Diplo

Photo by Tim Soter

One of the highlights for many at this year’s Electric Picnic was the appearance of Philadelphia-based DJ Diplo. To explain the diversity of his DJing style, I need only note his opening tracks: kicking off with XR2, a horn-laden, bmore bass-thumping track he produced for MIA, he thundered into DJ Jean’s The Launch, a forgotten trance hit from the late 90s. Heard outside its original context, this track becomes a guilty pleasure, finding new meaning as it straddles new styles, its muffled countdown acting as the perfect opening for such a barn-storming set.

Consistently busy, Diplo’s most recent work is that with hipster queen Santogold. Having produced three tracks for her self-titled debut album, he went on to create Top Ranking, a mind-bending fusion of Santogold’s tracks and a selection of dub sounds from the likes of Benga and Skream, as well as choice oddities by artists as varied as B52s, Devo and even Aretha Franklin. That said, Santi herself was such a perfectionist that she insisted on the man re-recording it on several occasions, his own personal favourite would have been two or three versions before that which saw the light of day.

Another mix of his that caught a lot of attention was I Like Turtles, a mix for Pitchfork in August 2007 which was subsequently released through his Mad Decent label. Similarly eclectic, it’s a breathtaking run through some of the biggest songs of last year from the likes of Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Soulja Boy and Justice, some classics such as Orbital’s Halcyon, and, of all things, even a bootleg of The Bartman. His motivation behind this mix was to make it so good that no-one would be able to follow with a better one, and, to date, there has been no subsequent Pitchfork mix. If that isn’t an indication of its success, I don’t know what is.

As far as running a label is concerned, his major enjoyment comes from his ability to oversee the work of others while taking a break from his own, and the artists that he feels garner special a mention are London’s Boy 8-Bit and Baltimore’s DJ Blaqstarr. On the other hand, his major frustration comes when certain acts don’t provide him with new material. Already well-documented, Bonde do Rolê have had a turbulent year, with the departure of one member, the addition two more, and a heavy amount of touring. While he understands the financial necessity of such a schedule, Diplo hopes that the group will soon knuckle down and get back to the studio. He’s certainly not the only one.

As for the man himself, he claims that his next work should come at some point in 2009. An unlikely source of inspiration for him is Mississippi-born modernist writer William Faulkner, whose Go Down, Moses was an inspiration for Diplo’s 2004 album Florida. A fellow Southerner (the album takes its title from Diplo’s birthplace), Faulkner was the first major figure from the South he found to create work that was truly challenging and interesting. While the atmospheric Florida has more in common with the work of DJ Shadow and RJD2, his DJ sets, like that at Electric Picnic, are unlike those of any other. His Stradbally set raced through everything one would imagine from listening to his mixtapes and then some, was technically impeccable and, more importantly, a whole lot of fun. Having played just four shows on this island since 2005, one can only hope that he will come back soon, and often.

Electric Picnic Timetable

Electric Picnic 07 – photo by Eoin O’Braoin

Not sure if this is the official Electric Picnic timetable or not but it looks fairly right to me. Download it from here.

The argument about the delay of the official timetable is still going on over at Jim’s blog.

Electric Picnic 2008, a MySpace Tour – Sunday

Sunday’s line up explained, through a MySpace linkaggedon…. Let it be known that I abhor the use of labels, so this was a painful exercise.

[Previously - Friday's acts; Saturday's acts]

Sunday 31st

Absentee; James Ford-produced dark, melancholic indie-pop. Think The Magnetic Fields, only British.

Adrian Crowley; Irish singer-songwriter folk music stuff. Hot Press love him.

Black Lips; Flower punk. Or so their Myspace says. Rough around the edges, and all the better for it.

Candi Staton; She sang Young Hearts Run Free! And You Got The Love! Unmissable.

Céilí House Allstars; The name says it all really.

Chromeo; One half is A-Trak‘s brother. The other dresses like Cee-Lo. They sound like Prince with a vocoder and a sense of humour. A bit Marmite, they’ll probably draw a HUGE crowd.

Conor Oberst and The Mystic Valley Band; Basically a Bright Eyes project without producer Mike Mogis, this doesn’t deviate much from his folk-tronica template. Not a bad thing, mind.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYewptydkvE]

Cowboy X; An Irish take on indie-tronica.

CSS; Brazilian flavoured pop-rock turned generic indie whine. If you’ve seen them already (and no doubt you have, you can afford to miss them). If not, they can be good fun live.

Deadmau5; Tech-electro flavour of the month. Pronounced Dead Mouse.

Dengue Fever; Indie-rock with a Cambodian twist. Hence the name, I guess…

Dublin City Big Band; I can’t find a link for these guys, but I imagine they play Glenn Miller and Gershwin favourites. Fun for all the family then.

Dublin Gospel Choir; An Electric Picnic staple, expect these guys to rouse you out of your hangover on Sunday morning.

Emmy The Great; More folk-pop. Seems to be a lot in this vein on Sunday…

Farmer’s Market; Some noodly jazz for your inner beatnik. Don’t be fooled by Famer’s Market on the Picnic website, it’s a typo.

Faust; 70s Krautrock. Important.

Florence & the Machine; Mournful, slightly distorted indie-rock.

Foals; Their Myspace says that they are SNOTTY ART SCHOOL DROPOUTS HUNGRY FOR THE DOLLAR, so who am I to say any different?

Gemma Hayes; Husky-voiced Irish indie-pop darling.

Get Cape.Wear Cape.Fly; British acoustic guitarist. Recently covered Justice’s DANCE, with surprisingly good results.

Grinderman; Nick Cave minus The Bad Seeds plus some other guys led Bad Seeds side project. Not my thing, but I think I’m in the minority.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sshpJbeNF4U]

Hadouken!; Their album title, Music For An Accelerated Culture, says it all. Comparisons to Mike Skinner aren’t that valid; think less Streets, more Street Fighter.

Ham Sandwich; Kells-based indie-pop.

Hayseed Dixie: Bar fight music. The sort of thing you’d expect to hear in the bar where The Blue Brothers do Rawhide.

Hercules & Love Affair; DFA-based future-disco. Sexy as hell. Antony (of the Johnsons) won’t be around, but don’t let that put you off. This will be great.

Iarla O’Lionaird’s Invisible Fields; Irish music. I don’t profess to know much about this kind of thing, so I won’t say any more than that.

Ibrahim Electric; Meandering Danish jazz-funk. In a good way.

Jah Wobble’s Chinese Dub; An experimental foray charting what happens when dub collides with Chinese folk music. This could be very interesting.

Johnny Flynn; The blues and country end of the singer-songwriter spectrum.

Leila; Moulin Rouge era-sounding nightmare-pop on Warp. Looks like a definite highlight to me.

Lou Rhodes; Delicate, heart-on-the-sleeve style folk music.

Mahmoud Fadl’s United Nubians; Master Drummer from the Nile. Gives world music a good name.

Martina Topley-Bird; Super-collaborator turned solo artist. One to see if you like your intelligent female pop like that of Santogold.

Mark Geary; Token Irish-American singer-songwriter nonsense. Don’t we have enough of these guys?

Micah P Hinson; Deep-voiced country warblings.

Michael Franti & Spearhead; Revolutionary Californian reggae-soul.

My Bloody Valentine; What can one say? The reason a lot of people are going I’d wager. Your friends will probably mock you if you miss this.

Pivot; Noisy, Australian post-rock-tronica. Nothing like the other Aussie acts in town for the weekend (ie Midnight Juggernauts and Cut Copy), but a little variety never hurt anyone. Worth a look.

School Of Language; Bizarre vocal experimentalists.

Sex Pistols; Probably only worth seeing if you want to tick them off the list of acts you’ve seen. Unlike MBV, I can’t see any valid reason for them to re/perform.

Sinead O Connor; Again, not much one can say on this front. She’s a bit nuts, she courts controversy, but she also recorded this.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rO8JWbG6bVw]

Stephen Malkmus; He was in Pavement. Lots of people like him. Karl talked to him recently, so have a read to see where he’s at these days.

The Congos; More reggae, coming from some guys who worked with Lee “Scratch” Perry and Max Romeo in the 70s. Old school.

The Dodos; Slightly twee indie-pop tempered with a heavy dose of live percussion.

The Gossip; Apparently these guys have been around since the 90s, but only hit big with a certain anthem two years ago. Go for Standing In The Way of control. Then see what else is on.

The Roots; Hip-hop with real instruments and “music”. Drummer/producer ?uestlove is an arrogant nutter, but that hardly matters when he helps to put on such a show with this crew. All rappers should aspire to be like this.

The Urges; Dublin-based psychedlic garage music. Sounds like something you’d hear on a Tarantino soundtrack.

These New Puritans; An English indie/nu-rave/noise band who wrote a song about Elvis. But apparently not that one.

Turin Brakes; Yawn. This one is for the Franz Ferdinand fans out there.

Wolfgang Haffner; Funky nu-jazz. That’s not always a bad thing!

Yacht; Experimental noise from Portland, Oregon. Sounds like fun.

Electric Picnic 2008, a MySpace Tour – Friday

A linkathon for all the confirmed acts for Friday of this years picnic. So you can stand back when your mates want to go the Pistols and say, ‘Na mate, there’s this fantastic new wave afro beat band starting over at the Big Tree…’

Also- I’m fairly sure this is the first site map to go up on the web, over one the bodytonic site.

ps, the Bodytonic acts are not in the list below- they may get their own post, depending on timings.

FRIDAY 29th

At First Light; Irish traditional music.

Booka Shade; Berlin based dj- and all that implies: paired back euro dance.

Carbon Silicon; a sub Billy Bragg, bit Adam and the Ants, post-punk type nonsense.

Dawn Landes; superb Beth Orton-esque singer

Digitalism; German dj, bleepie house.

Fovea Hex; Dublin based aural landscapests, eerily beautiful

Giveamanakick; rocking twosome from Limerick, prone to bouts of noise and commercialism.

Christy Moore; boozy hero of Irish folk

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8J-X0TBZ0sM]

Dobet Gnahore; exciting, relatively new, afro-beat singer, a little easy listening for my tastes.

Goldfrapp; sweet little Alison Goldfrapp, making music, all electro folk and vibrators.

Gomez; brilliant band who never quite seem to make it, despite being utterly fantastic. Terrifying old man voice.

Jape; third album just out but still known for that one song Jack White keeps covering. Brilliant live, sometimes, and consistently fantastic in the studio.

Joan As Policewoman; Very excited about this one.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMdzQB8qWS8&feature=related]

Kíla; always stunning live, Kíla mix traditional Irish music with African rhythms.

Kissy Sellout; owners of the best myspace background since kinsky, remix artists, similar but not as good as Gril Talk or Kleptones.

Late of the Pier; standard indie band with guitars and pretensions and annoying electro bits.

Little Green Cars; young Irish band, strong vocal lead, guitars and synthes, as is de riguer these days.

Lou Rhodes; distinctive vocals, breathy and beautiful from the Lamb former singer.

Miles Electric; cannot be found- please link through in the comments if you can undo my tower of ignorance.

New Young Pony Club; Trashy nu-rave gibberish beloved of neon crowd. Latest offerings are a mix of Winehouse and MGMT-esque bandwagon jumping shit.

Pinky; Potentially fantastic Dublin band, big hummable tunes and a friendly monkeys vibe. Playing in Crawdaddy soon, so you can get a preview.

Presets; spent too long listening to Duran Duran and early nineties housepop. Good, though.

Sigur Rós; I’ve never heard of this small time Icelandic act. Soundscapes, or something.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQ5Grncdjlc&feature=related]

Terry Callier; English Jazz.

The Gutter Twins; Hard touring, super ambitious indie duo. Sound uninspired.

The Stunning; Weak, late nighties sub-Beautiful South lameness. Brilliant name, tho’.

Think of One’s- Camping Shaabi ; Thinking of One are a Belgian collective, and Camping Shaabi is project based around Moroccan music. There’s a film about it here, but its in foreign. Here’s some of their music.

Tiga; superb dj producer, from Canada. Think Felix the Housecat and Miss Kitten, then compare. He wins.

Tinariwen; Best of the bands to emerge from the Sub-Saharan desert and the shadow of Ali Farka Toure. Inspired and enchanting.

Wallis Bird Singer-song-writer, Dublin. Likes Nora Jones from the sound of it. Fair play to her, she might make it.

Yard Dogs Brilliant burlesque group- lots of Tom Waits-like touches. Actually, nearly a tribute act. Fun and theatrical.

Friday. Saturday. Sunday.