The Free Design
Early in its conception, Seattle-based, Light in the Attic Records acquired the re-issue rights to The Free Design, an obscure pop band straight outta the ’60s. Over the past year the label has offered up 12″ remixes by the likes of Peanut Butter Wolf, Super Furry Animals, and Stereolab. After completing the three part series you can now find all the remixes and more on one CD: The Now Sound Redesigned. This is some of the best remix curating I’ve heard in a long while and available just in time — before summer ends…
Ezekiel Honig
Who’d have thought the “hook” stuck in my head for the past few days would be the sweet rhythm of what sounds like a printer feed tray being lifted and dropped? I know, I know, I should get checked for OCD. But Ezekiel Honig does have an ear for the latent musicality in such found sounds, which he uses to infuse his minimalist headphone techno with a real warm-blooded feel.
Thee More Shallows
Ahhh, it feels great to be back sharing the sharing. We were having some ugly hosting problems, and during the downtime many of you dropped us lovely “missing you” notes. One letter, from Ander W., expressed sheer dismay at the fact that we hadn’t posted Thee More Shallows. As I mentioned to Ander, Thee More Shallows and their beautiful, Bay Area blend of whisper rock was at the top of my to-do list. At the top of your to-do list should be “purchase More Deep Cuts by Thee More Shallows.” Dee Kesler and company spent almost three years working on this album, so if you buy it for, say, thirteen dollars, you’re paying the band .011 cents a day for their efforts. A small price to pay for this work of art.
Solvent
I originaly posted Solvent 16 months ago. In fact, they were one of the first bands featured on 3hive. Just days after, Ghostly pulled down their full-length MP3s due to bandwidth constraints and there went my Solvent post. As Sean points out over in the News section, Ghostly’s recently found some bandwidth in their hearts and now offer, among others, this gem from Solvent’s latest, Elevators and Oscillators. For the record, my original post was one line: “Proof once again from the Ghostly Massive that machines do have souls.” Still holds true today.
Ghostly’s Back w/ Mobius Band and More
The Unicorns
These Montreal hipsters do — oops, I mean, did — play a lovely brand of ’80s-tinged rock/pop/dance music. Slated as the next big thing, they instead split up. What can I say? It happens to the best of them, but that’s still no excuse to pass over these songs. Get those feet a-dancing!
3hive Has Changed Hosts
The Constantines
Guess I could have waited until the new Constantines album comes out in October to post these guys, but I’m putting them up today as “the band that played twice within an hour of my house in the month of July and I missed them both times.” Ah well… In the month of July, my daughter took her first trip to NYC and went #2 on the potty for the first time; Sam and I used power tools in his backyard in July; Jon aged gracefully into his next decade in July; Clay recovered from daughter #3, and so on. Catching live the intense art punk of The Constantines would have been a great addition to this list, but, come to think of it, I actually wouldn’t mind a little down time.
The Jessica Fletchers
The summer’s already a month over, but the annual search for the perfect summer anthem is still ongoing. That is, until now. This Norwegian quintet takes that famed Scandanavian rock ‘n’ roll swagger and applies to the ultimate song about the summer. “Summer Holiday & Me” is the best holiday soundtrack since Team USA’s “Halloween.” Life requires a soundtrack? So does the summer…