Tag: Daft Punk

Review: Trip-Hop Tricky Tries Out New Flavors, Settles on Vanilla for ‘Mixed Race’

Tricky Mixed Race

Tricky, you’ve split the critics on this one. The Brits seem to put up with Mixed Race‘s bland attempts at co-opting a few more danceable genres, not to mention specific songs by Daft Punk and unsung Jamaicans like Echo Minott. Me (Spin) and Pitchfork can’t go for that. No-oh, no can do:

“It’s odd that Tricky’s self-professed ‘gangster album’ may go down as the polyglot producer’s most bland offering yet.”

Read the entire review over here, or in the September print issue of Spin.

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Q&A: YouTube Phenom ‘The Napkin Holder’ on Covering Gaga, Wayne, Taylor and more

Napkin Holder plays "Single Ladies" using a single lady.

Weirder things have happened, but corresponding with a guy who calls himself “Napkin Holder” is medium-high on my long-running personal list of journalistic strangeness (doing the “Humpty Dance” with Digital Underground and going on a “groove cruise” with the Flaming Lips currently holding spots number one and two, respectively). Odder still, this piano-playing, pop-covers YouTube phenom is decidedly unweird as an interview subject — basically, your reserved virtuosic nerd type (with all due respect). He’ll be performing at the Space 15 Twenty, er, space across from Amoeba Music in Hollywood on Saturday evening. Read all about it via our Q&A on LA Weekly‘s West Coast Sound.