A Few of Our Favorite Things, 2011: Black Lips, Stephen Colbert, Sensitive Bros, Ambient Beats…

The good people over at Friends of Friends Music, in keeping with their founding each-one-teach-one ethos, asked their friends, and friends of friends, to contribute some sort of top ten (ish) music-related list of favorites from the past year. My contribution is below, but visit the FoF site to read entries by folks like Shlohmo, Ernest Gonzales (Mexicans With Guns), Lushlife, Clive Tanaka, Low Limit, TAKE, Garth Trinidad, Shaun Koplow and Jeff Weiss.

Like most folks that’ll contribute to this project, I could do this all day. To limit a “best of” list to ten entries is the cruelest of tortures to a real music geek, but the tradition exists for a reason: namely, to ensure we all get back to work. This isn’t definitive. These are the first ten wonderful music-related things that popped into my head, but considering the breakneck evolutionary pace and exponential expansion of our chosen medium, it seems fitting to shoot from the hip.

1) Destroyer goes Kaputt: There’s absolutely nothing I don’t love immensely about this album. Am I the only one who had an unrealized, unrecognized need to meet the lovechild of Steely Dan and Sade? Aside from Destroyer’s Dan Bejar, perhaps, but at least I know I’m not totally alone.

2) The Black Lips destroy a ballroom: Mere hours after watching Jared Swilley pinwheel a guitar body into the forehead of a grateful fan at Lollapalooza, I found myself thrashing in a chic hotel ballroom to “Bad Kids” while being pelted with TP rolls and complimentary vodka drinks. \\m//  

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News Roundup: U-Pick New Devo Songs, Dam-Funk Does Human League, Henry Clay People, Mexicans With Guns, Inara George, and more…

They might be men, but they are definitely Devo.

Quick bloggy bits* from around the L.A. underground (and up).

  1. New Wave U-Pick: Help Choose the Songs for Devo’s Next Album
  2. Funk Yeah: Dam-Funk Covers Human League, Releases Video and MP3
  3. MP3 Exclusive: Nocando’s ‘Old Friend,’ from Passion of the Weiss
  4. Hear Songs from Henry Clay People’s New LP, Forthcoming on TBD
  5. MP3 Exclusive: “Me Gusto” by Mexicans With Guns [UPDATED]
  6. Download: Free Music from Inara George and Charlie Wadhams
  7. (all stories via West Coast Sound, via LA Weekly)

*If you like it, then you better put a tweet on it.

INCHES reviews new vinyl from Ascend, Blank Realm, Active Child, Ernest Gonzales [MP3s]

At last! A brand new installment of INCHES, the L.A.-centric vinyl column that’s now numerous feet — no, yards — into its long-playing legacy. It’s a damn ripe time for independent music in Southern California, and this, friends, is your undeniable mainline. Inside, you’ll get your chillwave fix, your dose of droning doom, some spiraling psych and some fuzzy folktronica. Nothing to scoff at, and free MP3s from each. Plus words! And pictures!

Active Child, 'She Was A Vision'

Bassmaker Shlohmo Signs To Friends Of Friends, Plays Calling All Kids Friday [MP3]

Something less, erm, bawdy from the L.A. music universe.

Friends Of Friends — friends of ours responsible for a growing crop of exciting releases — has just announced its signing of L.A./S.F. beat music artist, Shlohmo, a.k.a. 19-year-old Henry Laufer, a former intern at Dubab. […]  Shlohmo’s glitchy, bass-heavy soundscapes are already drawing comparisons to the output of Flying Lotus and Nosaj Thing, both of whom are part of the Alpha Pup family, so dude should fit right in.

Read more, and download an MP3, here, via LA Weekly.

Roundup: Dead Man’s Bones, American Apparel + Father Yod, SUB POP SIGNS AVI BUFFALO, Sole & Skyrider, Friends Of Friends

Quick bloggy bits from around the L.A. underground (and up):

(via West Coast Sound, via LA Weekly)

*If you like it, then you better put a tweet on it.

Best Of L.A.: Vinyl, Cassettes, Music Tees, The Smell, Build-Yr-Own Instruments and More

The LA Weekly‘s annual “Best Of” issue is on stands now — in theory at least, they usually disappear pretty quickly. But whether you’re in-town or out, near the paper product or not, you can read all about our favorite things (300 of them) here. I contributed a handful of writeups on local people and places that I hold dear, all music-skewed of course, and you can go direct to each below.

More after the jump.

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Cult Bit: Daedelus/Jogger RMXs, free Nosaj MP3

An exciting, young L.A. label has just officially released a sweet set of remixes from the likes of Nosaj Thing, Eliot Lipp, Mexicans With Guns, Meanest Man Contest, and others. The label is Friends Of Friends, and the original artists: Daedelus and Jogger. Read about it here (via LA Weekly), where you can download Nosaj’s remix of Jogger’s “Nice Tights,” learn about the label’s remix contest, and play with a rad mixing widget.

Friends Of Friends Vol. 1 Remixed

Friends Of Friends Vol. 1 Remixed