Ghislain Poirier is set to release his Ninja Tune debut No Ground Under in the U.S. this month, and the bass-obsessed Montreal DJ/producer has assembled a 40-minute megamix that sets his album's grime-, ragga-, dancehall-, Baltimore club-, and crunk-infused beats alongside his remixes of tracks by Dizzee Rascal, Lil Wayne, and others. There's a lot here to get heads nodding, including two versions of Poirier's "Blazin" that aren't built to sell Toyotas. Poirier previously provided Forkcast with a mix of African hip-hop, which is still worth checking out if you haven't already.

MP3:> Ghislain Poirier: "Bastard Bass" Mix

TRACKLIST

1. "No More Blood" [ft. Face-T]
2. "Road Ride Riddim"
3. "East Montreal Riddim"
4. "Propaganda Riddim"
5. "Exils" [ft. Abdelhak Rahal]
6. Dizzee Rascal: "Fix Up, Look Sharp (Ghislain Poirier Remix)"
7. "City Walking" [ft. Abdominal]
8. "Hit & Red"
9. "La Ronde"
10. "One Hand Can't Clap"
11. "Bounce-moi"
12. "Robe Riddim"
13. "Ladies & Gentleman" [ft. Ambitieux, DJ Netik]
14. DJ C / Zulu: "Darling (Ghislain Poirier Remix)"
15. "Go Ballistic" [ft. Zulu]
16. "Outkast Riddim (Ghislain Poirier Refix)"
17. "Blazin (DJ C Remix)" [ft. Face-T]
18. "Blazin" [ft. Face-T]
19. "Pampa Pimp"
20. "Mangnen l'boulé" [ft. Nik Myo]
21. "ESG Riddim (Ghislain Poirier Refix)"
22. "Diaspora"
23. Bunji Garlin & JMC Triveni: "Doi Festival (Ghislain Poirier Remix)"
24. "Jusqu'en haut" [ft. Face-T]
25. Lil Wayne: "Dopeman (Ghislain Poirier Remix)" [ft. Birdman]
26. "Pour te réchauffer" [ft. TTT, Omnikrom]
27. "Close The News"

[No Ground Under is due 01/29/08 on Ninja Tune]

"Mansard Roof" was the first track from Vampire Weekend's forthcoming debut to get a video, and in it they had some fun with their packaged image as clever Ivy League grads by embracing it completely. To my mind, though, "Mansard Roof", while solid, isn't one of the stronger songs on Vampire Weekend. "A-Punk" is up there, however, with its spunky drive, pogo-inducing rhythm, and subtle but hugely effective sonic accents. And the video, by the Hammer & Tongs duo (they helmed clips by Blur and Supergrass, and they directed the 2005 film version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy), is way better too. Echoing the song's spiky energy, it consists of entertaining performance footage that finds the band processed into stop-motion figures that never miss an upstroke beat. (via Subterranean)

[from Vampire Weekend; due 01/29/08 on XL]

Sweden's Johan Agebjörn is best known as the producer behind Sally Shapiro's Disco Romance, Pitchfork's #32 album of 2007, but now he's taking a turn at the remixer's desk. Unfortunately, his hands are tied by the fact that Norway's Don Juan Dracula haven't exactly written the next "I'll Be By Your Side" here. The Oslo-based group's original "Take Me Home", from 2005's Young Debutantes II, sounds like New Order's "Blue Monday" meeting Orgy's 1990s nu-metal cover; you can hear what might've appealed to Agebjörn in the lo-fi drum beats and occasional bell-like synths, if not the adenoidal vocals and massively compressed guitars. Agebjörn's remix keeps the beats while stripping out (most of) the hormonal angst, instating a graceful eighth-note bass line and airy Italo-disco synth arpeggios. Shapiro's soft, sighing backing vocals, a light contrast to Henrik Lysell's moody lead, might attract some listeners. Agebjörn also adds his beloved vocoder, but he can't turn this into a sensual seduction-- maybe a T-Pain remix next time?

MP3:> Don Juan Dracula: "Take Me Home (Johan Agebjörn Remix")
[original track from Young Debutantes II; out now on Switch Off]

Belgian author and Situationist International member Raoul Vaneigem once wrote, "People who talk about revolution and class struggle without referring explicitly to everyday life, without understanding what is subversive about love and what is positive in the refusal of constraints, such people have corpses in their mouths." In the early 1990s, rock critic Greil Marcus used this metaphor as a jumping-off point for an essay about "modern cannibalism," including James Dean burgers, Sid Vicious burgers, and Jim Belushi burgers. Marcus even quoted Lester Bangs on imbibing bits of Elvis Presley's entrails: "SO YOU'VE ACTUALLY GOTTEN TO EAT THE KING OF ROCK 'N' ROLL!"

All of which may or may not explain the new video for Excepter's "'Burgers (Medium Rare Edit)"-- though if you'd expect any band to know what the fuck I'm talking about, it's this chaotic Brooklyn electro-acoustic improv group. From their forthcoming Debt Debt, "'Burgers" has a druggy bass groove in keeping with the more approachable side Excepter showed on Alternation tracks like "Ice Cream Van" and, especially, "The Rock Stepper". A choir of chipmunk vocals befitting Dan Deacon or Battles (please god, not the new Alvin and the Chipmunks movie soundtrack) swirl around frontman John Fell Ryan's megaphone mumblings. The video shows the band doing some simple, eerie choreography as Ryan gets set to devour a pile of dripping 'burgers. If the apostrophe is meant to imply something, um, cannibalistic, then these dudes are part of a proud tradition.

[from Debt Debt; forthcoming on Paw Tracks]

It's all well and good for Xiu Xiu's Jamie Stewart to say "I Do What I Want When I Want"-- the title of the previously posted lead track from the arty California group's forthcoming Women as Lovers. When young boys do what they want, it sometimes means beating the shit out of each other, as can be seen in the song's characteristically abstruse new video. Last time, we wrote: "'I Do What I Want When I Want' suggests Xiu Xiu's musical experimentation is not yet done, as distorted do-do-dos, whistles, feedback, skronky sax, and what sounds like harmonium spar with pick-heavy guitar downstrokes and Stewart's fluttering whispers. The setting begins with 'a dream about loss,' and no amount of fancy verbiage or off-kilter instrumentation can mask the sense made explicit in [Women as Lovers author Elfriede] Jelinek's novel: that, man or woman, nightmare or daydream, loss and love both hurt."

Kids wrestling on the playground or smacking each other with makeshift lightsabers probably hurts, too, although it looks like the guys here are just supposed to be doing stunts in a homemade movie. As for Xiu Xiu, the band's members are generally seen one at a time, whether standing in place, spitting out fruit, dancing idiosyncratically, tooting on the saxophone, or applying a vacuum cleaner to Stewart's face. The video concludes with text recounting a Korean-American immigrant's memory of being 8 years old, not yet speaking English, and trying to ask a teacher for permission to use the restroom. Inscrutable last words: "That's why glitter is my favorite color." The final image is of a hollowed-out watermelon. Ah, Xiu Xiu.

[from Women As Lovers; due 01/29/07 on Kill Rock Stars]

Antarctica Takes It! self-released their debut CD-R The Penguin League eons ago in internet time-- way back in 2006-- so "New Music" might seem like a case of mislabeling as blatant as putting a "Latin" genre tag on a Los Campesinos! mp3. Despite some favorable blog mentions, however, the lo-fi Santa Cruz, Calif. indie-pop outfit's songs won't have been available in proper album form until their forthcoming release on How Does It Feel to Be Loved?, the UK club night turned record label that gave us 2006's winsome The Kids at the Club compilation. The new edition of The Penguin League was remastered in London, but album highlight "Circuits" thankfully hasn't gone south, retaining the demo version's warm heart and ramshackle charm.

Early Belle and Sebastian is an obvious influence, but rather than take Stuart Murdoch's chamber-pop confections and simply polish them up, 22-year-old songwriter Dylan McKeever achieves a similar effect through his own devices: piano, cello, glockenspiel, accordion, harmonica, female backing vocals, and eccentric percussion, all captured through a laptop's shitty internal microphone. Like Fujiya & Miyagi's fantastic "Collarbone", "Circuits" connects the knee bone to the thigh bone, here not as a route to fake-Japanese absurdity, but as an innocent expression of wonderment at even existing at all. It's also a shy come-on to a love the narrator has lost or, just as likely, hasn't met yet: "See the spark ignite with electricity/ I know there's light inside of you, inside of me," McKeever murmurs. OK, so it's not quite "The State I Am In". But that'd be stretching the definition of "New Music" pretty far, don't you think?

MP3:> Antarctica Takes It!: "Circuits"
[from The Penguin League; due 02/11/08 on How Does It Feel to Be Loved?]

To those of us who once had I'm From Barcelona's "We're From Barcelona" video on constant repeat, or who just the other day found ourselves sitting in rapt incomprehension in front of a stream of Swedish TV show Musikbyrån, it might seem like all Swedes pretty much resemble the thrift-shopping crowd at your average American indie-pop show. Judging by the latest video from Jönköping keyboard-and-guitars quartet the Mary Onettes, Swedish clothing styles were a little bit different 25 or so years ago. But not that different.

The clip for "Explosions", from the Mary Onettes' 2007 self-titled album on Labrador, rewinds to just about the time the group's obvious influences-- the Church, or the romantic side of the Cure-- got popular for their first go-round. The song's "Be My Baby" beat and "Just Like Honey"-like back-and-forth guitars throw the Jesus & Mary Chain into the mix, as well. "It could make your heart stop," goes the tender refrain, as nostalgic images of Swedes and their children flicker past like the opening credits of early-1990s sitcom "The Wonder Years". The video is a deft acknowledgement of how much the Mary Onettes owe to the past, from a group who were never shy about their debt in the first place.

[from The Mary Onettes; out now on Labrador]

The kalimba, colloquially known as the thumb piano, is an instrument of sublime simplicity: The water-drop reverberations of plucked reeds or metal tines are amplified by a resonator box fashioned from humble wood or a hollow gourd. Classically trained pianist Laura Barrett plies her trade in miniature on "Deception Island Optimists Club", a kalimba-carried ballad where she makes the most of the instrument's rich, pure tones, and stands to do for the indie world's perception of the thumb piano what Joanna Newsom did for the harp (although her singing is more akin to Cat Power's retiring soul than Newsom's brassy world-jazz). If this were written for piano or guitar, it would simply be a forlorn dove of a song with a trembling, flighty melody-- nice if unexceptional. But the sprightly clockwork of Barrett's kalimba phrases, lurching forward and falling back with the organic melody, creates a more rarified and captivating atmosphere.

Alison Goldfrapp sounds like she's reinventing herself yet again on "A & E", the first single from her forthcoming Seventh Tree album with the group that shares her last name. From her 1990s roots as a trip-hop guest vocalist, Goldfrapp had gradually morphed by the time of 2005's Supernature into what Pitchfork's Nitsuh Abebe described as "something like a cross between Kylie Minogue and PJ Harvey, between Annie and Siouxsie Sioux, between Rachel Stevens and Beth Gibbons, the evil-twin model of the shimmery dancefloor princess-bot." Now, "A & E" dreamily blends acoustic strums, bubbling electronics, and the singer's sensuous, woozily echoing purr, resulting in something more akin to, oh, Beth Orton's mellow sister, or a folkier version of Goldfrapp's own Black Cherry-era self. This lovelorn song benefits from some relatively vivid lyrics about blue Saturdays and backless dresses, but it's likely to surprise people who know Goldfrapp best from Supernature's big hit, the glammy, electric guitar-driven "Oh La La". Given Goldfrapp's shape-shifting track record, that's probably the point.

Stream:> Goldfrapp: "A & E"
[from Seventh Tree; due 02/25/08 on Mute]