Melissa Auf Der Maur - Out Of Our Minds.mp3
Melissa Auf Der Maur – Out Of Our Minds [MP3]

Melissa auf Der Maur, who releases her second solo album Out Of Our Minds today (which also features a multimedia/film component), has told the story of her path in the music world to the Canadian National Post.

Here’s an excerpt:

I was only ever in one band before I joined Hole. It started on “Loonie Tuesday” in 1991 at a Montreal pub and an unknown group was playing for a dollar to 30 people. That group was the Smashing Pumpkins and, halfway through their set, I could tell my life was going to change. But while I was having this great epiphany, my friend threw a beer bottle at Billy Corgan and Billy jumped off the stage and they were fighting and rolling around on the floor. I realized what I loved about them was what he hated: they were playing to an empty bar as if it were an ocean. I knew I had found my gang.

[...] after I played 180 shows for [my first] record and flushed my twenties and the ’90s out of my system, I began from scratch and started over. That’s what my new record is.

I think with my new record, this multi-media project, I’m properly represented for the first time. I spent my years with Hole defining my character, my years in the Smashing Pumpkins defining myself as a musician and my first record finding myself as a songwriter. On this new record, all I did was follow my gut.

You can read the rest at the National Post website and you can stream the new album at Auf der Maur’s site, xmadmx.com.

We loved hearing the story of how Auf der Maur met Billy Corgan and ended up joining his band after bassist D’arcy Wretzky left. We have fond memories of the Smashing Pumpkins playing live (with Auf Der Maur on bass) in New York (including on a ferry around Manhattan) and in Chicago back in 2000. We also enjoyed her show at Knitting Factory Brooklyn late last year (where we spotted Love in the crowd) and her low-key album-release party at SXSW featuring free absinthe, and Out Of Our Minds (oft abbreviated as OOOM by the Auf der Maur camp) on repeat.

Yes, this was partly an excuse to reveal a bit more of the SXSW content we still haven’t fully shared with you. Stay tuned.

Foster The People are a four-piece LA-based band that formed just recently, in the Fall of 2009. So far, they’ve only played a couple LA shows and a couple last month at SXSW (see the video, below).

Foster The People - Pumped Up Kicks.mp3
Foster The People – Pumped Up Kicks [MP3]

The band’s great new track “Pumped Up Kicks” (above) is sure to get them plenty of attention. Already, the song has been featured in NYLON’s recent Fashion Week coverage. Previously, when frontman Mark Foster was still solo, his song “I Would Do Anything For You” was used in Paris Hilton’s MTV show My New BFF (November 2008) and “Kids”–now a Foster The People song, it seems–was featured in another episode of the show (July 2009).

Foster The People has a live date scheduled for this Wednesday, April 7 at Spaceland in LA, and you can stream other songs now at the band’s website, FosterThePeople.com.

The Highweights

Foster The People - Pumped Up Kicks (The Highweights Remix).mp3
Foster The People – Pumped Up Kicks (The Highweights Remix) [MP3]

Meanwhile, making their debut right now exclusively on TheMusic.FM, The Highweights, a DJ/production duo from Mexicali, Mexico (near the border with California), have offered a solid remix of “Pumped Up Kicks” (above).

We are excited to hear more from both Foster The People and The Highweights, and we’ll be sure to share it with you as soon as we do.

Foster The People live at SXSW: “Pumped Up Kicks”

We at TheMusic.FM are one of the first blogs to join a crazy collective known as Strangers in Stereo. Featuring 20 of the best and most unique voices in the music blogging community, the goal is to spread the love by sharing great content from each of the blogs and working together to accomplish more in the world of music.

This is not going to be a catch-all-aggregator type of deal where all the blogs just get automatically republished. Rather, we will feature key articles we want to share, and that will be coupled with some great exclusive content and features that the Strangers will create. This will provide us, and other members, with an even larger megaphone, when we need one.

The plan is to be an even larger presence in the blogging world and our communities, too. Look out for CMJ showcases and other events and projects. We’re excited to collaborate and share, and you should be too!

To kick things off, the Strangers in Stereo members collaborated to produce a mix, featuring one track chosen by each blog. Our choice:

Aeroplane feat. Au Revior Simone - Paris (Friendly Fires Remake).mp3
Aeroplane feat. Au Revior Simone – Paris (Friendly Fires Remake) [MP3]

Immuzikation mixed all the tracks beautifully to produce a mix titled “Strangers No More.” Check it out:

Click for larger images

StrangersInStereo.com - Strangers No More (Mix by Immuzikation).mp3
Immuzikation – Strangers No More Mix (StrangersInStereo.com) [MP3]

Additionally, the venerable Hype Machine’s podcast introduced Strangers in Stereo and interviewed SIS founder Will Hines during its SXSW 2010 preview episode. Listen and download, below:

Hype Machine Radio #16 [MP3 via Hypem.com/Soundcloud]

This is only the beginning. Stay tuned for more.
TheMusic.FM – Twitter / RSS
StrangersInStereo.com – Twitter / RSS

Freddie Gibbs - Slammin.mp3
Freddie Gibbs – Slammin’ [MP3]

Freddie Gibbs has carved out the most gangster corner of downtown Austin’s otherwise extravagant Hilton lobby. It’s a familiar five star design: plush leather couches, a South by Southwest sanctioned McStage harboring chilled out, sensitive guitar guys; lots of windows, wi-fi, a coffee shop named Java Jive. There’s also a dimly lit, airport-recalling bar and in its dark, back corner Gibbs sips Hennessey on the rocks.

At 27, the rapper has already been restrained and discarded by Interscope, become disillusioned with the genre’s talent, ascended to trendy blog bait on the heels of two exhilarating, freely downloadable 2009 mixtapes, The Miseducation of Freddie Gibbs and Midwestgangstaboxframecadillacmuzik. Gangsta rap on a ’93 tip.

He’s in a black hoodie, black fitted. His manager, Archie, checks laptops as his boys, one a Rick Ross lookalike sporting impenetrable black shades, say nothing. Gibbs provides direct, honest, warm and thoughtful answers. He’s not like most hip-hop interviews, in other words.

“I’m not interested in being the most famous rapper,” Gibbs says frankly, without blinking, “I’m interested in being the best rapper alive.”

Good thing, too, because Gibbs ruffled lots of feathers with his first, decidedly non-gangster dent on the culture: an academic New Yorker feature wherein the author (a) declared hip-hop’s irrelevance and (b) anointed Gibbs as its last hope. The genre you know and love is dead, the white Sasha Frere-Jones arrogantly theorized, except for this guy I found.

If you read the oft-circulated and retorted piece, I don’t blame you for blacklisting Gibbs out of principle. But the embargo is worth lifting, if only because he embraces the pressure.

“He’s a good guy and I appreciated Frere-Jones taking the time to write about me,” Gibbs said, “I don’t take issue with his claim because I believe it.”

Photos by Callie Richmond

Freddie Gibbs hails from Gary, Indiana and makes streets-based rap the way it should sound in 2010: learned, lyrical, about robbing, in societal context. His voice is thick, grizzly. A faster Slim Thug. A smarter Young Buck. His appeal lies in an innate ability to spit the occasional run of the mill boast (“Gibbs run in your crib like Kris Kringle” or “I’m from the home of the old-fashioned Joe Jackson ass-whoopin’”) and have said phrase resonate for days.

“I rap with tunnel vision,” Gibbs said, “that’s all I really do.”
continue reading "Interview: Freddie Gibbs Reps Gangsta Rap at SXSW"

You Say Party! We Say Die! by Lee Dale

For part 3, we’re going to do something a bit different and represent one of the best aspects of SXSW. For all the music, the running around, the free-ness, the best part is the connections and opportunity for collaboration. You meet so many people who do what you do (often more successfully or in different ways) and it provides a great spark of inspiration. It’s probably the best and most rewarding aspect of SXSW.

While we have more interviews and videos to come from Kid Sister, Fenech-Soler, Major Lazer, Nardwuar, and others, I’m going to conclude my piece with a final set of pictures from a different pair of eyes.

chew-lips-slick.mp3
Chew Lips – Slick [MP3]

Lee Dale, from I Need Sugar, had his camera out during much of SXSW and captured great moments featuring The xx, Fanfarlo, Marina and the Diamonds, Yacht, You Say Party! We Say Die!, Efterklang, Minus The Bear, Bowerbirds, Chew Lips and Memory Tapes. Check some of them out, below, and more photos can be found here.

-Charles
The xx

continue reading "SXSW Recap Part 3: The xx, Memory Tapes, YACHT, You Say Party!, Efterklang, Fanfarlo, More"