Song of the Day

Archive for the ‘Techno’ Category

RAC Portfolio by RAC

I present to you a beautiful collection of indie music that’s been remixed and remastered by RAC (The Remix Artist Collective) bringing you great music with an indie techno new wave twist that makes you start to wonder which version you like better. SCROLL DOWN INSIDE THE PLAYER to view more tracks. There are 109 songs in this list! That’s right THERE ARE ONE HUNDRED AND NINE SONGS IN THIS PLAYLIST!!!! Scroll down in the player and check them all out!

Which remix song is your favorite?

Upside Down by dreamthieves

Dream Thieves is a 4 piece indie electro group out of Iowa City, Iowa that just released their debut album Ocean Spell this year. Their own unique blend of gradually progressing new wave synth pop dance beats and misty whispering lo-fi vocals bring back a dream-like reflections of the past.

Their music would be the perfect soundtrack to Cyndi-Lauper era films about teenage romance, adventure, and exploration. If you could take the Goonies, 16 candles, and a steamy romantic horror film about vampires and turned them into a music video with Ocean Spell as the audio you’d have one killer experience! Although their sound is equally fitting today with new wave electro bands like M83, Phantogram, and Sono.

Listen to their entire album “Ocean Spell” on Sound Cloud. Be sure to check out their song “Capsized” which is another one of my favorites off their album.

Dream Thieves has been doing live shows in and around the Iowa City area and are only just getting started. It was with luck that I met the group while flying into Moline about a month ago, so here they are, fresh out of their garage recording studio for your listening pleasure.

The new wave group, Kids of 88, was formed in 2004. Group members Jordan Arts and Sam McCarthy, grew up listening to styles of music different from that of your average teenager. In time, they developed a new wave sound, by taking past ideas from pop music and putting a new twist on them. Their music can be described as a combination of “sleazy basslines”, “mind-numbingly catchy hooks” and “suggestive innuendos.” Their intertwining of quirky lyrics and musical elements, make them a force to be reckoned with in pop music. Based out of New Zealand, Kids of 88 built off their local success and soon began to spread throughout the United States. It was in the U.S. that Kids of 88 landed a remix for superstar Ke$ha’s single “Tik Tok.” Soon after, pop group Cobra Starship also requested Kids of 88 remix their song, “Hot Mess.”

This single “Just A Little Bit”, debuted at #13 on the New Zealand chart, when their album “Sugarpills” was released on August 16, 2010. In addition to their success with “Just A Little Bit”, Kids Of 88 were chosen to support Ke$ha on her December 2010 European tour which hit the following markets: Zurich, Paris, Brussels, Barcelona and Madrid. A Kids of 88 tour in the U.S. is also in the works for 2011.

I wasn’t sure if I should feature this song or their track Sugarpills but this one has just the right kind of provocative beat that gets my feet moving. I also am a fan of GoldFrapp and this song undulates with the titillating sex pump that’s in songs like Strict Machine and Train but with more punch and violence. Their music video doesn’t fail to convey the message either. Also check out Sugarpills with a Sinead O’Connor sample mixed in with good effect.

Also check out the official Kids of 88 website.

Romanian dance groove group Play & Win. This song just kicks me out of my chair and makes me want to dance every time I hear it. The music video doesn’t do the song the musical justice that I think it deserves, but it does succeed in conveying the kind of carefree life-loving feelings that the song promotes. At it’s core this is a dance tune that is 100% feel good and enjoyable all the way through. It’s one thing to make good electronic dance music, it’s another thing when it does an equally good job of making you feel good. I’m all about the good vibrations and positive house music!

Check out the Play & Win official website to learn more.

San Francisco based artist Scott Hansen shows his best work here. This music has creates such a rich multi-layered experience that it’s hard imagine any possible way this song could be better other than making it longer. This indie techno music track is a refreshing journey into sound that I wish more people had the opportunity to experience. I don’t understand why popular radio stations avoid playing this music and think that they are doing us some sort of benefit by trying to play only those artists that have the largest mass appeal. And yet, anytime you go to a spa or get a professional massage you’ll find the rooms often playing music like this because it IS APPEALING to most people especially when they want to relax.

I just hope Tycho keeps up the good work and gets more of his music out and into our ears. Be sure to visit the official Tycho Music website to learn more about this talented electronic music artist.

I don’t think it could be, I think it is.

Dan Black rules. This was the song that made me listen to Kid Cudi because Cudi remixed it. I want to show the comparison of the two music videos here. Tell me which one is your favorite and why…

I’ve never seen two music videos so similar in which an artist was more or less surgically inserted into half of the video the same way his vocals are added into the song. Either way, I think Dan Black makes some most incredible music. His entire album “UN” is awesome! My other favorite song on the album is U+Me, but there are a lot of other gems in the track list. Anyway, here’s the other song where Kid Cudi was added. Which of these would you make the indie electronic song of the day?

This Song of the Day has been waiting for months to get posted, and only now has come about because YouTube doesn’t allow embedding of the video on other sites, but I just saw tonight that it was available through MTV. So now it’s here! MSTKRFT has a great way of popping a beat and and sticking a rhythm that makes all the Daft Punk fans move while creating a contiguous and readable story-line using classic rock song structure and lyrics that make it the songs feel less like an electronic abstraction and more like a band that just happens to use some electronic keyboard samples video game noises to KRAFT addictive tunes.

Baths kicks ass. There’s a lot to say here, I’m feeling less explicit today so I’m just going to say that I have huge respect for Baths or Will Wiesenfeld or [Post-Foetus]. As well, whoever makes the calls on his music videos also gets my kudos.

If you’re turned off by the sound I think perhaps your criteria for beauty in sound is too restrictive. If you love this stuff then please spread the word. I wish I could fill up this entire Song of the Day blog with tunes like this, but there is plenty of other good indie music that doesn’t fall into the electronic experimental glitch-hop lo-fi ambient genre.

I’m just going to go ahead and post both of Baths’ two other top songs (per Last.fm) because I like them both as well and figured I might as well save you a click or two. Here they are…

Lovely Bloodflow


… and Aminals

I think I just realized what the problem is with music today. PROPRIETY!!! The reason why music suffers sometimes and why good music is hard to find is that people don’t share enough, and that’s because of money and the fact that our culture does not spend money on art and music. No, instead we spend at least half of our energy and funds on building bombs to destroy things, bullets to kill people, chemicals to speed up the growth of our subsidized genetically modified food, and research how to find ways to make people dependent on drugs so they come back every month to buy more of the drug instead of actually curing people.

My point here really is that artists should be collaborating more. Just like how gene pools require and benefit from a constant mix of diversity, just like eco-systems, music needs more marriages of two diverse styles. It’s a fact, when you mix two creative and vibrant things that come from different backgrounds but that are from the same species you get the most beautiful results. I present this song to you to help illustrate my point.

Upon previewing the songs from both the band Planet Funk and the DJ producer Benny Benassi, I could not find a song that either band produced that had more richness than this one. Now, that could also mean that when you combine the total sum of time that both artists spent on the song in their own respect perhaps there was more energy poured into this song, but that’s also kind of the point. From new blood, collaboration, sharing of ideas, and having a creative dialog you get things like “The Postal Service”, “Zero 7″, and a whole slough of other bands that I can’t think of right now because it’s late and listing a bunch of bands isn’t important, because I think this point illustrates itself.

So basically, I wish more remixes were made, I wish artists started out with more “Open Source” rights to their work or collaboration was facilitated more.

It produced great results, and makes for great Songs of the Day!