English band, Friendly Fires is like Foals for me. They are like the 2007 NME favourites with a couple really cool singles (video for Paris and On Board) and with a lot of people anticipating the album. Even musically they are a bit similar: the progressive indie rock injected with disco and electronica. The difference is that Foals are more on the heavier post-punk end of the scale and Friendly Fires are more elegant and relaxed like Hot Chip and LCD Soundsystem. The Foals album is awesome and totally lives up to the high expectations. The full-lenght of Friendly Fires is gonna arrive on the 1st of September this year. You could’ve already heard Jump in the Pool at Bigstereo which is such a cool song, it sounds like reaching out for the stars but being stuck in the stratosphere between scary chemical processes and stuff. Here’s another track from the upcoming album and it proves that its worth to wait for it. It’s gonna come out on XL Recordings (besides Vampire Weekend, Ratatat, etc).

Friendly Fires - White Diamonds [zshare]  // Friendly Fires - White Diamonds [ysi]  // Friendly Fires - White Diamonds [fileden]

New Adeyhawke material. Yay! Well, maybe not so new but I’ve been out of it for a couple days but here we are with the latest of the latest Valerie act.

Adeyhawke is a representative of the Valerie sound from the UK like Futurecop! He’s from Dublin. You might know him from our previous posts. Remixed Anoraak and Hail Social (we haven’t yet posted this latter one so I’ll make up for the mistake).

I guess you can imagine the sound by now. 80s of course, synths of course, sci-fi romance of course. New song Gigavolt Angel is like a troubadour robot singing its courtly love to a muse, an angel made of the heaviest lightning. Thanks to DiscoDust.

Adeyhawke - Gigavolt Angel [zshare] // Adeyhawke - Gigavolt Angel [ysi]

Hail Social - No Paradise (Adeyhawke remix) [zshare] // Hail Social - No Paradise (Adeyhawke remix) [ysi]

Our faves from London town, the Blamma! Blamma! boys just sent us a newly-made vid for Carry Me Home. We generally don’t post vids on Kunk because… well, i’m not even sure why not… but far be it from us to be able to resist small dj dogs licking up massive lines of coke before hitting the decks. The guys assured us that no animals were hurt, drugged or deafened in the creation of the flick. Good, because we’d hate for that poor pooch to have to learn sign language from a hot Ibizan deaf teacher a la It’s All Gone Pete Tong.

James Cook directed it, hit him up via the emails if you like. Some copies of Blamma! Blamma!’s limited edition vinyl-only EP “the.p” are still available. Order on Dovecote.

…is the name of a hungarian party which used to be drumnbass, now I have no idea what kinda music is on there cause it’s so annoying. On the other hand, Rewind is an awesome project of Buffet Libre DJs. They ask cool artists to cover and remix songs from the 80s. The first part of the project includes Dragonette, Moulinex, The Cloud Room, Frankmusik, Xinobi, CSK OK, Mono4, etc. And our beloved guest Anoraak did a cover of The Romantics. Jump over to Buffet Libre’s site, you can find a long list of artists and interesting q&a with them. Can’t wait for the second part, unbeatable stuff.

I chose to share South Central’s cover. Right, it’s a cover and not a remix. My two main reasons why I chose them were that the song they had chosen to cover is by Big Black which is fucking cool. Secondly the cover is like wow. It’s cruel and evil. Kerosene is a song from 1986, the debut album titled Atomizer. Actually, I - among many others - prefer their second one Songs About Fucking. Big Black was an experimental punk-noise band from the US. Experimental musically and in attitude. Provocative in every way. As South Central puts it: “Big Black were one of the early Punk/new Wave acts to mix electronic beats with Guitars and they had a cool DIY ethic, so it was a logical or natural choice for us.” And since SC would love Kraftwerk to do a version of one of their songs here’s a version of Kraftwerk’s The Model by Big Black. Btw Steve Albini, frontman of Big Black still rocks in Shellac.

South Central - Kerosene (Big Black cover) [zshare] South Central - Kerosene (Big Black cover) [ysi]

Big Black - The Model (Kraftwerk cover) [zshare] Big Black - The Model (Kraftwerk cover) [ysi]

Fred Falke (on the right) and Miami Horror. Very fucking nice, isn’t it? We’ve posted Embrace a while ago, now the first notable remix arrived.

To say that it’s cool is not surprising cause Fred Falke and Miami Horror are both Kunk darlings. Funny, this track is like a multinational collaboration between Australia guys, New Zealand+London girl and a French producer.

Get ready for a long song name and PNAU’s next single is gonna come out soon, be sure to pick it up. I can’t really say anything new about the aformentioned gang, read the previous posts. This mp3 btw was an exclusive premiere at Who The Bloody Hell blog, credit goes there.

PNAU feat. Ladyhawk - Embrace (Fred Falke and Miami Horror remix) [zshare]

PNAU feat. Ladyhawk - Embrace (Fred Falke and Miami Horror remix) [ysi]

Sweden surely has talent but we’ve only been posting about the weird, alternative, indie band-music stuff. There are heavy electro criminals in the country as well. The Swedish House Maffia. Okay, really awful name but Sebastian Ingrosso and Steve Angelo got together, formed Buy Now! and made a dancefloor-killer house-hymn. If you know a lot about disco then you can find a classic song hidden inside it. According to Missingtoof it was around for the first time in 2005. WTF? 2005? This must be a wormhole-timemachine sick sci-fi thing.

Now, Streetlife DJs (on the right) are cool. They are from London. They made remixes for Cazals, Muse, Michael Jackson to mention a few. They actually edited Body Crash so it’s not that it’s exciting once again and a bit less irritating after 10 listens or so. Give Streetlife some myspace love and check the awesome and many remixes they made.

Buy Now! - Body Crash (Streetlife DJs remix) [zshare] // Buy Now! - Body Crash (Streetlife DJs remix) [ysi]

XX Teens is a five-piece band from London, UK. Like a proper band, you know. There was a lot of hype around them and though they have a new single out and the album will be released 28th of July. They were called Xerox Teens but Xerox photocopier, etc company made them change it. Yeah, well, it would’ve been hard to play on a Xerox machine-something on stage. This is so funny, I mean rockband vs photocopy company? Haha, people are really serious about names. Proper name, totally sacred stuff.

Nevertheless, the XX Teens made the album and it sounds cool. At the very least it’s much better than the overhyped psychobilly revival of The Horrors. Dancey, dirty, noisy art-punk. Seems like a much more honest follower of the tradition than many other recent post-punk acts.

XX Teens - B-54 [zshare] // XX Teens - B-54 [ysi]

Sexy in black, scary in black, synths in black, sedated in black… The Black Ghosts are Prince with the hair of Robert Smith in a giant disco on the other side of heaven and the river Styx. The duo from London are one of the most entertaining electro acts nowadays. With a lot of diversity and a tasteful combination of influences they are getting ready for the July 8 release date of their debut LP. Pre-order from the label.

I won’t write a lot, everyone has posted about them and clearly it’ll be hard to live up to the expectations and the hype but I have a strong feeling that they won’t dissappoint. The vocals of ex-Simian singer, Simon Lord is like the best relaxing massage which rejuvenates the body and the soul so you wanna jump back to the tranquilized dancefloor made up of stars which have sexual desires. Watch out, darkness lurks in the shadows…umm…yeah, so the depths of human soul are scary, even in the most calm situations. Neurotic stuff and the unconscious haunts in easy listening. With the music supporting the whole thing, it will dominate upcoming Valentine’s Days’ twisted mixtapes…if you know what I mean haha…pfff… Seriously, watch the lyrics, brilliant.

The Black Ghosts - I Don’t Know (zshare) // The Black Ghosts - I Don’t Know (y. s. i.)

“i don’t know what she did

but she did it to my head”

Warning! Coolness alert! We’ve already posted about GRUM a couple times but I think we haven’t mentioned Le Castle Vania yet. I first heard about Dylan Eiland when he remixed Kill the Noise’s Hey You and that was some amazing gasoline on the fire. Umm…he was remixed by The Toxic Avanger and LA Riots so the hipness-o-meter is just rising and rising exponentially. And of course, opening for Steve Aoki can never hurt for a successful dj-career. Dj Dylan remixed Snowden, 120 Days and the newest stuff is this GRUM song. Thanks to DiscoDust.

GRUM - Go Back (Le Castle Vania remix) (zshare) // GRUM - Go Back (Le Castle Vania remix) (y. s. i.)

This tune bangs and everything. Not better than the original, maybe it’s just fitted for a bit more dancefloor-madness. The sad thing is that I can’t not like it. Why wouldn’t I want to? Take a look at this photo:

Now take a look at this one:

Am I the only one who thinks that there’s something wrong with the universe? First I thought this is a joke. I mean WHAT THE FUCK? And it’s not just about looks. Or it is only about that. I must say that I would choose darkness. The whole thing is so artificially cheesy, it gives me the creeps to think about the future celebrity events, by then everyone will have a button on his hand to trigger a electronic orgasm…Burroughs-style. BiBaBiDi was so right: “Hack DJs clutter out clubs pretending to be the voices of a generation, but have no idea what the hell their generation is, who don’t give a rat’s, and haven’t an iota of a clue as to how to become relevant. Let’s just mosh in the meantime, right? Next time you consider checking out Le Castle Vania or Steve Aoki or Guns ‘n Bombs, resolve to staying home and watching Jeopardy at 3 AM. It’s better than walking into a club, immersing yourself in the noise and confusion, and fooling yourself into thinking it’s music.”

So yeah, you can download this one and bang it with superbass (which is okay, I do it sometimes) or jump a post backwards for the Hammer of Gods track.

Slow, dirty and heavy and recalling a different era that isn’t too removed from today but I can’t exactly place my finger on it, Tronik Youth’s new single shows how to keep a modest pace while not losing any hottness. Already there are several remixes of Laugh Cry Live Die floating around and undoubtedly there will be countless more — but I’m holding out and sticking to the original — in part because he deserves the credit on the back of the many deft remixes he’s put under his belt to date (Goose, The Gossip, and MGMT among other standouts).

Things are only on the up and up for Tronik so check him out live in London-town or on the festival circuit this summer.

Tronik Youth - Laugh Cry Live Die [zshare] // Tronik Youth - Laugh Cry Live Die [ysi]