Crystal Castles Get Technological For Toshiba

Alice Glass topping the NME Cool List isn’t so surprising when you consider how she and (to a lesser degree) Ethan Kath have tapped the hep zeitgeist. From the controversy over their merch and accusations of plagiarism down to Glass’s perfectly angled hair and perfectly black eye makeup, it’s as if the duo’s dark fashion-forward 8-bit excursions were hatched by a computer program using Vice and lastnightsparty-approved algorithms. She’s that realm’s ideal pinup. Fitting, then, that CC’s “Air War” would be the soundtrack for this Toshiba clip, ostensibly “the world’s first timesculpture advert.”

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Breaking: Deerhunter

Who: Deerhunter, a quartet of Atlanta shoegazers that follow indie acclaim and opening for Nine Inch Nails with their most accessible album to date, Microcastle.
Sounds Like: Deerhunter combine My Bloody Valentine’s atmospherics, Sonic Youth’s knack for experimentation and the girl group vibe that channels Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound. Microcastle features everything from billowing dream pop like “Little Kids” to twitchy dance rock on “Nothing Ever Happens.” “I listen to music every waking hour — silence makes me uncomfortable,” says singer Bradford Cox of his wide-ranging influences.
Vital Stats:

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New Raconteurs Video - “Old Enough”

Jack White was playing patty-cake with the Kills yesterday. Today he and his fellow Raconteurs head out into the woods and play the traveling hobo bards from the album cover of Consolers Of The Lonely. It’s all in honor of Autumn De Wilde’s video for soft Appalachian rocker “Old Enough.” If you’re familiar with De Wilde’s other work, you should know to expect something more elaborate than just trees and bark. So, of course, it’s not your usual forest; instead, the guys are in some kind of pastoral hall of mirrors, complete with a mysterious woman in an animated dress.

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Stereogum x Amazon MP3 Friendly Deals #1: Guided By Voices’ Bee Thousand

Today we announce a partnership that brings you classic indie rock albums at hugely discounted prices. Every week, Amazon.com is letting us select one album from its MP3 store to go on super sale (up to 75% off normal prices). Hopefully you’ll be able to add these must-own LPs to your library without breaking your budget. First deal up: Guided By Voices’ Bee Thousand.
Released in 1994 by Scat, an independent label then located in Cleveland, Bee Thousand was Guided By Voices’ seventh album. The Dayton group, a ragtag lineup of friends centered around Robert Pollard and vast quantities of beer, had been making music together as GBV since 1983. They released a number of other earlier gems (1992’s Propeller, 1993’s Vampire On Titus, etc.), but this 20-track/tidbit collection crystallized their lo-fi collagist approach to pop songwriting and, via Matador’s help with distribution, propelled the band onto stereos far beyond [...]

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New Death Cab For Cutie Video - “No Sunlight”

DCFC’s third Narrow Stairs video is for bouncy, upbeat “No Sunlight,” the album’s most obvious single contender. This clip imagines the song’s title literally, inviting us on the night vision journey of a young boy through his neighborhood of like-minded daysleepers. The band’s not in it, but we do meet night owls doing errands and playing sports as the protagonist bikes to a beach bonfire. As sunrise approaches, all the partygoers bolt for the indoors. Maybe everyone suffers from solar urticaria. More likely they’re all vampires because everything’s about goddamn vampires these days.

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The 100 Greatest Singers of All Time

The 100 Greatest Singers of All Time

1 | Aretha Franklin
by Mary
J. Blige

Photo: Goodwin/Redferns/Retna
Born
March 25th,
1942
Key
Tracks
“(You Make Me Feel
Like) A Natural Woman,” “Respect,” “I…

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Kanye Posts Remastered “Heartless” MP3, Video

Ever the realist, Kanye figures if people are going to bootleg his 808s songs and videos, he might as well put higher quality source material out there. So via his blog, we now have a clearer Vimeo and a Vlado Meller remaster of “Heartless.” “Love Lockdown,” too, while he’s at it. PLEASE PLAY THIS VERSION INSTEAD, SQUIDBRAINS!!

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MGMT Offer Spinner “Future Reflections,” An “Electric Feel”

It makes sense I had to watch a Pantene commercial before getting through to MGMT’s Spinner/Interface session: Andrew VanWyngarden has good obnoxious hair like the guy from Ted Leo’s band had three years ago. Regardless, the recently Cool Listed Summer Of Love-loving Brooklyn crew brought some of their Oracular Spectacular to the AOL studios. The resulting video has a certain graininess to it, which goes well with the music’s retrofit feel, but there are no very sexy girls who can dance for real, so the vibe’s not 100%.

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Guns N’ Roses - Chinese Democracy

Artist:
Guns N’ Roses
Review:
Let’s get right to it: The first Guns n’ Roses album of new,
original songs since the first Bush administration is a great,
audacious, unhinged and uncompromising hard-rock record. In other
words, it sounds a lot like the Guns n’ Roses you know. At times,
it’s the clenched-fist five that made 1987’s perfect storm,
Appetite for Destruction; more often, it’s the one
sprawled across the maxed-out CDs of 1991’s Use Your Illusion
I and II, but here compressed into a convulsive
single disc of…

Rating:
4 Stars

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New Live Smashing Pumpkins Video - “99 Floors”

That Smashing Pumpkins celebratory 25th Anniversary DVD, If All Goes Wrong, is out next week: The 2-disc set looks at SP’s 2007 19-show comeback tour, also dedicating an entire disc to live footage from their 2007 residency at the Fillmore, San Francisco. When they did their California stand, Billy Corgan explained it to Spinner:
The general idea of doing the residencies for us was to create an artistic opportunity … By being in the same bed every night, but yet being in the same community, it affords the opportunity to see the band really have their teeth sunk into a certain energy and vibe. As the old music business systems break down, a residency will create a sense of a moment in time that general touring no longer can.
That makes very little sense if you read it slowly more than once. Leading by example, though, here’s Billy with his acoustic guitar [...]

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