Check out my new mix for the W Hotels app!  You can grab the app for free HERE or stream at HERE.  There’s mixes by ill DJs from around the world.  Don’t sleep!

Played with an international crew of innovators and originators in Spain this summer.

They got me on tape geeking out.

CHECK OUT MY SET HERE

There’s a certain spirit to going out west.

Austin’s own Cowboy & Indian.

To begin to describe the chilling pangs of joy it gave me to hear Hank Williams sung in the golden hour in 4 part harmony by kids dressed as cowboys and indians and one of the Doobie Brothers (not pictured but shirtless in leather vest plus concho belt plus cheech-stache and playing a mean electric guitar), it was an amniotic sonic vibration.

A Place To Bury Strangers out of NYC destroyed guitars and sent ears away bleeding at the W.

Me, also at the W.

Quality time with lil’ big sis

Suffer for Fashion (or whatever)

Austin native Erin Wasson squired me away to hear Lucinda Williams play at ACL.  This new song “You Were Born To Be Loved” is incredible.  Get it HERE.

Erin’s a really cool chick who really loves music, a kindred 2nd generation audiophile who’s keen on country AND house!

Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All.

All hail the conquering heroes, determined to prove themselves villains and hate the idle pleasures of these days.  Everybody’s still talking about Odd Future.  Like Johnny Rotten and his model Richard the III, Odd Future ain’t shaped for sportive tricks – these kids came into this breathing world to make a mockery of everything they can’t physically destroy. These are the raw tactics of the  juvenile, the punk, the thug, the forgotten prince.  Dealt a bad hand by dissembling Nature, their only recourse is war-like and savage.  Anger is an energy.  This is the sinister wisdom of parasites, packs, and bands, unable to be assimilated and thus veritably other.

(language liberated from Shakespeare, the Sex Pistols, and Deleuze)

Austin’s The Black Angels pay lyrical tribute to the sunny utopian promise contained in the word “alright,” as used by Lou Reed.

Ringo Deathstarr.  Nothing better than a girl on bass guitar.

Little Dragon.  Hypnotizing the crowd.

Valida & Mia Moretti: DJ Princesses

Stevie Nicks remains a vital icon for the contemporary frontwoman.

Impossible not to love LA’s Jenny O.

Listening to this new single from Canyons makes me want to shout rock journalist hyperbole from the rooftops.  It’s a refreshingly shocking turn!  Their early single “Apples & Pears” (which sampled the legendary band Cymande) was first-rate wine&cheese balearia that’ll still go down loungin’ poolside in any lap of luxury, the “Fire Eyes” EP was kinda cool jackin’ acid house, and that sax break on “Blue Snakes” meant business on the dancefloor.  ”My Rescue” isn’t a departure from the late 80′s underground, second summer of love era that Canyons has always explored but they’ve struck out for danceable sonic territory that’s so far only been staked out by a lucky few-Primal Scream is a tough act to follow (just ask…well…Primal Scream).  It’s a similar project to the Time & Space Machine: reverse engineering house back to the mind-expanding festivals & proto-disco of the late sixties, based on the principle (ostensibly) that Kraftwerk started out as a hippie jam band.  But texture Canyons comes up with is like if Anton Newcombe put his anglophilic ear to good use and started making proper psychedelic stompers.  It’s got great vocals, tambourine shakin’, soul piano, geeetar, a single note bassline and the drums, the drums, the drums, the drums just keep building until a break down of woodstock proportions with the refrain of “hey, i want to lose my mind with you and keep this light alive, what are we trying to find?” that’ll get the longhairs putting their lighters in the air.  Plus there’s an awesome cover & remixes from fellow travelers Eric Duncan & Wooden Shjips.  Listening to the whole thing straight through is a real journey, man.  I loves it.

Bedbugs & Ballyhoo by Echo & The Bunnymen

If you don’t like the Doors because they kind of suck, get over it.  They’re responsible for all things good. The list starts with Iggy Pop, Ian Curtis and Ian Mcculloch.

Prism by Spectacle

I was going to write “Speaking of Ian Curtis, check out this primo Detroit/Chicago/Berlin house from Iron Curtis.”  But listen to this Detroit/Chicago/Kraut House from Spectacle instead ’cause the beat sounds like buffalo falling off a cliff and the Bunnymen were singing about buffalo and these washed out piano stabs are kaleidoscopic loveliness.

Don’t Cry by Deerhunter

Desire Lines by Deerhunter

In the desert of the Real.  It gets easier, but it’s still a bummer. “Halcyon Digest” is a good album for the kind of “the dream is dead, long live the dream” aphorisms I’ll always love in guitar music.  Squeezing the last drops of Nirvana from hedonism before anhedonia sets in can sound pretty chill.

I got back djing with L’Acqua at Instyle’s The Show for Fashion Week in Moscow.  It was a huge production-there were some models, some dancers from the crazy horse in Paris, no sleep and plenty of vodka.  What’s not to love about Moscow?  ’Till the police shut us down (you seriously do not wanna step to Russia cops), we rocked  the disco at the afterparty.  To get to the booth, I had to climb over the bar like in “Blood Simple.”

I was talking with Blu Jemz about Russia and we both agreed that it is EPIC.  Walking around Red Square or driving by the KGB building, the thought returns: “this is Epic.” Like the statue of Taras the Great Ukranian Lyricist outside of my hotel, everything is monumental and poetic.

Music too: this was playing in the lobby.  I can’t wait to go back and hear the dial of my internal radio station (call letters LINC) change from here:

to here:

Last time I saw Nancy Wang she was spinning some awesome Exposé 12 inches with Punches at the W’s Symmetry Series back in the summer.  Now she’s running around in this funky Downtown 81 video rocking some fresh parachutes pants.  I’ve had my pleasure zone for late 80′s proto-house production stimulated by shit robot’s whole album but sometimes it takes a psychedelic video effect to really drive the point home: DFA still runs the art school synth game.  Bow down.

(In case you haven’t checked out Punches)

“Goth Star” by Pictureplane

This song comes on like the end of the world.  Falling stars and explosions in slow motion.  The chopped-up ghosts of Stevie Nicks slice into a shimmering melody that crackles and oozes under a field of distortion, overlaid onto a stomping push-pull beat, until the final minute when the voices coalesce into, maybe, “I tell everybody, Is this the end?  That’s what I meant.”  Put it on repeat.

“Pass The Wine (Sophia Loren)” by The Stones

Just watched “Stones in Exile” and I’m obsessed with their St. Tropez period, when they fled England to avoid taxes and recorded “Exile on Main St” in Keith’s basement.  Hanging on the beach with their acoustic guitars and their supermodel wives, driving sports cars and drinking wine, getting loaded and playing the dirtiest, funkiest, “we don’t give a fuck” blues music on through the French Riviera sunrise- it ain’t all peaches and cream being on the run but on this outtake it sounds like they kept their joie de vivre.  ”Sometimes mistakes come back to haunt you and I don’t know if I’m gonna laugh or cry.”

“Girl of Independent Means” by The Honeybus

Another ray of sunshine from the beautiful people in the sixties.  ’Cause I’m just a rocker at heart.

“Moonrock Badman” by Downlink

Bass drop, zero gravity.  I think a lot of dubstep is kind of rapey.  I just want something with a little menace that the ladies can bounce to, not the soundtrack to the next “Saw.”

I love this video.

(by Mark Weaver mrkwvr.com)

“Lordag Del 2″ by Blackbelt Andersen

“Ladies & Gentlemen, We Are Floating In Space.”

“Some people call me the Space Cowboy.”

(by Banks Violette, also below)

“Never Fade” by Chow Daddy

Hypnotic musematic edit of  some moldy disco.  Sunlight, dancing, good feelings.

“Activation” by Atlas Sound

A song like this only comes around once in a while.  The opening strum has that timeless sort of cool that only takes 10 seconds to fix your life.  ”Change the way desire folds.”

“World Turning” by Tyree Cooper

To wrap things up: another bastard offspring of Stevie Nicks, a genre-bending anchor baby born on a mission to incept the dancehall with misdirected nostalgia for vogueing-era house.  Down in the third level, Major Tom is humming this song to himself in his capsule, staring out the window at the earth below.

“Made For Each Other (featuring Jan Hammer)” by Junkie XL

“Wow” by Siriusmo

“Uniform” by Faberyayo

“O.N.E.” by Yeasayer

“Quicksand” by La Roux

“Heathen Child” by Grinderman

“I Feel Better” by Hot Chip

“Instant Love” by Sylvia Love

“Various Sound Sculptures” by Zimoun

Breakin’ (Lorenz Rhode Remix) by Strip Steve

I like how electro’s coming full circle and it’s funky enough that old school heads can get down to it.  The original was a boysnoize-y banger but file this one under “Cold Stone Crushery-1984.”

(for more choice examples of this phenomena, don’t sleep on the above minimix aussie DCUP put together special for the homies over at CRAP eyewear!)

This new !!! track has got a pretty cool groove and the video’s by Black Dice.  It’s got that downtown early 80′s New York by way of late 80′s Madchester, so I’m into it.  And the shaker is always a good look.

More Than Friends (Markus Lange Stereofunk Remix) by Fukkk Offf

This is some real “Get the Party Started” music.  Bouncy fun with a glimpse of the nasty.

Dirty Cash (Money Talks) (12″ Sold Out Mix) by The Adventures of Stevie V

Dizzee Rascal dressed up like the artful dodger, being dragged through London by a mob of torch-wielding victorian bankers, carnival freaks and Ronald McDonald is pretty fresh and everything but it still can’t beat the OG David Morales mix.  Classic NY-by-way-of-UK (or is it the other way ’round?) 90′s house.  ”Meanwhile, back in the city…”

Another Man 12″ by Barbara Mason

The instrumental is the type of freaky deaky electro funk that you hear at Funkmosphere, surrounded by pop-locking asian b-girls.  These vocals are Real Talk too-when the love that dare not speak its name gets between you and your man, you have to get all “Whoooo000O, tell it, child!”

Let’s Take ‘Em To Detroit (by way of Paris)

“so you can run and tell THAT, homeboy!”

Bang Bang Bang (U-Tern’s Disco Dub) by Mark Ronson & The Business INTL