For your sliding-into-the-festive-weekend-and-it-feels-so-good enjoyment, I’d once again like to take the opportunity to present Australia’s The Presets. A “Trouble Week” musical interlude, if you will.
Remember that it was the troublemakers who made history on this weekend.
“My People”, The Presets (Apocalypso):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1ufW2INWmM

I’m here with all of my people
Locked up with all of my people
So let me hear [...]

Of course the big music news last week was the release of the better-than-all-their-previous-albums-combined-to-the-power-of-infinity Viva la Vida (or Death and All His Friends) from Coldplay. It’s not so much that I’m finally hearing what everyone else was hearing as much as they’re finally putting out something worth hearing.
But bigger news in Casa bstewart was the [...]

“Citizen of the Planet”, Alanis Morissette, Flavors of Entanglement:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmnLBPENNys

…her latest album doesn’t rage like ‘You Oughta Know” — it sounds more like grief.
– Ellen Carpenter, Rolling Stone
Flavors Of Entanglement is Alanis at her most upbeat and at her happiest.
– Amy Sciarretto, Artist Direct

The Dandy Warhols’ music has been bound to my DNA for so many years and their latest release — …Earth to the Dandy Warhols… — is no exception. Have you seen them in concert? See them in concert.
Listening to The Dandys makes me wish I was a bazillionaire, so I could rent Toronto Island and [...]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-B9Z3b3zxg

So it’s Gay Pride Month, right? Time to maybe think about equality in a wider sense than we normally might. Thanks to Consolidated’s “Unity of Oppression” (1991) for the reminder. Except for the not-eating-meat thing. Can’t quite get behind that.

Some crusty, agit-prop pop from those commies, The Gang of Four:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlWFu9MQ1BM

Warning: Some offensive, racist commentary at the end, courtesy Gen. William Westmoreland. Dick.

I got a new cellphone today. A new cellphone practically demands a new ringtone, right?

That’s not gonna get old on the second ring or anything, is it?

If I’d had procreative sex while listening to Cabaret Voltaire’s Colours when it first came out, the resulting love child would be barely old enough to drive right now. I guess it’s worth noting that if the sex I’d had while listening to Colours was, in fact, of the procreative sort, there’d be a rather [...]

Actually, the whole thing’s free. The new Nine Inch Nails album, that is: The Slip.
Does it refer to the four performers? Or to the Twilight Zone episode of the same name? Whatev. I can’t get “The Four of Us Are Dying” off my playloop. Intoxicating.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_tsfCpYKdU

When I first heard the Aussie technolectro duo The Presets a couple of years ago, it was like my two of my favourite ’80s genres — Industrial and New Romantic Techno — had done some serious drugs, went out to a dank and very loud nightclub, fell in love while dancing under seizure-inducing lights, fucked [...]