Soul of the machine

Hiroshi Sugito

Strider - Paper

I've heard the first album this year that I can say absolutely unequivocally will make my year-end best list. "Strider" is one of the awesome tracks from it. Just to show you how awesome: Cept for the first two seconds (the song starts like something from Suicide--but don't worry!), this track is vocals-free--and I'm almost always partial to the human voice. I hesitate to call "Strider" instrumental because, like a lot of good electronica (for clarity, "Strider" is more punk than anything), it seems to eliminate the very concept of vocals as a medium through which to convey overwhelming emotion. Its hammering headlong, yet running-in-place, rush does a very close approximation of that alarming moment when you realize you've done or said something incredibly stupid and are totally fucked and there's nothing you're gonna be able to do about it and everything seems simultaneously to be going in fast and slow motion. I've heard the band is really really loud in person, which makes me really really anxious to see them.

From An Object (eMusic), Myspace

I Want to Be Your Girlfriend - Bachelorette

Can't stop listening to this. Supposedly the New Zealander (with the pouty French robot inflection) has an album coming out sometime this year, and if it's anything like this lush, pillowy electropop number, I'll be all over it. So maybe I'll wait until later to drown Bachelorette in purple prose. In the meantime, you know what to do.

Myspace

No, I'm not jealous of y'all in Austin right now. Or wasn't anyway until I saw this listing (gasp x 4):

The Local: Sam Amidon, Alela Diane, David Thomas Broughton, Shearwater - 18th Floor at Hilton Garden Inn

And although a small part of me wants the Stone Roses rumors to be true, I was actually relieved to see this. You go, John!