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Back when Australians Cut Copy were riding a high between In Ghost Colours and Zonoscope, their countrymen Mitzi were just getting started. The Brisbane four-piece (or, 4/4-piece, if you will) traffic in more restrained rubbery basslines and piano-fortified exclamations, ending up with a style that sounds closer to Cut Copy’s one-time tourmates Holy Ghost! On "All I Heard", off their forthcoming debut LP Truly Alive, Mitzi draws simply and unabashedly from disco's  sunnier side. With brief exhalations for verses, toe-tapping guitars, and synths sparkling intermittently in the background, "All I Heard" strives for that blissful feeling of mindlessness above all else.

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Pixeltan are a Brooklyn based noise rock/electronic band consisting of Mika Yoneta (vocals/keyboard), Devin Flynn (bass/percussion), and Hisham Bharoocha (drums/electronics). They are currently signed to DFA Records and are working on new material and playing shows in New York City.

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The last time we checked in with disco-loving NYC duo Holy Ghost!, they were sinisterly covering Ministry's "I Wanted to Tell Her", with assistance from the Juan MacLean and Nancy Whang, who's worked with LCD Soundsystem and Shit Robot in the past. As the title suggests, new single, "It Gets Dark" continues in that shadowy vein, possessing a low-key type of menace while still retaining the expansive, sparkly propulsiveness that marked the pair's excellent debut LP from last year. "It Gets Dark" was previously released in ultra-limited run as a one-sided 12" at the Williamsburg Brooklyn Flea; it sees release digitally tomorrow via DFA.

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Pitchfork:

Biography can be overstated when evaluating an artist's work, but Ahmed Gallab's story is key to understanding his music. The Sudanese son of two college professors, he moved to the United States with his family at the age of five to escape the country's fomenting political violence of the late 1980s. The family moved around a bit, and Gallab eventually settled in Columbus, Ohio, when he was 18, where he fell in with the city's hardcore punk music community. He later found work as a session musician of some demand, drumming and serving as a multi-instrumentalist for Yeasayer, Caribou, Of Montreal, Born Ruffians, and Eleanor Friedberger. Eventually, as these things often go, he made his way to Brooklyn, where Sinkane started taking shape as his primary creative outlet.

Mars is Gallab's second full-length as Sinkane, and it sounds like the work of a nomadic professors' kid with equally strong ties to a DIY scene as well as his east African roots, whose creativity flourished on the road with indie vets and in the self-styled cosmopolitan home of 21st-century indie music. Mars is both refined and easygoing, if not a bit aloof at times. It works in multiple musical registers simultaneously and smartly-- the syncopated rhythms and breezy guitar figures of Sudanese pop, krautrock, early-70s funk, free jazz, Fader-friendly global indie-- while maintaining a clear authorial voice (largely coming from Gallab's playing multiple instruments on each song).

There's a loose concept at play on the record: Mars is Gallab's metaphor for a musical space in which anyone can exist, regardless of background. Though the temptation to refer to the rich tradition of Afro-futurism arises when a guy born in Sudan references interstellar reaches, the connection to Sun Ra, Parliament, or André 3000 is tentative at best. The record's politics are as abstract as the cover photo, and the album's mood thermostat doesn't move much from the "chill" position. There aren't a whole lot of lyrical specifics, but an abundance of references to the red planet seems less meant to signify escape (as in the Reverend A.W. Nix's pioneering "White Flyer to Heaven" sermon), or a sign of plain weirdness (as in Lil' Wayne's use): For Gallab, it's more along the lines of a summertime rooftop party, where your affable host greets you without rising from his deck chair.

With few exceptions, Gallab makes sure Mars' invitees are clearly identified. The album opens with the squawking funk of "Runnin'", on which his thin falsetto and encouraging words directly channel Blaxploitation-era Curtis Mayfield. "Love Sick" is about as blatant a reappropriation of "Spoon"'s vampiric funk riff as I've ever heard, and "Jeeper Creeper" vamps for five minutes around the core idea of Yeasayer's "2080" (it helps that the band's bassist plays on the song). "Making Time", which rides a new age synth pad that could have been drawn from All Hour Cymbals into the pocket of a deep Afro-funk groove, is the album's most successful synthesis. He plays all instruments on the song, save for a "Dirty Diana"-style guitar solo, courtesy of Twin Shadow's George Lewis, Jr. Yet instead of flaunting it, Gallab buries it in the mix, allowing it to serve as more of a textural element than a spotlit celebrity showcase. This is perhaps the clearest example of Gallabs gifts: using his friends smartly, playing down virtuosity, lest it detract from the overall vibe.

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Spin.com:

Don't ever look back," Rapture frontman Luke Jenner intones on "Sail Away," the ecstatic opener to the band's first album in five years. But how can you not? It's been nearly a decade since their epochal single "House of Jealous Lovers" threw post-punks, fashionistas, and disco lovers alike onto the same dance floor, shining an international spotlight on both their label (DFA) and their producer (James Murphy). When 2003 full-length Echoes fizzled commercially, Franz Ferdinand and Murphy's LCD Soundsystem seized those dance-punk blueprints with great success; meanwhile, the Rapture jumped to a major label, got a sleeker producer, suffered a subsequent backlash, ?lost bassist Mattie Safer, and were set adrift until they now ?find themselves...back on DFA?!

Redemption drives In the Grace of Your Love. For the bandoneon-laced banger "Come Back to Me," Jenner announces his intention to "welcome you back into my heart." The handclap stomp of "Miss You" explodes at just the right moment, while the house-music piano of "How Deep Is Your Love?" proves the boys' club credentials remain intact. "Rollercoaster" has none of the thrills of its subject, but during the title track's melancholic build, Jenner sings of the grace of your love where "no one can ever die." Not exactly what you'd whisper to your dancing honey, but who better than the Rapture to reconvert true believers?

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Wiki:

The Rapture is an indie rock band based in New York City. The band mixes influences from many genres including post-punk, acid house, disco, electronica and rock, pioneering the post-punk revival genre. They were forerunners of the post-punk revival of the early 2000s, as they mixed their early post-punk sound with electronic and dance elements.

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Pitchfork:

And thus we get Psychocandy (1985), the JAMC’s enduring contribution to the annals of rock history. Sometimes people tell you that a 20-year-old album “sounded like nothing else,” but when you listen with today’s ears, it seems rather quaint and unsurprising. Psychocandy is not one of those albums. Its noise isn’t the thick, tactile noise of the new millennium: It’s thin, trebly, and drowned in indistinct reverb, such that this record still sounds like it’s being played in the apartment across the street at staggering volume while someone intermittently runs glass through a table saw. The music stumbles its way from stoned, lazy beauty (“Just Like Honey”) to speed-freak noise (“Never Understand”) to almost-bouncy pop (“Taste of Cindy”). Jim Reid chants his melodies in the selfish, mostly monosyllabic vocabulary of rock’n’roll (“I’m in love with myself,” “I don’t want you to need me,” “oh yeah,”). And just about every song comes out ideal: You’d think they’d sound like jerks, or toughs, and yet it all comes off so vulnerable, so pretty.

more.

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Pitchfork media:

Joakim Bouaziz is one of those slyly ubiquitous artists who hangs around the periphery of your music collection. The busy producer/DJ/songwriter has spent the last decade remixing artists like Cut Copy and Annie while working for France's Tigersushi Records. A classically trained composer, Joakim periodically submits full-lengths of his own material, genre-jumping affairs that play like the product of an artist with disparate, long-developed ideas and non-traditional thoughts about what a full-length should accomplish. Milky Ways, Joakim's latest offering, vacillates between lengthy psych-rock dirges, Italo-disco frippery, and foggy art-pop, a de facto running commentary on contemporary trends.

Despite his shapeshifting, Joakim's reputation lies firmly in the electronic realm, and even the open-minded will have trouble preparing themselves for "Back to Wilderness", an eight-minute squall of distorted guitars trampled by huge, live drums. This may be the product of Joakim's working band, the Disco (want running commentary, zeitgeist? The Disco were formerly known as the Ectoplasmic Band), a relationship that sees a handful of Milky Ways' songs recorded virtually live. Expectation obliterator, palate cleanser, band workout, whatever: "Wilderness" probably should've populated a B-side somewhere, because the remainder of Milky Ways musters plenty of variance without resorting to such transparent adventuring.

Joakim's best work on Milky Ways comes via contemplative dance fodder. "Spiders" stretches out on short, timorous arpeggios and occasional guitar chirps, clearing room for a slow-chanted group chorus. "Ad Me" reestablishes order after "Wilderness" with blasts of dated, fake symphonics, and robotic, vocoder'd chatter. On "Love & Romance & A Special Person", a resonant major-key vocal melody burrows into Bouaziz's computer-love funk. The Kraut-y "Travel in Vain", its nodding momentum paced and familiar, touches on James Murphy's adroit simplicity.

Joakim could probably roll off an entire album of these electro-punk gems, but he's too skittish. Sometimes-- the aforementioned "Wilderness", the post-rock jamminess of "King Kong is Dead"-- he trips over his own shoelaces; often he molds weird, lingering pop music. "Glossy Papers" sounds like Giorgio Moroder taking on 1960s psych; "Medusa" mimics that chime and crash of Caribou's spicier compositions. "Fly Like an Apple" is ominous, lurking rock pastiche. "Little Girl", the album's closer and easily its softest moment, is a rhythmic ballad based on a William Blake poem. This is the work of a rarely satisfied auteur with a like-minded band: like Beck if he saw himself both too gaudy and too ragamuffin.

This compositional variety results in an album that lacks a cohesive narrative. If you're keeping score at home, the above basically paints Milky Ways as a drone-metal-electro-soul-funk album, plus or minus some 18th century poetry. To those without the stomach for Joakim's waywardness, Milky Ways will often sound as much during the course of a listen. For those who are feeling adventurous but forgiving of the same, Joakim is a worthy companion.