Summer ’09

Hard to soundtrack my entire summer with the festivals, jobs and experiences i’ve had so far, but here goes:

• ‘Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)’ – Florence And The Machine: Best act at the Lovebox Festival in Victoria Park. Also nominated for the Mercury Music Prize, which would be a good fit.
• ‘Future Primitive’ – Papercuts: San Francisco band i’ve been hearing about a lot but never bothered to check out, until I heard this. Havn’t really stopped listening since.
• ‘Brooklyn (Go Hard)’ – Jay-Z feat. Santogold: Continually amused with Jay-Z’s output despite him being apparently ‘retired’ for a few years now. Looking forward to visiting Brooklyn for the 1st time with ‘Street Talk’ later this month…
• ‘Uprising’ – Muse: Undecided about Muse’s direction into electro-pop (where’s my Rage-influenced band of ‘New Born’/'Stockholm Syndrome’?), but seeing them in October so i’d better give a quick mention.
• ‘Summertime Clothes’ (Dam-Funk Remix) – Animal Collective: Still the best album of 2009 IMO, and this track benefits from a cool remix. Going to the Merriwether Post Pavillion (of album-name fame) to film at the Virgin Mobile Festival in Baltimore this weekend. They’re not playing
• ‘I Feel Cream’ – Peaches: Irritated that i missed out on filming her performance at the Royal Festival Hall earlier this year. That’s all, really…
• ‘The Prayer’ – KiD KuDi: Trying to blag a quick interview when we’re in NY for ‘Street Talk’, is the album still not out yet?
• ‘Knife’ (Girl Talk Remix) – Grizzly Bear: Worth a mention as I first heard this around Easter last year (via @the_beav) and Grizzly Bear have been catapulted to indie-fame since. Will be interviewing Girl Talk at the Virgin Mobile Festival.
• ‘Who Can Say’ – The Horrors: This from my fave British album of the year, which is also up for the Mercury Music Prize.
• ‘Knockouts’ – Ouch My Face: The most aggresive thing i’ve heard all year, which is a good thing. They’re from Melbourne, Australia and heard this whilst listening to Fee Bamford-Bracher’s show on Triple R – v happy when i got a shout-out

Also going to draw attention to 2 amazing free downloads by a couple of artists i know:

• Conelrad: Downtempo/’Boards Of Canada’-esque artist played a bit on BBC 6-Music a while back. Just released 2nd LP called ‘Sure Is The Risk Made’.
• Kase: East-london rapper who’s on Master Shortie’s new album and just released his own ‘The Reunion’ EP.

That’s all for now – getting on the plane to Baltimore in a couple of days and then off for 2 weeks in NY! Nice end to the summer…