Remixes: Chris Crocker Remixed (SHE'S! Not a. HUMAN!)

Some lols for your Friday before we leave for the weekend. It's the infamous "LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE!" video remixed to the beat of "Toxic" (aka the only legitimately good song that will ever have BS's name on it). The twist: It's remixed so that it sounds like CC hates Britney. It's not convincing, but it's hillarious, and it reminded us how much ass "Toxic"'s beat kicked.

Remixes: Peaches, Soulwaxed

As awesome as Peaches is, I never really got into "Fuck the Pain Away", but I love this remix of it so fucking much. 2 Many DJs (aka Soulwax) compressed the song into a wild 100-second adrenaline rush. No bullshit and no wasted time, it's as close to punk as electronic music can get. Available for Megaupload download. Enjoy.

Click here to download remix from Megaupload.

Music Videos: Alicia Keys

Alicia Keys' new video just showed up. Alicia Key's new song "No One" has really grown on me in the last few weeks, and I see this being a big comeback hit for her. Nice vid, too.

Covers: Leela James does No Doubt

One of the more memorable songs from Leela James' debut album ("A Change is Gonna Come") was her cover of "Don't Speak". She neo-souled it into a great R&B track that stands completely out of Gwen Stefani's shadow. I never really got into the rest of the album, but this is an amazing track. It starts out slow, but really turns it out towards the end. LJ's got a lot of potential, I hope she uses more of it for her own music in the future.

Music videos: Making of Feist's "1234"

So by now you've probably seen Feist's video for "1234" all over the new iPod commercials. If you've seen the whole video on Youtube you know how amazingly ambitious it is, and you probably wondered how they put it together. To find out, check out this cool find on Youtube:

Random track of the Day: Von Iva

I'm not going to lie to you people. I know almost nothing about Von Iva. What I do know though is that this song is hotness. It's called "Same Sad Song" and it's from their self-titled six-track EP. I've only heard a handful of songs from that EP and I already know that they're my favorite thing to come out the Dance Punk genre since The Gossip.

Live covers: Linda Perry and Courtney Love do "Rhiannon"

This may have been on the old blog, but it's worth reposting. It's a camera-phone video of Linda Perry (4-Non Blondes, "What You Waitin For" writer, a few other awesome things) and Courtney Love performing an acoustic set at the LA Gay & Lesbian center. It begins with a cover of "Rhiannon" that's insanely cool to watch if you're a fan of Linda and Courtney (which I still I am no matter how ridiculous she gets in her personal life).

Covers: David Choi makes "Gimme More" suck less

Singer/Songwriter David Choi has Youtubed an acoustic pop-rock cover of Britney Spears' "Comeback" "song", the Danja-produced "Gimme More". He does a really amazing job with it and made me forget how awful the original was. It just proves the original sucked because of the vocals and nothing else. The beat was really well-done and it was written well enough (by bullshit-pop standards of course), but Danja should be shot for letting her vocals be processed to sound like that. We all know that a computer is responsible for 90% of how her voice sounds on the album, so why the hell couldn't he process her vocals to not be annoying as fuck? We may never know, but at least we'll still have David Choi's awesome version of it.

Music videos: Mark Ronson (sorta) featuring Amy Winehouse

You may or may not have heard the story behind the falling out between Amy Winehouse and Mark Ronson-- the short version is that she ditched the shooting of the "Valerie" video to go on vacation or for something pointless like that. Well, this is the result. Instead of Amy singing in the video, we see a look-alike and a few other girls lip-syncing the track. It's a cool-looking video, but I was distracted by thinking about how it would have been different if Amy got her shit together in time for shooting the video. Oh well.

By the way, I will never figure out how MTV got the awesomeness of Mark Ronson to show up to that VMAs shitfest. He was one of the few good qualities of the show.

Random Track of the Day: W.A.L.E.D.A.N.C.E.

"D.A.N.C.E." always annoyed the crap out of me, but this Wale song makes me not mind it. "W.A.L.E.D.A.N.C.E." was easily my favorite song on the Wale mixtape (If you haven't heard it, Google it, because it's brilliant). The awesome lyrics (Was I the only one a little surprised when he called out the Lindsey Lohan-Samantha Ronson situation?) somehow manages to salvage a sample from a song that I hate so much.

Friday randomness: Rilo Kiley watches Paris Hilton sex tape

Yeah, you read that right. No music today because I'm leaving town in five minutes, but I have just enough time to post this bizarre little gem from Youtube:

Covers: The Pixies cover Jesus and Mary Chain

Not a whole lot of time to post today, but I found a vid on Myspace of the Pixies covering "Head On" by the Jesus and Mary Chain. They really rough up the song and give it an abrasive edge, which works a lot better than you would expect it to.

Pixies - Head On [Live]

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Live Music: The Duke Spirit on Henry Rollins Show

The Henry Rollins Show is in Audioclash's top friends list on Myspace for a reason. That show has some amazing musical guests and it's hooked me on a lot of bands I didn't know about before. The most recent is an amazing band called The Duke Spirit. They peformed "Lasso" from the upcoming Ex-Voto EP. I don't want to put them in "A box", but if I had to compare their sound to an already-established artist, I would say they're half-way between The Sounds and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. So if you love both those bands, you'll probably die unfulfilled if you don't check these guys out.




You can listen to the studio version of the song on their Myspace page.

New Music Tuesday: Kanye, 50, Alicia Keys, Rogue Wave, and Hot Hot Heat

The two biggest releases this week are obviously "Graduation" and "Curtis", but I already recapped those last week, so I won't go through them again. Here's the post.

New stuff: New Alicia Keys single, called "No One", the lead single from her third album. Her voice sounds a little more strained than usual, and the song is a lot more basic than what we're used to hearing from her, but it's still a solid effort. Should play well on the radio.



Rogue Wave has a new album called "Asleep at Heaven's Gate". One of the best American indie rock albums to come out in the last few months. My favorite song from the album, "Lake Michigans", plays like The Shins with a little more bite.



Hot Hot Heat's new album "Happiness Ltd" is out. The album is pretty basic stuff for indie music and doesn't really take any chances, so it didn't really do much for me, but I still really love the track "Give Up" and have ever since I found a bootleg of it a few months ago. Plays like a more indie version of Franz Ferdinand.



Next week: Chamillionare, The Donnas, LCD Soundsystem EP, Nelly, Twista, KT Tunstall, and Matt White.

Details on new Melissa Auf Der Maur album

Details about Melissa Auf Der Maur's new album are finally coming to the surface. All the ideas and tracks are in place, now we just have to wait for a label to pick it up, since Melissa and Capitol are no longer together. This article showed up in my Gmail Google Alerts, and it tells you everything you need to know about the concept album that's being released side-by-side with a short film and a comic book. Excerpts:

"Former Smashing Pumpkins/Hole bassist Melissa auf der Maur has completed her second solo album, "Out Of Our Minds," and it's part of a multidisciplinary Viking-themed project that includes a short film and comic book. They will all be released under her initials, MADM (pronounced "madam").

"MADM represents an eternal female force, travelling through time and space, on the hunt for the 'heart,' be it a human's heart or the heart of the universe," auf der Maur told Lowdown in an exclusive interview. "It's almost like a myth or fairytale that is explored in all elements: the album, the film, the comic -- as well as the web. Every one of them explores it differently."

""The album is pretty different from the last one, but, to me, it seems like a natural evolution," says auf der Maur. "It's far more dynamic. The last one was straight-ahead rock, I guess, but this one goes from heavy to atmospheric to sometimes just piano and five female voices to instrumental interludes. It's far more diverse." "

The film is 30-minutes in length and includes a totally separate soundtrack to the songs on the album. It also contains no dialogue, but is instead scored by instrumental, psychedelic, trance-y rock music, says Auf Der Maur, who stars in it. She says the short, which was shot in Vermont on 20 acres of land Stone's parents purchased in the sixties, is a surreal time-travel fantasy that jumps between three time-periods --present day, 10th century (the Viking Age) and the 19th-century (at a logging camp).

"In my mind, it was like a 'Twilight Zone' episode that could continue into a mini-series if it wanted to or maybe even a Twin Peaks [type] episode, something that a vague story and a cliffhanger to be continued. Because it's time travel and because it's fantasy, it's endless," she says.

I have no idea if this is going to be brilliant or a trainwreck, but I can't wait to find out!

Random Track of the Day: The Dollyrots

You may not know the Dollyrots' name, but you've probably heard one of their songs before. "Because I'm Awesome" is now plastered all over a set of nation-wide Kohls commercials, giving them more exposure than ever before. "Because I'm Awesome" is the kind of pop rock song that may annoy you at first, but slowly gets stuck in your head and digs itself into your memory until you can't forget it. In a good way. Here it is:

Live music: Amy Winehouse

I always thought "Love Is A Losing Game" was one of the more boring songs on "Back to Black", but seeing Amy perform it live completely changed my mind about it. She pumps so much emotion into it onstage that it's almost as affecting as BtB's title track. Only the best live performers can really engage you with a not very interesting song, which is totally what she does here. Amazing work.

Music Videos: Snow Patrol

I really liked Snow Patrol's last album ("Eyes Open"), but my biggest problem with it was that most of the time SP sounded like the were trying really, really, hard to sound epic. "Shut Your Eyes" was one of the few songs that sounded almost completely effortless, which is why it was one of my favorite songs on the album. It's now the most recent single from "Eyes Open", and now it has one of my favorite videos in a long time. It's brilliantly directed and put together, and I dare you to look away after you click the play button.

New Music Tuesday: Hard-Fi and Calvin Harris

This week, the only release I'm really excited about is the UK release of Hard-Fi's new album "Once Upon a Time in the West". The whole album is available for streaming on Myspace. The opening track, "Surburban Knights", wins Audioclash's "Best New Song of the Week" award. I knew I loved it four seconds after it started. It has that same fun, euphoric, makes-you-want-to-scream-out-the-lyrics effect that "Gold Lion" had. The whole album is pretty amazing as well. It's much more diverse and dynamic then H-F's first album. They've really evolved into a much more exciting and interesting band. This is already one of my favorite albums of the year.

"Surburban Knights":


Also, Scottish producer Calvin Harris's album "I Created Disco", is now available in the US. It was released in the UK last June. Something about the guy annoys me, but I've really come to respect his work as a producer. It's so unpretentious and uncomplicated and just fun to listen to. Here's "Acceptable in the 80's":

Album leaks: Kanye vs 50

You all know the story. Kanye vs 50, two of the biggest egos in the industry, Graduation vs Curtis, blah blah blah. Now that the albums are both floating around on the internet, America can listen to both albums and decide who the winner is. In my opinion: Kanye wins in a landslide.

"Curtis" exists for one reason and one reason and one reason only: so Curtis Jackson III can remind you how fucking tough he is. He really has nothing else to say. The album really doesn't do anything new or interesting, and except for "Ayo Technology", the entire first 2/3 of the album is forgettable and sounds exactly the same. It's a little hillarious that Fitty said that Kanye raps like a robot considering that he (50) sounds like he's sleepwalking through every track. He's taken that laid-back sound so far that he sounds completely bored with what he's talking about. And at the same time, the album takes it self so damn seriously. And honestly, I don't think I would dislike this album as much as I do if it wasn't for how fucking arrogant 50 is about what a genius he claims to be. The only two tracks that I really wanted to listen to a second time were "Ayo Technology" and "All of Me", and the only reason those tracks were good were because of the involvement of Timbaland and Mary J Blige. 50 himself didn't bring a whole lot to either one. Timbaland (collaborating with Justin Timberlake) produced "Ayo"'s trippy, slick, computerized beat, and MJB provided vocals for "All of Me", giving the album a way needed shot of passion. Buy these two on iTunes and forget about the rest.





Kanye's new album, though, is way more exciting to listen to, and there's more creativity in the first three tracks (not counting the intro, because who cares) than the were 50's last three albums combined. He pulls from an eclectic set of samples, not all of which totally work for me, but it's so much more unpredictable than "Curtis". "Graduation"'s production is damn near perfect, except for a small slump from tracks 7-9. The highlights besides "Stronger", which deserves every bit of the ridiculous radio play it's getting, are "Champion" and "Big Brother". Check out the album: