I'm going to be throwing down some tunes this Thursday at Hugs in Williamsburg with my friend Andy D providing live jamz, along side Suspicious Package and Macaque, and DJs Jay McElfresh and Carlen Altman. The show starts early, so show up and party with the setting sun!

Here'z the details:

Hugs – Williamsburg, 106 N. 6th St. (btw Berry and Wythe.)
with Andy D (complete awesome), Suspicious Package (Burlesque Rap), and Macaque (Electro dance) LIVE
DJs: Robot Blair & Jay Mcelfresh
and videos by Carlen Altman

All this awesomeness is FREEEEE - Boom!

Your favorite Japanese law enforcement music ensemble has been busy lately. They finally put out their first full-length, Elephant Shell, they're on tour, and their song "Tesselate" has been remixed by Tom "Los" Campesinos:

Tokyo Police Club - Tesselate (Tom Campesinos remix).

They're also busy, however, giving stuff away to you. That's right, you! Because you deserve it.

If you want either a) a vinyl copy of Elephant Shell or b) a pair of tickets to an upcoming TPC show, be the first person to hit me up at david [at] music.for-robots.com. We have a winner! No more entries, please! We'll either send you a copy of the record or put you on the list for a TPC show of your choice (festival dates excluded). If you win, I'll be in touch about which option you go with.

Elephant Shell is no A Lesson In Crime, but it's pretty solid, if you ask me. And I bet it sounds really great on vinyl. Or live. So I think you should probably enter the contest. I'm just sayin' is all.

Tesselate!

Osborne - There

When it comes to my 4-4 beats, I've been on a house music kick lately, and just in time for that specific aural desire comes Osborne, aka Todd Osborn, with his new self-titled full length album, via our friends at Spectral Sound, the more techno-oriented arm of Ghostly International.

See, I bought the Ruling EP about a month back and played the title track out when I was at Love - the super-bass on that track sounded absolutely amazing on their sound system - and I had been salivating over the Osborne full-length album from that moment. Thankfully the record doesn't disappoint in the least.

Osborn covers tons of ground on the album, from deep New York house in the aforementioned "Ruling", to Detroit techno with "L8"; from delicate electronics with this song, to a wicked tribal jam in "Afrika". Osborn seems to have no difficulty in applying his talents with melody and beat structure to all these styles, and then some (he also records insane drum 'n bass songs as Soundmurderer, and techno as TNT with fellow Ghostly artist Tadd Millinux). What's more, according to all the biographical information, Osborn makes all this music on computers and music-software that he built and wrote for himself. So he is basically a badass.

Osborne is available now. Buy it direct from the Ghostly Store or through iTunes. Highly recommended. Oh and there are a handful of Osborne live dates this month, including a 'Ghostly Swim' thing in Chicago, so check the Ghostly live page for info.

"Wait," you're saying. "Is Robot David into Cirque Du Soleil?" No. Well, yes. But that's not what this is.

DeVotchKa, guardians of all things romantic and eastern European, played First Avenue on Wednesday night, and it was fantastic. Their new record A Mad & Faithful Telling is easily one of the best releases so far this year, and when the band played songs from it - "Along The Way" and the majestically discordant "Transliterator" - the audience watched in adoring silence, despite not being too familiar with the tracks.

Since their records are often crammed with strings and various other instruments, I didn't know what to expect for the band's full lineup. It turns out they tour with a strings section ("The DeVotchKa Strings") and, yes, two acrobatic dancers who probably have a different title I should reference. These dancers came out for the last encore, and perhaps you can forgive me for forgetting what song the band played. All I know is that frontman Nick Urata played the theremin while two curtains dropped from the ceiling and two scantily clad women climbed them to the catwalks.
What did you do Wednesday night?

A Mad & Faithful Telling is out now on Anti- Records.

Here's a track from the band's record How It Ends - You Love Me.

Also, I interviewed Urata for the Minneapolis weekly Vita.mn last week. You can read that story here.

There are a couple more photos after the jump. Thanks to Katie T. for the use of her camera.

Santogold - Your Voice (link via RCRDLBL)

So yeah, MFR is joining the party a little late - if you're a regular reader, you know that we often do, just because Mark and I both like to ruminate a bit, you know, let things seep in a bit more, before hyping something.

Anyway, I'm happy to put the MFR stamp of approval on Santi White's new band and album, Santogold, because the record is a solid piece of multi-referential cross-cultural pop music, tying together electronic dance music, hip-hop, reggae and punk into an incredibly listenable album with a massively broad appeal (think modern Beck or Gnarles Barkley). It seems that everyone online and in print (Rolling Stone, Spin) has been hyping Santogold since people first saw her live shows last year, and heard about her collaborators on the album (including Spank Rock, M.I.A., Diplo, Radioclit, Sinden and Switch, etc.), marking the project "one to watch" in 2008.

Now, I'm not going to toot ye olde MFR horn that much, but remember MFR Vol. 1? There's this track on there, "A Day With Andrew", by a band called Stiffed - that's right, that is Santi's previous project. So yeah, we were there. Ha ha!

No, all right, you got me. I tend to shy away from majorly-hyped stuff like this, but from when I first heard "L.E.S. Artistes" I was certainly curious to see what would happen with Santogold, and it is looking like big thing are afoot.

Buy Santogold from Amazon.com, or download it from Amazon or iTunes. Recommended. Also check out the video for "L.E.S. Artistes" over on Youtube.

The Presets - This Boy's In Love (Lifelike Remix)

Boom!

If you're a regular reader, you know that MFR and Modular have been buddies for a while now. That is because we are fans first - I myself have been a big fan of the label's releases since the Avalanches (where on earth is that second album?) and Cut Copy waded ashore in the early 00s - and blog-nerds second.

Well, one of Modular's biggest acts, the Presets, have returned with their second album, the cleverly titled Apocalypso. Their first album, Beams, while a great introduction to the band, at times felt too dark, too jarring, and perhaps just too industrial-sounding for my taste. Having seen them perform live multiple times, their sound seemed to lose something in translation to that record. With Apocalypso, I'd say that has changed - the new album feels more full of life and energy, and more light and fun(!), all of which seemed just a little bit lacking before, and all of which are a huge part of the band's live sound. Don't get me wrong, this new record still bangs pretty hard, but there is a little something in there that was missing before. If you're already a fan of their sound, you will almost certainly love the new record, and if not you should definitely check them out - they're the darker, Depechce Mode-esque foil to Cut Copy's ELO-esque magic.

If you've been following along with the Modular site you already know they've been giving away songs and such, but since Modular told us we could give away this awesome Lifelike remix of "This Boy's In Love" I was all over it in a second - check out the video for the original version of the song here.

Apocalypso is out now exclusively on iTunes, and comes out in regular stores this next Tuesday. Highly recommended.

Also they're on a national tour in May and June (with our pals Walter Meego!), so hit their Myspace page for details and dates.

James Pants - We're Through

Awesome.

If ever there was a great one-word description of an artist, "awesome" would definitely be applied to James Pants.

Why? Because to my ears, James Pants' music sounds like Beck did when I first heard Mellow Gold at the age of sixteen, and that was awesome. It just sounded so unusual and downright freaky, I barely knew how to process it - what is this? Where does this fit in with what I know? James Pants not only sounds a bit like that Beck of old, but feels just as unusual and un-categorizable, and thank goodness for that.

Pants' new album, Welcome, is a great crossbreeding of 80s-style synth and lo-fi sample-funk (plus indie rock weirdness thrown in there for good measure), yet it all sounds new and only-possible in the 00s - not quite Cameo, not quite Chromeo, not quite Beck, not quite Madlib. All those not-quite's end up balancing the equation towards the out-there side of things, thus it is fully appropriate that the album is being put out by Peanut Butter Wolf's Stones Throw.

Welcome comes out on the 27th, so be sure to pick it up at your favorite retailer then, or pick it up now via iTunes. Pants is going to have a lot of people talking him up with this one - he's already on the British press radar, and the bio for the record includes a quote from Busy P, so yeah, revel in the freaky and enjoy.

Plus peep the weird, out-there album art by Parra, which you can enhance with a sticker-pack by visiting this page over at Stones Throw. Awesome.

Nik Freitas is hot soup, sunshine, an electric blanket. He is lemonade. This is refreshing, reassuring springtime music: the voice goes down smooth, the chords are where you want them.

Nik Freitas - All The Way Down.

Nik's new record Sun Down comes out today on Team Love, and it's really a great listen. It won't break any ground or anything, but it's not supposed to. It doesn't need anything crazy to hold it up.

Nik's bio was written by his next-door neighbor, and if you can't trust the guy who heard this record's conception through the walls, who can you trust? He says he heard traces of Todd Rungren and The Kinks, but "I also heard no evidence of frills or pretensions to greatness. No going for the gold. Just immaculately produced and performed pieces that informed you exactly how their composer was feeling at that particular time. "

That's exactly right. Sun Down is awesome, and perfect for spring. Pick it up today anywhere awesome stuff is sold (but you can start at Insound).

For the Black Keys this song is like walking into a thrift store and finding a shirt that fits like a glove. A straightforward but smoking cover of this Captain Beefheart jam works pretty much perfectly for them. There's a thin layer of fuzz that makes you forget it was literally recorded yesterday. And somehow I believe them, just as I believed Beefheart when I first heard it.

I can only hope they share more tracks from this session, because hot dam this one's fine.

Have a good weekend. I'll see you around.

One of the highlights of the Justice "cross" album is the song "Stress" - its all squealing strings and squelchy synths squashed on a pounding beat - the song is actually a bit off-putting, especially when you've not heard it before. That said, the track is absolutely brilliant in a late-night set on a big sound system. Now, the video for "Stress" is a dark one: a mob of angry youths wreaking havoc in the Parisian suburbs? Check. Think "La Haine" cut down to six minutes. If anything, it feels less like a music video and more like a short film that features the song on the soundtrack.

Then on the other side of the coin, we've got the video for Sebastien Tellier's "Divine", which Mark posted here a while back. I say the other side of the coin because here the darkness of Justice gets washed off by delicate electro-pop and hilarious vignettes of Tellier (or is it just a variety of people dressed up as him?), singing in sunny southern California.

Justice "cross" is out now on Vice Records/Ed Banger, and Sebastien Tellier's Sexuality is out now on Record Makers/Lucky Number. Gotta love Paris!

Sam Keenan is one of those Twin Cities musicians who pops up everywhere. He's one of the creators of Misplaced Music, a site that streams local music; he's a producer at The Current; and he makes a lot of music. I mean a lot of music.

He also just put out a record called All The Dark Colored Markers Went Dry, and it's pretty ridiculous, in a good way. Half the record is straightforward rock music, and the other half is... like this.

Sam Keenan - Chalk Circle.

As a musician, I'm constantly astounded at arrangements people come up with. How did Keenan come up with this treatment for what's essentially a melody from a Busby Berkeley movie? It's great.

All The Dark Colored Markers comes out soon from Draw Fire Records; keep an eye out for it.

I first wrote about Meg Ashling in September 2006, when I saw her at the 331 Club in northeast Minneapolis. I loved every second of it - even though she played solo, her songs and her voice were good enough to represent a whole band.

Meg Ashling - Move Down The Line.

I saw her play at the Java Jack's Hootenanny a month or so ago, and she sounded just as awesome. Her new record is called Look At The Moon, and it's very lo-fi. But it's also excellent, and who needs slick production when you sound this good?

I'm not sure how you can get Look At The Moon, but you can start by hitting up Meg on MySpace. Update: Meg says the best way to get a record is to come to one of her shows. And that she'll have a new record available in the next couple of months. So there!

If you live in Minnesota, you can catch her at The Rox in St. Cloud tonight.

It doesn't take much to make a pretty good song very good. It's often something you'd never think of, too - a trumpet solo, say, or really loud backup vocals. In this case, it's someone playing the same piano arpeggio over and over again. (It's just a loop, of course, but I like to imagine there's a guy in The Heavenly States whose sole job is to play this piano part repeatedly.)

The Heavenly States - Morning Exercise.

The Heavenly States are from Oakland, California. This song is from their record Delayer, which is full of power-pop goodness. I like this song in particular because sometimes you feel like hearing big, fat power chords with someone yelling something melodic and concisely clever. But Robot David, you're saying, isn't "this goes on the record" too clever by half? Yes, yes it is. Sometimes you feel like hearing something too clever by half, too.

Delayer is out now on The Rebel Group. Buy it now from Insound.

Anyway, it should be pretty amazing.

Friday, April 25th
No Age
Yeasayer
the Death Set
Free Blood
@ the Los Angeles Ukrainian Center
4315 Melrose Ave Los Angeles, CA 90029
$8 / 8:00pm / All Ages

+ Dennis Owens from Good Foot (LBC) will be playing records...

You can buy tickets from the L.A. Record here, you can buy them in person at Scoops (insanely good ice cream) or at the door the night of the show. Or you could be the first two people to email me today and I'll put you on the list with a plus one. How does that sound? Make sure you include "No Age Contest" in the subject line.

Seriously, if you're in LA this Friday and not headed to Coachella, what the fuck else would you be doing?

Related: the new No Age album is nothing short of amazing. And for you stalkers, if you squint real hard you can even see me in the liner notes.

Ghostly Swim (full album via link)

All right. Now I'm sure this is a money-making venture on the part of Adult Swim and Cartoon Network's owners, Turner Broadcasting, but I honestly don't have a problem with that. At all.

Adult Swim is my favorite block of nightly cable TV programming, particularly when they rerun the bizarro shows from the UK like Garth Marenghi's Dark Place, their own programming like Venture Brothers, Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!, and ATHF, and their old-school shows like Harvey Birdman, Attorney At Law.

Well, Adult Swim have teamed up with one of my favorite American dance labels, Ghostly International, and are giving away a full-album's worth of music called Ghostly Swim - click the intro link above to go to the album page on the Adult Swim site, where you can stream the tracks if you just want to see what it is like, or click the link to the full-album zip file with album art.

The album is a really good introduction to Ghostly's roster, with artists they've had on the label since they started, like Matthew Dear (whose track on here, "R+S", is excellent), Osborne (whose awesome new album comes out later this month), Dabrye, and Kill Memory Crash, as well as some of their more recent signings, like The Chap, School of Seven Bells, and Dark Party, all of whom are excellent. It cuts a nice wide swath across the styles Ghostly has been experimenting with and helping bring to their audience for many years now, from techno and house, to electro-rock and hip-hop beats.

On the Adult Swim page, you can also see the amazing video by BoyCatBird for Michna and Mux Mool, and visit Ghostly's page for the comp for more info on all the artists. Highly recommended.