Lightspeed Champion myspace
What happens when you take a post-punk rocker who wants to move in a different direction and hand him a classical guitar? The answer is surprisingly great folk/country music. Devonte Hynes, formerly of Test-icicles has formed a new project and dubbed it "Lightspeed Champion". Veering away from anything closely related to loud rock music, Hynes has created some exquisite melodies. The opening classical guitar licks on "Galaxy of the Lost" are just the beginning. In the vein of Bright Eyes, Lightspeed channels roots Americana and combines it with some really outlandish and not cheesy lyrics. This is particularly odd because Hynes is a native of Britain, where country/Americana, although sometimes popular, doesn't have the storied history that it does across the Atlantic. It will be interesting to see what kind of success Hynes manages with this format, but I hope it is significant, as the music itself is a pleasure to listen to.
MGMT --myspace
Last night I was involved in a conversation about electronica/rave/dance music with my bandmates and one thing we all agreed on was that we hated the term "IDM" which was used to describe a genre of music as Intelligent Dance Music. It is a totally cheesy, elitist, and utterly meaningless term. Unfortunately it is also one that aptly describes songs produced by Brooklyn duo MGMT (pronounced Management).
Before I get carried away, although their debut release Oracular Spectacular is filled with dancefloor friendly grooves, you probably won't hear MGMT at your next rave. This is such an eccentric collection of music, that to be honest, I have no idea how to describe it. If you locked the Stones, Abba, the Arcade Fire, and Ween in a room together a long with a drumset, a couple of guitars, and a moog, you'd probably end up with something similar to the sounds MGMT have created on this great album (that is if Mick and Keith didn't team up with Win to slaughter the Swedish foursome at the world's ugliest game of basketball ever played).
Anyways, I digress. Go pick up this album, and if you haven't appreciated its art by the third listen, you can challenge me to a game of 21 for kicks.
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