Following the axiom of "if it ain't broke, pummel it some more until it is," this track from Parts & Labor is a welcome and familiar follow-up to the accessible screech of last year's Stay Afraid, with the same frenetic drumming, dentist-drill keyboards, and chest-beating vocals. The only way to sound any bigger: horns, which, just before some double-speed heart palpitations via bass drum, introduce a new melody on a megalograndiose chorus that makes you want to leap over a canyon on a skateboard on fire. On the rest, the band's idea of growth-- round vocals, more quiet-to-loud dynamics-- are common indicators of "maturity," but when your drummer is this relentless and you switch out your guitars for electronic squealing that eviscerates ear canals and chest cavities, the results sound just as fresh as the last album.

MP3: > Parts & Labor: "Fractured Skies"
[from Mapmaker; due 05/22/07 on Jagjaguwar/Brah]

The world is being torn apart by zealots and fanatics who insist on pushing their worldviews on others. We need a hero, and now we have one. His name is simply, poignantly, Speak. He is a man of indiscriminate age who has so internalized every "yeea," "come on," and "tha's right" of the rap music he loves that he spills these words like the blood of the slain to whom he pays tribute in this labor of love.

Speak is an enigma, paying his respects to 2003 in a video for a song that may not even have a title, a video that only recently resurfaced. Though four long years have passed since, his message transcends the boundaries of time. It is a message he, true to his name, spoke, to the world at large: "I don't want a war. I just want a peace." If you close your eyes, you can still see him, pigeon in hand.

Speak, we will never forget you. Yeea, come on.

Tyondai Braxton turns Minus the Bear's spiky, mathed-up new wave tune into a fractured dance number, nicking and processing minute instrumental phrases to create beat fodder. The structure of the original is somewhat mirrored in the way the beat breaks down where the spacey bridge used to be. The tiniest guitar or synth squiggle is eligible to take center stage in Braxton's looping, diced-up interpretation, which in some ways echoes the modular approach he takes on stage. In the end, the remix is just as catchy and complex as its source, and stands perfectly well on its own as an inventive re-imagining of the assembly plan for a song's most basic raw materials.

MP3: > Minus the Bear "Fulfill the Dream (Old Italy Remix)"
[from Interpretaciones del Oso; out now on Suicide Squeeze] | [ORDER]

Here on a song from the forthcoming album God Save the Clientele, we have a Clientele more forward in every conceivable way: "You got my name/ Pick up my number/ Come on darling/ Let's be lovers." Maybe he's in character, but lead singer and songwriter Alasdair Maclean almost sounds like a cad. Meanwhile, the chords are hitting on the 1 and 3 over the brisk beat and strings that sound like they might have drifted over from Philadelphia are swirling all over the place. And then Maclean throws in a fuzztone guitar solo on the break and doubles his own voice like John and Paul during a closing refrain of "Good Night".

Turns out the Clientele are pretty good at peppy, upbeat guitar pop with orchestral flourishes. They've so far been one of those bands less interested in "branching out" than perfecting a unified aesthetic, but here they sound different, energized, more expansive, and less hermetic, and the change is welcome.

MP3: > The Clientele: "Bookshop Casanova"
[from God Save The Clientele; due 05/08/07 on Merge] | [PRE-ORDER]

Like most compilations, Ed Rec Vol 2, the second label sampler from France-based Ed Banger Records is a hit-or-miss affair. But there's also a reason why their label's one of the hottest in electro right now: From insane club nights to a lineup (Justice, DJ Mehdi, SebastiAn, Busy P, Mr. Flash, et al) that just won't quit-- and let's face it, a design aesthetic that could kill a man-- there aren't many other electro stables bringing it quite this hard at the moment. From today's Pitchfork review by Tim Finney, here are two tracks off the comp you don't wanna rest on:

>> Justice: "Phantom"

"...Justice's "Phantom" fuses hyper-plasticity with noise for noisiness' sake in characteristic fashion. While it's hardly surprising, it's perhaps the duo's best executed effort to date, the descent from disco sparkle into a mid-range black hole and back out again carried off with agility, even grace..."

>> Krazy Baldhead: "Strings of Death"

"...Krazy Baldhead's "Strings of Death" performs the unlikely feat of summarizing the label's entire aesthetic while sounding like nothing else in its back catalogue... It slinks its way around overblown, bluesy guitar riffs while paranoid synths and snapping electro beats add a slight industrial inflection, somewhere between Ministry at their most lithe and Depeche Mode at their most heavy..."

This is the version of "Missing Links" London rapper Plan B wanted to release, but for obvious reasons couldn't. The track samples the opening piano chords from Radiohead's "Pyramid Song", but the Oxford art-rockers, being not famously sample-friendly, turned down his request to recycle elements of their track. Plan B talked about it in an interview with Ukhh.com:

Radiohead, they don't let anyone sample their shit. Which kinda fucked me up. I had to replay it. I was a little bit bitter about that, cos they were my heroes growing up. And I thought they didn't have the decency to listen to the track and tell me honestly what they thought. Just give me a proper reason and fair enough. Man just ignored me. That was a bit hurtful. Fuck it, I'm a grown man, I got over it, did a new version, put it on the album. People will hear the other version man.

That they will. This version, now appearing on Plan B's new Paint It Blacker mixtape, only samples a few seconds of Radiohead's intro, but while it might've been more impressive to hear him rock the original time signature, the beat here makes more sense.

MP3: > Plan B: "Missing Links"
[from Paint It Blacker mixtape]

This Hot Chip remix is focused. It has a mission. Hot Chip know that if you don't want to dance to this, they've failed, so they do away with !!!'s nuanced, funkier beat for an aggressive dancefloor thump. The bass rumblings in the track's second half are turned down; the beat and vocals are cranked. With virtually no empty space around him, Nic Offer's talk/rap, which recalls some of the early 90s more egregious white-boy rap breaks, becomes more prominent. Never mind. The best parts are instrumental anyway-- like when Hot Clip push the steam lever forward and surround the bass with fog.

[from Must Be the Moon 12"; due out 06/05/07 on Warp]

As reported by the hounds over at Pitchfork News, Brit-rock jokesters Art Brut are prepping their sophomore full-length, It's a Bit Complicated, for a June release. Having premiered the first single, "Nag Nag Nag Nag", on their MySpace back in November, the boys (aaaand girl) are finally letting us all in on a few additional songs from the upcoming album.

Each of these songs is fuller and more fleshed out, but of course, frontman Eddie Argos' self-deprecating wit remains front-and-center. In "Pump Up the Volume", the lead makes out with a lady, but wonders, "Is it so wrong/ To break from your kiss to turn up a pop song?" (If you answered "depends which song," congrats-- let's trade seats.) "Direct Hit", meanwhile, finds guitars competing with Argos for dancefloor space and a shouting chorus. And finally, "Post Soothing Out" sees Argos either referencing John & Yoko or trying on a little cliché: "Every day/ Is just like starting over."

[from It's a Bit Complicated LP; due 06/26/07 on Downtown]

Proclamations of personal wealth and the minutiae of the drug game are evergreen subjects for hip-hop, but "White Girl", the debut track from Young Jeezy's new clique USDA (United Streets Dopeboys of America), ain't saying anything too new. The 808-laced beat, produced by Drumma Boy, taps into the Southern street sound, but its plodding beat and virtual lack of verse/chorus differentiation doesn't exactly have the (ahem) trappings of a hit single.

Maybe a more nimble emcee (say Lil' Wayne) could make it work, but Jeezy isn't that man. Here, the gravel-voiced rapper recycles an old metaphor (white girl = cocaine) used to greater effect on E-40's "White Gurl" [ft. Juelz Santana and Bun B], attempting to flesh out the beat with grunted adlibs. But it'd take a lot more than gimmickry to save this cut-- like guest MCs who actually take advantage of an opportunity to distinguish themselves. Instead, fellow USDA members Slick Pulla and Blood Raw fail to step up in their moments to shine, leading to what could be one of coke rap's early signs of withdrawl.

[from Young Jeezy Presents USDA: Cold Summer; due 05/22/07 on Def Jam]

Fans of Page France's earnest chamber pop won't be surprised by this winning nugget from their forthcoming third LP. But, leading with its best assets-- Michael Nau's reedy, plaintive croon and those glockenspiels-- this charming new track does manage to distinguish itself from the band's catalog of acoustic sing-alongs. Its insistent build and fragile coda seem out of character for the group, yet there's something playful in the song's downstroked urgency-- like the Hidden Camera's "Boys of Melody" without lyrics about stained bed sheets.

Page France' are instead more chaste, the song almost pastoral; Nau sings of a little dove, worms in apples, and precious children. But each time the verse returns, a new instrument is layered into the mix-- first staccato piano chords, then marching-band drums and a doo-wop electric guitar line-- pushing the song forward until it's frothed into as much of a frenzy as the guileless folks in Page France are capable of mustering. And it's at just that moment that the music dramatically cuts out, and Whitney McGraw's sweet babydoll vocals rise out of the silence to calm everything down. "Don't you get so worked up," she sings over a dreamy wisp that could have been culled from the Mamas and the Papas' rendition of "Dedicated to the One I Love". The long, meandering outro seems a little unnecessary, but after getting so agitated, it clearly takes this group a little while to chill out.

Flying Lotus is best-known for his work with Adult Swim, where the L.A.-based producer made beats for their bumpers. There you have under a minute to grab and keep attention. "Spicy Sammich" holds for longer, though some of it runs on needlessly. This sandwich comes grilled-- the song sizzles and cracks for the first half before its beat comes in. Dark, wordless voices chant over the intro as well, though a little bit of this could have been cut to make way for the second half. Here the chanters present a victim, a drowning voice that gargles water in its last breath.

[from upcoming 12"; due in June on Warp]

The closing track from Return to Cookie Mountain is also the last on TV on the Radio's new Live at Amoeba Records EP. The tracks were recorded in September at the legendary music store-- one of the country's largest-- and you can hear its cavernous space in the acoustics and vocals here. The studio version's static-hazed ending is preserved on this live version, along with the flutes and chimes that scatter and fly at the song's end.

[from Live at Amoeba Music EP; out now on Amoeba Records] | [ORDER]