Badly Drawn Boy

Today’s music.

μ-ziq, “Johnny Mastricht”

Electronic artist μ-ziq is the moniker of Michael Paradinas. Designed not for clubs but for headphones, μ-ziq had a great run of really interesting, inventive albums. The prize record is the fantastic Lunatic Harness, but the follow-up Royal Astronomy is great as well. This album, Bilious Paths, is very good but is a little off his peak.

Einstürzende Neubauten, “Mei Ro”

This track is from The Jewels, a compilation of a series of tracks that Neubauten posted on their site. The tracks themselves were the product of a series of formal experiments, with the band participating in games to generate constraints, and the songs were all put together very rapidly, a day or so. The results are interesting but not always super gripping.

A bit of a mixed bag today. Too bad we missed the Amon Tobin track that immediately followed these!

Arsonists, “Blaze”

Underground rap act out of Brooklyn, Arsonists are odd simply for the fact that they signed to legendary indie rock label Matador for their two records. The two turned out to be excellent, with the group itself doing all the production as well as the rhyming, which is always a pleasure. I can’t really think of any other rap artists who ended up on Matador off the top of my head, so this remains just a fascinating experiment for the label.