We’ve finally got some good weather here in the The Big Smoke AKA The T-Dot AKA Toronto, and I’ve really been digging the Waves ≠ Raves collection of mixes by the Gotta Dance Dirty Crew. All these tracks remind me of the time I was traveling in South East Asia and listening to nothing but great house music.
Here are a couple of my favorite tracks off of their recent editions:
Toronto local Scotty Dynamo is back with a music video of one of his best tracks, Make it Right. If his name sounds familiar, its because I’ve blogged about him a few times here on 199X.
His music is fun, and it reminds me of a couple of other acts I’m digging these days: The Girls Can Hear Us and Dr. Hollywood. Give them all a listen.
Its been a while since a song made me laugh out loud. Thankfully, The Deli Boys dropped me their track PR Girls, Inspired by the chicks in public relations that they know.
Is it reinforcing the stereotype of PR girls as nothing more than dumb, gold-digging sluts that are into lattes, brunch and fashion? Definitely. But that’s what makes it good.
From their blog post about the track:
“It talks about the large boot, small dog, fancy bag culture that has taken over the city streets across our nation. We recognized a type of girl that was repeatedly emerging from the deep jungles of urban culture. Owning the street with their over-priced bags, they developed their own language of terms by using weird melodic lisps and slurs. These women, no matter if they were in the Public Relations field or not, were dubbed “PR Girls”. This term catapulted the idea of writing and producing this song. We hopes you like.”
If you’ve been in Toronto for the past years, you’ve probably noticed that the city has some serious electronic talent.
Part of that talent includes some of the city’s finest music blogs:
Salacious Sound posts some great party tracks on a very regular basis, and they’re often the first place I read about tours coming to Toronto. A recent post they wrote stakes the claim that Toronto might just be the Remix Capital of the World, and I think the might just be right.
Here’s a couple of choice tracks from Toronto artists they posted recently:
As a bonus, their History of Electro series kicked off the other day, and promises to be a great series of posts.
Pugged Not Thugged is a blog that I’ve only been reading for a few weeks now, but I already like it a lot, especially the fact that there were the first place I heard the O-God Ducksauce remix:
ElectroTO is like a shrine to the city’s finest electro. In their “What’s Good Wednesday,” posts the blog’s writers Trackson and The Vamp give everyone a good heads up on the city’s best parties. The image at the top of this post comes from them (thanks, guys), and is one of the better redesigns of the Jay’s logo that I’ve ever seen. Close seconds are the one where the Blue Jay looks like an uzi and one I’ve seen of the Blue Jay wearing headphones.
Plus, ElectroTO has some wicked t-shirts available for sale.
Torontette has been blogging her little heart out for the past couple of months and while her tunes of choice aren’t always the pumping electro I prefer, she’s still got a feel for the city.
I especially like the Van Schie tracks she had up recently:
Finally, this blog post is dedicated to the memory of The Curb Crawlers - the first music blog I started reading (single tear rolling down my cheek) and despite having folded up shop, still one of the internet’s finest pieces of HTML and CSS.
What are your favorite T-dots artists or blogs? Hook me up with some new stuff to listen to.
I’ve been a big fan of The Girls Can Hear Us ever since Audioporn mentioned that they sound like another of my favorite artists, Scotty Dynamo.
The Girls Can Hears Us! (conveniently shorted as TGCHU) have the sort of self-aware hilarity that I like in my electropop-rap, and the catchy beats also make for pretty good gym music.
Now, just in time for summer, TGCHU are going to drop their debut album and all of the songs sound pretty good. Even better is that the boys are fans of giving some of their tracks away for free, and hooked me up with a couple for posting here.
To stay posted on when their album comes out, hit up TGCHU.com. Bide your time until then with a couple of other TGCHU tracks I’ve posted here and here.
Its the beginning of March here in Toronto (actually, its probably the beginning of March in the whole world) and the weather is unseasonably warm. To celebrate, I ate lunch on a patio.
Is this the beginning of summer? I hope so, and to get in the mood I’ve been listening to these smart Beach Boys remixes.
I haven’t seen it, but I’m pretty sure 1980’s GALAXINA is probably the most perfect movie in the world. Produced by Playboy, it stars the 1980 Playmate of the year Dorothy Stratten as a “voluptuous android who finds herself alone for many years, developing emotions and falling in love with the ship’s pilot as he and the other crew sleep the years away” after they’ve been placed in suspended animation (Parts of this actually sound suspiciously similar to Alastair Reynolds epic book House of Suns).
The tag line on the movie poster (via) is “IN THE 31st CENTURY MAN FINALLY CREATED A MACHINE…With Feelings” and its going on my must-watch list.
Speaking of machines with feelings, you can’t go wrong with remixes of Florence + the Machine’s You’ve Got The Love. I wrote about the XX remix of that track a little while ago (damn, I love golden robots), and I was glad to hear Adam Smith’s take on it.
The Secret Galaxies remix comes courtesy of T-dot ballers Borracho, who were kind enough to post it on their Myspace page. Its a little more mellow than some of their other stuff, and I definitely like it.
You can’t go wrong with a little Ellie Goulding, and when the theme of the day seems to be galaxies and robots what better than a space-disco track about getting starry-eyed (I’m just going to assume she’s singing about looking at the stars and dreaming about space). These Monarchy cats have done some other mixes, and I dig that they called this one the Horses Head Nebular remix.
Anyways, if you’re in a galactic mood, give ‘em a listen:
Florence + The Machine - You’ve Got The Love (Adam Smith Remix)
Cavaliers of Fun - Secret Galaxies (Borracho! Remix) (via Borracho!’s MysSpace)
