Starting with the premise that it's not healthy to live in the past all the time, I scan the zip blogs once in a while to get a taste of what's new, to hear if anyone is making good music today.  Answer: for the most part, no.  Same as always.  But it's the ones that cut through the noise, that shine through the murk of mediocrity like a halogen laser, that reward the hunt.  "Little Bit of Feel Good" from German soulster Jamie Lidell is one of those, and it's jazzed me up enough to further derail my whole trumpet theme.  Oh well, it has trumpets in it too.  And hey, I just found a tool that lets me embed a MySpace player right here on the blog, so here is Jamie Lidell's:

Wouldn't it be awesome to see a Jamie Lidell and Dap Kings double bill?

(Here is the MySpace Music Player Embed Tool.)

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Last weekend's holiday road trip gave me time to listen to every CD in the minivan, including some I hadn't heard in months.  One of those was Sunchild by Thief, from the Berlin-based Sonar Kollektiv.  (A musical collective, it seems, is a bunch of people who make music together in groups of two or more under different monikers for commercial release.  Or it's a fancy way to say "record label.")  Thief is a collaboration between Stefan Leisering and Axel Reinemer of Jazzanova and singer Sascha Gottschalk, and I won't pretend to know any more about them.  I last listened to Sunchild in early summer, when I got it, and it never progressed from "nice while I'm listening to it" to "I'm still humming the songs days after hearing them."  But this time some of the songs made that jump, the foremost being track 2, "Atlantic":

02_thief-atlantic

Thief

I think I've isolated Thief's musical DNA: they're a cross between Stereolab and The Association.  Here are one song from each to back up my claim:

Does that sound about right?  Mrs. Veneer hears more Duncan Sheik than The Association in Thief, and wants me to append one of his songs, but I'm saving Duncan for other purposes.  Speaking of Mrs. Veneer, the Sunchild cover art strongly resembles her own, especially the lettering of "thief."  Which is to say it's lovely.

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Protest music can come from the unlikeliest places.  German DJ and recording artist Malente came up with the supremely catchy "Open Secret" last year, which turns out to be quite a relevant protest song as well.  The lyrics are clever, offering ironic support for government's lust for ever-increasing search and surveillance powers (all for our "security," of course) and culminating in the chorus of

All the things I do, the things I say
Are an open secret, that's okay
Tell me how to funk, and I'll obey
'Cause I'm an open secret anyway

That's right, if you've got nothing to hide you've got nothing to worry about.  That's the theory.  It's refreshing to find incisive political commentary in a music genre (electronic breaks) littered with lyrics like "Breakbeat suckers, we're the real motherfuckers" (Cirrus) and the like.  So "big ups" to Malente, or whatever we're supposed to give people these days to show appreciation.  (Kudos?  Props?  Two snaps up in a circle?  High-five?  Chest thump?  "Yee-ha!"?  Any ideas?)  (Not that I don't like Cirrus, in spite of the idiotic lyrics.  That's guilty pleasure #422 or thereabouts.)

Malente on MySpace

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