It's the Supersound

Peep the entire new album from Canyons! It’s awesome!

I’ve really fallen for the French dance label Marble, which is owned by producers Surkin, Bobmo, and Para One. With just a few releases to their name, they’ve established themselves as solid tastemakers.

Their new release is from Sam Tiba, who hails from Northern France. His EP Black Eyed Weed infuses club bounce with some hip hop noises, weird synths, and plenty of character. Check out the lead-in song, “Zig Zag” below and buy the EP from iTunes.

I have said it many times and I’ll say it again, Bombay Bicycle Club is one of my favourite bands this year. I had a chance to catch their set during Canadian Music Week (CMW review HERE). The band is touring with Two Door Cinema Club this Fall. I bought my tickets for their Toronto show (September 17th at Kool Haus) the first day tickets went on sale — I am anticipating for the show to be sold out.

A Different Kind Of Fix was released Monday August 29th via Island Records/Universal. The album is the band’s third studio album — having released I Had the Blues But I Shook Them Loose (2009) and Flaws (2010) prior. The album starts off with “How Can You Swallow So Much Sleep,” an instant favourite of mine from the record. Some other tracks that I really enjoy are “Your Eyes,” “Lights Out, Words Gone” and “Leave It.”

It took a few listens of the album before I started to enjoy it throughly — it definitely grew on me. The album is infused with a variety of elements from so many different genres. From elements of dream-pop in “How Can You Swallow So Much Sleep” to elements of chillwave in “Lights Out, Words Gone” and “Take The Right One” to the acoustic folk elements in “Beggars”… the album is infused with a sense of wonder and captures the band’s energy.

Bombay Bicycle Club – How Can You Swallow So Much Sleep
Bombay Bicycle Club – Lights Out, Words Gone

For More…
Website: http://www.bombaybicycleclubmusic.com/
Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/bombaybicycleclub
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/bombaybicycleclub

Jens Lekman has announced a new EP, An Argument with Myself, his first release since 2007′s Night Falls Over Kortedala. The tracklist is below, along with video of a song “Waiting for Kirsten” about his meeting actress Kirsten Dunst.

1. An Argument with Myself
2. Waiting for Kirsten
3. A Promise
4. New Directions
5. So This Guy at My Office

It’s out September 19th on Secretly Canadian. Lekman says these songs didn’t fit the mood of his upcoming record, so except a full-length album soon too!

Below is the latest edition of our weekly feature, Stuck On Repeat. The premise is simple, we’ve asked all our contributors to submit one track and a brief write-up. The track can be new or it can be old, just whatever we could not stop listening to this week. These are the songs we’ve had Stuck On Repeat.

:: selected by: V :: Kohwi – Every Morning (Sugar Ray Cover)

Mark McGrath and his band Sugar Ray created some of the most publicly loathed but secretly loved music of the mid-to-late ’90s. Their funk alt rock was just awful, but you can’t deny that these guys were masters of writing songs that were the very definition of Stuck On Repeat. It only helped their cause that their handful of more successful selections seemed to get maximum radio play right at the height of school’s out for summer. Along comes Ann Arbor, Michigan musicmaker Kohwi (Cory Levinson) with a cover of Sugar Ray’s “Every Morning” full of gurgling underwater wooziness and clouded vocals. I love this cover because it really captures the dizzy, bleary-eyed stumbles of awaking from slumber and facing the morning.

:: selected by: BryanB :: Bryan Ferry – Me Oh My

To be honest, the entirety of Bryan Ferry‘s newest album, Olympia, has been Stuck On Repeat this whole week. It’s not hip, or the newest blogged about band, but an Anglo-legend’s album of classic sounding pastoral English rock. Think latter-day Bowie or Abbattoir Blues-era Nick Cave. “Me Oh My” is a simmering and resigned slow burner, with Ferry murmuring an intonation of lost love. The snaking guitars remind me of Pink Floyd circa their Division Bell album and the piano and cooing gospel singer are just too stately to ignore. Sometimes, deep down inside, I feel very old and ragged and tired, but still love the hope that lies in a new day. I hear that in Mr. Ferry’s music as well.

It’s a bit surprising to see a pop figure like MC Hammer becoming mythologized over the last couple of years, but like any celebrity who lived fast and then faded away, we always tend to remember the most glamorous and flashy elements of their career. And so, it has come to this. “MC Hammer”, the new track from Rick Ross featuring Gucci Mane, off Rick’s new album Teflon Don. The rhymes go into obvious sexual territory, and yet, not a breath is wasted on big pants or Hammer’s as of late search for God. Only goes to show, when you are hot and blowing through stacks of cash on elaborate set pieces and custom made iron gates for your mansion you obviously won’t be able to keep once the hits start fading, you too can look forward to a carnival-sounding rap anthem that really only references you in name.

Rick Ross (ft. Gucci Mane) – MC Hammer (128 kbps)

Lying somewhere in a triangulation between Bob Dylan, The Tallest Man On Earth and Jarvis Cocker is I Am Kloot. The trio has been creating lush anglo-indie for almost a decade now and there newest album Sky At Night, released today, is probably their best to date. Bringing to mind the above mentioned artists and also Spirtualized and The Beatles (especially on the building “Radiation”) throughout the ten song suite, I Am Kloot alternate between pastoral gestures and stadium singalongs with ease. My personal favorite is “The Moon Is A Blind Eye”, with John Bramwell’s tattered vocals pushed so far up on the mix, the effect turns cinematic when the soft drums and guitar plucking become accentuated by echoing chorals and a distant pipe organ.

Learn more about the band and their new album here.

I Am Kloot – The Moon Is A Blind Eye (187 kbps)

I Am Kloot – Radiation (212 kbps)