Diandra’s 2012 in New Music

Rapper P.O.S.’s latest, We Don‘t Even Live Here Anymore, didn’t make me run to the record store like 2008’s Never Better. However, it has an urgent opener with Bumper [1]  and the standout is They Can’t Come (feat. Sims). [1]

I did purchase the debut CD of indie retro duo Electric Guest. Only when I researched the band today did I found out that one of the two members is Asa Taccone, brother of the Lonely Island’s Jorma Taccone, and producer on some of that comedy troupe’s songs. You might have heard the radio-friendly fun This Head I Hold, but I’d like to highlight Under the Gun, a piece of ’70s mid-tempo melancholy [1].

Sifting through free and legal mp3 postings can be tiring, but the effort yields the occasional worthwhile discovery. Try Canadian rapper Cadence Weapon’s 88 [1], which brilliantly riffs on a Grimes beat. Bounce to the bright pop of Tennis’s Origins [1]. For a free glitchy 8-bit dance album, try out S/T by Knife City at Bandcamp, where I ended up taking braid. Via another free music site, I found Candice Gordon’s I See a Demon [1], a soft and smoky number from mid-2011. When I checked up on her more recent work, I found her screeching with swagger on bursts such as Smoking Like the Barrel of a Gun.

Continuing on the rock ’n’ roll  path, listen to the snarling You’re Not Pretty But You’ve Got It Going On [MV] from Band of Skulls, then simmer down with the alt slow-burn of In Time to Voices from Blood Red Shoes [MV]. Switching over to hip-hop, there’s Balkan Beat Box’s Enemy in Economy [1] a head-bopping surprise about ethnic profiling. While I tend to skip over remixes/refixes/edits/whatevers, do not ignore Caballo’s “cumbiastep n heavy tropicalbass” edit of Major Lazer’s Original Don [1].

The entire album was free until deleted a few months back, but a few other tracks remain here [1].

Diandra Rodriguez

Proudly Latinasian NorCal American.

1 Response

  1. August 27, 2015

    […] tidy up the sprawl that overruns calendar borders. I’ve posted my favorite new music, but I can’t resist the urge to share, in list form, more media […]

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