Happy 2009, Omnikrom and TTC make me hungry!

And they win!

Here's the video for Omnikrom's "Prends une photo avec moi."

Maybe I am a hipster, just a poorly dressed, uncool one: Cool Kids v. Omnikrom and TTC

What's up, all?

I hope everyone had a nice Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa etc.

So, a few months ago, back when the weather was nice, I was at an event DJed by my good friends Matt Blair and Nemo Burbank.

Nemo started talking about the hipster rap phenomenon, and said something to the effect that, while he hated the whole thing, he couldn't help but like The Cool Kids 'cause they were just so damn catchy. I attempted to mount a defense of Spank Rock, to which Nemo responded with a concise "Spank Rock can go get AIDS." (Or something like that. I definitely know he wanted them to get some sort of horrible, fatal disease. The specifics may be hazy due to time and alcohol.)

Let's back up, here. What is hipster rap? That's a really good question. As far as I can tell, it's hip-hop made by hipsters -- either the garden vareity white ones like Ghislain Poirier and half of Spank Rock or blipsters ("black hipsters") like The Cool Kids and the other half of Spank Rock -- for hipsters. They lyrics are pointedly ungangsta. It usually, although not always, incorporates a lot of late '80s/early '90s throwbacks as far as aethetics, and the beats are often pretty heavy on techno influences.

Again, the key component here seems to be the hipstertude of the performers. More "street credible" acts that have accidentally attracted a large hipster audience -- a la The Clipse and Lil' Wayne -- are not considered hipster rap, even if they have electro beats and rope gold.'

I maintain that I'm not a hipster based on the fact that I'm slightly overweight, poorly dressed, broke and about six-to-eight months behind on every trend. On the other hand, I like Labatt 50, have a blog, and fervently deny my hipsterdom.

Whatever, enough about me.

The Main Event

In the red corner, from Chicago, Illinois and Detroit, Michigan, a group that's nostalgic for the '80s, even though they were both born after 1985, THE COOL KIDS!

The Cool Kids (known individually as Mikey Rocks and Chuck Inglish) may be the poster children for Internet-era music. They met via MySpace, and spent most of two years using that same website to get their music to the public, creating a huge media buzz. They then released a hit EP that was available on iTunes weeks before you could buy a physical copy, and made a load of money licensing songs to ads and video games. Oh, and most of their songs are shorter than three minutes.

They're also pretty divisive. I'm not speaking as a journalist here, I haven't done any studies, but anecdotally speaking, you either really like this group or you don't.

People in the pro-Cool Kids camp say they make likable, danceable old school-flavoured party records that appeal to people who are turned off by both thuggin' crack rap and heavy-handed, message-driven conscious music.

The anti-Cool Kids crowd say they're the Seinfeld of hip-hop, and not in a good way. They're about nothing. At their core, they're two guys waxing nostalgic for a mythical version of the year of their birth. They represent everything that's wrong with modern hipster culture, they're a meaningless collage of pop-culture signposts.

Personally, I like them. Here's the video for "Black Mags."

The Competition

In the blue corner, from Montreal, Quebec and Paris, France, the Francophone hipster rap power team of OMNIKROM AND TTC!

I openly don't know nearly as much about either of these artists as I do about The Cool Kids, and my iffy French makes research a bit of an uphill struggle.

Here's what I know. They have three members (MCs Jeanbart and Linso Gabbo and producer Figure8).

They roll with Montreal-based DJ-and-superproducer Ghislain Poirier.

They have a lot of songs that are either about food or use food as a metaphor -- again, my French is sketchy, I understand the words but can't read them for secondary meaning and I don't get idioms -- and finally, a writer for La Presse dubbed them horrible misogynists when they played the '06 Francofolies de Montreal, and the ensuing controversy got them on Radio-Canada and helped make them minor celebrities among the French-speaking third of the population.

TTC are from France and were making what's now called hipster rap way before the term hipster was resurrected in about 2002. They consist of Tido Berman, Teki Latex, Cuizinier and DJ Orgasmic.

They're also signed to Big Dada, which has got to be one of my favourite record labels of all time.

Most importantly, their first full length album was call Ceci n'est pas une disque. Put that in your non-existant pipe and smoke it.

Here's the video for "Danse la Poutine."

Now, this could just be my sketchy French again, but why are they looking for the poutine place on Rachel St. if they're hanging out with a giant carton of poutine? Couldn't they just eat him?

Comment to vote, votes due by Friday at midnight.

Robyn, The Grammiest of Them All

Robyn beats Lil' Wayne.

Man, this blog loves Robyn.

Good luck to both of them at the Grammy's.

Our Grammy nominated friends: Lil' Wayne v. Robyn

I'd like to think that Music Video Violence had something to do with Lil' Wayne and Robyn getting Grammy nods, but it's probably not the case.

The Main Event

In the red corner, from New Orleans, Louisiana, with a mind-blowing, pack-leading eight Grammy nominations... LIL' WAYNE!

Anything you want to know about the artists, I've probably already covered in the previous posts. If I missed it, that's waht Google is for.

What I can't believe is that Lil' Wayne, who I still think of as the least hot of The Hot Boys, is a multiple Grammy nominee.

Here's the video for "Lollipop."



The Competition

From Stockholm, Sweden, this year's nominee for "Best Electronic/Dance Album" ROBYN!

Wow...

After completing the most awesome image make-over ever, Robyn gets nominated for a Grammy. Hot damn.

Here's the video for "Cobrastyle." Dig it.



Comment to vote. All votes due by Friday, midnight.

That's funky... or grimey: Either way, Donaeo wins!

What's up y'all.

Four - two in favour of Donaeo, regardless of whether or not he's grime or funk, and no matter how he spells his name.

The only thing I could find to post as a victory video is a flick of him doing "African Warrior" live at some festival. I think it was shot on a cell phone.

I'm too busy to be hip: T2 and Jodie Aysha vs. Donaeo

What's up team, sorry I've been a bad blogger (again). I told you from the outset, I have a bad track record with this sort of thing.

So, I've officially decided that I can no longer be cool, at least with regards to music. There are just too many electronic music genres for me to keep up with and I am too busy to keep track of it all. It feels like I've just gotten all caught up on Baltimore Club, only to learn that it's been supplanted by Philly Club, and Baltimore is "so 2007."

Fuck this. I don't care anymore. Next time I want to listen to some heavy bass beats, I'm going to get all 1995 on your asses and listen to some Shy FX.

As a final attempt at being up-to-date, I'm going to run a battle between two artists representing two of these genres that I just don't understand, then I'm going to watch the Phats and Small video with Chris Eubank in it.

The Main Event
In the red corner, from Leeds, England, representing bassline house, T2 AND JODIE AYSHA.

Bassline house popped up in early '07 as a response to grime, which some people felt had stopped being dance music and started working primarily as a soundtrack to gang fights. Bassline house, which is sometimes just called "bassline," is a little more uptempo than grime and about 100 per cent more friendly. So far, there's only been one major bassline club shut down over violence. Compared to grime, which averaged about one club closing a month, that's pretty solid.

Now, to be honest, I don't really get the difference between bassline house and the 2-step that I was listening to in about 2001, the same shit that was declared painfully uncool by 2003.

To illustrate my point...

This is 2-step.


This is bassline.


Can you tell the difference? I can't.

Anyway, the first commercial hit to come out of the bassline house was "Heartbroken" by T2 and Jodie Aysha. Apparently T2 is pretty much the Prime Minister of this whole bassline thing.

Here's the video.


The Opposition
In the blue corener, from London, England, representing "funky," a man who used to do grime before grime stopped being cool. DONAEO!

OK, so funky house is a house subgenre based around soulful vocals and big four-to-the-floor beats, best typified by the shit from the Hed Kandi comps. Funky, or UK funky, is a house-derived subgenre based around r & b vocals, soca-type beats, Latin percussion and UK Garage-style sub-bass. It also appeared as a response to grime being too dark, dank and angry. Confused yet? You should be.

Donaeo got his start 'round about 2003 providing choruses for grime MCs. I first became aware of him on the grime remix for The Streets "Fit But You Know It," which I'm pretty sure is also the first place I heard Tinchy Stryder. After a period of limited output -- Discogs has him doing nothing between 2005 - 2007 -- he came back with two big "funky" solo tracks, "African Warrior" and "Devil in a Blue Dress."

Also, he seems to have difficulty deciding how to spell his name. In about half his output, he's listed as "Donae'o." Further confusing matters, he also releases music under the name Bredren Steve and Mr. Fidget.

Here's the video for "Devil in a Blue Dress." Regardless of how you spell his name, the man has a hella dope hat.

As always, comment to vote, polls close on Friday.

GOOOOOAL! Kano beats Happy Mondays!

In a close fought, high scoring match, the lad from London overcame the hools from Manchester by a score of 3 - 2.

Here's the Kano's victory video, "Ps and Qs" off Home Sweet Home. I won't front. This video brings out my Scarborough.

Opening weekend music: Kano vs. Happy Mondays

What's up all?

So as two or three of you may know, this weekend was Opening Weekend for the English Premiership. As a fairly major soccer fan, this warms my heart tremendously. After spending the summer sleeping in until noon, I was actually kind of happy to get up on Saturday morning and watch Blackburn Rovers beat Everton while I ate my Raisin Bran.

To celebrate the return of the Prem, here's some good footballing music.

The Main Event

In the Chelsea blue corner, from East Ham, London, England, a former West Ham Youth player who once tried out for Chelsea, KAAAAANOOOOO!

Yeah, you read that last part right. Kano once tried out for Chelsea. Thankfully, the Lions didn't like the cut of our man Kane's jib and failed to sign him on. After that crushing defeat, he did the smart thing and focused on music.

Kano first started getting noticed as part of the NASTY Crew in the early 2000s. At a 2005 Lord of the Mics, he got on stage and battled Wiley to a draw. Wiley, for those of you who don't know, pretty much invented Grime as a genre and is (arguably) responsible for finding talents like Dizzee Rascal, althought Dizzee might disagree.

Around the same time, he released his debut full-length Home Sweet Home. The album went gold in Britain, produced three hit singles ("Ps and Qs," "Typical Me" and "Nite Nite") and received a full-on bukkake party from the press.

His second album London Town, came out in 2007 and featured noticably smoother R & B edges. While I didn't like this development, apparently the British music buying public did. London Town debuted at #14 on the British pop charts.

That said, Kano has recently parted ways with 679 records. Apparently he wanted to get back to a harder sound on his next album, but the label had other ideas.

Anyway, here's the video for "Typical Me." It's about getting tossed from bars.

The Competition

In the Manchester United red corner, from Salford, Manchester, England, The HAPPY MONDAYS!

The Happy Mondays were formed 1980 by brothers Shaun and Paul Ryder and fellow delinquents Gary Whelan and Mark Day. As far as I know, none of the Mondays ever played high level soccer, but they were often described as football hooligans by the music press, so that has to count for something.

In 1987, the released their debut full-length, the improbably named Squirrel and G-Man Twenty Four Hour Party People Plastic Face Carnt Smile (White Out). Their second album, Bummed, received massive critical love and the Mondays' mix of soul, funk, indie pop and acid house became the template for the Madchester Sound.

Their third album, Pills Thrills and Bellyaches, brought them commercial success and enough money that a band that already had a gift for a substance abuse was able to fulfill their incoherent crack and heroin filled dreams. The band began to have trouble making it to gigs, or knowing where they were at any given moment, as this famous quote from Shaun Ryder proves.

"I'm not too sure where I've been, I've just got off a plane, mate. I think it was Spain or Norway or some mad place like that… in fact ask Bez."

That was after returning home from Holland in 1992.

In an attempt to get the band back on track, the minds at Factory Records sent them to the Barbados to record their fourth album Yes, Please! Instead of focusing on music, the band sold their gear, and later their clothes, for cocaine. The massive cost overruns from the Yes, Please! recording sessions wound up bankrupting the label. The band broke up shortly afterwards.

This is the video for "Step On," off of Pills, Thrills.



As always, votes are due by Friday at Midnight. Comment to vote.

I'm not sure how I feel about you: She Wants Revenge vs. Lil Wayne

For a minute there, I was worried that I might not post for two weeks running, effectively signaling the end of this blog. I was tremendously stuck for a topic and starting to worry that I'd used every idea I was ever going to have.

As always, my friends managed to save my ass without them even realizing.

Recently, I've been having a lot of conversations about acts that I'm having a little trouble admitting that I like.

With that in mind, I bring you MMV's tribute to ambiguity, Lil' Wayne vs. She Wants Revenge.

The Battle
In the red corner, from New Orleans, Louisiana, a man who's short in stature but a giant in syrup consumption, LIL WAYNE!

I work with a number of Lil' Wayne fans. Last month, while one of them was desperately trying to get tickets for his gig at Circa, which was subsequently canceled, I mentioned that I still wasn't completely sold on this "Lil' Wayne is good now" thing. They both had minor panic attacks, burned me a copy of Tha Carter 3, and pretty much refused to fuck off until I acknowledged Wayne's greatness.

I have to admit that the last two Wayne albums are pretty impressive, but I still have major issues with anyone who claims to be "The Greatest Rapper Alive" and isn't named Jay-Z. I also have a tough time looking at Wayne and not thinking of the guy who got the throwaway verses on The Hot Boys albums.

I was in Grade 12 when the single "Bling Bling" came out. "Bling Bling" may be one of my least favourite songs ever. Not only did it introduce the phrase "Bling Bling" into wider society, to the point that my dad now uses it, it also featured such lyrical gems as "Hear my cell phone ring/bling bling bling/see my earrings from a mile/bling bling." As someone who's a lyrically-minded hip-hop fan, this song was like a kick in the balls to me.

Dwayne Carter was grew up in New Orleans' Hollygrove neighbourhood. Like me, he was a gifted kid in elementary school. Unlike me, he dropped out of school at age 14 to join The Hot Boys and once accidentally shot himself with a high-powered handgun. Earlier this year, he was arrested in Arizona with a fantastic quantity of drugs.

Although Carter found fame as a rapper starting at the age of 16, he wasn't really taken seriously as an MC until he made a major comeback as a mixtape MC in his mid-20s, when he was so good that critics gushed all over his new albums, Tha Carter one through three, and were remarkably willing to overlook his past indiscretions.

Wayne and Julez Santana are working on a project called I Can't Feel My Face, bits of which have already been leaked on the Internet.

This is the video for "Got Money" with T-Pain and Mack Maine.



The Opponents
In the blue corner, from The San Fernando Valley, California, a group who's name bugs me, SHE WANTS REVENGE!

I don't know nearly as much about She Wants Revenge as I do about Lil' Wayne. I know they're from California. I know that frontman Justin Warfield used to be a rapper and released an album that was produced by QDIII (Quincy Jones' son) and Prince Paul. I know that Justin Warfield looks strangely like a biracial goth Paul Giamatti. That's about it.

Oh, and I know that they make awesome, creepy, cinematic videos.

The reason it took me two years and two-and-half albums to warm up to Revenge is pretty simple. Their name, album art and overall image convinced me that this was a band for 15 year-old girls, and the number of 15 year-old girls wearing their t-shirts did very little to change that impression.

My slow conversion began about a year ago when I was at a club for my buddy Shaan's birthday. It may have been the bad draft, but there was something about Revenge's hit "Tear You Apart" that absolutely blew my mind. Subsequent sober listenings have had the same effect.

That said, I still can't get it out of my head that revenge are a sadcore band for little girls. Here's the video for "Tear You Apart."

She Wants Revenge - Tear You Apart
Uploaded by enkil_

Comment to vote, votes due by Friday at midnight.

So, How's Your Liver? Also, Chemical Brothers Win

Hey gang,

How was everyone's weekend? Mine was good, although I'm pretty sure I caused permanent damage to my body. Thanks, Big Guns.

In other news, Chemical Brothers won last week's battle 6 - 2. I can't say I'm surprised. The girl in that video is absolutely smoking hot.

Here's "Hey Girl, Hey Boy," off 1999's Surrender.

Superstar DJs, here we go.

Remembering Big Beat: Chemical Brothers vs. The Prodigy

If you were born between 1977 and 1985 and live in Southern Ontario, you may remember a period in the 1990s where fully one-third of your teenage friends suddenly declared themselves "ravers."

They left school on Friday afternoon as a jock, or a faux-gangster, or a goth, or a math nerd, went to some mysterious gathering over the weekend, and came back on Monday morning with a wardrobe made up entirely of fun-fur and cyan ballcaps and a small meth problem. When you asked them what the hell happened, they either began to blab uncontrollably about new friends named "Sunshine" and "Zippy," or else passed out due to drug-and-dance induced exhaustion.

One could point to several causes for this phenomenon: evil drug dealers, unscrupulous fun-fur manufacturers, or the fact that something like seven different active promotions meant that, for a brief while, Toronto was the dance music capital of North America. I prefer to point the finger at two bands from England.

Before 1995, electronic music was pretty much the exclusive property of gays, ginos and gay ginos. Then the big-beat explosion happened. Suddenly, "rave" acts started using guitar samples and rock drum loops. Dance music songs used a "verse-chorus-verse" song structure. Electronic acts had good videos and charismatic front men. "Electronica," as was the stupid catch-all term for all synth-based music, was the new rock 'n' roll.

And if electronica was the new rock 'n' roll, then the Chemical Brothers and The Prodigy were like Elvis and Chuck Berry.

The Main Event

From Manchester, England, a band that makes really good videos, THE CHEMICAL BROTHERS.

The Chemical Brothers (aka Tom Rowlands and Ed Simon) started as a DJ duo in 1992, spinning in small venues around Manchester under the name "The Dust Brothers," as a tribute to the Beastie Boys' production team of the same name. One of their regular gigs was at the Heavenly Social Club, a spot frequented by a who's-who of Mancunian rock. By 1994, they working with acts like The Charlatans, The Stone Roses and Oasis. (Their relationship with Oasis ended rather suddenly. In 1995 they were DJing before an Oasis gig when Liam Gallagher decided he didn't care for their set and literally threw them off stage.)

In the summer of 1995, after finishing their first LP, The Dust Brothers were set to embark on their first American tour with fellow "electronica" acts Orbital and Leftfield. Before their first show, they received a cease and desist order from The other Dust Brothers, forcing a sudden name change.

Their debut album, Exit Planet Dust, went gold in the UK, mostly on the strength of the single "Life is Sweet."

Two years later, they released their second album, Dig Your Own Hole. Where Dust has been a domestic hit, Hole made the brothers international superstars. The single "Block Rockin' Beats" appeared on the soundtrack for every youth-marketed movie for the next half-decade and The Brothers became one of the few electronic acts to successfully make the transition to arena rock style shows.

You can look up what happened to them after that, but chances are you already know because you own at least one of their albums.

This is the video for "Setting Sun," their first hit video in North America. If you've ever done a bucketload of acid, then had to try and act normal in front of your parents because you were still high at 10 o'clock the next morning, you know what this video is all about.



The Competition

From Essex, England, a band that has kept re-making the same album for the last 10 years, THE PRODIGY!

The Prodigy were formed in 1990, at the peak of the British rave scene, by producer Liam Howlett and dancers/vocalists Keith Flint and Leeroy Howell. In 1991 they had their first commercial success with the single "Charly," which made simultaneous reference to a popular British cartoon of the 1970s and '80s and doing blow. "Charly" was part of a movement in electronic music known as "kiddie rave," where techno artists sampled bits of children's media in their songs. (See "Sesame's Treet" by Smart-E's for what may be the oddest example.)

Wanting to get away from that unfortunate label, Howlett took the group in a new, more breakbeat hardcore oriented direction for their first full-length album, 1992's The Prodigy Experience. While the album barely made a ripple in North America, it spawned a series of hit singles in the UK, including "Out of Space," which is still one of my favourite songs ever.

Their next album, Music for a Jilted Generation, saw the band go in a heavier, almost industrial direction on a number of songs. They even went so far as to collaborate with Pop Will Eat Itself on "Their Law," a song that took a swipe at the newly passed Criminal Justice and Public Order Act, a piece of legislation which effectively killed rave culture in the UK. Once again, the album was a huge hit in Britain, but barely existed over here.

In 1996, The Prodigy released "Firestarter" as a stand alone single in North America to help stir up hype for their dates on that year's Lollpalooza tour. With a video featuring Keith Flint in a new cyberpunk getup -- Keith had previously looked like a bit of a hippy -- and Sex Pistols-esque vocals, "Firestarter" was a massive hit and is forever linked in my mind with being 15.

Rather than strike while the iron was hot, the band wound up waiting almost a year before releasing their next album, The Fat of the Land. What they lost in momentum, they more than made up for by choosing "Smack My Bitch Up" as a single. A song based entirely around a sample of Kool Keith talking about domestic abuse, "Smack My Bitch Up" scared the crap out of parents and made Fat one of the best selling electronic albums ever.

The two big knocks on The Prodigy are that they don't make very much music anymore, and what little they do make all sounds like Fat of the Land. Both of these things are true, anyone who heard 2004's Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned knows that. But that doesn't make Jilted or Experience any less fantastic.

This is the video for "No Good (Start The Dance)" off of Jilted. Check out the strobe action.

That Was DJ Madness! Also, The Faint Wins

For those of you who made it out last night, I'd like to say thank you.

My partner Jon Blair and I were absolute fire and I think all of you can verify that. For the rest of you, you suck, but you can make it up to me by coming out next time.

In other news, The Faint beat Cassidy 4 -1.

Here's the video for "I Disappear" of 2004's Wet from Birth.

Hey Everybody! Come See Me DJ Next Weekend! Cassidy vs. The Faint

OK, this is where I use this blog to mercilessly promote my other shit.

As many of you already know, I'm going to be DJing at the Tiger Bar on July 19. To give people a little taste of what I'm going to be bringing to the table, I thought a battle between two of my staples might be cool.

Be warned, these two acts have very little in common with one another other than they both tend to work their way into my set.

The Contest

In the blue corner, from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with one manslaughter conviction and one near-death experience with a box van, CASSIDY!

Some rappers have real names that are so awesome, they have to work them into their stage name. Marshall Mathers III took his intials and became Eminem. Talib Kweli Greene just pulled a Madonna and dropped his surname. Obie Trice's name was so awesome he skipped picking a rap name altogether.

Cassidy, on the other hand, was born Barry Adrian Reese, which may be the weakest name ever. Barry Reese is not the name of a street-hardened soldier. It's the name of a mid-level insurance salesman. The most Barry Reese can hope for is to be a big wheel down at the cracker factory.

On the other hand, Cassidy makes me think of a washed-up '70s pop star, so it's not that much of an improvement.

Cassidy starting rapping at age 13. He first got noticed as a battle rapper, winning contests on local radio and eventually beating Roc-A-Fella artist and fellow Philadelphian Freeway in a head-to-head battle.

In 2003 he released his first full-length album Split Personality. The idea was to showcase the "two sides" of Cassidy. Half the songs showed off his battle rapping skills, while the other half were poppier and more accessible to 14-year-old girls. The album was a commercial success but put a major dent in Cassidy's street cred. The mega-hit "Hotel," with a hook featuring R. Kelly, was the perfect summer pop song, but so soft it totally prevented people from taking Cassidy's battle styles seriously.

In '05 he released I'm a Hustla. The album featured minimal pop shit and had a title track/first single that came very close to being part of the burgeoning "crack rap" subgenre. Sadly, the album was a commercial flop thanks to Cassidy being "unavailable" to help promote it.

On June 8, 2005, three weeks before the release of I'm a Hustla, Philadelphia police put out an arrest warrant for Cassidy in connection with a murder in April of that year. He spent the rest of 2005 in jail awaiting trial. As a result, touring and promotional appearances were off the menu for Cassidy, causing the label to leave I'm a Hustla to rot. (Cassidy was later found guilty of involuntary manslaughter and released after serving eight months of an 11 month sentence.)

Cassidy's third album, BARS: The Barry Adrian Reese Story, came out in October 2007 and produced the slightly annoying club hit "My Drank and My 2 Step."

This is the video for "I'm a Hustla." Although the album fell flat, the single was the first song to go platinum as a cell phone ringtone, so that has to count for something. Also, if you look carefully you can see those fucking goons from Growing Up Gotti pretending to be hard in a couple frames.

This is a song that I usually play fairly early in my set, when I'm trying to weed out the weak by playing offensive shit that I happen to like.

OK, So I'm Taking a Week Off, Nobody Panic

Hey all,

I feel like I got a little fail on me, but shit was hectic at work and I just didn't get a chance to post, so I'm just taking this week as a hiatus. Trust I'll be back at it next week.

In the mean time, here's the video for "Office Boy" by Bonde do Role. If BDR beat CSS back in the Brazilian Buzz Band Battle, this would have been their victory video.

OK, next week, I swear.

Ladytron are the Last Ones Standing

After several weeks of blowouts, we finally had a close contest. Ladytron edged out Felix 3 - 2 in one of our most competitive battles yet.

This is the video for "Destroy Everything You Touch," off the Witching Hour album. This video manages to make an innocent hobby like mountain climbing seem super creepy. In it, the members of Ladytron are both the mountaineers and the mountains. That's right folks, they're climbing mountains made out of their own faces. It makes the "Seventeen" video seem like a playful puppy in comparison.

Battle of the Electroclash Survivors: Felix Da Housecat vs. Ladytron

Does anyone out there remember electroclash? Is anyone, other than me, willing to admit to liking it?

If you're suffering from Selective Memory Disorder, electroclash was a musical genre that combined retro-'80s synths, house basslines, porn sleaze and musical theatre silliness. It was a big deal for about eighteen months six or so years ago. I won't front, I fell for the sound whole-heartedly. At the time, several of my friends mocked me for getting sucked in by what was clearly the millennial equivalent of novelty disco. They were right.

As with all strange musical fads, the acts with actual talent managed keep their careers going after their genre became a punchline. So while the all-style, no-substance Fischerspooner are currently unsigned and Tiga, best known for a high-irony Nelly cover, has been reduced to remixing The Killers, Ladytron and Felix Da Housecat are still producing.

The Main Event

In the red corner, from Chicago Illinois, with a tendency to get mistaken for King Britt, FELIX DA HOUSE-CAAAT!

Felix Da Housecat was never really part of the electroclash movement. He's not from New York or Montreal or Berlin, he wasn't a lame art hipster and he never really got into the silly performance art shit that Fischerspooner were all over.

While most electroclashers were making music that was nostalgic for the '80s, Felix actually made music in the '80s. He released his first single, "Phantasy Girl," in 1987. He was 15. Felix's parents were less than enthused with their son's fascination with club culture and his association with house pioneer DJ Pierre and basically forced him to give up music entirely. By 1992 he had dropped out of college, against their wishes, and returned to the Chicago club scene. He produced several club hits under multiple monikers (Aphrohead, Sharkimaxx, Thee Madkatt Courtship) and spent the back half of the '90s running Radikal Fear Records, one of house music's most productive labels.

In 2001 he released Kittenz and Thee Glitz, his most commercially successful album ever and the album that many critics blame for creating the whole electroclash sound. It's also one of my favourite albums ever. If anyone ever asked me that "five albums for a desert island" question, this would have to be included. (The other four albums would be Public Enemy's It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, The Descendants' Milo Goes to College, De La Soul's Stakes is High and Rancid's Let's Go.)

This is the video for "Madame Hollywood," off of Kittenz. It's a pretty strange video, which makes sense, because Felix seems like a pretty strange dude.



The Opposition

In the blue corner, from Liverpool, England, with a live show inspired by Power Point, LAY-DEE-TRON!

Ladytron was founded in 1999 by an English keyboardist, a Chinese-English industrial engineer, a Scottish ex-model and a Israeli-Bulgarian biochemist. They make fantastic albums and have one of the most underwhelming live shows I've ever seen.

In 2001 their single "Playgirl" got some solid burn in the music press, but they didn't really get noticed until they released "Seventeen" in 2002. In addition to being prominently featured in the movie Party Monster, "Seventeen" manages to deliver a scathing indictment of the modeling industry in less than 30 words. Their third album, Witching Hour, does not make my desert island all-time list, but is one of my favourite albums to come out in the last two or three years.

In defense of Ladytron's live show, I did see them directly after seeing CSS for the first time. After seeing Lovefoxx explode all over the stage, watching a bunch of nervous looking, androgynous pale people fiddle with laptops while an art movie was broadcast behind them just wasn't that impressive.

What Ladytron lacks in live dynamism, they make up for in video creepiness. Every time I watch a Ladytron video, I wind up feeling like I've been touched inappropriately. This is the video for "Seventeen." I like it because it both accurately illustrates the song's lyrics and gives you an idea of how much fun a live Ladytron set is. I dislike it because it makes me shiver a little.



As always, you should comment to vote and the polls close at midnight on Friday.

Heads Up MMV Nation! Former Winner Robyn Coming to Town!

What's up y'all?

This is an emergency broadcast to let those of you who haven't seen the new edition of Eye know that Battle Two Winner Robyn will be in Toronto at the Phoenix on Monday. I'm still slightly embarrassed to admit it, but I'm totally fucking going. You all should to.

Female Fronted Brazilian Buzz Bands: Cansei de Ser Sexy vs. Bonde do Role

OK, so I know I promised Sqwd a special edition of Music Video Violence just for him, to make up for disappointing him so bitterly. That, and because he's a whiny little bitch. My whiny little bitch. I promise that The Sqwd Special Edition will be forthcoming, but first I wanted to do something a little less creepy and a little more tropical.

I'm not very well traveled. I know a lot of people who are, and I hate them. I particularly hate them because they keep telling me that I could be well traveled, too, all I need is a bunch of money and some time off. Unfortunately, I'm massively in debt, poor, lack financial discipline and refuse to take time off work for severe injury and illness, let alone a vacation, so I don't see a whole lot of travel in the near future.

In the medium term, I really want to go to Brazil.

Brazil's a country that's fascinated me for a while. On one hand, it has pretty much everything that's good in the world: fresh produce, incredible wildlife, good barbecue, the world's most exciting soccer, decent basketball, great music and really, really insanely attractive women. Oh, and they speak Portuguese, which is one of the coolest sounding languages in the world. It has almost no hard consonants.

On the other hand, it's also a pretty fucked up country by almost all accounts. It has some of the worst income disparity on Earth and you're more likely to get killed in Rio than any other city on the planet, save Johannesburg. (Strangely, South Africa is also really high on the list of country's that fascinate me. I don't know what this says about me.) Oh, and they're cutting down the rain forest at almost mind blowing speed, and they're also really odd about race.

Apparently I'm not the only one who's really into Brazil, because Brazilian bands are fucking huge right now. I think it may have something to do with both the rich musical heritage and the unreasonably attractive women. Just a thought. Anyway, this week, we're going to put the buzziest of the Brazilian buzz bands and put them head to head.

The Main Event

In the blue corner, with a buzz factor of an iPod ad, from São Paulo, CANSEI de Ser SEXY!

Sometimes a band just gets so cool you want to backlash and stop liking them. I had that urge when CSS became an iPod ad band, but I didn't because a) that's a really douchebag move, and b) they're just too good to not like.

If you believe the band, CSS was pretty much started as a joke. Legend has it a couple of them more or less learned to play their instruments in front of audiences. They got hugely blown up by Brazilian website Trama Virtual, and a writer from The Guardian said they could be the "biggest band ever to come out of South America" before they had even signed with a record label. That sort of talk is usually meaningless hype, particularly when it comes from the British music press, who are notorious for discovering the greatest band in human history every five or six days. While it's still hard to see them eclipsing Sepultura, let alone Spanish-language superstars like Soda Stereo, anyone who's seen CSS live can understand why someone would get so excited about them. They're one of the best live bands I've ever seen. I watched them open for Ladytron two years ago and they pretty much blew the dour Liverpudlians off the stage. In fact, CSS frontwoman Lovefoxx sort of scared the Ladytron crowd.

Lovefoxx is like a tiny, neon-clad, Japanese-Brazilian Tasmanian Devil. She stage dives without irony, she manages to make bad dancing look sexy, she jumps on the monitors and loses her balance and dry-humps her bandmates. She makes Torontonian hipsters dance, and that's no small feat. She also touched my friend Morgan's boob at the Ladytron show. Sadly, she's engaged to one of the guys from The Klaxons, totally breaking my heart.

This is the video for "Let's Make Love and Listen to Death From Above." There's a couple rad things here. One, there's not many bands that would put their ego aside and write a love song to another band. Two, I feel like the ladies (and gentleman) of CSS are giving me a little tour of their hometown in this video. This video takes my urge to visit Brazil and doubles it.



Now for their opponents.

In the red corner, from Curtiba, with a buzz factor of being discovered by Diplo, BONDE do ROLE!

In Brazil, the kids in the hood have developed a music they call funk. It sounds a like the bastard child of Miami Bass and violent hate. I started listening to it when I was in my first year of university after reading an article in Spin about, funk balls, parties that got the kids so wound up they would stab the fuck out of each other in the middle of the dance floor. Apparently Diplo got into it around the same time, but because he's much cooler and more important than me, he set about trying to break the genre in North America, where I just sat in my room, downloaded Furaçao 2000 mixtapes off the Internet and smoked pot.

Discovering Bonde do Role in Curtiba was sort of Diplo's equivalent to discovering Lucy at the Olduvai Gorge. They're kind of the giant ruby in his global dance music crown, right between MIA and Baltimore Club.

For the record, Bonde do Role have about as much hood cred as me. They're a bunch of middle-class art school kids playing hood music, but they know that and they're cool with it. It's just that comparing these guys to legitimately heavy dudes like Juca or Mr. Catra is kind of like comparing MC Paul Barman to M.O.P. Not that there's anything wrong with Paul Barman, in fact, I'm a big MC PB fan. Nor is there anything wrong with Bonde do Role, they are what they are and they own it by doing things like sampling Alice in Chains and the Grease soundtrack, and Bonde do Role DJ Rodrigo Gorky produces some of the best mixtapes I've ever heard.

Bonde do Role almost broke up late last year when MC Marina Ribatski quit the band. Gorky and MC Pedro D'Eyrot decided to replace her in an American Idol-style reality show on MTV Brazil. In the end they picked two new female vocalists. The incredibly un-Brazilian-named Laura Taylor was chosen by the audience, while Ana Bernardino was picked by the band after she took a piece of meat out of her vagina.

This is the video for "Solta o Frango" off their North American full-length debut With Lasers. The name of the song translates as "Release the Chickens," which I sort of knew from eating a lot of Portuguese barbecue. Or at least I knew "frango" meant "chicken."

This video features the now departed Marina Ribatski on the mic. I think she has the same stylist as Lovefoxx. That or all Brazilian girls are taking this retro '80s hipster thing and flying it to Absurdistan. This video is so good it almost makes me want to shit myself. I can't even tell you anything about it or I'll ruin the incredible surprise.


Go do it.

A Hard Fought Victory Over Vowels. Congrats MSTRKRFT.

OK kids, we have a winner.

After an extra day of voting and much animated discussion, MSTRKRFT takes the the title, winning 5 - 3.

I have to say, I was pretty impressed with everybody's comments on this one. It's nice to see that smut with little redeeming social value can provoke thoughtful conversation.

MSTRKRFT's victory video is "Street Justice." I really like this video for a number of reasons. One, it has a guest appearance by the Trackdirtyaz, who I like a lot. Two, it's modeled after dance party TV shows. I love dance party TV shows. Electric Circus may still be one of my favourite shows of all time, with Soul Train on WGN a close second. Three, one of the girls in this video looks a little like Jennifer Beals in Flashdance. I love Flashdance.

Dirty, Smutty Hipster Disco: MSTRKRFT vs. Simian Mobile Disco

What's really good?

OK, so it's no secret I spent more than two years wasting my talent slinging porn at a Wal-Mart sized sex store, the name of which rhymes with "induction."

In addition to the promised slightly-more-than minimum wage, this job offered me a few decent perks before it caused my soul to implode.

They included the following:

1) Discounted porn.

2) Free (read, stolen) porn.

3) Long, uninterrupted stretches of time to read, write, eat and stare at the walls.

4) An excuse to start reading Fleshbot on a regular basis. (By the way, it's not like I'm making news here, but Fleshbot may be the absolute best thing on the web. If you're not a regular reader you've been napping for like half a decade.)

5) An ability to differentiate high quality smut from middling smut.

It's the last two that are really important here.

There was a period of time in 2006 where Fleshbot was regularly posting music videos that would not make the rotation on MuchMusic or MTV. It turns out that YouTube is a veritable treasure trove of musical smutitude. Now, as it turns out, a lot of it is crappy re-hashings of old David Lee Roth videos. But some of it is pretty awesome.

I decided to take two of those videos and pit them against each other in a battle to see whose filth is hotter.

A couple things about these videos. They have more in common than just nakedness. Both bands produce a sort of music that straddles the gap between straight up house and retro-'80s electro, a sound I've dubbed Hipster Disco, in part because it's accurate and in part because I've always wanted to invent a genre.

The Main Event

In the red corner, from Toronto, Ontario, with a pretension factor of no vowels, MSTRKRFT!

Pretty much everyone already knows the MSTRKRFT story. The group was started by Jesse Keeler from Death From Above 1979 and Toronto producer Al-P as an outlet for Keeler's housey, DFA-inappropriate musical urges. A year later, DFA was no more and MSTRKRFT was all Keeler had.

(Two asides: One, Al-P is in no way related to El-P or Al B. Sure, which sucks. Two, I am still not 100% over the death of Death From Above 1979.)

This video was one of the '06 Fleshbot classics, and with good reason. Not only is this song a fucking banger, the crew at Fleshbot wasn't lying when they called this bad boy Jules Jordan-esque. (Be aware that there be a porn link, kiddies. For those of you who don't know, Jules Jordan isn't just a pornographer. In my mind, he's THE pornographer. Really and truly, this man has provided countless hours of enjoyment for me.)

That said, this video isn't just pervy. It really doesn't make any sense, either. I dig that. There's no reason for a milkshake to fall from the sky. It just does.



And now the opposition.

In the blue corner, from Manchester, England, with a pretension factor of a long, goofy name and releasing shit on a French label, SIMIAN MO-bile DISCOOOO!

Where MSTRKRFT came as the result of a side project, Simian Mobile Disco rose phoenix like from the ashes of electro-rock act Simian.

Here's what I know about Simian. When I was working for an excellent little campus paper at a less-than-excellent university, I got a review copy of Simian's We Are Your Friends. I don't remember if I ever got around to writing the review, but I remember really liking the album. I think I may still have it. I should probably go look at some point.

After the band's 2005 break-up, half the guys from Simian started remixing songs for acts like Muse, The Go! Team and Air. In 2006 Kitsuné records released "Hustler" and the rest, as they say, is history.

As far as I can tell, and I won't front like I put extensive research into this blog, their are two "official" videos for "Hustler." Both of them are righteously dirty, but I picked this one because I think it contrasts with the MSTRKRFT joint a little better.

A few things I like about this video:

1) Girls kissing girls. It's cheesy, it's clichéd and to be totally honest with you, I don't really like all-girl porn that much, but in music videos it works. Hell, just ask Pittsburgh Slim.

2) The slow build. There's no action until two-thirds of the way through. Again, not so cool in porn, but it works in the smutty music video context.

3) The cheese-bag, '80s art school film vibe. I'm going to assume this was like a "meta" type reference to art school film, rather than actually thinking that's cool.

If the MSTRKRFT video is lay it all out early, cumshots 'til you explode, Jules Jordan-style joint, the Simian Mobile Disco video is more like an Eon McKai video. It's art you can jack off to, if you really, really need to jack off.

(Again, two asides. One, Cadence Weapon did an absolutely insane mash-up of "Hustler" and Rick Ross' "Hustlin'" called, not surprisingly, "Hustlin' Hustler." I suggest you all go find it when you're done here. Two, my former co-worker Marty once made an excellent observation on the work of Eon McKai. "It's a gritty portrayal of urban life, it's fucking awful .... Do you jerk off to Scorsese films?")



OK, so once again voting closes midnight Friday. Sorry to take away a day of democracy, but my trip to the hinterland through me off schedule. Won't happen again.