Particularly when it comes in the form of Svein Berge and Torbjørn Brundtland. Röyksopp’s latest album is Senior, the much anticipated follow-up to Junior, a poppy, blippy and toe-tappingly fun affair that hit the shelves in March of ‘09. But what was cool about the launch of Junior is that fans of the techno twosome were told fairly right away that Senior was also coming down the pipeline. Talk about planning. Where Guns n’ Roses take 13 years to put out one album, S&T already had two in the wings.

So Senior is a darker (check out that near-black album cover!), foresty, swooshy, introspective affair. It’s no less wonderful and fills the void out there with its intensely pretty beeps. It’s lush and swoons. First single “The Drug” harkens back to the heyday of great chillout. There’s rain on the album and a few birds. And a delightful slight crackle that you only get on vinyl. It sounds great when coupled with a hangover, comedown or Sunday. Inspiration apparently came from Evangelos Odysseas Papathanassiou – otherwise known as VANGELIS.

Röyksopp are pretty awesome live and I can only pray (DO YOU HEAR THAT, TROMSØ?) the boys get their act over to the Best Coast and tour N.A proper in time. Particularly as the last time I saw them was, oh, the UK Homelands festival in 2002, where I, rather “refreshed”, bumped into Torbjørn and insisted that as a result of my Danishness and his Norwegianness that we were somehow interconnected. And then I told him I was going to be his biggest cheerleader down the front. I was.

Without further adø, here’s Senior.

It’s available on September 13, but you can preorder it here.  On first listen, I’m thinking it may be a contender.

Hear it for yourself: \m/

So all this exciting news reminded me to share with you a remix of the band’s “O.N.E” that myseriously landed on my desk. And it’s one I guarantee you’ve not yet heard. It’s by a Vancouver DJ going by the nom de mix Master Control Program – he’s got a fetish for bass. And drums. And drum n’ bass. But he also likes his fair share of wooshy plinky pew-pew stuff. That’s technical speak, folks.

This remix is a slow build of goodness. All the falsetto happens towards the end. And it’ll have you headbobbing.

Have a listen or download and don’t say I don’t never give you stuff for free. \m/

O.N.E. (Bass by Master Control) by MCP

But for now, summer’s about finding a long lawn upon which to play bocci. Enter Sex With Strangers and Guilty About Girls.

See, these Vancouverite robot rockers have been making a habit of getting their balls out after a rehearsal. And this time, the BackstageRider was invited. There were green balls and red balls. Two teams: 4M (Mark-Mark-Mikala-Mike) and DoubleDanBobCor (Dan-Dan-Bobby-Cory). Otherwise known as Hatch Benedict, Mark Henning from Guilty About Girls/Combine The Victorious, The BackstageRider and Magnus Magnum) vs. Dallas Archangel, Non-Band Dan, Isabelle “Bobby” Dunlop and Wedge Beavers. You know…them.

Here’s what transpired:

First, everybody gots to get a drink. The default drink of the summer in the UK is Pimm’s, so why not in Vancouver? It seems fitting if you’re gonna be chucking miniature deathstars around a lawn. Wedge (in red) insists that one’s throwing improves if one holds a drink in the other hand. Not sure.

Hatch throws out the first ball. He’s a champion first-ball thrower. Anyone can see that.

Note the elegance and the positioning as Wedge takes his shot. It’s a beaut. A BEAUT! It comes close to the others, but who’s closest? Quick! Despatch Bobby to determine who’s in the lead!

Bobby has a habit, it seems, of estimating that her team’s balls are always closest. This won’t do.

There are jeers and arguments. Wedge, several Pimm’s to the wind, is insistant that his BocciMate is correct in her highly scientific estimation. We yell louder. (And actually play better and win!)

THREE CHEERS FOR 4M!

Happy summer, y’all.

Oh and by the way, Sex With Strangers are currently recording some demos to the follow-up of the fabulous album Tokyo Steel. Apparently the first seven tracks have been labelled “Death Funk”. Check out theirs and Guilty About Girls’ MySpace pages (linked above) for gigs and news. \m/

….”so, that’s why we’re a bit late,” explained a scrappy Robert “3D” Del Naja regarding Vancouver’s, uh greenery, during a frankly blinding set by as Massive Attack. 3D and Daddy G brought along legend Horace Andy and opener Martina “Tricky’s muse” Topley-Bird and shadow-boxed through a wet set of Heligoland-Mezzanine-Blue Lines tracks, including “Babel” “Girl I Love You”, “Teardrop”, “Inertia Creeps” “Risingson” and “Unfinished Sympathy”.

And while the rain came down (“We’re used to this every fucking day where we come from,” joked 3D, “so we brought it with us. You’re welcome”), the audience beamed as bright as the digital light wall – which, incidentally, Massive Attack have been using for years. But it was all good. Brilliant, even. No surprise there, then. \m/

Aussie-UK drum n’ bass superstarz (they are HYOOJ if you like your drum with bass) MC Verse and DJ Paul Harding from Pendulum popped in to Celebrities in Vancouver on March 18. They ripped the place apart.

The floors seriously bounced under foot all the way to the back of the club, the MC snogged or hugged practically every clubber there (including me at one point) and jumped around and crowdsurfed like a mad thing. And. The. Crowd. Went. Wild.

What was left after the carnage? Rock hands of course.\m/

Such is the flipfloppery of The Hot Chip album.

Live, the five Revenge of the Nerds are absolutely unstoppable. And if you ever, ever have a chance of seeing them, do.  At their last Vancouver show, we very nearly had to re-piece together the roof after their proverbial blowing off of it, and the band the next day claimed Van presented them the best audience of their North Am tour. On their website even.. Which, as we all know, equals commitment.

It’s certainly in my top 10 of the past 10 years, absolutely. And when mixmaster Joe Goddard humps his keyboard? (Okay, you gots to be there for that.) But the crowd love them some Hot Chip. And rightly so.

See, watch:

So I love Hot Chip. In a kind of k-i-s-s-i-n-g s-e-x-i-n-g c-a-s-i-o p-o-k-e y-o-u sort of way.

But I love them live and only like them on record.  What’s not to like? They’re underdogs with goofy lyrics and a blender full of wonky references including Stevie Wonder, monkeys with miniature cymbals, German techno, handbag house, arms-aloft early ‘90s dancefloor classics, smiles, calculators… and on this album, steel drums and lots of “pew pew” noises.  On here, the swooshy single “One Life Stand” (romantic!), the totally Ibiza Lite-softly-softly sundown raveup of “I Feel Better” and the happy house of “We Are Love”, all glisten. “Take It All In” has some background Broken Frame-era Depeche Mode bleeps, then crescendos into a sort of 70s sunshiney glow. “Thieves in the Night” is a singsong awaiting its live moment, when it revs up and the place – inevitably – goes bonkers. You can dance to these. You will dance to these. All HITS.

But the MISS-ness? One of the factors is, as Editors’ Tom Smith pointed out in an interview with BSR recently, the fact that main singer Alexis Taylor’s voice “is the splitter”. It’s unbelieveably soft, so take it or leave it.  And then there’s the saccharine issue. While this album marks a nice, grown-up turning point for the band in terms of presenting a real package of lyrics – it’s the first with a proper theme (love, girlfriends, friends, some more about love, friends, relationships) –  that theme gets a bit 1950s weird after a while.

And for the love of gods, please remove tracks 5-7, starting first with the hymnal “Brothers”. It’s lovely, Joe, but dancing with your brothers? Giving your life for your brothers? Having a wild love for your brothers? Playing X-Box with your brothers? Huh?

Okay, it’s sweet. And Hot Chip should be forgiven. But not for “Slush”. Good title, chaps, spot on. Seriously, Alexis, you want the loop in this song to mainly consist of what sounds like you’ve gone off to a singing teacher to practice your scales and all you could think of was to sing “Huminah-huminah” over and over?  Are you looking down her shirt? Ack! Bring back “Over and Over” instead!

So, Hot Chip are, on occasion, maddening.

But as long as the hits are there, we can try to forget the misses. Miss them live, however, and forget it. \m/

Hot Chip’s new album “One Life Stand” is available now on EMI Music Canada. Check out their website for tour dates.

A Woodhand! Doing a Rock Hand! GEDDIT?

All hail Paul Banwatt from Woodhands, throwing the horns, just for you. The sweat on his Star Trek shirt evidence of a night of carnage as Toronto’s finest 80s/electro danceband played to a lustful Biltmore crowd in Vancouver this past weekend, the first show of their Canadian/US tour. Q Magazine last year anointed them (“them” being Paul and Dan Werb) among the best new bands in the world, and that’s saying something because Q Magazine is printed on nice, glossy paper and comes from London, England.

In other words, they are the shit.

The duo are like a little less than a third of Hot Chip (a Hot Chip off the old block. GEDDIT?), all Revenge of the Nerds-stylee. They know how to rock a keytar, insert “It’s Tricky” and Rockwell’s “Somebody’s Watching Me” into dance songs and make you want to shake your ass. Which you want to do, right? Go see them, they’re on tour now: www.myspace.com/woodhands \m/

Sex With Strangers are an awesome synth-pop robot-rock band from Vancouver. Their new album The Tokyo Steel was released in October on local label Boutique Empire – read my review about the launch for Guttersnipe News. They’ll also be playing at the equally awesome-for-indie-bands (and initialled) SXSW in Austin this March.

A while back, I was invited to attend a house party. SWS are friends of friends (and now friends of mine) and they were filming their first-ever rock video for a hells-yeah catchy ditty called “New City Anthem.” It’s all, like, Depeche Mode meets New Wave meets Robot Rock.

Thirty of us packed into a basement with a mountain of free beer, some sweat, and some hot, 18-year-old girls, many of whom get a lot of face time. But that’s okay, cos they were nice.

Shameless Media Whore Moment: I’m in the Video
This is what came of it. A brilliant, expensive-looking-but- no-budget, crisply and professionally directed video from BKS Crew Productions. As SWS singer Hatch said: “it’s like they took a $5 bill and stretched it around the corner.” Check it out.

I’m in the background in black next to a chap with a cap at around 0:33 and then again at 1:22ish with a grinning head, just after the dude who’s into the blonde chick.

Does anybody request music videos any more? Or does anyone here know how to get this thing seen by The Masses? Suggestions welcome. Support CanCon and spread the word.

Sex With Strangers play at the Lamplighter in Vancouver on January 28, along with Fake Shark-Real Zombie!, Accost and Lengthy List of Lovers. Tourdates and more at myspace.com/sexwithstrangers \m/