Australia: The Maligned Continent II

Tame Impala Lucidity
(HEY DMCA JACKASSES, THERE IS NO MP3 ON THIS POST ANYMORE!)

About a month ago, I was talking to my friend Adrian (who just returned from an extended visit a couple of months back) about Australia and the general consensus was... Maybe Australia isn't crappy. Beaches, nice weather, good fashion mags. Another feather in the cap of that great southern landmass is Tame Impala, who specialize in blissed out psych-rock. The above track is from their album Innerspeaker, which was recorded with production assistance from Kevin Holmes of Death in Vegas. Like other good things (Cut Copy!), they're on Modular Recordings.

Cut Copy's I Thought of Numbers EP (2001)

Cut Copy Rendesvouz
Cut Copy Drop The Bomb
Cut Copy Standing Up Sitting Down

The other day, I was thinking that there should be another Cut Copy album coming down the pipeline, and lo and behold, no word of anything yet. Alas. The Australians are easily one of my favourite electro groups around today, managing to penetrate my low-level hostility and antipathy towards that continent. To tide myself over, I returned to their 2001 debut EP, I Thought of Numbers, from which the songs above are taken. Rendezvous best bears the Cut Copy sonic stamp of the three songs here - the rolling synth-lines, disaffected vocals, and chopped vocal samples: not quite ready for the dancefloor yet, though. Drop the Bomb sounds a bit like the Avalanches, or the Bumblebeez or the hybrid edits that Jacques Renault specializes in - certainly more of a UK break influence being felt at this time, while Standing Up Sitting Down is a faux-Teutonic head-nodder that eventually morphs into a sample-fueled disco mid-tempo work-out.

You can still buy a 12" from Modular that has four of the songs on it.

Fleetwood Mac Never Forget (Cut Copy Lifelife Remix)

As an addenda to yesterday's Fleetwood Mac post, here's Australia's favourite Golden Boys re-mixing another Christine McVie song from the So Cosmic mixtape that they put out last year. The layers of jet-propelled melancholy are perfect if you find yourself biking up a mountain an hour before sunset or so.