009-10-02T10:53:00.002-05:00

I heard that Glenn Danzig was so horror punk that he actually birthed 3OH!3 in a black mass to undo all goodness in the world.

Props to F.L.P.

Danzig vs. Justice "Two Minutes to Mother" (Frail Limb Purity Edit)

2009-09-30T15:05:00.000-05:00

This Wednesday RIGHT AFTER a Daddy/Zuleyka edition of Wednesdays With Harold, Nate Kushner (A Week of Kindness) and Matt Little (Thank You Robot, The Ground Williams Show) will be presenting the inaugural edition of their new film series, Movies vs. Humans.

If you’ve ever been late to the party on a cult movie, Movies vs. Humans is the show for you. This is your monthly chance to get in on the ground floor with movies that don’t yet have cult followings, but should. At each Movies vs. Humans show, Matt & Nate guide you through a free screening of one of these “new classics.” New York’s funniest comedians and improvisers will join them on stage to experience these movies for the first time, and to give us their perspectives on what they just witnessed.

Tonight, the guys present Jamaa Fanaka’s 1992 masterpiece Street Wars. It’s a gritty slice of life from South Central Los Angeles in which a drug gang attains supremacy by taking to the skies. Click here for the trailer. Joining Matt & Nate are Jeff Rubin (collegehumor.com) and am.fm.pm's own Dan Chamberlain.

It’s the most free entertainment you’ve ever had outside of your pants, and it all goes down Wednesday, September 30th, at 10 pm, at The Creek.