Janet's Big 2009 Song Mix

My narrative medium is the mix!
I have divided it into three parts for download frustration (and also because they're about CD length)(and to minimize damage if I have to take anything down). Each has a bit of art. The art dividers are the download links. Songs with links are to videos, when the video improves the song even more. 8tracks mixes (also imbedded below)1, 2, 3. Naturally, you will pick and choose amongst them, so I've tried to cluster by genre and mood, somewhat.


0 TITLE ARTIST ALBUM

1 Bad Romance Lady GaGa The Fame Monster 4:57
2 Fixin To Thrill Dragonette Fixin To Thrill 4:08
3 I Feel Cream Peaches I Feel Cream 4:33
4 Actor Out Of Work St. Vincent Actor 2:15
5 Turn It on Franz Ferdinand Tonight Franz Ferdinand 2:21
6 Games For Days Julian Plenti is... Skyscraper 3:57
7 1901 Phoenix Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix 3:18
8 Sweetheart Micachu Jewellery 0:53
9 Michael Telepathe Dance Mother 4:15
10 All The Kings Men Wild Beasts Two Dancers 4:00
11 Little Secrets Passion Pit Manners 3:59 (their videos are making me like them even better)
12 Zero Yeah Yeah Yeahs It's Blitz! 4:26
13 Glass Bat For Lashes Two Suns 4:33
14 Hell Tegan & Sara Sainthood 3:25 (Amanda Palmer Karaoke Verite)
15 Idiot Heart Sunset Rubdown Dragonslayer 6:09
16 Psychic City YACHT See Mystery Lights 5:09
17 New In Town Little Boots Hands 3:19
18 Summertime Clothes Animal Collective Merriweather Post Pavilion 4:32
19 Daylight Outro Mix Matt & Kim Grand 3:11
20 Moonson Delorean Ayrton Senna EP 3:45

21 M Telefon Tel Aviv Immolate Yourself 3:42
22 Tricky Tricky Röyksopp Junior 5:59
23 The Fear Lily Allen It's Not Me, It's You 3:26
24 Dominos The Big Pink A Brief History Of Love 3:46
25 One Day The Juan MacLean The Future Will Come 4:17
26 Bulletproof La Roux 3:27
27 2012 Gossip Music For Men 3:50
28 Break Up Girls! The Raveonettes In And Out Of Control 4:00
29 The End Vivian Girls Everything Goes Wrong 3:16
30 Hot Song Talk Normal Sugarland 4:06
31 Wet Hair Japandroids Post-Nothing (Promo) 3:12
32 So Bored Wavves Wavvves 3:14
33 The Turn Around The Oh Sees Help 1:03
34 Keep Me In Dark The Fiery Furnaces I'm Going Away 4:04
35 Shelter The xx xx 4:30
36 Stillness Is the Move The Dirty Projectors Bitte Orca 5:14
37 Real Live Flesh Tune-Yards Bird-Brains 3:33

38 People Got a Lotta Nerve Neko Case Middle Cyclone 2:34
39 The Forest Mirah (A)Spera 3:30
40 Avalanches Jordaan Mason And The Horse Museum Divorce Lawyers I Shaved My Head 2:18
41 Hands Like Roots The Builders And The Butchers Salvation Is A Deep Dark Well 2:18
42 See The Leaves The Flaming Lips Embryonic 4:24
43 Easy Thao with the Get Down Stay Down Know Better Learn Faster 3:37
44 Dog Days Are Over Florence And The Machine Lungs 4:16
45 The Wooden Chair Jenny Wilson Hardships! 3:15
46 Gimme Sympathy Metric Fantasies 3:55
47 Sylvia The Antlers Hospice 5:25
48 Triangle Walks Fever Ray Fever Ray 4:23 (really hard to pick a favorite song. This video looks like her live show.)
49 Bloody Palms Phantogram Eyelid Movies 3:32
50 Fake Out Bear In Heaven Beast Rest Forth Mouth 3:14
51 Trace A Line Au Revoir Simone Still Night, Still Light 3:58
52 On Rose Walk, Insomniac Why? Eskimo Snow 2:08
53 It's All Good Bob Dylan Together Through Life 5:28

Janet's Favorite Albums of 2009

Subject to editing and the addition of 10 more albums.

30. The Gossip - Music For Men
29. Phantogram - Eyelid Movies
28. Dragonette - Fixin to Thrill
27. The Raveonettes - In and Out of Control
26. The Oh Sees - Help
25. Jenny Wilson - Hardships!
24. Bear in Heaven - Beast Rest Forth Mouth
23. Thao with the Get Down Stay Down - Know Better Learn Faster
22. The Antlers - Hospice
21. the xx - xx

20. Royksopp - Junior


19. Wild Beasts - Two Dancers


18. tUnE-yArDs - Bird-Brains

a.k.a. Merrill Garber with a ukelele and a laptop.

17. Micachu and the Shapes- Jewellery

Young experimentalists to keep an ear on.

16. Telepathe - Dance Mother
Experimental female electronica duo. Very Brooklyn. Looking forward to their future.

So Fine video
I liked the pink dead rat they had as the cover when it leaked. Ah well.

15. St. Vincent - Actor Out Of Work

Like the other Bush-descendant, a giant leap on the sophomore album. Actor Out Of Work, Marrow.

14. Passion Pit - Manners

All-male dance pop with falsettos and beards. To Kingdom Come! is not the song we thought it was

13. La Roux

Sharp retro-synthpop. If their videos keep improving does that mean their budget's increasing? Of course. In For The Kill, Bulletproof, I'm Not Your Toy.

12. Fiery Furnaces - I'm Going Away

They've taken their own premise in yet another weird direction - less produced, more accessible, and resembling live blues-pop, it's not their strongest, but there's something perfectly deadpan about it. Even in the Rain.

11. Yacht - See Mystery Lights

Listen to these fucking hipsters. Summer Song.


10. Little Boots - Hands

Victoria Heskel is a vulnerably pretty, slightly awkward music nerd who makes energetic catchy spacey electro-dance-pop. She also has a good buzz management system and shares my aesthetic. The album kind of drifts overly cheesy toward the end. New In Town video hobo, gangbanger and whore minstrelry for the times. Other videos try to avoid boots herself dancing. What is a laser harp? It's a harp, made of laser.

9. Vivian Girls - Everything Goes Wrong

I like almost every song. Maybe I'm naive and just like songs about boys by girls and nice simple chords. Maybe I wouldn't like it if it didn't roar with distortion. Maybe I'll be deaf enough to like Times New Viking soon.
Moped Girls I had not seen before. When I'm Gone.

8. The Dirty Projectors - Bitte Orca

Yeah, but who didn't list them this year? Stillness is the Move: llama wanker, wanker llama

7. Sunset Rubdown - Dragonslayer

This band is better than Spencer Krug's other band[s]. Proggy. Ambitious. Fantastical. Fun. And this is the album that makes it better. They don't make videos, but the do play Nightingale/December Song live (with an obscene number of drummers).

6. Bat for Lashes - Two Suns

Huge conceptual and technical leap forward from her debut. She is a worthy Pakistani-British successor to Kate Bush. Daniel, Pearl's Dream (Lynchy!), Sleep Alone.

5. Neko Case - Middle Cyclone

The impression I get of this is that it's one great and one okay EP with a lot of filler, scrambled together. It could lose the covers and the crickets. Then I realized that's still half an hour of better music than anything else ever.
People Got A Lotta Nerve video based on Julie Morstad's drawings. If I listen to this too much I cry. Onward.

4. Fever Ray s/t

(probably the 3rd best album cover, isn't this an odd pattern?)
Truly a grower, and a profoundly lonely album, by Karin Dreijer-Andersson, a.k.a. the female sibling of The Knife. Her increasing influence on that band's sound is evident in the similarity between Fever Ray and Silent Shout. Her and her cohorts are as weird as they want to be, coldly maintaining their performance of electronic shamanism in natural virtuality. When I Grow Up, Seven.

3. Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion
Natch. Also, second best cover. Shut up, I like crawly op-art.


2. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - It's Blitz!
Also wins "best album cover". Decade-defining art-rock trio does electropop. So some of them might be dicks.

Video for "heads will roll" featuring two of 2009's other memes, a werewolf Michael Jackson.

1. Metric - Fantasies

If you're gonna self-release an album, it's good if it's your best, and there's still plenty of budget, and a whole series of Buenos Aires street art by Hollwood Cambodia for each song. Here's the video for"Gimme Sympathy" in which members of the band switch within, seemingly, the same shot.
Emily Haines is also in this excellent video for "Games For Days" with Julian Plenti / Paul Banks of Interpol.

Mica Mica. Chu Chu.

try Jewellery

Art School: The Band.



From last.fm:

Micachu is the 21 year old songwriter / producer, Mica Levi. She studies composition at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama in London . As well as writing more traditional pieces, she writes electronic pop songs, sometimes delivered acoustically. She has worked with a band of equally talented musicians (“The Cluster”) made up of Miss Bienek, Taza, Yvette, Baker Trouble, Mayhem, Kit Downes, GhostPoet and Kwes., but has recently unveiled her amazing new band (“the Shapes”), made up of Raisa Khan and Marc Pell.

Pop stars younger than me set off so much envy. Still, she's all androgynous and adorable and British and a damn good musician, perkily cynical as only the young can be.
video for "Golden Phone"

Track list:
1. Vulture+
2. Lips
3. Sweetheart *
4. Eat Your Heart +
5. Curly Teeth
6. Golden Phone +
7. Ship
8. Floor +
9. Just In Case *
10. Calculator *
11. Wrong
12. Turn Me Well +
13. Guts (w/ hidden track, so really just lots of silence, sorry I didn't split it)

Draculatron

Hypnogaga

Sounds like: Gay Nine Inch Nails. From Upstate NY. Well, more poppy.
If that sounds good to you, go for it. It's definitely a leap forward from his first, "The Uncanny Valley", which itself is good. Personally, I dig it.

1. Airlock
2. Palm Trees
3. Zero Romance+
4. The Swan+
5. Gamma Ray +
6. Hypnogaga 03:55
7. The Fall 04:43
8. If You Should Ever Sleep 04:11
9. Mountain 03:15 *

tUnE-yArDs

haha yeah I know caps-sensitive band names are hilarious, but at least it's still searchable.

try

tUnE-yArDs is Merril Garbus with a laptop and some free software. DIY but very far from craftless. She's been opening for the Dirty Projectors, you know, that pretentious Williamsburg group with the hippies cooing?

Tracklist:
1. For You
2. Sunlight+
3. Lions+
4. Hatari
5. News+
6. Jamaican+
7. Jumping Jack
8. Little Tiger
9. Safety*
10. Fiya+
11. Synonynonym+
12. Want Me To
13. Real Live Flesh*

Performing, she does that really impressive thing with layered loops.

TALK NORMAL

Sugarland

try
buy
Video of "in a Strangeland".
Sort of has no sense of humor. It's just these two women who could totally punch you to death, playing music.
Pitchfork review :P

Talk Normal is churny yowly Brooklyn noise rock duo Andrya Ambro and Sarah Register. They've been around longer than I thought before my favorite Other Music geek Karen, and Marnie Stern, recommended them. I actually bought a CD. I may have to go back for their earlier EPs, although they may be less structurally sound.

Tracklist:
1. Hot Song *
2. in a Strangeland +
3. Bold Face *
4. Mosquito
5. Transmission Lost *
6. River’s Edge +
7. In Every Dream Home A Heartache +
8. Uniforms *
9. Warrior
10. Outside

Oh look, more Vivian Girls

Vivian Girls - Everything Goes Wrong

Less than a year after their 23-minute-long debut, the girls have released their followup. It's twice as long, twice as fun, and a lot sadder. They continue to pump out speedy, simple, 60s-girl-group-inspired melodies and lovelorn lyrics, in a wall of craftless shoegaze noise. Everything Goes Wrong picks up where their S/T ended, heartbroken, with occasional exceptions. It's hard to pick favorites on this one, because every song's terrific. But as usual, I asterisk my personal favorites.

01 Walking Alone at Night
02 I Have No Fun*
03 Can't Get Over You
04 Desert
05 Tension
06 Survival*
07 The End*
08 When I'm Gone
09 Out for the Sun*
10 I'm Not Asleep
11 Double Vision*
12 You're My Guy
13 Before I Start to Cry

Yello - Live At The Roxy N.Y. Dec 83

Grab in MP3 on Mediafire (-V0 VBR).

This is an official maxi-single of Yello's appearance at the Roxy in New York City. It's a long medley consisting of snippets from their early works including "Bostitch." The performance is surreal and hypnotic.


Track:

1. Live At The Roxy N.Y. Dec '83 (15:00)

The performance can be seen on YouTube too. Watch as the mustaches lull you in a trance...
Part 1 and Part 2

Yello is best known for their song "Oh Yeah" in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. If you enjoy Kraftwerk-like instrumentation with song lyrics that fit perfectly in film noir soundtracks, Yello hits that spot.

Minimal Compact - Returning Wheel (Classics) [2003]

Get the MP3 album (-V2 VBR) at Mediafire.

Minimal Compact were one of those new wave/post-punk/experimental bands that nearly touched mainstream success. Unfortunately, due to internal struggles inside the band, coupled with their absence from a couple of crucial venues for promotion kept them from the top. The band members fled Israel for Amsterdam and Brussels due the mounting tensions from war. Nonetheless, they are still regarded as one of the most successful contemporary rock groups from Israel.

What you find here is self-described non-musicians (with the exception of Berry Sakharof, who was a professional guitarist) creating refreshingly honest dark and experimental music. You can read more about them at Trouserpress, Wikipedia, and SwimHQ.

The album featured here is Disc 1 (Classics) of their retrospective anthology called Returning Wheel. Most of their albums are hard-to-find, but this release is relatively easy to find. The rest of the box set contains remixes and rare demos. The remixes are considerably different from the original songs, so it's definitely a different animal compared to the first disc of the set. Read more and purchase the set in various formats at Crammed Discs.

Discogs Info

Tracks:

01. Dedicated (unreleased) (5:03) [YouTube clip]
02. Statik Dancin' (3:42)
03. Babylonian Tower (3:33)
04. Creation Is Perfect (I Am A Camera) (4:21)
05. Next One Is Real (3:47) [Disc O' Dell extended remix on YouTube]
06. Not Knowing (4:06)
07. New Clear Twist (4:49) [YouTube clip]
08. The Howling Hole (3:19)
09. Burnt-Out Hotel (3:56)
10. I Imagine (4:10)
11. Autumn Leaves (4:25) [YouTube clip]
12. Returning Wheel (4:30)
13. Disguise (4:44)
14. When I Go (3:16)
15. Piece Of Green (5:18)

Eskimo Snow

Why?


It's essentially less-hip-hop outtakes from last year's Alopecia. Yoni Wolf's bone-dry, flat delivery and terror of mortality incline me to characterize Why? as Roast Beef Sings.

1. These Hands
2. January Twenty Something
3. Against Me
4. Even the Good Wood Gone
5. In The Shadows of My Embrace
6. One Rose
7. On Rose Walk, Insomniac
8. Berkeley by Hearseback
9. This Blackest Purse
10. Eskimo Snow

Sunset Rubdown - Dragonslayer

(sendspace)
Buy

I played this for someone recently whose first comment was "have you heard David Bowie playing with Arcade Fire?" That's kind of all the description needed. Epic, multi-movement indie rock from Montreal, with myth-laced lyrics in one of my favorite voices, the same dude from Wolf Parade. The band consists of Spencer Krug (vocals, guitar, keyboards), Camilla Wynne Ingr (percussion, keyboards, vocals), Michael Doerkson (bass, guitar, drums), Marc Nicol (bass, kimbala), Jordan Robson-Cramer (drums, guitar). The album was released last month.

Tracklist:
1. Silver Moons
2. Idiot Heart *!
3. Apollo and the Buffalo and Anna Anna Anna Oh! +
4. Black Swan +
5. Paper Lace
6. You Go On Ahead (Trumpet Trumpet II) +
7. Nightingale / December Song *
8. Dragon's Lair

New Fiery Furnaces

Fiery Furnaces' I'm Going Away

Amazon: it releases July 21.

The Fiery Furnaces are an experimental indie band headquartered in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, known among a cult following for their unpredictability and genre-hopping, and consisting at core of the brother and sister Friedberger. Most of the songwriting (often a found-language process) is done by Matthew, but Eleanor's strength of delivery and presence really make the music addictive. I got to hear a preview of I'm Going Away earlier in the month at their live show. It's much more straightforward blues-pop than their previous frenetic lyrical collages, but still has the pastiche spirit. This may be the Fiery Furnaces album for non-fans, in fact, which means that fans may be a bit disappointed that they're maturing. The songs seem closer to their New York abode than albums like Widow City (2007) or grandma-duet Rehearsing My Choir dedicated to their Illinois upbringing. They lament a string of exes (Drive to Dallas, Even in the Rain, Ray Bouvier, Lost At Sea, Keep Me In The Dark) or vaguely indicated petty triumphs and travails (The End Is Near, Cut the Cake, Staring At The Steeple), and only with "Cups and Punches" do they approach their trademark concealed absurdity. Their confidence approaches a retro attempt, which I find similar to Dylan's recent output, to refine the universality of pop cliché beyond irony into something raw, classic, comfortable, and eminently quotable.

Tracklist:
1. I'm Going Away +
2. Drive To Dallas *
3. The End Is Near
4. Charmaine Champagne +
5. Cut The Cake
6. Even In The Rain +
7. Staring At The Steeple *
8. Ray Bouvier *
9. Keep Me In The Dark *
10. Lost At Sea *
11. Cups and Punches +
12. Take Me Round Again

+ Good
* Personal favorite

Jordaan Mason and the Horse Museum

Are you one of those people that's just listened to Neutral Milk Hotel too many times and need something almost exactly like it, only maybe even sexier?


Divorce Lawyers I Shaved My Head is for you.

01. Bird's Nest
02. Organs For Oceans+
03. Avalanches*
04. Racehorse: Get Married!+
05. The Wrong Parts (Vivian Sisters Singing)+
06. Prayer
07. O Jarhead! O Wife!+
08. Hymn/Her
09. Is Water*
10. (S)Mother+
11. Wild Dogs: Divorce!*
12. After The Glandolinian War
13. Carpenter/Rebuild The Body Out Of Birds+
14. 1990 Was A Long Year And We Are All Out Of Hot Water Now*

Where I found it (has more of a description)

Saw an installation with congruity:
Gregory De La Haba's Equus Maximus. Only, not.

Little Boots

WARNING: POP TRASH


Little Boots's Hands is an album I've been anticipating since I heard her "Meddle" and "Stuck on Repeat" in late 2008. The first half of the album is stronger. It's your basic British dance-electronica by a hot chick, but with nerd-kitsch braininess.

1. New In Town +
2. Earthquake *
3. Stuck On Repeat +
4. Click *
5. Remedy *
6. Meddle +
7. Ghosts *
8. Mathematics +
9. Symmetry
10. Tune Into My Heart
11. Hearts Collide
12. No Brakes

From last.fm:

Victoria Hesketh (born 1984), known professionally as Little Boots, is a British electronica musician. She sings, plays synthesizers, Japanese electronic instrument the Tenori-on and the stylophone. She is the former lead singer/synth player in Dead Disco.

Hesketh was born in Thornton-Cleveleys near Blackpool, Lancashire and now lives in London. She attended Rossall School, Blackpool Sixth Form College and then the University of Leeds, gaining a first-class honours degree in Cultural Studies, with a dissertation on "The concept of originality in the music of Jamie Cullum".

"Little Boots" is a translation of "Caligula".
Holy crap this woman is my age. What am I doing with my life?

Moebius, Conny Plank, Mayo Thompson - Ludwig's Law

Another 1983 album at Mediafire.

Collaborative album of Dieter Moebius (of Cluster), Conrad Plank, and Mayo Thompson (of the Red Crayola). Basically, it's a long stream-of-consciousness philosophical rants set to bouncing electronics. The monologues steer from deeply insightful moments to random babbling about Karl Popper. As entertaining as the album art when you catch it.

Sky Records rejected the album back in 1983. It took 15 years to get a proper release through Drag City Records. More on the history of the album.

Discogs Info

Tracks:
1 Scientists (0:39)
2 Das Apartment (4:30)
3 The Truth? (5:14)
4 Ludwig's Law (4:21)
5 42 (3:44)
6 Farmer Gabriel (4:51)
7 Gestalt (4:44)
8 Taras Bulba (5:06)
9 Boy Boy Boy (3:16)

Blaine L. Reininger and Michael Belfer - Night Air Plus (2002)

Night Air on Sharebee

Night Air follows Reininger's and Belfer's personal journeys stranded in one of Europe's capitals. This sentiment is best captured in Birthday Song, where Reininger sings "There's Nothing, Nobody Home / Nowhere to Go, Nowhere to See."

Reininger, along with his other American band mates in Tuxedomoon, fled San Francisco in search of the Europe they admired. Everything turned out differently from what they hoped: they found themselves stuck in gray Brussels with little money, erratic touring schedules, expired visas, and many drugs.

Dissatisfied with working conditions, Reininger shortly left Tuxedomoon. A fortunate encounter with old friend and musician Michael Belfer set Reininger to begin work on the next "solo" album. Together they weave a tense mixture of light and dark textures: glimmers of optimism poking through the loneliness and cynicism. Before everything becomes too serious, Reininger's characteristic humor highlights the absurdity of the situation. Its beautiful melodies and haunting imagery will accompany you after listening.

This reissue includes the epic Crash from Tuxedomoon's What Use? 7" single. It also includes an alternate mix by The Residents.

You owe it to yourself to hop on over to Blaine's excellent Mundo Blaineo site for all things Reininger and Tuxedomoon. Also, check out the video for "Mystery And Confusion" on YouTube.

Release Info

Label: Les Disques Du Crépuscule (Les Temps Modernes)
Release: 1983 (2002 remaster)
Type: Album
Genre: 80s, ambient, electronic, experimental, rock, new wave, synth-pop
Length: 44:11 (1:14:11)

Alain Goutier - Bass and fretless bass
Blaine L. Reininger - vocals, violins, keyboards, piano, percussion, lyrics
Michael Belfer - guitar, electric guitar, lyrics
Steven Brown - organ, saxophone, and synths
Winston Tong - Backing vocals on (2)
Marc Hollander - Clarinets on (5)

Realized 1983 at Daylight Recording Studios, Brussels.

Track Listing
01. Night Air (4:01)
02. Birthday Song (4:10)
03. Beak People (4:47)
04. Mystery And Confusion (4:15)
05. Intermission (2:06)
06. Ash And Bone (6:19)
07. L'Entree De L'Hierophante (3:26)
08. Un Café Au Lait For Mr. Mxyzptlk (5:22)
09. Miraculous Absence (3:47)
10. El Mensajero Divino (5:36)

2002 Remaster Bonus Tracks
11. Mystery And Confusion (7" Mix) (4:01)
12. Bizarre Bizarre (3:58)
13. Windy Outside (6:42)
14. Broken Fingers (4:57)
15. Crash (5:29)
16. Crash (Remix) (4:38) / Remix - The Residents

Vivian Girls

The Vivian Girls are a garage-rock, lo-fi sort of pop-punk girl-harmony outfit from Brooklyn. They appear generic at first - aggressively generic. Their self-titled album, released in 2008, works using a similar aesthetic logic to Henry Darger, the outsider artist after whose virtuous hermaphroditic preteens they named themselves. Clocking in at just over 20 minutes long, the album, in the most tried-and-true chord progressions and song structures and instruments and lyrics and all, follows the archetypal narrative of any pop album: a love affair. Like Darger drawings, the craft is minimal and derived from magazines, but the emphasis is on a story whose very predictability is its uniqueness. You have to listen to the whole album in order, and though you may find yourself preferring different songs depending on where you are in your own narrative, it's a useful tool for putting yourself in glib perspective.
That said, my favorite song on it has always been "No". It's the concentrated version of the whole album - one minute and twenty seconds; Verse, chorus (with backups), verse, chorus, bridge (my favorite), solo, verse, chorus, verse, end; a gender-neutral voice; lyrics: one word. It affirms the observation I once made that I would enjoy listening to recordings of toddlers having tantrums.



download (sendspace)


1. All The Time
2. Such A Joke
3. Wild Eyes
4. Going Insane
5. Tell The World
6. Where Do You Run To
7. Damaged
8. No
9. Never See Me Again
10. I Believe In Nothing

Darger:

Tetsuo The Iron Man Sndtrk

KANEEEEEDDDDAAAAAAAA

Lee & I ended up talkin' about Tetsuo the Iron Man, which isn't the best film in the world, but is pretty interesting. (Unless you're Dale, who ended up taking a nap during it.) The soundtrack is pretty awesome -- and so here it is! I done found it on another blog a long time ago -- I think it MIGHT have been Egg City Radio, or perhaps Mutant Sounds (both of which are in the sidebar, and both of which have awesome stuff, so you should check them out). Either way, though -- it's pretty rad, and y'all should check it out, particularly if you like Industrial-Soundin'-Type-Stuffs.

Man Man in a Blue Turban with a Face

download Man Man - The Man in a Blue Turban With A Face
Debut from 2004 (gotta get my hands on their other two) and a good introduction.
I would compare this band to Tom Waits, Neutral Milk Hotel, AND Gogol Bordello, which is high praise indeed.

1. "Against the Peruvian Monster"+
2. "10lb Moustache"+ (video)
3. "Zebra"*
4. "Sarsparillsa"
5. "White Rice, Brown Heart"*
6. "Gold Teeth"
7. "Magic Blood"
8. "The Fog or China"*
9. "I, Manface"+
10. "Man Who Make You Sick"+
11. "Werewolf (On the Hood of Yer Heartbreak)"

+: good
*: my favorite