The studio version of this song, from the upcoming Raveonettes album Lust Lust Lust, made its way to Forkcast a couple of weeks ago. And now we get to hear the Danish duo performing the song in the back of a cab. I'll be damned if it doesn't sound pretty great, with the harmonies spot-on and the vehicle noise kept to a minimum.

[from Lust Lust Lust; due early 2008 on Vice]
 

The German duo Âme's remix of "Repeat Again After Me" has been burning up dance floors for a few months now, and it's not hard to understand why: slow-burning in a bewildering 3/4 time signature, it marries overdriven Moogy squeals to an aching saxophone solo, resulting in nine-plus minutes of cosmic disco madness.

The original, however-- the work of Zombie Zombie member Etienne Jaumet, a French synthesizer wizard who's clearly spent as much time listening to Conrad Schnitzler as he has Giorgio Moroder-- is even better, and not only because it's four minutes longer. Playing an ever-modulating Korg SH101 arpeggio against a bare-bones 808 pattern, letting the sax run free and wild, the track pulses with astral intensity, magnetic fields flaring with the agonized twirling of the dials.

With a name that sounds like some long-lost Elephant 6 band, the Ginger Envelope sure enough hail from Athens, where they share members with local acts Dark Meat and Venice Is Sinking. However, they sound nothing like that psychedelic swirl of bands a decade ago; their debut, Edible Orchids, is full of understated, rainy-day songs like "Drift". In a hangdog voice, Patrick Carey sings about drifting out of a relationship-- "Let me be your runaway, leave the phone alone, and let the memory decay"-- while the bands backs him with understated accompaniment and sways gently to Matt Stoessel's pedal steel, which breezes pensively through the song. "Drift" opens up nicely in the instrumental passages, where Steve Miller's bass walks across the footbridge, reinforcing the song's subtle drift.

MP3:> Ginger Envelope: "Drift"
[from Edible Orchids; out now on One Percent Press]

Spoon stopped by WXPN's NPR-distributed show World Café to perform three songs from Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga plus "I Summon You" from Gimme Fiction. There's also a bit of chat with host David Dye, in which Britt Daniel explains how he tried to make Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga a little "weirder" and "frayed on the edges" compared to Gimme Fiction.

Stream:> Spoon: Live on "World Cafe"
[Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga is out now on Merge]

When I watch this video, of a performance several weeks ago by former Can vocalist Damo Suzuki with Bardo Pond in Philadelphia, shot by Mike at Eattapes, I think of how musicians age, how their priorities shift, and the things they do to lead a comfortable life as they reach their twilight years. And then there's this guy, 57 years old, still going from town to town, playing with a new band each night, completely improvising crazy music in the moment for however many dozen people happen to show up. Suzuki's M.O. for many years now is to create spontaneous music with whatever local musicians will have him, who then become part of Damo Suzuki's Network, an ever-growing, free-floating pool of collaborators. It's a rough life that no one would pursue unless they had to, and when you watch his intensity here, how deeply he seems immersed inside the sound, you get the idea that he probably doesn't have a choice.

Last month we pointed out a website that was streaming at least a large portion of Jonny Greenwood's score for the P.T. Anderson film There Will Be Blood. That page was shut down, but now two tracks from the score are streaming on Nonesuch Radio over at the label's blog.

Stream:> Jonny Greenwood: "Open Spaces" / "Future Markets"
[From the There Will Be Blood OST; due 12/18/07 on Nonesuch]

Pitchfork's Mark Pytlik talked a bit about this MC/producer pair back in April, specifically the "Thou Shalt Always Kill" single that made an impact on radio in the UK. That song offered a long list of new commandments. "Though shalt not go into the woods with your boyfriend's best friend, take drugs and cheat on him" wouldn't fit very well on a stone tablet but it seems like good advice all the same, and the pingy electronic production helps it go down easy. "Letter From God (to Man)", a new song streaming now on MySpace and available for a free download on Christmas Eve, has an equally conceptual slant (yep, this is an audio letter from god to you and me), but the production this time is built around a sample of Radiohead's "Planet Telex", originally found on The Bends. So it's kind of like god sampling Radiohead to help get his message across, or something. They also put together the video below, which mentions the new track and has a few roffles. (via NME)

Stream:> Dan Le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip: "Letter to God From Man"

[from the artist's MySpace page; single available for free download on 12/24/07]

Marion Brown isn't well known outside of jazz circles. Heck, he's not even well known within some jazz circles, but as an active member of the jazz avant-garde from the 1960s through the 80s, his style of playing the alto saxophone had few peers. Where many free-improv players adopt abrasive or aggressive tones, he offered a lyrical, at times even pastoral approach, lending a distinguished voice to recordings with John Coltrane, Steve Lacy, Sun Ra, Pharoah Sanders, Archie Shepp and Harold Budd, as well as to the two-dozen or so sessions he led for labels like ECM, Impulse! and ESP. It's frankly wonderful that His Name Is Alive's Warn Defever and a group of other musicians, including members of NOMO and Antibalas, have chosen to pay tribute to Brown on the recent Sweet Earth Flower album-- a player and musical innovator of his caliber deserves it. "Bismillahi 'Rrahmani 'Rrahim" was originally the side-long opener of ambient composer Harold Budd's 1978 debut album, Pavilion of Dreams, on which Brown played alto. The band here does it under five minutes, but the way the warm bed of Rhodes piano cushions the searching sax lines and noisy guitar during the long crescendo and brief diminuendo captures the restless reflective spirit of its inspiration.

MP3:> His Name Is Alive: "Bismillahi 'Rrahmani 'Rrahim"
[from Sweet Earth Flower: A Tribute to Marion Brown; out now on High Two]

This voice-and-piano version of New Order's "Age of Consent", recorded live in the studio for PRI's show "Fair Game", finds the Broken Social Scene frontman transforming the propulsive post-punk/new wave track into a delicate ballad. His piano intro is a direct transposition of the guitar line but slowed to a more conversational pace, and he completes the effect by lingering over each word like everything hinges on getting it across clearly. Where New Order's original was an anthem to bring the misfits together, this feels like an intimate discussion over a quiet drink. Lovely stuff, and then at the end Drew can't help throwing in a couple of lines from "Temptation". Who can blame him?

The full show is streaming over at Fair Game, including an acoustic version of Drew's "Safety Bricks" and a new work in progress called 'Have a Life", performed in collaboration with Broken Social Scene co-founder Brendan Canning. There's also an interview with host Faith Salie.

MP3:> Kevin Drew: "Age of Consent"

Glasgow is a traditional wellspring of indie pop, from early-1980s progenitors like Orange Juice, the Pastels, and Aztec Camera up through the noisier Jesus and Mary Chain, the dancier Primal Scream, the power-poppier Teenage Fanclub, and the more recent likes of Belle & Sebastian, the Delgados, Camera Obscura, Franz Ferdinand, and the Twilight Sad-- among many others. Bubblegum Lemonade is primarily the project of a man named Laz, a veteran of several Glaswegian bands. Laz's current projects joins the 12-string Rickenbacker jangle of the Byrds (or their successors in the 80s Paisley Underground scene) along with the upbeat scruffiness and simple tunes of such C86 acts as another set of fellow Glaswegians, the Shop Assistants.

"Tyler" comes from The Matinée Hit Parade compilation, which pulls together previously unreleased tracks by 13 artists on California indie-pop label Matinée (The Lucksmiths, the Fairways, Math and Physics Club). While a couple of the songs on Bubblegum Lemonade's MySpace page feature prominent electronics, including the title track to the forthcoming Ten Years Younger EP, this one could almost have been pulled straight out of the 1960s, with tambourines and Laz's cheery vocal harmonies nicely recalling the false ebullience of classics like "I'll Feel a Whole Lot Better". Updating the sound slightly is a thin haze of JAMC-informed distortion, and some programmed beats do glimmer beneath it all, only fully emerging near the end. Sweden may be doing more to move indie pop forward these days, but Glasgow is keeping the flame.

MP3:> Bubblegum Lemonade: "Tyler"
[from The Matinée Hit Parade; out now on Matinée]