Stuck on Repeat / #46
04 22 2011
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 :: Switchblade Symphony – Mine Eyes
When I was 16 I had a goth AOL boyfriend. His screen name was “vamppunk” and he powdered his face deathly white, wore lipstick, eyeliner and fangs. Mostly we chatted online, but on weekends we’d meet up halfway between our respective DC suburbs at a Borders in Tysons Corner, VA. He introduced me the world of goth, industrial and darkwave music, his favorite label being Cleopatra. Switchblade Symphony were a San Francisco group signed to Cleopatra, whose music blended hard beats with classical instrumentation and possessed, operatic vocals. I would go as far as to call their 1995 LP Serpentine Gallery an essential release in the goth genre. It’s interesting listening to this album 15 years later. It’s aged very well. “Mine Eyes” in particular feels comfortably contemporary against releases like Zola Jesus’s Stridulum EP. Something like five years after that dark summer “vamppunk” tracked me down and we met again at the Borders. He no longer wore makeup and was in law school. The girl he thought he was going to marry must have broken up with him. He seemed to be on some kind of soul-searching mission. It was weird. And now all the Borders stores are closing. How depressing.
:: selected by: BryanB :: Sophie Ellis-Bextor – Make A Scene
BASSOOOOOONS! Well, at least, I think they are bassoons—a big belching horn (or are bassoons woodwinds?) section in a dance pop song goes a long way with me, and the fact that the incomparable (yes, I used that word) Sophie Ellis-Bextor is cooing in her supermodel thin range over them only amplifies the effect. In all honesty, “Make A Scene” is a little messy, with a bit too much going on in the background. A lovely instrumental and voice only breakdown would have created a nice tension amongst all that’s going on here. Nevertheless, Huey Lewis and the News stylings, a weird off-step intro, propulsive beats, and a rapturous siren whispering some vague dance inspired lyrics is more than enough for me, thank you very much.
:: selected by: Jams Dean :: Donnis – Eyes Low (ft. Gorilla Zoe and Young Dro)
I wasn’t expecting this, but I love the new Donnis Southern Lights mixtape. There’s a few weak links in the mix, but overall it bangs. Nothing too groundbreaking or unexpected happens, just more perfecting of the format we have come to expect from Donnis. And that’s refreshing, finding rap music that isn’t trying to bend another genre. It’s the kind of stuff that sounds crisp and polished and you never have to think too hard. Basically, it’s some good party music. I have been listening to it back and forth all week on my headphones and thinking, mixtapes of this quality are hard to come across. Even harder though, is finding an emcee who has as much fun as Donnis does dancing and partying all over every track.
:: selected by: Moneyworth :: Soulja Boy – Zan With That Lean
Somewhere in the last year or so, Soulja Boy stopped being an icon of “everything terrible about hip-hop in the 21st century” and became “cool”. It could’ve been “Pretty Boy Swag”, or the fact that he put out seven mixtapes in 2010 (and three so far this year), or his association with (and similarity to, in a lot of ways) Lil B, or his awesome new haircut. Anyway, “Zan With That Lean”, off his most recent mixtape, Juice, might be his best song ever. It’s got that zealous autotune a la Lil’ Wayne a couple years ago, the kind that’s so over the top it totally works, not to mention is an ode to Wayne’s beverage of choice, and rolling with the Lil B-ness, it’s got an uber-positive vibe that can’t be described as anything but #based. Pretty sure Soulja Boy is too young to be sippin’ on lean, but he also brought “Superman that ho” into national consciousness when he was like 17. He’s an old soul.
