If you liked music in the Year of Our Lord 2008, then congratulations: today is the day you’ve been waiting eight years for. It was admittedly not worth the wait, but today is a really good day for internet-age music fans who were all about this shit before hashtag EDM neon loose-pooped all over the cool points we worked so hard to attain. Take what you can get and don’t be greedy: it’s 2016 now and we have tremendous debt where our frivolous loan money once was.
Tiga’s new album, No Fantasy Required dropped Friday (full review coming this week) and it’s true to classic Tiga form in that it’s impossible to pigeonhole. Equal parts house, techno, disco, and well… Tiga-flavored, it flies deliciously in the face of current trends in favor of classically danceable grooves. It’s a no-doubt more mature product than previous Tiga fare, but every bit as quirky and rave-minded. (Stream the whole album on Spotify here.)
Also dropping Friday was the first new MSTRKRFT track in five years, “Red Hen,” a modular synth techno jam that sounds… good. To be entirely honest, it doesn’t actually sound much like old MSTRKRFT. “Red Hen” is earnestly catchy, well-made, and you’ll probably like it if you didn’t stop listening to music in 2011 — but it’s way more of a dance record than it is any of their rock-fueled hybrids that drew us in originally. Think Gesaffelstein with a live band. The DFA1979 influence is relegated to distortion effects, forget a punk rock vibe entirely. Fans of Boys Noize might rejoice over this one, and there’s a part of me that is, but I’m left scratching my head as to where all the rock influence went.
The real story/buried lede on this morsel is the launch of MSTRKRFT’s Soundcloud, featuring their very best records and remixes from over the years, as well as the announcement that there’s a new album coming, along with their first live appearance in a half-decade at SXSW. Mind you, the showcase is at a Whole Foods, but this is apparently what live music is in 2016 and I never got to see MSTRKRFT live the first time, so I’ll save you a spot next to the $7 purified asparagus goji berry mineral water and I’ll try not to trip over your stroller or blow kush in your toddler’s face as we clamor to see the buzzband we both used to obsess over when we were young and irresponsible.
The thing I’m really excited for, actually shaking in my seat over, isn’t even the fuck out yet. Cassius teased eight whole seconds of their forthcoming record, “ACTION” featuring Cat Power and Mike D. Yes, that Mike D, the always oldest-looking Beastie Boy. Leave it to these talented cocky French house bastards to know that eight seconds of a huge collaboration is enough of a statement to wake all of their fans from a years-deep slumber to start hypothesizing as to whether it’ll live up to their old sound. We’ll find out on Friday.
With all this considered, we now have not only LCD Soundsystem on the revival front, but now MSTRKRFT and Cassius, along with a splendid coming-of-age from Tiga. There’s also new Gorillaz happening this year. Isn’t Brand New doing something too? I stopped caring about them when I realized it was probably super misogynist to wish violent death on your ex-girlfriend for breaking up with your moody teenage ass.
Is this a “real revival of buzzbands” or is this just what growing into our 20s sounds like musically? Is this the start of a ‘new bloghouse revolution’? Is ‘ur dad’s music industry’ still alive and relevant? Are these new buzz ballads ‘tite’ and ‘buzzworthy’? Would you exhale weed smoke at a baby to get a better spot to watch the electropunk band perform at the designer grocery market? Do you even get the reference I’m making here or am I too old for having read Hipster Runoff? Am I still relevant?
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