The following is a Public Service Announcement from 3hive and Hearts of Palm UK.
Hearts of Palm UK offers a timely song this week about citizens and their right to vote, “Super Tuesday,” the (un)official anthem of (obviously) Super Tuesday, the day 24 states in our blessed union hold presidential primaries. Hearts of Palm UK are not British or Northern Irish, as the name would suggest; Erika and Ambi-D are a couple of Cali girls cranking out this peculiar indie-electro-pop. As a political science major in college, I secretly hope that they follow this up with a song discussing, dissecting, and explaining the results of Super Tuesday. Maybe they can even get invited to appear on Meet the Press. Anybody got Tim Russert’s email address?
Remember to vote!
I found out about The Hermit after checking up on
I’ve been busy the last two weeks. Busy doing nothing. It’s been nice, but it’s time I start catching up on a few things. First up, outta Sam & Joe’s hood, more or less, from Ypsilanti, Michigan give it up for Ben Benjamin. Formerly of Midwest Product, Ben Benjamin, AKA Ben Mullins, splits his time between this solo project and PostPrior, his neu-wavish duo also out on Ghostly. Between his myspace and Ghostly pages you can get a good feel for his debut full-length, The Many Moods of Ben Benjamin Vol. 1. “Selective Periphera” showcases Mullins strength—his ability to elaborate, with both electronic and organic instruments, on a simple riff for an absolutely hypnotic effect. Run this track into your skull and your life, regardless of how mundane it may be, will resonate with cinematic panache.
Hey, as I’ve admitted elsewhere on these pages, I was a child of the 80’s. When it came to the electronic music of the decade, I did have certain tastes. Big fan of Tears for Fears’ the Hurting, as well as A-ha (those Norwegians could write a fantastic pop song), the Thompson Twins (who weren’t really twins), the perverse Australian fun of Severed Heads, and even, gulp, for a brief while, the Communards. Despite their popularity at church dances, I was not so into Depeche Mode, and I sold Erasure back to the CD exchange store a week after buying it. After ending 2007 with the electronic pop of 
Let me end 2007 with hollAnd, one of my favorite all-time bands, who I first wrote about on 3hive in May 2004, although it’s not so much a band as it is one Trevor Kampmann, musician/producer/former-child-TV-actor extraordinaire. A dozen (or more, depending on how you count) releases, along with even more production credits, over the last dozen or so years. From the day I bought the Sea Saw (his first moniker) seven inch Stereo on a whim at No Life Records in LA until the recent release Love Fluxus and my new favorite hollAnd song “French Grass” (replacing his cover of Human League’s “The Lebanon”), I’m man enough to say it’s been a love affair.
Today’s selection is actually a nice bookend to Lisa’s Hello, Blue Roses post yesterday, albeit 4Hero has always been more of a sweeping club fave than an electronic bedroom dweller. Way back in 1999, I took a job in Los Angeles and drove down the very next day in my Chevy Sprint Turbo (yes, turbo), and 4Hero’s Two Pages, which came out a few months before, was about the only cassette I had that would play in my cheapo radio. Unlike the CD release, the promo segregated the darker drum’n’bass onto one cassette and the more chilled-out, string-laden fusion stuff onto another. As the title suggests, one was a great antidote to the other. In the central Utah mountains? Time for Ursula Rucker’s smooth spoken-word over lovely breakbeats and sweeping strings. Trudging the home stretch through the Mojave? Bring on the sci-fi jungle. Since that bygone era when we were all going to be dot-com millionaires, 4Hero has gravitated more and more toward the groove, and “Morning Child†has the feel of both a return to form and a culmination of the form. It also sounds like a lithe and lovely summer song, so perhaps it’ll warm up your new year a few degrees.
May you and yours have a festive and safe holiday this year. Please enjoy this Christmas song from our friends in 
Have you ever pursued a particular boy or girl because he or she was hot in a way that another particular boy or girl was hot, but for whatever reason the former boy or girl avoided your clutch? Well that’s the situation in which I currently find myself. Musically speaking. It’s been over a year since I’ve heard anything from 
Mikrofisch is our first entry from the Hamburg net-label, Komakino. Their album, Masters of the Universe, represents the label’s first full-length release (the band’s second) and you can download it, in its entirety, 
What do 80’s electronic dance popsters Freezepop have in common with the Dead Kennedys and the Sex Pistols? They’ve all been included in the video game Guitar Hero!