Flash Steinbeiser: Astonishing X-Men Creators Dish on Marvel's Historic Gay Wedding

Flash Steinbeiser: Astonishing X-Men Creators Dish on Marvel's Historic Gay Wedding

New single from The Mary Onettes

The waiting is finally over! On April 29 The Mary Onettes release their first single in two years' time. And it's a grandiose return - that's for sure!

Written in isolation and partly recorded in a church "Dare" still ends up their most uplifting song to date - imagine a Swedish equivalent of The National on a diet of speed, Planet Earth DVDs and Go-Betweens singles and you’ll have a vague idea of how wonderful this is!

Like so many times before you get it free, and you get it first. Enjoy!


The Mary Onettes "Dare"
CD/EP - LAB121

Track listing
1. Dare
2. Kicks
3. God knows I had plans

PRE-ORDER
It's easy ordering from Labrador...

Little Big Adventure

- "All my songs are about hate" /Magnus, Little Big Adventure.

Labrador proudly presents Little Big Adventure - a superb one man band that moves in inexplicable ways. We'll release the debut "The Hateful Eye EP" on May 13. You'll get to hear them long before that of course... today to be exact. Enjoy!

Free MP3 download here >>

With the most delicately poignant pop melodies and hard distorted drums they present songs about hate in a voice that is equally nonchalantly cool, fragile and sweet. And when they sing we should ”go fuck ourselves”, we just want to linger and spin ”"The Hateful Eye" yet another time. Truly marvelous!

BIOGRAPHY (by Magnus Sätterström, Little Big Adventure)

Things turned when I took all my savings and bought a Casio-keyboard. Instead of writing boring guitar songs I could now play everything on this. I’m not exactly a skilled keyboard player so I recorded everything note by note and then cut it all together in my music program. To cover up all my technical flaws I put a noise filter on everything so that no one could hear the glitches between the notes, and no one could hear the noise from the microphone, as everything was noisy.

This was back in the year 2004 and now five years have passed and nothing much has happened. I still write about what has happened since last I was drunk. But now I also write about trying people at school, trying people on the streets, or trying people on the Internet. Or songs about my low self esteem. Or about hate.

I once tried to explain that all my songs are about hate, and that’s probably true, with some very few exceptions.

Midnight Closes In

As you probably know by now: I am obsessed with The Fascination Movement. Their debut EP, 0.5, has been on constant rotation for the latter part of last year and those cold nights when I need my new wave fix. "Radio" still drives me nuts and the new Starcluster Remix brings me down from cloud 9. But it is the Elitechnique Remix of "Just Pretend" that has my player on repeat. I just have to make sure to snatch up one of the 100 copies with hand printed sleeves on March 16! An official release is due out in April - just in time for my birthday!


A1) Radio (Starcluster Remix)
A2) Just Pretend (Elitechnique Remix)
B1) Down Again (ALBAs Rework)

Just Pretend (Elitechnique Remix)

One More Chance for Bobby Orlando

1984 proved to be a critical year for 30 year old Neil Tennant and 25 year old Chris Lowe. Their short love affair with producer, Bobby Orlando, spawned their now infamous "West End Girls". But if you thought this disco crush ended there then you are terribly wrong.
Out of Bobby's tender loins spurted out "One More Chance". The song was intended for the lovely Divine by the name of "Rock Me", but ended up in the mouth of a fledgling, later legendary, Pet Shop Boys.

Chris Lowe later had his way with this song.

Don't take my word for it but I prefer the original:

Pet Shop Boys - One More Chance (1984)

The Presets - If I Know You Video

If I Know You represents one of the more sublimely opulent moments from the multi award winning second album by The Presets, Apocalypso. Built from a somber chord progression and poignant tale of bitterness and lessons learned, If I Know You echoes of lonely night drives, dancing in the forest and the feeling of gallantly marching away from a spiteful lover. If the first single from Apocalypso, My People was a sledgehammer to the skull, then If I Know You, the last, is its lance to the heart accompaniment.

To recreate the emotionally resonant atmosphere of the song on film, The Presets have enlisted French director Eva Husson (who directed the acclaimed short for M83's Kim and Jessie last year) to weave a poetic LA dream sequence of fire and dance.

Husson’s tale follows a teen as he departs his plush family home in the Hollywood Hills in the morning light, and follows him as he walks, runs and dances his way through the picturesque Los Angeles cityscape throughout the day and into the night, climaxing at some kind of ritualistic bonfire surrounded by dancing, disaffected youth on skidrow.

The video is a thrilling juxtaposition of a middle class teen from the burbs, the volatile LA environment, explosive dance and the touching electronic throb of The Presets’ track.

As is the parlance of our times, If I Know You has been given the remix treatment from a saddle of heavies. Tom Middleton turns heartbreak into ecstasy, with a bombastic house rework, while UK new-Italo duo Heartbreak turn in a throbbing old school electro-disco jammer. Former Depeche Mode/Yazoo/Erasure production don Vince Clarke returned to the studio to whip up a mystic voodoo breakbeat version that one wouldn’t generally conceive when thinking of The Presets but makes sweet sense. Via Tania and Jori Hulkkonen teamed up under the name Tania & Jori to conjure up a completely enchanting, swirling analogue bubblebath of a cover, with Tania’s vocals replacing Julian Hamilton's, while Israeli techno producer Chaim strips the song back to even less than bare bones, if that’s possible, for an impressively stark, minimal builder.

If I Know You is to be released late March 2009 on Modular.

Happy Valentines, see you at Good Vibrations this afternoon.

Love,

The Presets

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