Oscillations - Is Our Children Dancing?

And check out the music this guy makes. Makes me miss summer, already.

It's been done tons of times before, not always with great results, sometimes utterly genius. This versions seems to be spreading very quickly all over the interweb nowadays. Welcome The XX! Stone cold guitar playing & smooth r&b synths, what else you'ld want?

The XX - Teardrops (Womack&Womack cover)



And here's a special treat for Wim/Willem/Miw, Justus Köhncke's amazing take on the Neil Young Classic Old man. Teardrops, innit?


Justus Köhncke - Old man (Neil Young cover)

Very interesting piece of video where Paul Morley discusses the roots and continuing influence of disco with Vince Aletti, the very first writer to cover New York's emerging disco scene in the 70's, DJ and author Bill Brewster, and Luke Howard, DJ at London's Horse Meat Disco.

There's three parts and you should just follow these links to get to see them. Total boogie time: a bit over half an hour... Enjoy!
Part one
Part two
Part three

Source: Guardian

not talking about the Boredoms drum circle, Emiliana Torrini's Jungle Drums, that "cool chick" from the Ting Tings chanting, not even talking about The Drums from San Francisco.

i'm talking about Jonathan Pierce and Jacob Graham who played their very first show, with Connor Hanwick and Adam Kessler helping them out live, only about a month ago at the Cake Shop in New York City. just two days before i deejayed at the very same venue at the To Bad Catholics, Katie Eastburn, Nick Krgovich and Skeletons gigs. i can not fucking believe i missed that show!





in any case, they reside in Brooklyn by way of Florida which makes total sense if you listen to their music. now just imagine a Manchester childhood along with it and you could get to the whole bastard child of post-punk and new wave with a slight surf-induced vibe they got going on. very psyched about this stuff! i predict a signing to Domino for Europe by the fall, w00p w00p.

A while ago I was asked to furnish a fashion show with a soundtrack. The mixtape I made is mainly midtempo, which turned out to be perfect for the models to their stuff to. I added some extra faster tracks for the Oscillations blog, giving the mix a total length of 74 minutes. You can find the download link below. If listening online is your cuppa tea, click here.

Sixsixsixties Street Editorial
Dollskabeat - Zodiac Rising
Eurythmics - Paint A Rumour
White Light Circus - Rocket Ride
Simian Mobile Disco - I Believe (Prins Thomas rmx)
Harmonic 313 - Flaash
Boards Of Canada - Nlogax
Indeep - The Record Keeps Playing
Imagination - Just An Illusion (Terje edit)
Alan Parson's Project - I Wouldn't Want To Be Like You
6th Borough Project - Just A Memory
South City Allstars vs Joe Quartermain
Fan Death - Veronica's Veil
Willesden Dodgers - 112 BPM
Baby Oliver - Shot Caller
Morten Sorensen - Start Something (40 Thieves rmx)
Hypnosis - Bormaz
Fatima Yamaha - What's A Girl To Do
Jade - I'm Gonna Get Your Love
Ivan - Fotonovella (Pete Herbert rmx)
Lifelike - Sequencer
Faze Action - Stratus Energy
Dance Reaction - Disco Train
NOIA - Stranger In A Strange Land
Blaze - Lovelee Dae (Isolee rmx)
The Allessi Brothers - Seabird


Don't forget that we're playing De Markten in Brussels on friday. Starting at 23h is Captain Starlight with The Michael and me taking over around 00h30. It's free of charge and always loads of fun, so why not stop by?
Oh and did I tell you about our new facebook home?

Jermaine Jackson & Devo

A very big up to all the people who came out to dance and who made the Hug Me Heimlich party in Cologne and the latest party at De Markten such a blast. Oscillations salutes you!




It's been way too long since there was some music on here, let stand alone good music. Let's make up for that...




First up is a tune that got passed on to us by Jan L. from Cologne. It's an extremely funky piece of synth music from 1982, by the bass player of Prince's Revolution. It's quite obvious where he got the inspiration, but don't let that hold you back from freaking out to it!





Don't remember in which part of the ever fantastic interweb I found this little gem, but this is first class robot music. The track comes off a 1985 LP by a certain Jeff Phelps, who - sadly - never got around making more than this one album. The silly female vocals are provided by Antoinette Marie Pugh.





Last up (but certainly not least) is former Oscillations- and Vicuna-guest Matt Waites aka Nightmoves. Under the alias of G&S he's produced a very glitch new beat stomper together with the ever pretty Nadia Ksaiba for the excellent Dissident label. They're riding a swell wave there, with excellent releases by Den Haan, Brassica and The Off-Key Hat in the last few months. Long may it continue!



On another note: our facebook was taken down recently by the f*scists working in the FB-offices, so we lost all of our contacts & correspondencies. Thank you! We'll be back shortly with a fan page, just so you know where to find information on future Oscillations events. Expect some in the near future!

Those who came down to Ric's Art Boat on Saturday night witnessed a brilliant set by our honorable guest for the night, the MIGHTY Daniel Wang. Playing for nearly 5(!) hours, the man switched from a treasure of disco gems to some early house records, threw a bunch of Stock, Aitken & Waterman productions on top and added some extra flavour with a late comedy routine.


Closing my eyes I was drifting away to Mancuso's Loft, Levan's Paradise Garage and 1990's Ibiza. Yes folks, it was THAT good! One of many highlights was Danny playing this balearic classic, just moments before sunrise...




Launching the love boat was our man Dirk Eskimo, who not only brought the new Lindstrom & Prins Thomas monster "Tirsdagsjam" but also some unreleased track by a new Italian (?) act on Eskimo that we desperately NEED! Needless to say, Dirk tore the roof down!



For more Oscillations bada bing over the next couple of weeks, we direct you to these fine parties. Come and say hi!

24-4 Hug Me Heimlich, Cologne
25-4 T*E*A*S*E*R at La Campine, Antwerp (Sixsixsixties)
30-5 Noord at Bab Mansour, Antwerp (The Michael)
01-5 Another Late Night at De Markten, BXL

Just seven more days before the disco madness comes our way... I hope you're as psyched as we are!

everyone should play keyboards or synths like this.

having to fight for your right to party in the weekend wars sucks. it always baffles me why someone wants go out and have or give a bad time. have they not heard of Chic?! in light of recent events involving gunpoint drama, a mass beatdown, hassling and verbal threats (but at least we've got some taste and a much, much, much smarter mouth), here are some conflict related tunes. recent and older. guitars and synths.



The Bitters - Warrior

Beanie Sigel & Jay Z - Glock Nines (Ratatat Remix)



and here's a little sumpin' sumpin' for the eyes.





i figured out what their problem is in the mean time.

a silly, little while ago i made up (yes, "made up") a silly, little love story about a sex addict trying true love and leaving his sexadelic past behind using the names of the artists and or the names of the songs. long walks by the balearic beach and cosmic candles crawling out of your ass and all that funky fresh stuff. here goes!


I wanna be your lover and now love has come around! I'll take you on my aeroplane to Paris (I promise!), but oh no, you might find out I'm a R'n'B drunkie and although I try to shed my Balearic incarnation it's like a dream I can't stop dreaming (with my wang) and it's still going and going... Oh, what a situation! Always trying to get fresh at the weekend, showing out my wang when it's on the rise. Dreadful moodiness, I just need some emotional rescue! Oh why, cruel fate?! Why testeth thou me so... uhm -eth? I can't kill the lady (in my heart, duh). No, it's too late... Here my love is! MORE, MORE, MORE!


lol.
sad.
but sadly cool, right? right.

Over a week ago, Zeigeist announced their split via their myspace page. We had the honnor to welcome the swedish band as our guests for our bash at Antwerp's Kavka, back in december. The buzzing and theatrical performance they put on that night turned out to be one of their last. Marie, Per and Mattias called it quits on personal grounds but I'm sure we'll be seeing them in other incarnations sooner or later.
Here's a video to Zeigeist's "Humanitariansm" that I made with my man Joris to commemorate the band's passage at Oscillations. I guess now is the time to post it here. Oscillations salutes Zeigeist!

hey there, hi there

i read another article about how brilliant Romain Gavras' video for Justice's STRESS is. this annoys me because it is... well, it is simply... not. shock! gasp! seriously, its faux shock tactics don't contribute to anything. aesthetically it's nothing that hasn't been done before (even by himself!) or it does not aid in the least in delivering a platform for discussion. it just sells and they knew. Justice are really good salesmen. when something is done for the sake of salesmanship, i still consider it a form of art, but not the kind of art which i find interesting. however, dissing people or creations for the sake of it doesn't interest me either so i'd like to write about two other of mister Gavras' video clips. i will leave out the one he made for The Last Shadow Puppets, although i'm pretty sure it's quite impressive from a producer's point of view, it just ain't mah thang, G.

Romain Gavras seems to be quite fond of people living in the margins of society. and why not? they're excellent material for comic relief! hurray for margies making us laugh! which is certainly the case in his video for Dj Mehdi's Signatune (the wonderful Thomas Bangalter edit). when the protagonist pulls his head away from his caring and carressing mother... lol. classic stuff.





less hilarious, but still funny is the totally unsexy environment of an anonymous and what i believe to be a Eastern European village on the countryside for the sexy song I Believe by Simian Mobile Disco. the setting reminds me of Jonathan Safran Foer's excellent debut novel Everything Is Illuminated.




mmmmmmmm marginal folks.

i bought Curtis Mayfield's Curtis LP the other day and i thought i'd expand on Starlight's theme a bit with a classic tune from the Prince of Suave himself.



brilliant album cover but anyways: Move On Up!

and if you're planning on climbing a mountain, why not make it Mount Eerie? wooooooooooop woop woop-woop! Phil Elvrum (= Mount Eerie) played at our very first evening, which seems like a pretty long time ago already, but even longer ago he played under another moniker and my favourite song from Phil is back when he was The Microphones. it's from the The Glow, Pt. 2 album and bears the same name. the song reminds me of early to mid Modest Mouse, which i like mucho mucho, but in its own right the album is a wonderful trip that really sucks you in if you let it. Phil basically creates a universe for you to explore, lyrically it's a really metaphysical and existential record.



The Microphones - The Glow, Part 2

if you're not one for upward movement, you can still bomb the motherfucker (yay!) and build a tunnel, chip chip churrah! Here We Go Magic's been blogged about quite a bit early in january, but i thought it was a pity there wasn't much mention of Luke Temple. that would be the head honcho of Here We Go Magic who made (and makes) music under his own name before Here We Go Magic's inception, which was last year.

Here We Go Magic - Tunnelvision

and i'll add the video for Luke Temple's More Than Muscle, simply because it is one of the better songs of 2008. when he delivers the chorus... there lies so much power in his restraint. i'm not convinced by the video yet, i'm just not quite sure whether it's really dull or just silly and funny. the music is powerful stuff though.

I've been floating in higher atmospheres for the last weeks. It's incredible what getting up early does with a human corpus, innit? Therefore: a little dedication to the mountains of our world.



First in row is a song by The Alps off their album "IIII", a record I impudently overlooked in 2008 that, since I discovered it, didn't leave me ipod on my countless trips with the metro to work and backwards. It works as good at 7am as it works at 22pm...

A piano, some bass, killer drum breaks, fuzzy guitars and lots of Californian sun make this blistering piece of psychedelic music sound like you're in the middle of some western-gone-wrong-on-mezcal.

The Alps - Trem Fanstasma


It ain't a long way to get from The Alps to Sic Alps, when you're not talking music-wise at least. Sic Alps sound like they recorded their music in your basement on this truly excellent cover, also from 2008, of the Throbbing Gristle anthem (yeah, right) .


Ain't that genius?

From psychedelica over lo-fi goodness to something a little more headbanging? Aye sure, no problem, meet Black Mountain. Great riffs, a whooshing hammond, as if stonerrock wasn't invented yet...



And - although it has nothing to do with mountains - a little mix from our beloved friend Malo in Germany, aptly titled "International stocktaking of long forgotten dance moves". You can download it here, and make sure to check out the artwork for the mix that's included in the file,it's awesome. No tracklisting, just namedropping: Enzo Ponzio, Weird Tapes, Todd Terje, BB & Q Band, Faux Pas, Peter Sarstedt, Tensnake, Glossy, etc.

We're working with Wilfried on a collaboration between Los Ninos, Fingerspitzengefühl and our own Oscillations, called Vicuna (official caption: "A rare party breed at extraordinary venues"). This time around, on the 14th of february, all things will take place in the Metro-station of Anneessens, in the very heart of Brussels, in an exposition space that hasn't been open to public since the seventies (except for the recent Brussels Biennale). Rest assured, it's a magnificent venue...



For the lovers, the evening takes off slowly with an accoustic concert of Pete Randy, at 21.30, in the small movie theater. Hurry up, there's a very limited capacity of 40 places & these tickets are only available in presale. For the others, the evening starts with a dj-set of Aguila (have a look at his site, there're some real pretty mixes). Next up and straight from Glasgow, UK, are new Hi NRG demigods Den Haan. The group consists of 2 friends, one of them may be not-so-unknown to some of you.



Next in line isn't a stranger neither, and we're very glad to welcome back mr. Nightmoves. Those of you who were in Antwerp for our last party will most definitely remember him for his monstrous 4 hour set. After Nightmoves, Jean Baptiste Biche (the guy who made the awesome Fingerspitzengefühl-logo) will take over control and our very own The Michael will finish off the night, in his well known style.

Surf over the waves of the intraweb to www.vicuna.be for music & mixes, or to get your tickets. Presale tickets are 10 euro, except the ones for the concert of Pete Randy that are just a tad more expensive (12 euro), and you get a drink for free before midnight. The venue has a limited capacity, so make sure you order your ticket soon enough!

Rest in peace Ron Asheton.
And rest in peace, beloved Stooges, there's no sense in going on anymore.

After touring with Blood Brothers & TV On The Radio and playing almost every single major venue in Europe, this Antwerp-based quartet is performing in Brussels. Get your silly ass to Beurskafee this saturday, because they're playing a free (GRATIS! GRATUIT! KOSTENLOS!) concert. You won't regret attending, sure thing.

Posting the above video, I also feel obliged to tell you the song they're playing is a cover from an Australian band modestly called GOD. Here it is, take care not to fall off your chair...

women are nice, women are fine, women are good... but you gotsta get some'o'that young meat! girls just wanna have fun and all that.

Women made a pretty good self-titled album in the year past and secured themselves a spot in plenty of year end lists. contrary to biological patterns, however, next year will evolve into a Girls year! i must admit i threw them away at first (not talking about my personal life here, still the band) in the spring of 2008, but that was on the account of hearing Molten Light which kind of made me vomit as to how badly and directly and without any shame it was stolen and copied from Sonic Youth's Mote. i turned it off after a minute and skipped them ever since. yesterday brought about a change when i read Chris from Gorilla Vs Bear's post about 2009 and how he was looking forward to the, apparently self-titled, Girls debut album. well, after another inspection i am converted! I AM SAVED! PRAISE JESUS-AH! i especially like how they use synths, it sounds very Vangelis to me and that's intended as a huge compliment. it could remind you of Elvis Costello in the way the vocals are delivered, hints of Ariel Pink and the softer (acoustic) guitar-oriented songs on Oracular Spectacular without the compression to make another 2008-2009 cross-reference, but i seriously doubt they'll reach the same popularity peaks as MGMT. actually they just won't, but which is fine with me because i'd rather have they didn't anyhow so i can see them at Oscillations or the Rotonde of the Botanique or Scheld'Apen. check out their stuff and keep your eyes and ears open for that debut on True Panther Sounds (of Lemonade fame).

i'm not particularly a fan of the videos they've made so far, but this one for older (my guess) track God Damned is really enjoyable. it sounds more Ariel Pink'ish than their other songs. the video:



some other girls i got into in 2008 were Vivian, Parenthetical and US.

i missed Parenthetical Girls with Deerhoof in antwerp and then again in gent by themselves, but incorporating them into my favourite music videos list of 2008 should count for something. Parenthetical Girls reside on the roster of german imprint Tomlab which in itself is a sort of quality branding for indie and electropop.

Vivian Girls i saw in may in NYC at the Silent Barn, they played right after Abe Vigoda who i liked better, speaking in terms of live performance at least. Vivian Girls is for people who like their 60's girl groups mixed with a smidge of 80's no wave. it's all pop music to me, but anyway, they will be touring europe soon and pass through Trix in antwerp on the 9th of february.

US Girls i haven't seen yet, but will most certainly do so on the 30th of january when they (she?) will be performing at Scheld'apen in antwerp. think noise, think reverb, but the woman can actually sing really well as opposed to other bands that seek refuge in aforementioned treats to hide possible flaws. some weight to this claim can most easily be found in Don't Understand That Man. for diggers of Wavves, this more extreme version of Nite Jewel.

go check out those girls!

once again i hope to see many of them in the coming year, the Late Nights at De Markten not being the least ones of'm! the Late Nights started after their (special mention and thanks to Vijay) invitation to go and dj at De Markten on the Nuit Blanche. it was so much fun (and not bad for their business either, hah) they decided to turn it into a monthly shindig. since then we had two more in november and december. these Late Nights take place in the heart of Brussels, in between the Dansaert street and St Catherine's and not a 5 minute walk from De Beurs/La Bourse on the Anspachlaan. the booze is reasonable, it's free entry and the music is - if you don't mind my saying so - rather excellent. awesome, even. the people present are a nice mixture of various nationalities and languages whose common purpose is having a good time. you should come and join in the fun.



i don't know when the next one is, but i'll be sure to let you know.

red tops, blue tops, yellow tops... they're all tops, right? another year, same wonderful crap. personally, i just want you all to always have a good time and not fuck someone else over.

alrighty!
second and somewhat booty oriented part of the ohmygoshthosevideoswereawesome!!!-series.


THE BPA (FT. DAVID BYRNE & DIZZEE RASCAL) - TOE JAM



creative with nude! it looks classy which is a rarity these days. that's not nostalgia, just an observation. my favourite scenes are the Pong and duel one.


SPANK ROCK - LOOSE


hilarious rhyming, y'all! oh man, the part where naeem says DEEZ NUTS is classic stuff. it's a sleazy track with a sleazy video. which is nice.


THUNDERHEIST - JERK IT



i had never heard of thunderheist and don't feel the immediate need to find out more about her/them/him, but in the same vain as Spank Rock's Loose this is just nice'n'sleazy. love the bling, love the pants.


FLYING LOTUS - PARISIAN GOLDFISH


and more with the sleaze. this video is simply goddamn horny. even though the actress (and actor) would normally be filed under DO NOT TOUCH WITH A STICK in my personal notebook, i find their interaction stimulating to say the least. it makes me think "where's me wench?!". it deserves applauding that the video dares defying standards, even for lesser known or underground artists. nice colors bonanza, too.


PARENTHETICAL GIRLS - A SONG FOR ELLIE GREENWICH



aaaaaand cue anticlimax! pasty, white kids looking as sterile as caucasianly possible. yet it's somehow compelling. with a total lack of any means or action they succeed in making a compelling video. i'd suspect i'm lured by the sense of clarity, but then again maybe the song's just really good.