Great Bodyboarding vid

Cercata is a Spanish bodyboarder who recently popped over to Ireland. He posted this on Corksurf and its gotta be shared! Small but perfectly formed!

Motherland bodyboarding from cercata on Vimeo.

Castanets

I love decent alt country. Country in general is something I simply can't stand, living across from a ballroom when I was younger helped me develop a healthy detest of the irish 3 chord stetson wearing heros that mangled the countries music charts until the mid-80s. However, with Ryan Adams (early albums), Wilco (any album), Calexico and William E. Whitmore my eyes opened to superior string plucking and story telling.
I dont buy most of the "new weird america" scene, but one of the artist being tarred with that brush that I do like is Castanets, basically Raymond Raposa and available session musicians.
The sooperb Daytrotter have an exquisite session including an unreleased track. Castanets is signed to Sufjan Stevens Asmathic Kitty label, where you can pick up his albums, or pick up a label sampler for free on last.fm

Baltimore Madness

Anyone familiar with the Wham City phenomena will be aware of the Dan Deacon and his "flatmates" art project. Jimmy Joe Roche and Dan have teamed up for some audiovisual madness, and its up on Pitchfork.tvs' One Week Only yoke - get on it, and decide are these guys talented or nuts!

High Places and Foals on Pitchfork.tv

Those wonderful folks at Pitchfork launched their Pitchfork.tv yoke a few weeks ago, full of superb interviews, vid premiers and live stuff. Current fav is Brooklyn duo's High Places live at the Market Hotel in Brooklyn - yum!




Also, check out the new vid for Foals track, Red Socks Pugie. Yannis and the boys have a gem there. Having seen these boys live in a small tent at Bestival, I was so looking forward to Antidotes. I shouldnt have been surprised to have been a little disappointed by it, especially as they left the crackers Mathletics and Hummer off it, but its slowly growing on me, Im getting used to the brass. Looking forward to them at the Picnic!

Santogold

New album is quality

Esau Mwamwaya - Tengazako

Of the hundreds of mixes of MIAs' Paper Planes then one that I absolutely love is Easu Mwamwayas' Tengazako. A Congolese immigrant who got mixed up with the Radioclit boys in London resulting in this gem!



Download

Esau Mwamwaya Tengazako here

Malakai

Bristol has given the world dubby music legends such as Massive Attack, Portishead, Tricky, Roni Size and Will Gregory of Goldfrapp. Lately, they have a new emerging talent, Malakai. If could be said that they are carrying the old 'Bristol Sound' torch, and Geoff Barrow of Portishead has personally signed them to his Invada label. They've already had the Zane Lowe seal of approval - giving them single of the week for Fadaing World. Missingtoof intoduced me to Malakais' Fading World, and the haunting trippy reverb heavy vocals, the beats and samples hooked me in from day one.
Malakais' Fading World here
More @ their myspace including 2 free mix tapes for download - both tapes just emphasizes their crazy range of influences!

Arthur Russell/Loose Joints/Wild Combination

Pinglewood is one of my favourite blogs out there, varied, intersting, funny but always full of ear candy.
Back in January attached to a post with 2 mp3s from the emerging Hercules and Love Affair, was a little ditty from Loose Joints. Initially I didnt take any notice of it, but when I started hitting repeat on my iPod whenever it came on, its gone on to become my favourite Disco track.
Arthur Russell turns out to be one of those unhearlded people who were in the right place and the right time all the time during the 70s and 80s, being involved with every interesting individual the floated around back then. In 1992, he died from Aids, leaving behind over a 1ooo tapes of unreleased and unfinished music.
Wild Combination is a movie of his life, agitate your local arthouse cinema to get it in - this guys life is too much fun!
Loose Joints - Its All Over My Face (long version) here
More Arthur Russell here

Crystal Castles in Cork

Crystal Castles - Cyprus Avenue, Cork (an hour ago)

Support act, The Karman Line, were pretty good. More @ http://www.myspace.com/thekarmanline.

Crystal Castles, hmmm. Exploded onto the stage, with a track that I didnt recognise. Ethan and live drummer where excellent, the sound the live drums provide with the synth/mixer work from Ethan were faultless.
Then theres the Alice part. Her performance as part of the 35/40 minute set was all energy, pouts, scowls, poses like a Madonna on acid during Vogue, she is the band for the whole performance, writhing on stage and into the crowd soaking up the adoration (and tonight, Cork loved her). It looked alot like the crowd from the Foals gig came straight to Cork for this, because I have never seen people like this crowd at a Cork gig before. Anyway, back to Alice, the clever strobes, and dramatic hair and makeup, make her all action performance worth the admission fee; she is an electronic version of Karen O. She scream, howls and hisses her way through the Castles new album, belting out Crimewave, Untrust Us , Alice Practice, Magic Spells and the nights highlight for me Courtship Dating, all well received. But, and maybe this was just me, by the time 35/40 minutes had passed, Id had enough. No crowd interaction, no clever vocals like in Air Wars (which wasnt played), just howling, hissing and growling. I was a bit disappointed tbh.
Jurys still out
5/5 first 20 minutes 2/5 last 20 minutes

Reckless from camera phone - loud

Hullo

Having be addicted to blogs of all kinds for the last few month, Ive decided to give it a shot. Im a bodyboarding music addict, therefore expect a mix of both.