Bonobo

I just pre-ordered like 7 albums on iTunes the other day, which is rather exciting. I intended to pre-order Bonobo's new album, The North Borders, which I had read comes out April 1. Luckily for me that was wrong and it is out already. And now I own it and keep on listening to it.

In fact, this album may be my favorite album of the year so far. Sorry to some of my other favorites, like Daughter, Atoms for Peace and Local Natives, but this album is amazing. Here, hear for yourself.




Cirrus is definitely my favorite track on the album. I feel like he's taken everything I love that he does, and then mixed in elements that I love from Four Tet and Caribou to make something that is ridiculously good.

I managed to see him live in LA a couple years ago, after he released his last album. Which, coincidentally, was one of my favorite albums of 2010. I'm sensing a trend here. I went with my friend Jasmine, who happens to be the best concert buddy ever. So if you find yourself in LA and need a concert buddy, I'll introduce you. He was joined by Andreya Triana, who sang a few of the songs on the last album. I was a bit disappointed not to see her on this album, but he's got some great new vocalists, which is always great for finding new artists. Here's another track I love, with one of the aforementioned great new vocalists.




He even features Erykah Badu on this album. That got me rather excited as well.

It's still early in the year, and there's still a lot of albums I'm looking forward to this year, but I'm pretty sure this one will be in my top 10. Probably high up in my top 10.

Ghost Beach

I usually share music with my sister when I find something that's either really good or that I just think she'll like. Ghost Beach tick both boxes. This is fun music, and they're one of the closest things I've found to Passion Pit, which is always good. They've got 2 EPs so far, and I rather enjoy both.

It was also a perfect choice of what to listen to when I walked out of the office after my last day with my company yesterday. Obviously, I was already quite thrilled. Empty Streets, the first track off their first EP, matched my mood perfectly.






 So far, Crazy Heart is my other favorite. I just got the 2nd EP so haven't listened yet. I'm sure there will be other great ones, too.

 

NO CEREMONY///

Heard NO CEREMONY/// today and really liked it. I could find 3 songs, but that was about it. These guys know how to keep a secret, and in this case they are the secret. It would seem they don't want anyone to know anything about them. But when you're playing gigs with alt-J, I will pay attention, and so will others. But it would seem that the only information that's been given away so far is that they're from Manchester.

On a related note, I'm not sure I'm a fan of strange use of punctuation in band names. I'm also not sure if / technically counts as punctuation or not.

Well that was fun. Now you can listen to FEELSOLOW.

 

Miner

Heard these guys months ago and they still only seem to have two songs out. Kind of annoying, but at least they're great songs. Think Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros. Good stuff. Here's Hey Love.

 

And if you have trouble finding their music, try searching for "thisisminer" instead of just Miner.

And just for good measure, here's their other song, Golden Ocean. If you're in California, maybe you can catch them live.

 

Snakadaktal

Nobody reads my blog anymore. Literally nobody. Which is fine with me, honestly. Becuase of this I stopped writing for a while. But then I was having a conversation the other day and mentioned how I had re-found music via my own blog that I had forgotten about after posting. So I've decided to put the blog back into action, if for nothing else than for my own record.

So, from now on, it's probably bare bones notes for myself and some music. And that also means only one band per post, so I can just look at titles and easily be reminded. For today, Snakadaktal. One song in particular from this Australian band sticks out to me, and that would be Dance Bear.





Also, this remix of Dance Bear by Ta-Ku may actually be better than the original.





They've released an EP in their native Australia, but not many goodies for me yet. An album is supposedly in the works, though.