Rest In Peace Mr Smith

Elliott Smith is five years gone today. Rest in peace Mr Smith. This is my favourite song of his.
And this is an awesome tribute...

Wrongtom in the disco

We are getting very excited over here at BP about our next party at Gramaphone on Friday 3 October. It promises to be our best yet and the main reason for that is the headline performance by the one and only Wrongtom. Hard-Fi's tour DJ and the remixer of Roots Manuva's new album, Wrongtom is a fantastic DJ who we are proud to invite down to Beat Poetry. To give you a taste of the man's talents here's a disco/new wave mix he did earlier this year. It features the Clash, John Lydon's Public Image Ltd and Phil Daniels (!?) and shows that he is a DJ with not only top-notch mixing skills but also a phenomenal knowledge of music.

Download: Dumb Down The Disco - Wrongtom

Glaxo Babies/Dj Wrongtom - Wrongtom Meets The Disco Dinosaurs
The Clash - Radio Edit (Wrongtom’s Disco Dub)
Rip Rig And Panic - Take A Don Key To Mystery
Coco Beware - Tropical Depression
Fad Gadget - Make Room
Public Image Limited - Death Disco (Live In Tokyo)
Orange Juice - Lord John White And The Bottleneck Train
Pig Bag - Getting Up
Boots For Dancing - Hypnotize
Return Of The Panthers - Crown Of Thorns (Wrongtom’s Disco Dub)
Au Pairs - Shakedown
Blank Students - I Want To Be Happy
Phil Daniels + The Cross - Kill Another Night
The Beat - Too Nice To Talk To
Penetration - Movement (Wrongtom’s Disco Dub)

Photo courtesy of Mark Carnaby

Radiohead - good (BP approved)

You know that band Radiohead? They're good them. Are you bowled over by my astounding insight yet? OK OK, a blog post singing Radiohead's praises is never going to be a beautiful and unique snowflake in the unending icestorm that is online music criticism, but I just wanted to draw your attention to three reasons why Radiohead are so great - and two of them are preformances by other bands.
In the days before the internet, Radiohead fanatics (and those of any other 80s/90s band) would have to trudge down to Camden market to pay 17 quid for hooky bootleg CDs of them doing stuff like Carly Simon's Nobody Does It Better. Now, there is such a wealth of stuff available online that it's hard to keep up. NB: This is also due to the fact that the band has embraced the internet wholeheartedly - apparently they gave their album away for free or something, but I don't know I must have missed that. Supposedly it was a big deal.
Anyway, if like me you crave any Radiohead-related sound snippets then your prayers have been answered. Here is an MP3 of Californian band Cold War Kids covering OK Computer track Electioneering and a clip of Beat Poetry favourites Gnarls Barkley doing Reckoner from In Rainbows. Radiohead covers have a tendency to be totally crap, derivative and vastly inferior to the original, but these two are fantastic. At the bottom I've also included Radiohead's version of The Rip, the stand-out track from Portishead's latest album. Enjoy.

Download Cold War Kids - Electioneering



Ally

Get sexual

Download: Hot 8 Brass Band - Sexual Healing (Me & You re-edit)

Holla! Check this out. The Hot 8 Brass Band from New Orleans cover Marvin Gaye's signature tune and have so much fun with it. This re-edit from Brighton's Me&You extends it out into a nine-minute horn epic complete with a long breakdown perfect for boozy singalongs. This has got last-tune-of-the-night stamped all over it.
The original features on the Hot 8's album for Tru Thoughts. Buy it here.
Ally

Blowin' Up

Things are pretty exciting at Beat Poetry at the moment as our next club night is beginning to take shape and looks like being quite a special night. We've got DJ Wrongtom doing a headline slot for us; made famous by his work with Hard-Fi, he's fresh from remixing Roots Manuva's new album and his DJ sets have impressed everyone from XFM's Eddy Temple-Morris to rap royalty Pharrell Williams.

This post is dedicated to two tracks i've been playing out for years and still can't get enough of. The first is US69's 'Yesterday's Folks' - big drums, big dirty vocals and a slightly psychadelic edge. This is a crate digger favourite and original pressings of the lp are worth a lot. The second is an understated Northern Soul gem that makes up for is slightly plodding instrumentation with a killer vocal from The Exciters' lead singer Brenda Reid. "Dynamiiiiite, and nitroglycerine..."

US69 - Yesterday's Folks Download Here
The Exciters - Blowin' Up My Mind Download Here

Hey kids

Hi there, sorry for the lack of posts over the last few weeks, BP has been taking its summer holidays. Anyway, we'll be back up running at full speed soon enough and will have some exciting news about our next party at Gramaphone. Stay tuned and for now here are two summer dancefloor bombs to feast on...
Download: MGMT - Kids (Tronik Youth remix)
Download: Chemical Brothers - Hey Boy Hey Girl (Soulwax remix)

Thanks to Emma Cook for the summer encapsulated in Polaroid form. Ally

Top 10 albums of 2008 so far

2008 has so far been the Year of the Mouse, the Danger Mouse that is. The American producer and Gnarls Barkley mastermind (who has previously worked with Gorillaz, MF Doom and The Good, The Bad And The Queen) has had a hand in creating four of our top 10 LPs of the year so far. Read on to find out which ones and discover what else has tickled our ears in 2K8.


10) Santogold - Santogold (Warner)
It is of little surprise that someone who used to work in A&R could produce an album that sounds so achingly now. Santogold's debut strikes a perfect note somewhere between New York punk, Jamaican dub and UK electronica – all overlayed with MIA-meets-Karen O vocals. Great stuff.
myspace.com/SANTOGOLD

9) The Black Keys - Attack & Release (V2)
The blues/rock duo from Ohio have been in danger of running out of creative juice for a while now so the introduction of producer Danger Mouse for their fifth album was inspired. Tracks like Psychotic Girl and Strange Times mean this is their best LP since 2003's Thick Freakness.
myspace.com/theblackkeys

8) Beck - Modern Guilt (XL)
This guy must sprinkle creativity on his Shreddies. Listening to a new Beck LP can be an anxious experience, you never quite know what you're going to get, but Modern Guilt delivers. From the Caribou-sounding, washed-out Chemtrails to the world-weary urbanity of Volcano, it demands your attention from start to finish. myspace.com/beck

7) Gnarls Barkley - The Odd Couple (Warner)
No one else does songs about mental illness and depression quite like this. No one else scores so high on sheer danceability. No one else takes retro influences and makes them seem so cutting edge. Drums, meaningful lyrics, a great soul voice and a bonus disc on the vinyl LP which plays the whole album backwards. What more do you want? myspace.com/gnarlsbarkley

6) DeVotchka - A Mad And Faithful Telling (Anti)
No matter what else you say, it does sound like Arcade Fire and Beirut went out into the desert and had a baby. And the baby's name was DeVotchka. But in our book that can only be a good thing. The "Denver Beatles" have made an album that fuses a lot of different styles but, more importantly, has a lot of genuine emotion and beautiful compositions. myspace.com/devotchkamusic

5) The Roots - Rising Down (Def Jam)
It's fair to say that 2008 has hardly been a vintage year for hip-hop albums, but you can always rely on Philadelphia's The Roots to turn in a quality performance. Rising Down is a tough, pissed-off-sounding album that features one of Beat Poetry's favourite tracks of the year: Get Busy.
myspace.com/theroots

4) The Shortwave Set - Replica Sun Machine (Wall of Sound)
The highest placed of the four Danger Mouse-produced albums to make our list and it is arguably the one where his input is least audible. Deptford's Shortwave Set have channeled the spirit of the Beta Band (RIP) and produced the catchiest most melodic alt-pop record of the year so far.
myspace.com/theshortwaveset

3) Crystal Castles - Crystal Castles (Different)
As the indie-disco boom continues, there's a lot of crap out there purporting to innovate while just delivering the same Daft Punk/Talking Heads rip-offs. But Crystal Castles is one of the few albums that delivers something both new and challenging. If you haven't seen them live yet do yourself a favour, just don't wear your brand new white trainers. myspace.com/crystalcastles

2) MGMT - Oracular Spectacular (Sony BMG)
Ostensibly a pop record and hyped to the hilt, Brooklyn's psychedelic duo took odd castaway/pirate stylings with Bowie vocals and bright, quirky production and made songs you couldn't get out of your head (in a good way). Time To Pretend and Kids already feel like classics; if anything sums up the sound of 2008, it's this. myspace.com/mgmt

1) Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago (4AD)
A funny choice for No1, perhaps, from a blog mainly about beat-based music, but Bon Iver's beguiling acoustica - powered by his heart-breaking voice - is far and away the best LP we've heard this year. How he managed to produce such a rich, powerful album while shacked up in a mountain hut is beyond us.
myspace.com/boniver

Download: The Black Keys - Psychotic Girl

NB: Notable mentions also go to The Raconteurs, Fleet Foxes, Hercules & Love Affair, Ida Maria, Vampire Weekend and Pete Molinari.