Thanks to user Navelgazer at community blog Metafilter, I was turned on to this interesting story recently published by the New York Times about an all-female Saudi rock band called The Accolade, most probably the first one of its kind ever. There are no photos of The Accolade because they are forbidden from posing for them. They have a MySpace page though, where you can listen to their first single, "Pinocchio." It is the sound of cultural awakening.

My good buddy Daz I Kue of London's pioneering Broken Beat crew Bugz In The Attic recently sent me this fantastic remix of James Brown's "Funky President" that he's done under his Bloodfire alias -- one he's applied to cheeky less-than-official reworks of other jams like Syl Johnson's "Is It Because I'm Black" and Syreeta's Stevie-penned "To Know You Is To Love You," both of which are fantastic and worth the tracking down, if you can find either out-of-print 12".

Recently married and residing in Atlanta, Daz channeled his emotions over the recent presidential election into this fantastic bit of dancefloor badness which juxtaposes the untouchable original with "Yes We Can" chants, putting the whole thing into glorious, evocative focus.

Many thanks to Daz for giving us permission to post the track here. No MP3 either, this is a full-spectrum AIFF CD-quality soundfile, suitable for club play. Play it loud!

Bloodfire V Funky President (Yes We Can Rehash) (sendshare link to 71mb AIFF)
and here's a 16MB MP3 in case you're balking at the file size!

Little did I know that the amazing 12" by Sorcerer that I had picked up earlier this year was by an artist living in my backyard! I had been initially attracted to "Surfing At Midnight" due to its fantastic Prins Thomas remix and the fact that it was on white-hot UK label Tirk (aka the folks behind the highly revered Nuphonic imprint), but I was further intrigued - who is/are Sorcerer? Well, it didn't take too long to find out.



Sorcerer's debut full-length White Magic was released in August and the SF Electronica section has been singing its praises ever since. The album is chock-full of sun-drenched beach vibes, slow tempos, wistful guitar melodies and gentle, rolling beats - basically everything I'm feeling in 2007. I finally met Daniel Judd - Mr. Sorcerer himself - recently, at Prins Thomas' SF debut earlier this month and got to tell him how great I thought his music was. He's a chill, friendly guy, not unlike his music unsurprisingly, and he introduced me to his partner Sam Grawe aka Hatchback, who recently released a fantastic 12" on SoCal boutique label Sentrall Records, and who Daniel collaborates with as Windsurf. Not long after we exchanged pleasantries, Thomas played a tune that was so great I *had* to find out what it was. Lo and behold - it was Windsurf's remix of "Us vs Them" by LCD Soundsystem, coming out soon on the Bunch of Stuff EP on DFA. Awestruck, I walked over to Sam and Daniel. "This is your tune?!", I gushed. They confirmed it, and it was then I knew I had a new favorite artist. I invited the duo to play a DJ set for Mandala, Amoeba SF's weekly DJ series, which they will be doing this Friday at 7pm. In the meantime, I asked them some questions via email; here are their responses:

Here's something you don't see every day: Newsweek columnist Steven Levy pairs up the unlikely combination of hipster mash-up laptop god Gregg Gillis aka Girl Talk and Democrat Congressman Mike Doyle, who counts Pittsburgh, Gillis' home, among the areas he represents, to discuss the Copyfight and what sort of compromise, if any, can be made between the current generation of media-saturated sample-heavy artists and the clampdown attitude held by corporate copyright holders. Doyle seems like one of the good ones, especially when he puts his money where his mouth is - back at the House Telecom Subcommittee. Read the article right here.

While it's quite obviously inspired by LCD Soundsystem, this gem of a single from Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip has wormed its way into my brain and continues to make me chuckle upon repeated listenings/viewings. "Thou Shalt Always Kill" is the best kind of rant: one that is intended ultimately to be beneficial for the listener. Sac and Pip are (presumably) both English, and there are a few references in the tune that non-Britishes might not get, like Stephen Fry, but the rest of this list of commandments applies everywhere - and definitely in San Francisco. Check out the video:



Love that video, especially how it gets more visually clever as the song progresses. While it starts with a couple of cute and slightly cheesy puns like the pedestal, the bit about using music to get into girls' heads then appearing in the woman's thought bubble to tell her "thou shalt not watch Holyoaks", it gets better with the animated map of global inequity and the photocopier running off "repetitive generic music".

These two seem to be part of the loosely-grouped scene of message-board mashup DJ's, IDM-influenced laptop glitch producers and booty-music afficionados that's been rumbling about since the early days of the century. The single has been quite hard to find but is blowing up iPods virally via the 'net, which is a good place to keep up with these two.  Also of note is that this single is put out by the venerable Lex Records, a Warp-affiliated label that puts out lots of other great music from the likes of Boom Bip and Amoeba's Own Subtle. Lex has been around for a few years now and is worth your time and money, so check them out.