We do this all the time: The Vinyl Vultures hatch!

Turn your Light up High

presents:

Vinyl Vultures

Thur 4 Aug 2011

Free Mix Friday: From Sass Africa with Love pt.1!

This ones an oldish mix that was posted up here way back in 2009. It's the first of 4 mixes I did as a part of a cross-medium project I put together for a London exhibiton called The Sense Summer Art Fair. This particular episode of "From Sass Africa with Love" was made up of some of the bands that transformed me into The Sassquatch and got me DJing back in the ancient times known 2005. From 70ies post-punk queens, to New York no-wavers to underground South African jive legends & DC art-punk heroes, it's a wild ride that I'm sure you'll agree, is best represented by a dachshund waring a giraffe suit!

DOWNLOAD

"THE ORIGIN OF THE SASS"

HERE!

Ben's non-SA acts of the decade 2000 - 2009

Since last year I've been working on a list of my favorite albums from this past decade. Trying to decide which TV on the Radio album is better than the next was just becoming a headache, so instead I've decided to just make a list of my top acts of the decade.

Even arranging this list was kinda silly. Can I really say I loved Beulah more than Belle and Sebastian? Not really but i did anyway.

The positioning of the acts is pretty much based around quantity x quality. Life Without Buildings beat the crap out of everything because although they only had a quantity of 1 album, the quality is so absurdly awesome it beats even the massive quantity of high quality that Liars churned out over the course of the decade.

50. Islands
49. Cut Copy
48. Explosions in the Sky
47. Modest Mouse
46. Do Make Say Think
45. Super Furry Animals
44. Moving Units
43. Broadcast
42. Yo La Tengo
41. The Evens
40. Pinback
39. Camera Obscura
38. Grandaddy
37. Black Eyes
36. Mae Shi
35. El Guapo/ Supersystem
34. Broken Social Scene
33. !!!
32. The Shins
31. Caribou/ Manitoba
30. M83
29. LCD Soundsystem
28. Toe
27. Le Tigre
26. The Raveonettes
25. Belle and Sebastian
24. So Many Dynamos
23. Enon
22. Beulah
21. The Rapture
20. The Sea and Cake
19. The Go! Team
18. TV on the Radio
17. Why?
16. I Heart Hiroshima
15. Phoenix
14. Blood Brothers
13. Liars
12. The Unicorns
11. Saturday looks Good to Me
10. Yeah Yeah Yeahs
9. Les Savy Fav
8. Sleater Kinney
7. Thunderbirds are Now!
6. Ratatat
5. Johnny Foreigner
4. Q and not U
3. The Dismemberment Plan
2. Life Without Buildings
1. And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead

Ben's international top 10 for 2K9!

These were my most beloved albums, released outside of South Africa in 2009:

10. Cymbals Eat Guitars - Why There are Mountains
9. Dananananaykroyd - Hey Everyone!
8. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - It's Blitz
7. And you will know us by the trail of dead - Century of Self
6. Phenomenal Handclap Band - ST
5. Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
4. Passion Pit - Manners
3. Johnny Foreigner - Grace and the Bigger Picture
2. Japandroids - Post Nothing
1. I Heart Hiroshima - The Rip

UK.2.2.T in the Park - Friday

Friday was mostly spent hanging around waiting for 5PM when the arena would open. Anja and I took this time to plan who we'd be watching over the next 3 days.

T in the Park has a tradition called 'Fancy Dress Fridays" and kids make the most insane effort for this. Loads and loads of people dressed up, but the 2 groups that stick in my head were a couple dressed as the milk cartons from Blur's "Coffee and TV" music video and a gang of 12 kids dressed as storm troopers, led by Darth Vader, with a Princess Leia handcuffed and held prisoner. Cam, Col, Rod and I brought back their old Greenisforturbo power ranger outfits...

Considering the arena only opened at 5, the lineup for the Friday was a lot smaller than it would be on Saturday and Sunday. But one of the acts I was most excited too see at the festival were playing Friday night; The Yeah Yeah Yeahs.
As soon as I first layed my paws on their "Master" EP, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs were instantly one of my favorite bands. reading about their live shows made me wish I could be in some tiny club in NYC seeing Nick Zinner creating walls of sound with a single guitar or Karen O swallowing her mic while screaming "Aaaarrrrt Staaaarrrrr".
While, for me, the bands past 2 albums don't hold a candle to their first album and earlier tracks, I really love them for what they are. So yeah, I was pretty massively excited. Anja and I even sacrificed seeing Camera Obscura to make sure we could be right in the front for YYYs.

The show was pretty great, with stage design matching the artwork of their single "Zero".

The band performed in front of a massive eyeball. There were also giant inflatable eyeballs bouncing around on the crowd.
Anja told me that when she saw them in London the huge eyeball at the back of the stage rolled back and they started projecting stuff onto it. I'd like to have seen that.

Everything about the show was quite perfect. They played a good amount of the old songs, and the newer songs translated live really well. But the whole thing was just kinda sad for me - seeing the 4 members spread out over this massive stage, even where we were from the barrier they were miles away. Just wished I could be seeing them in some tiny club, crammed onto a little stage, with all that energy contained and bouncing around the room, not just drifting off into the Scottish, evening air.

That said, seeing the band perform "Skeletons" with an eight piece bagpipe section was a pretty freaking incredible moment that just wouldn't have been the same anywhere else in the world.

So Friday was pretty damn awesome, but nothing could have prepared us for what would happen 12 hours into the next day...