2010 is beginning to look as the moment of truth for the recent batch of bands coming from Brooklyn. New York’s hippest borough has been the heart of indie music for the last few years and has seen many of its artists -from TV on the Radio to MGMT- going global, while redefining the state of alternative music. Early in the New Year many of those Brooklyn scene-shapers will be releasing new records that may help revalidate their neighbourhood as pop music’s creative epicenter.
Yeasayer are among the first ones delivering new material, after ‘All Hours Cymbals’ just earned them a place within Pitchfork’s much talked-about top 200 albums of the decade. The experimental trio, notorious for bringing hip world music and hippy psychedelic influences to their perfect pop pills, have begun promoting their second work ,’Odd Blood’, with a recent gig at NY’s Guggenheim Museum and is giving away a download of ‘Ambling Alp’, the contagious first single.
The song can also be purchased on several digital and physical bundle formats that include mixes by indie wunderkind Memory Tapes and king of leftfield DJ/Rupture, plus all sorts of merchandise.
“Odd Blood” will be released on February the 9th by Secretly Canadian in North America and Mute around the world. Get “Ambling Alp” Here.
The DJ, responsible for some of the most leftfield and innovative records in recent times has been doing his research on Cumbia, the traditional Latin American folk genre, particularly strong in Colombia, that’s experiencing a XXI century electro-facelift, coming from diferent parts of the American continent from Buenos Aires to Brooklyn, and is tipped to be the next big thing in clubs around the world.
His set at last weekend Primavera Sound festival in Barcelona, was regarded by many as one of the highlights of the event. Other heavyweights who stormed the seaside Spanish city were Neil Young on a two and a half live set which covered most of his classics; My Bloody Valentine on a double treat playing both outdoors and indoors at the Auditori the next day; Sonic Youth introducing their new album “The Eternal” and Yo La Tengo.
Other standout moments were The Vaselines, Throwing Muses and Jayhawks reunion; Drone kings Sunn)))o and British fine popsters Saint Etienne playing respective classic albums. Jarvis Cocker; Aphex Twin; Lightning Bolt, Alela Diane, Deerhoof, The Pains Of being Pure at Heart and Shellac.
A first taster of DJ/Rupture’s Cumbia findings can be found in the following mix, done for Ghetto Palms.
