Subject: Daft Punk

• European Imports of Import

  The mighty Forced Exposure distribution company is America's lifeline to the fertile global electronic-music underground—as well as many other arcane sonic delicacies. Whenever a package from FE arrives, I can be assured a bounty of excellent sounds from the planet's most forward-thinking sound sorcerers. Below is a survey of releases from the most recent batch of goodies. More treasures can be yours at the FE site or at your local hip record emporium, if you're indeed fortunate enough

  April 5, 2007

• Photos: Lollapalooza 2007

  The Daft Punk mothership lands in Chicago. Click the image for photos of Blonde Redhead, M.I.A. and other bands at the festival:

  August 7, 2007

• Dirty Money, Avalon, August 8, 2007

  Dirty Money's Jay Cash: Bank on his taste. I lost my Dirty Money cherry last night and am wondering why I waited so long to do so. The Wednesday weekly at Avalon gave me a much-needed dose of hot new electronic dance music that was mostly well-mixed and intelligently selected. Sure, lots of people were dancing on the club's tiny floor, but you should've seen me taking notes and trainspotting. Man, it was breathtaking... Helmed by three DJs—Tea-Long, Jay Cash and BbGunz—Dirty Money breaks

  August 9, 2007

• Uffie, Gina Turner and Others at Tapas, August 20, 2007

  Uffie is ready to... what? Last night at Tapas in Newport Beach, Orange County's hipster contingent turned out in middling numbers ($15?! On a Monday?! Outrageous!) to gawk at Uffie, the sassy Ed Banger recording artist/fashionista whose best-known track is the lad-baitingly lewd “Ready to Fuck.” Unfortunately, Uff only performed two songs (including “Ready to Fuck”), and even those sounded like they could've been lip-synched. I should've felt ripped off, but the DJs on the bill broug

  August 21, 2007

• Club Call Sick On Friday

  UPDATE: Club pix are up. Thursday night was a little bit different from the usual dance party that is Call Sick On Friday. It brought the best of both nightlife worlds: the beginning was dedicated to live music, the end belonged to digital. Held at Que Sera, this week’s Call Sick opened with Long Beach darlings Repeater, who did an amazing set of their frenzied, cerebral brand of shoegaze. Around Midnight the DJ took over and spun the crowd into a frenzy with smashes and remixes of early

  September 8, 2007

• Get Yer Hands Dirty… and Your Ears Blown Out

  DJ Chaz moved the crowd and worked a mean air horn. Friday Oct. 12 at Santa Ana’s Proof Bar, the monthly Get Yer Hands Dirty night went off with several bangs. But the indoor/outdoor party suffered a setback when police pulled the plug on the back patio outdoor stage due to a neighbor’s noise complaint. (I too had a noise complaint, more of which later.) Nevertheless, the revelry continued inside (and folks continued to socialize and smoke outside with a passion that must’ve pleased the

  October 15, 2007

• Busywork, Detroit Bar, October 31, 2007

  Muscles from Melbourne: kinda weak. Halloween: It's really more for adults than for kids, isn't it? It astounds me how much effort grownups put into their costumes, simply to have ridiculous amounts of fun getting wasted as they take mini-vacations from their own personae. The overflow gathering at Detroit Bar last night proved this conclusively—and reminded me that I need to get a camera, damn it. (I hope to get some shots by OC paparazzo Will Tee Yang later.) Sure, you had your share of

  November 1, 2007

• Feast Your Eyes on These BusyhalloweenWork Photos

  A Daft Punk and DJ Legit make a bunch of grown-ups in get-ups sweat. As promised in my review of the last Busywork, Will Tee Yang's pictorial handiwork of this ludicrously fun gala event can be found here. Better late than never, and now you have almost a year to plan next year's costume, playas.

  November 5, 2007

• Spin City DJ Competition

  Last night at Spin City (held at Sutra, that place is sooo beautiful), another 2 hopeful DJs made it a little bit closer to the Winter Music Fest in Miami. And I got just a little bit closer to destroying my liver. The competition, which consisted of 20 minute sets, started off with Peter J spinning an enjoyable set sprinkled with Interpol and Jay Z. It was more enjoyable to watch the Tila Tequila wannabe on stage gyrating tragically off beat. Second was DJ Dizzy whose fans showed support by

  November 19, 2007

• The Grammys: Drunk on Winehouse

  Every year the Grammy Awards ceremony proves—among other things—how far out of step my tastes are with mainstream music, a state of affairs with which I came to terms, oh, in the early '80s. It also reveals the dearth of imagination/adventurousness of the nominating committee. Most of the music that charts and excites people of mainstream sensibilities just strikes me as bland and insipid. Must be the way I'm hard-wired. I like weird, edgy shit, generally speaking, the sort of stuff the powe

  February 11, 2008

• What You Missed Over The Weekend Part XV

  On Friday night, Dave Segal watched London duo, Black Ghosts, put on one of the better hipster-dance live shows he's seen in a while. Saying, "It was kind of like a combination of Daft Punk and Chemical Brothers, full of aggressive beats, filthy synth textures and sing-along tunes." Saturday found our own Luke Y. Thompson at the toy store shopping for Iron Man action figures to add to his collection. He found himself a Robert Downey Jr. action figure at the Toys R Us in Irvine. Too bad it loo

  March 24, 2008

• Coachella, Day 3

  Holy Fuck: Holy fuck! Awesome Canucks! Coachella dealt me a TKO, so I missed Sunday. Ouch. Beware the undercooked brown rice... or something. Sadly, my illness prevented me from witnessing Holy Fuck, Swervedriver, Spiritualized, Justice, Modeselektor, Booka Shade, Black Mountain, Deadmau5, Linton Kwesi Johnson, and the unforgettable sight of thousands of near-naked humans texting in the blazing sun. (Huge sigh.) To remedy this void, please check out our sister paper LA Weekly's Day 3 cove

  April 28, 2008

• Detroit Bar-Bound Dance-Pop Duo Walter Meego Don't Watch TV, Even Though Their Music Is Always on It

  September 25, 2008

• [Coachella 2009] Everything New Is Old Again--and Vice Versa

  April 9, 2009

• [CD Review] South Central, 'The Owl of Minerva' (Egregore Music)

  December 25, 2008

• [Summer Guide] Summer Concerts, Festivals and Music Worth the Sweat

  June 12, 2008

• [Sprawl of Sound] Eli 'Paperboy' Reed and Yet More Coachella Blurbage

  April 17, 2008

• Coachella's Robot Rock: Kraftwerk, Aphex Twin and Justice's Automation for (Moving) the People

  April 17, 2008

• Hotter Than the Temperature at Coachella? Black Lips, Animal Collective, Duffy and 43 More

  April 17, 2008

• [Sprawl of Sound] Black Ghosts In the Booth, Gaslamp Killer On Disc, and the Crosby (Finally) Opens

  March 27, 2008

• [Hits!] Top-Selling Records at Music Revolution

  March 13, 2008

• Afrika Bambaataa Raises Consciousness—and Roofs

  February 21, 2008

• [Sprawl of Sound] All Excess Pass

  The problem with hipster dance DJs, plus a Mars Volta member's solo album

  February 7, 2008

• Sprawl of Sound

  Year-End Revelries: Living it up in clubland as 2007 dies

  January 10, 2008

• Spinnin' & Singin' Pretty

  DJ Colette Vox the House

  October 25, 2007

• Blissed Out, Once More

  Ulrich Schnauss Puts a New Swirl on Shoegaze Rock

  October 4, 2007

• Rocket Surfin'

  Air

  September 20, 2007

• Into the (weird) Groove

  Holy Fuck’s Raw Music Is As Provocative As Their Name

  September 13, 2007

• CD Review

  Kanye West, Graduation (Island Def Jam/Roc-A-Fella)

  September 13, 2007

• Faster Format

  VHS or Beta channel Gang of Four, New Order and . . . Jackson Browne?

  September 13, 2007

• Never Mind the Shit, Here's Coachella

  Is this annual desert festival an ordeal or orgasmic experience? Yes

  May 10, 2007

• Losing Your Coachella V-Card

  Apatow-comedy parallel alert! By my age, most rock-lovin' dudes who grew up in Southern California are able to sit around -- maybe at a beach bonfire, maybe around a Lake Forest hookah set-up, or maybe over a steaming bag of Pedro's Tacos -- and swap tales of how "experienced" they are with the Coachella music festival. As previous Heard Mentality posts by Albert and Ryan indicate, most of these stories seem to involve weed, awkward sleeping situations, heat stroke, parking lots, bathrooms

  April 15, 2009

• Last Saturday: KROQ Weenie Roast at Verizon Wireless Amphitheater

  Andrew YoussefLast Night: KROQ Weenie Roast at the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater; Saturday May 16, 2009. (More pictures here.)Better Than: Wango Tango.Download: Videos from the day at KROQ.com.The KROQ Weenie Roast is typically full of surprises. With Blink 182 reuniting the night prior at a private party, the fact that TRV$DJ-AM were closing the evening led to rampant speculation that Blink-182 would be the final act. But the Blink-182 reunion didn't happen.A last minute shuffling had KROQ move

  May 18, 2009

• Chicago DJ Bad Boy Bill Goes Old-School, Releases an Album

  July 9, 2009

• [CD Review] Mungolian Jet Set, 'We Gave It All Away . . . ' (Smalltown Supersound)

  August 20, 2009

• Last Night: Franz Ferdinand at the Hollywood Palladium

  Andrew Youssef​Last Night: Franz Ferdinand, the Blood Arm, Neverever at the Hollywood Palladium; August 27, 2009.Better Than: Being assassinated by Gavrilo Princip.Unfortunate Timing: Rousing Franz Ferdinand hit "This Fire," featuring a chorus of "this fire is out of control, gonna burn this city," being played while all this stuff was happening.People still like Franz Ferdinand. Thank goodness.

  August 28, 2009

• New Detroit Bar DJ Night a Lot Like Old Detroit Bar DJ Night

  ​Busywork, the old no-cover weekly Wednesday dance night at Detroit Bar, has been replaced by Pistol, the new no-cover weekly Wednesday dance night at Detroit Bar. The similarities don't end there.

  September 3, 2009

• [Sound Guy] Everything Sort of Old Is Kind of New Again

  September 10, 2009

• Dance Music Pick of the Week: Gene Farris at Focus

  ​One of my favorite house tracks of all time is Gene Farris' "Richard's Word," (sample) which floats a skit by the late, great Richard Pryor above an optimistic groove that's laced with a flighty flute loop. Pryor is at his gut-busting best riffing, for example, on what it takes, power tools and all, to get his lover to the, er, promised land (e.g. "all ugly in the face").It's a light touch of soul with a purposeful, dance-floor drive, not unlike much of Farris' output. While dance music, part

  September 17, 2009

• Five Songs About Technology Gone Horribly Awry

  Flickr user NMFinFan​Between the "sexting" phenomenon and underage kids letting the world know via tweet what public place they had sex at last night, we're not sure if we're getting old and grumpy or the rest of you are just getting dumber and dumber. We're going to opt for the latter. And we're not saying it can't be done right (see: Daft Punk's "Technologic"). Either way: If this is a sign of the times, well then we want out. Here's a list we've compiled of the top five songs centered arou

  October 5, 2009

• Last Night: Miike Snow, Jack Penate at Detroit Bar

  Andrew YoussefThese masked men are Miike Snow.​Green lasers pierced the thick fog as the mercury started to rise. Bodies next to me writhed in time with the pulsating synthesizers. The euphoric combination of heat, sound and lasers bombarding the senses provided a rush similar to being in the Gobi tent at Coachella with a few thousand of your closest friends. After seeing Thom Yorke at the Orpheum two nights in a row, how could my week get any better? Miike Snow was the answer.

  October 7, 2009

• Dance Music Pick(s) of the Week: Jujubeats, Dr. Freecloud's Record Shoppe Party, More

  ​It's a big weekend for electro-insomniacs in Orange County. First and foremost, the annual Jujubeats party doubles up with its sister event, How Sweet It Is, for an outdoor rave Saturday at Oak Canyon Ranch in Irvine.

  July 29, 2009

• Mash-up Master Dirty South Leads Geekdom's Charge Into Clubland

  November 12, 2009

• Ghostland Observatory

  November 19, 2009

• Ghostland Observatory Fuses the Best of Man and Machine

  November 19, 2009