White Flight

I've been listening to this guy for a while now and he has officially blown my mind like all the hippy acid I know his hippy self has taken must have done to him. This music is so layered and busy and the vocals are just nuts, it almost makes me feel like I would like psychedelic music.

This is what Outkast should have done after 'B.O.B.'. This is what Spencer Krug would do if he grew up in Knysna. This is Frog Eyes meets Hip Hop and Soul. Actually, there are so many comparisons, pieces, influences, memories/references that can be drawn from this album that everyone who hears it will have a different way of processing it. First time I listened I said 'Meh', I can't believe it now.

Listen in order.

White Flight - Now [MP3]
White Flight - Pastora Divine [MP3]
White Flight - Death Hands [MP3]

Bonus:

Justin Roelofs, aka White Flight, used to be in a band called the Anniversary. So here it is. Can any one say 'So, 90's'?

The Anniversary - Sweet Marie [MP3]

Links:

MySpace: Here
WebSite: Here

All you need to know about White Flight

White Flight - Pastora Divine


More videos Here

Fujiya & Miyagi

Owing to the fact that we live in Africa (el terra del changos y léones), coupled with some pretty lucrative Telecommunication Monopolising, a sudden lack of an Internet connection will cause today's Guest List to be a little late.

If you're reading this saying: "But if I'm reading this howcome he can post this and not the guest list which is what he is said he couldn't do because of a lack of an internet connection?" You're an idiot. Your grammar and spelling sucks, and if you can't figure out why then how could I know? Cry me a fucking river.

So here is my cop-out back up post - what I'm listening to right now. Clever!

Fujiya & Miyagi are really Japanese, they really need new shoes, understand skeletal structure and believe photocopiers can haunt. They are also awesome. Think Hot Chip lite. Think can white Brits juxtapose funky and funny and not seem insincere? Yes! Think where was I when these guys first received notice 6 months ago.

Fujiya & Miyagi - Collar Bone [MP3]
Fujiya & Miyagi - Photocopier [MP3]

MySpace: Here
WebSite: Here

Links:

Review
Interview

SharkTron

Lurking in the depths of MySpace is SharkTron. SharkTron will chastise the elderly and mock the unfortunate. SharkTron will use big words in simple sentences. SharkTron is sickened by mortals and the movies Jaws and Deep Blue Sea. SharkTron makes great tracks. SharkTron will bite you with the awesomeness of Fish Rock.

All you bright colour wearing, bling bling, solo sewer sea surfers have been warned. Although, this may be more to the point.

SharkTron - A Hot Damn [MP3] from GREATEST HITS

MySpace: Here

Hey look, it's Crystal Castles.

Crystal Castles - Air War [MP3]

MySpace: Here
WebSite: Here

Deerhoof

'Choo choo choo choo beep beep'. That is what Deerhoof want you to know, bob your head to, maybe even sing out loud in moving traffic. Which is weird considering the style of their previous work - well, the music I know at least. But, and I'm sure we've all figured this out by now, I don't know much about much. Unless it's Vector Calculus. I know a lot about that.

Well, here's the 'CCCCBB' (aka '+81') track off their upcomming new album, which could possibly be an incredibly annoying song in about 1 month, however, I know I still love 'Holla Back Girl' - so here's to hoping.

I'm sorry, it is a great song, but...

Deerhoof - +81 [MP3] Track removed at Record Label's request.

Deerhoof - Adam+Eve Connection [MP3]

A lot more of their MP3s. Like a lot. [MP3s]

MySpace: Here
WebSite: Here

And Deerhoof's vocalist's lispy inability to ennuciate her words in '+81' reminds me of another band that looks the same - Enon. Well they don't look the same, but they both have asians, which is very chìc.

Enon - Knock That Door [MP3]

MySpace: Here
WebSite: Here

Colour Revolt - Continental Divide

Colour Revolt

Color Revolt's lead singer takes you on ride. The kind of ride that starts off innocently along a coastal road during sunset and ends with him drunk, slumped over the wheel, the bonnet accommodating a lamp post, an adrenalin buzz drowning out the sirens, and blue lights illuminating his face every other second.

In the opening stages the first thing you think is 'Will Oldham?'. At the halfway point you comment 'At times he's channeling Isaak Brock'. Periodically, his driving gets worse, but he manages to reel it in. He looks around the car, smiles, 'See, it's okay' he says. You nod back unsure of how this is going to end up. And then he snaps. It's too late to get out, but you ask 'Do I want to?' You realise you don't and regret it when the rides suddenly stops.

Color Revolt - Mattresses Underwater [MP3]

MySpace: Here
WebSite: Here

Continental Divide

Nathan comes to the party drunk. He slams a few more whiskeys. He's had too much already. He's upset. He starts to share his woes with someone who can't find a way out of the conversation. He begins to reveal too much. He wanders off. He drinks more. The music swells, the drums become more persistant, the night gets worse. He's stumbling badly now, whiskey bottle in hand, shouting his problems out loud. Everyone knows them now, but he doesn't care. He's numb, and when you're numb you can't feel. And that's the point.

Continental Divide - The Days Drag, But He's Old [MP3]

MySpace: Here

Benoit Pioulard

This music is that picture. It's a grainy home video from a summer holiday your grandfather had when he was 8. It's eerie. Spectral. It's an empty cruise ship floating around the ocean. It sounds like the lament of a ghost; wandering through the walls of your house, jumbling all the note making objects he can find, knowing it's too late and that's the problem. It's amazing.

Benoit Pioulard - Palimend [MP3]
Benoit Pioulard - Ext. Leslie Park [MP3]

If these don't grab you immediately give it time. Listen. You can't always disko. And it's not often we make any sense and I appologise for it. The making sense part. Not for not making sense. Not really.

MySpace: Here
WebSite: Here

Links

Review - I couldn't understand a word, maybe you can. I'm so stupid. I hate myself and now I'm going to go eat some cake. Maybe go and strike a homeless person.

Interview I
Interview II

The Harlem Shakes

This is a funny bunch of guys. "I'll never forget the first time I got venereal diseases from Shakespeare's (gay) carcass." - The Harlem Shakes

It kind of reminds me of another funny man, and close friend, le Marquis de Sade.

"Monsieur Bouloir was a man whose erotic appetites might discreetly be described as post-mortem. A habitue of cemeteries, his proudest conquest was a maid six decades his senior, deceased a dozen years. The vigor with which he made love caused her bones to dislodge. Still, he granted her the highest compliment he accorded any woman - well worth the dig." - Marquis de Sade (Quills)

Boy I sure can relate.

We drank a little too much last night after selling this blog to Microsoft for an undisclosed amount ($1.2 Billion) and my head is a little clouded. So... Fuck Reviews, Let's Dance! Chord changes, drums, bass lines. Beer, Music, Fun. Harlem Shakes, Harlem Shakes.

Someone important said they're what The Strokes should sound like. Someone more important says download the songs and love them and that person is me.

The Harlem Shakes - A Night [MP3]
The Harlem Shakes - Carpet Bangers [MP3]

MySpace: Here
WebSite: Here

Links

An in depth review

Interview I
Interview II

And for those of you who didn't spend their youth battling in dance offs in Mitchell's Plain, the Harlem Shake is the dance move, best coupled with a Crip Walk, that finally seals the deal with Laeticia. Boy's getting play, yo!

Harlem Shake FAQ I
Harlem Shake FAQ II

Harlem Shake, Crip Walk, Et Al.


Sometimes the Internet is too weird.

Sex Pistols and Starry Nipples

So you’re 13 years old, and you’re staring at the cheap plastic AM/FM radio on your bedside table, counting the minutes till you turn 18, pass your driver’s license, get the hell out of your parents' house, and embark on a career as an ‘assassin for hire’. Your first two hits, the ones that will make you famous, and justifying your $50,000-a-hit invoice will be your parents (after they buy you a car), and Miss Christhowdoyoupronouncethis - your Greek whore of a geography teacher, who refuses to acknowledge your existence even though she’s slept with half the Water Polo team and one apparently well-endowed guy from the chess club.

You’re thinking about all these things, while lying on your bedroom floor, smoking a Chesterfield filter while looking up at the Union Jack and listening to the Sex Pistols.

It’s 11:30 on a Sunday morning, and life couldn’t be more Easton Ellis-esque.

Your mom bursts in... fired up and fresh from church, having just decided that you’re going to hell unless she tears your Iron Maiden posters off the wall and throws away your sad excuse for a collection of soft porn, which amounts to nothing more than some topless Jane Fonda look-alikes with stars for nipples. She also tosses all your black clothes... all of them, even the lame ‘slippery when wet’ Bon Jovi t-shirt you almost never wear.

Remember those good old days? We here at Digital for Fish sure do. That’s why we spend all the profits we make by selling autographed Kirk Hammett nail polish on eBay to topless Freudian-Mexican therapists. And that’s why we’ve decided take it way back.

Sex Pistols – This Is Not A Love Song [MP3]

Dead Kennedys – Too Drunk To Fuck [MP3]

No post would be complete without some complete butchering and blasphemous misuse of whatever music we post. So for all you heathens, we’ve added some cheeky-sexy-french-whore-bossa-nova covers of the above two songs.

Nouvelle Vague – This Is Not A Love Song [MP3]

Nouvelle Vague – Too Drunk To Fuck [MP3]

Wednesday Guest List: Eat This, Horse

^{Photo credit Natasha Fourie, check out her photoblog.}

Guest posts are going to be a new thing we are going to start doing around here on a regular, well, more like fortnightly basis with some of our local artists who we believe to have respectable musical tastes. They're gonna tell you sheeps what made them the musicians they are today. Baa.

For our first installment I got hold of John from Eat This, Horse!, self-quoted as "probably the 3rd most gangsta band in Cape Town". I can only assume that they are tailing the only other "birthed prodigies" of our land besides me and Digital Disko, the razor sharp lyrical wonderland know as Kallitz. Some sarcasm.

Now for some cast-iron downloadable music cleverly stolen from various Nigerian cigarette vendors on Sea Point Main Road. Hey, who's complaining at R15 a box...

Top 5 Albums: "Heard in the last year, in no particular order"

1. You Can't Hide Your Love Forever - Orange Juice
2. Ys - Joanna Newsom
3. 69 Love Songs - The Magnetic Fields
4. Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer? - of Montreal
5. Night Ripper - Girl Talk

Top 5 Songs: "Of all time (Because my favourite songs of all time are sort of interchangeable and transient, you knows?)":

1. This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody) - Talking Heads
2. Only Skin - Joanna Newsom
3. Blueberry Boat - The Fiery Furnaces
4. Sister Ray - The Velvet Underground
5. Ballad of a Thin Man - Bob Dylan

"A whole lot of other shit, actually, probably. I guess it doesn't matter THAT much? It's quite hard to succinctly distinguish what has led you to do ANYTHING, and the creation of music is sort of the same, I think. Or no different, rather."

MP3:

The Fiery Furnaces - Blueberry Boat [MP3]
Of Montreal - The Past Is A Grotesque Animal [MP3]
Joanna Newsom - Only Skin [MP3]
Girl Talk - Minute By Minute [MP3]

And finally, our guests

Eat This, Horse! - Come Dance [MP3]

Here are some dates when you can catch Eat This, Horse! live:

Nov 24 2006 11:00 EVOL Cape Town
Dec 19 2006 10:00 Indie Armchair (with Desmond & the Tutu's) Cape Town
Dec 20 2006 10:00 Upstairs at Mercury Live (More Tutu's) Cape Town
Dec 23 2006 12:00 SECRET POOL PARTY (More Tutu's, Secretly) Cape Town

MySpace: Here
WebSite: Here

Bloc Party

Page 2
Cover

Woo hoo. Self-indulgence, fake apathy and psuedo-intellectualism. Man, I love Bloc Party. Maybe, um, no.

Ellis is better than good, Clay is more interesting/vapid than most, and Bloc Party are idiots. I can't even believe this. The book deserves better/nothing.

Here is a song by a band I don't like 'based' on a book I do like.

Bloc Party - Song For Clay (Disappear Here) [MP3]

MySpace: Here
WebSite: Here

Bonus:

Elvis Costello

Elvis Costello - Less Than Zero [MP3] The song that inspired the book title

Bret Easton Ellis

Picture
Website
Less Than Zero

Bloc Party

News
Development
Track By Track Guide

A video of scenes from the Less Than Zero film set to Foreigner's 'That Was Yesterday'

Can Joann

As I've stated before, there is an astounding, titanium-like work ethic here at DigitalForFish. Our diligence is only matched by our 'skills'. We're Clark Kent at the Daily Planet when he's not hiding his powers. We're 'Birthed Prodogies'.

However, we also don't believe in redundancy, so here's Can Joann, and here's all you will ever need to know about them. How's that for research? Economical use of the limited space on the Internet if you ask me. Billy, Mr. Gates to you, sends me creepy fan mail.

This will be fun music to drink to later.

Can Joann - After The Seizure's Gone [MP3]
Can Joann - Lady Luck [MP3]
Can Joann - Indecision's Way [MP3]
Can Joann - Endure En Vogue [MP3]

MySpace: Here
WebSite: Here

Sufjan Stevens

Sufjan's performance at the ACL recording is on their website now, but I decided to save you the trip and place it here.

Sufjan has been touring lately, in new Butterfly Brigade outfits, and just performed in Dublin with the very talented Annie Clark (St Vincent). On this current tour Sufjan's been performing a new beautiful, sweeping track, 'Majesty, Snowbird', and just in case you've been hiding under an incredibly large, infinitely dense rock I have the video and MP3 for yor benefit, along with some unreleased/b-side tracks.

If, at this point, you are asking 'Who is Sufjan Stevens?' I would like to inform you that the Second World War is over and you can come out the jungle.

Sufjan Stevens - Casimir Pulaski Day [MP3]
Sufjan Stevens - Majesty, Snowbird [MP3]
Sufjan Stevens - Woman at the Well [MP3]
Sufjan Stevens - Borderline [MP3]

WebSite: Here

Bonus: So damn good

St Vincent - Paris Is Burning [MP3]

MySpace: Here

Sufjan Stevens - Casimir Pulaski ACL

Download 8.8 MB [MOV]

Sufjan Stevens - Majesty, Snowbird

Down Therr

Okay, I know it's lame, but sorry about the inconsistent updates around here. I'm a little busy. Burn the Spaniards, shoot the shops. I tell you this one store I'm programming stuff for uses 'Buddy' more often/loosely than an Indian taxi driver in Vancouver. But they say it 'Budd-aay'. Aren't Indians with a dot (not a feather) fun?

And speaking of Indians with feathers, it's been a little electronic up in herr (that's Southern speak folks) lately, so I'm gonna show y'all we know how to roll country. So here is the DigitalForFish Mid-Week-Plus-One-Day Keeping it Southern Mix Tape. Spit. And I don't need any of y'all city slickers' smarts tellin' me that some of these herr bands ain't Southern. Duh.

Yeah, it's all lonely. Yeah, it's all good music. In no particular order.

Horse Feathers - Blood on the Snow [MP3] MySpace
The Soft Disaster - Nothing Returns [MP3] MySpace
The Shivers - Beauty [MP3] Here
Death Vessel - Deep in the Horchata [MP3] WebSite
Haley Bonar - Am I Allowed [MP3] MySpace
Mishka Shubaly - Home [MP3] MySpace
Zykos - Keep It Light [MP3] MySpace
The Court and Spark - Rooster Mountain [MP3] WebSite
Ola Podrida - Jordanna [MP3] MySpace

Cats like Felix ...

Although he deserved nothing short of a donkey punch for letting his "Donkey Rattle" track from 4/4 Down the Stairs be appropriated into a piece of governmental, anti-underage drinking propaganda (an ad campaign so bad it drove many adults to start drinking), his first two albums were pretty solid. So you forgave him, packed them in your suit case and headed off on your travels to North America, where you played them for some French-Canadians and they were like, "Damn, Eh? What’s this cat’s name, Eh? Felix the Band? He's la shit..." or is it le shit? Someone get me French lessons.

A year goes by, and many many gigs, festivals, and record stores later, you return home a wise, aged music sage with a bag full of new doof-doof kiffness that no one’s ever heard of. You’re still kind of digging you local music but in a more ex-girlfriend, reminiscent on the ‘good times we had’ kind of way.

Enter, Dark Days Exit. Everything stirs and shakes; all that new electronic music gets tossed aside as you spend the entire summer driving from work, to beach, home, bar, and Bolshevik folk dancing lessons, listening to this album, and dreaming of the day your local record store calls you up to let you know that the Dark Days vinyl release has just come in.

Monsieur Laband's new album is a mature work that traverses the local underground music community, and will, undoubtedly even if only eventually, make him an international electro-indie star. His trademark elements are here: thick chill-inducing bass opposed with delicate arrangements of various tinklings, glitches, samples and sounds. Tight and atmospheric, the tracks on Dark Days Exit are instantly pretty, innocent, introspective yet uplifting, heavy and weightless in equal measures, as if you’re both flying and falling at the same time.

His got the exit down with dark days skills, now if he could only manage to arrive to his f@#$ing sets on time.

Felix Laband - Whistling in Tongues [MP3]
Felix Laband - Sleeping Household [MP3]

WebSite: Open records artist profile - Felix Laband

Terry Poison

This genre, hot chicks singing/rapping/talking over synth/dance beats, is obviously celebrated among musical theory professors and classically trained musicians for its cutting edge implementation of the most difficult musical forms. Not to mention its lastability and play-that-again qualities. This band, Terry Poison, reminds me of another musical prodigy in this genre, the Mozart of her day, Uffie of Miami girlfriend of Feadz of Paris.

I've heard worse Le Tigre songs.

Terry Poison - Buzz on the Bell [MP3]

Uffie - Ready to Uff [MP3]
Uffie - Hot Chick [MP3]

MySpace: Here
WebSite: Here

Brian Scary

Driving to the lab today I was listening to ELO. 'Mr Blue Sky' specifically. For those of you who didn't grow up listening to Electric Light Orchestra, they sound a little like the Beatles meets the band members of ELO. However, they were good and served a great purpose; they filled many a 'Who am I without the Beatles?' 1970 depression void. Also, ELO's name proves EMO band names have been around for centuries.

I arrive at work, ignore the robots, turn on the computer and engage in some light reading on the music sites. During my travels perusing the web I turn to Filter Magazine. There, after the Naked iPod, is Bryan Scary. "Pink Floyd-style 60s space rock" it says. Kinda like rock-opera. Kinda like ELO. Let's check out their MySpace.

They is actually He, and he fucking rules. Simply put. If you enjoy the Beatles/ELO you will definitely enjoy this.

However, he doesn't have MP3s available for download. Not a problem, someone else will have a sample. So, here is a track I appropriated from Skatterbrain, who's pretty good on getting the scoop on shit before most. Like being the second person to cover Bryan Scary, after the inteview by 3QuarksDaily.

Bryan Scary - The Ceiling on the Wall [MP3] from The Shredding Tears

ELO - Mr Blue Sky [MP3]

MySpace: Here
WebSite: Here You can listen to the ablum here