King of the mountains

“The Horse is back in the barn, shaking off the rust"

Silver Jews man returns

Soulwax have remixed Arcade Fire's 'Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)'. The Belgian dance-rock pioneers have reworked the track, taken from Arcade Fire's third album, 'The Suburbs'. You can listen to the track, which premiered on Zane Lowe's BBC Radio 1 show last night (March 19), by scrolling down the page and clicking on the video.

It may be a touch rash to suggest that Oneohtrix Point Never are challenging, say, Lady Gaga for influence and ubiquity all of a sudden. Nevertheless, more and more psychedelic records I’m sent seem to follow levitational synth patterns rather than more rockist jams, and there’s even been a few weird instances of PRs dropping the Oneohtrix name as an eyecatching influence, when the actual music sounds nothing like him (last week: a very lame pop-dubstep thing with faint ethereal trim).

Plenty of interesting psych stuff accumulated here over the past few weeks, while I’ve been distracted by a bunch of other things. A bit of a roundup today, kicking off with Daughters Of The Sun, whose “Ghost With Chains” is forthcoming on Not Not Fun.

A strange experience this morning. As I write, I’m listening to what seems to be a perfect recording of the Mountains show I saw last night at Club Uncut. As with a previous tour, which resulted in the superb “Etching” album, Brendon Anderegg and Koen Holtkamp rehearsed a new piece for the tour, recorded an early take on it, then produced CD-Rs to sell after each show.

Apologies for yesterday’s grouchy digression. Back to business today, and one of a bunch of new records that have been exciting me over the past week or two.

The 19-track Kraftwerk Remixes features contributions from Hot Chip, Orbital and more

Gentle indie-folk quartet on a mission to soothe our modern anxieties

Diaries out!