soulRocks » Electro-Pop

Chromeo + Solange Knowles – When The Night Falls Official Video

soulrocks — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 05:50:29 +0000

“If this video was a news story, the headline would be: Dudes from Chromeo impregnate entire female population of Quebec (as well as guest vocalist Solange Knowles)” – Eddie “STATS”. Press Play and you’ll understand.

Sneaky Sound System

soulrocks — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 18:43:58 +0000

Electro-pop group Sneaky Sound System emerged among the premier Australian club acts of its generation with its self-titled 2006 breakthrough LP. Songwriter/producer “Black Angus” McDonald and MC Daimon “Double D” Downey first met at a Sydney costume party in the spring of 2000, soon after hatching plans to co-headline DJ sets at a friend’s nightclub. The following summer, they began collaborating under the Sneaky Sound System aegis, signing to Sony Music Australia and in late 2003 issuing the mix CD Other Peoples Music. After founding their own Whack Recordings label, Black Angusand Double D teamed with producer/engineer Peter Dolso to begin work on their official debut, scoring a club hit with the single “Hip Hop Hooray.” Soon after, they recruited vocalist Miss Connie Mitchell, a former member of the Aussie rock trio Primary, and completed work on the first Sneaky Sound System LP, scoring a pair of Top 40 hits with the singles “I Love It” and “Pictures.” Touring stints in support of Jamiroquai, Robbie Williams, and the Scissor Sistersfollowed.

www.sneakysoundsystem.com

Roisin Murphy

soulrocks — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 18:36:22 +0000

Dublin-born singer Róisín Murphy moved from Ireland to Manchester, England, with her family when she was 12, and remained there even after her parents returned to Dublin four years later. On her own at 16, Murphy had no aspirations of singing until she met producerMark Brydon, with whom she formed the eclectic electronic pop duoMoloko. The pair’s stylish-yet-quirky sound scored them several hits, including “Sing It Back,” “The Time Is Now,” and “Fun for Me.” By the time of Moloko‘s fourth album, 2002’s Statues, Murphy and Brydon‘s personal and professional relationships were strained, and Molokocalled it a day after completing the tour supporting that album. Murphy moved to London and began working with forward-thinking electronic producer Matthew Herbert, who had previously worked on a remix of “Sing It Back” with Moloko. He encouraged Murphy to bring typically non-musical items like notebooks into the studio and use them in musical ways; the results were first released as three limited-edition vinyl EPs, Sequins #1, Sequins #2, and Sequins #3. In 2005, Moloko‘s label, Echo, released the EPs as the full-length albumRuby Blue. In spring 2006, Ruby Blue was released in the U.S.Overpowered, which featured productions by Bugz in the Attic andGroove Armada members and some of Murphy’s most pop-oriented songs to date, arrived in late 2007.

www.myspace.com/roisinmurphy

N.E.R.D.

soulrocks — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 18:19:48 +0000

The acronym N.E.R.D. stands for “No One Ever Really Dies,” but childhood friends Chad Hugo, Pharrell Williams, and Shay most certainly used the group to proudly emphasize the nerdier aspects of their musical personalities. Before this side project took shape,Hugo and Williams — as the Neptunes — had established themselves as giants in the field of pop production, whether they were working with hardcore rappers, smooth crooners, or teen pop groups. Although their faces were known to many due to this prominence, N.E.R.D. allowed the duo to take center stage, as rock stars, even if a new alias was being used.

The trio recorded its first album, In Search Of…, and released it in Europe in late 2001. Not entirely happy with the results, they reshaped the album using live instrumentation — with significant assistance from the funk-rock band Spymob, to further differentiate the material from Neptunes productions — before issuing it in the U.S. in March 2002. Singles “Lapdance” and “Rock Star” made minor indentations on the singles charts; despite this, the album didn’t come close to achieving the kind of commercial success won by the average Neptunes production. In March 2004, after another endless influx of hitmaking Neptunes work, they resurfaced with Fly or Die. This time out, Hugo and Williams handled more of the instrumentation. Unrelenting in their knack for the absurd, lead single “She Wants to Move” was promoted with a video that depicted the three members performing in the rear “compartment” of a female-shaped space vessel — a very literal interpretation of the line “Her ass is a spaceship I want to ride.”

The trio’s third album, Seeing Sounds, followed in June 2008. UnlikeIn Search Of… and Fly or Die, the disc failed to reach gold-selling status in the U.S., even though it had a strong first week and reached the Top 10 of the Billboard 200. The group eventually welcomed Rhea into the fold and performed as quartet, but the vocalist was let go several months prior to the release of September 2010’s Nothing. The album was preceded by the single “Hot-N-Fun,” featuring Nelly Furtado.

http://n-e-r-d.com

MGMT

soulrocks — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 18:11:28 +0000

Finding an unlikely middle point between Suicide‘s hostile, proto-electro punk art noise and the sardonic, pop-friendly sound of the Flaming Lips, MGMT started as electroclash musical terrorists but quickly grew into an eclectic, brainy pop group with psychedelic overtones. MGMT first formed in 2002, during Ben Goldwasser andAndrew Van Wyngarden‘s freshman year as art students at Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT. The band was initially known as the Management, and its shows consisted mostly of backing tapes, synthesizers, and prerecorded vocals playing as Goldwasser and Van Wyngarden engaged the audience in a manner somewhere between performance art and good old-fashioned punky hostility. By their senior year, things had toned down considerably on-stage and the duo began augmenting its live sound with backing musicians.

After graduating, MGMT released an electro-rock EP, 2005’s Time to Pretend, on the tiny indie label Cantora Records. Good reviews (particularly for the title track, which would later crack the U.K. Top 40) and extensive touring brought the duo to the attention of British producer Steve Lillywhite in his role as an A&R executive for Columbia Records, which signed the band to a major long-term deal in 2006. Regrouping in Brooklyn, the duo partnered with another producer, Dave Fridmann, and recorded Oracular Spectacular, a far more musically expansive album that was released digitally in late 2007. A traditional CD release followed in January 2008, andOracular Spectacular ultimately enjoyed both critically approval and commercially success, with the album selling over 500,000 copies in the U.S. and going platinum in Australia, the U.K., and Ireland.

MGMT served as Of Montreal‘s opening act for their extensive 2007 tour, during which Van Wyngarden and Of Montreal frontman Kevin Barnes began sketching out ideas for a side project called Blikk Fang. Although Blikk Fang planned on releasing an album in 2009, touring commitments kept the members of MGMT busy, and all side projects were temporarily shelved as the band spent the better part of two years on the road. In 2009, MGMT began working with producer Sonic Boom on their second album, Congratulations, which was released in the spring of 2010.

www.whoismgmt.com

Lykke Li

soulrocks — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 18:07:00 +0000

The Swedish indie pop artist Lykke Li Zachrisson (better known as Lykke Li) grabbed the attention of international bloggers in the early 2000s with a handful of catchy, retro-chic singles made available on her MySpace profile. Armed with sensuous, barely there vocals and backed up by a quirky, bass-heavy, electro dance sound (courtesy of producer Björn Yttling of Peter Bjorn and John), Lykke Li released her debut EP, 2007’s Little Bit, on her own fledgling LL Recordings label. The disc’s title track went on to earn a good deal of buzz among not only indie pop-centric bloggers but in the mainstream Swedish music press as well. She made her first appearance on Swedish MTV that same year, and the video for “Little Bit” was nominated for Best Video at the Swedish Grammy Awards. Soon, she signed with Atlantic for worldwide distribution of the Little Bit EP and her first album, 2008’s Youth Novels. The album proved an international success and Lykke Li increased her visibility through touring, a guest spot on Swedish producer Kleerup‘s debut album, and appearances on late-night television talk shows.

www.lykkeli.com

LaRoux

soulrocks — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 17:59:16 +0000

Meaning “red-haired one” in French, La Roux is the synth pop project of flame-haired singer/songwriter Elly Jackson and keyboardist/producer Ben Langmaid. Before they collaborated,Jackson, the daughter of actress Trudie Goodwin, grew up listening to folk artists and singer/songwriters like Nick Drake and Joni Mitchell, and drew inspiration from their sounds for her early music. However, Jackson‘s style changed as she got into the rave scene, taking her music in a more electronic direction. Meanwhile,Langmaid had gone to school with Rollo from Faithless, and the two recorded as house duo Huff & Puff in the mid-’90s; Langmaid also recorded as Atomic and as one half of Huff & Herb for Rollo‘s label, and was a songwriter for the group Kubb. Jackson and Langmaidbegan working together in 2006, when they were introduced by a mutual acquaintance. Initially, they called their project Automan and wrote largely acoustic music before scrapping that name and sound for the sleek Prince, David Bowie, and the Knife-inspired style they pursued as La Roux, a moniker Jackson found in a book of baby names. Their debut single, “Quicksand,” was released by Kitsune in fall 2008, and earned the band acclaim from the BBC and the Guardian. La Roux supported Lily Allen on her 2009 U.K. tour around the time their second single, “In for the Kill,” was released that spring and debuted at 11 on the U.K. charts, reaching a peak position of two; that summer, the single “Bulletproof” debuted at number one a week before La Roux’s self-titled album was released.La Roux arrived in the States that fall. Late that year, the duo began working on new material that steered away from the heavy ’80s influence of its debut. In early 2010, Skream‘s remix of “In for the Kill” won Best Dancefloor Filler at the NME Shockwave Awards. That summer, “Bulletproof” entered the Top Ten of Billboard‘s Hot 100 singles chart, and La Roux released the mix album Sidetracked.

www.laroux.co.uk

Daft Punk

soulrocks — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 18:09:55 +0000

In similar company with new-school French progressive dance artists such as Motorbass, Air, Cassius, and Dimitri from Paris, Parisian duo Daft Punk quickly rose to acclaim by adapting a love for first-wave acid house and techno to their younger roots in pop, indie rock, and hip-hop. The combined talents of DJs Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter, the pair’s first projects together included Darling, a voiceless indie cover band; their current recording name derives from a review in U.K. music weekly Melody Maker of a compilation tape Darling were featured on, released by Krautrock revivalists Stereolab (their lo-fi D.I.Y. cover of a Beach Boys song was derided as “daft punk”). Subsequently ditching the almost inevitable creative cul-de-sac of rock for the more appealing rush of the dancefloor, the pair released their debut single, “The New Wave,” in 1993 on the celebrated Soma label. Instantly hailed by the dance music press as the work of a new breed of house innovators, the single was followed by “Da Funk,” the band’s first true hit (the record sold 30,000 copies worldwide and saw thorough rinsings by everyone from Kris Needs to the Chemical Brothers).

www.daftpunk.com/

Crystal Castles

soulrocks — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 18:05:15 +0000

Fusing low-res electronic noise and pop hooks so effortlessly that it can seem accidental, Crystal Castles began as producer/multi-instrumentalist Ethan Kath‘s solo project in late 2003. Kath got the moniker from the name of She-Ra’s dwelling in the He-Man and Masters of the Universe cartoon series; it’s also the name of a 1983 Atari video game, which is oddly appropriate, considering that one component of the band’s distinctive sound comes from a keyboard modified with an Atari 5200 sound chip. When Kath collaborated with singer Alice Glass on some songs in spring 2005, Crystal Castles’ lineup was complete. One of the songs the pair recorded, “Alice Practice,” was something of an accident: it was intended to be a demo of Glass testing out a microphone, but its presence on MySpace piqued record labels’ interest. “Alice Practice” was released as a limited-edition 7″ in summer 2006 on Merok Records, also home to Klaxons; its 500-copy run sold out in three days. Kath and Glassworked on their own songs and also honed their remixing skills, tweaking songs for Klaxons as well as GoodBooks, Uffie, Health, andBloc Party. Tours with the Presets and Metric in 2007 set the stage for the release of Crystal Castles’ self-titled debut album, which Last Gang released early in 2008. The duo returned in 2010 with another self-titled album; when it leaked onto the Internet in late April of that year, the band released it digitally soon after, with a physical release following that May.

http://crystalcastles.com/