Eclectic Grooves

Well, I know that Eclectic Grooves has been neglected lately, but serious life issues have materialized recently that have required more of my time and energy. This is not to say that I will be abandoning the site though, as I have a couple huge posts coming up over the next month. One of these posts is the massive list of my favorite albums of 2010 that I have been compiling over the past couple months. I am certain that there are still going to be some albums coming out in December that may deserve to be on this list, but I plan to have this list done no later than December 15th. With that being said, today's I Hear a New World Podcast focuses on music released in 2010 that will likely be included on my year-end list. I have included a setlist below just in case you are unable to catch the artists and song titles from my repartee throughout the show The latest edition of I Hear a New World is available for download here, and at http://ihearanewworld.podomatic.com/. I would love...

The Halloween Hodgepodge edition of the I Hear a New World Podcast is available for download here, and at http://ihearanewworld.podomatic.com/ . Given the time of the season, it is once again time for me to dredge through my seemingly endless archives of spooky music to present a new Halloween mix to the readers. Last year I was rushing against the clock to complete my Halloween podcast before the clock struck midnight on Halloween. After learning my lesson from this, I began compiling my list two weeks ago with possible songs that could make the cut for this years mix. These songs were culled from my own collection, Soulseek users and the numerous Halloween blogs and forums across the internet. Without the help of these sources, it would have been practically impossible for me to finish this mix on time. Considering my tendency to strive towards perfection, finishing this mix before Halloween has meant spending hours painstakingly crafting a two-part mix of the most terrifyingly bone...

The latest edition of I Hear a New World is available for download here, and at http://ihearanewworld.podomatic.com/ . This week's episode of I Hear a New World primarily features albums that were released in 2010, as I gear up for my annual "Best Albums of the Year" post. Artists on this podcast who have released albums from 2010 include The Intelligence, Quasi, Thee Oh Sees, Madlib, and Grass Widow. Interspersed throughout the set are a couple jazz greats and some choice international cuts for a good balance of sounds. I would love to receive some feedback from the listeners as to what you think of this edition of I Hear a New World. Also, keep your ears peeled for another edition of Plain Brown Wrappers as well as the annual Halloween podcast since Halloween is just around the corner.

Recently I have been digging into my old crates of tapes looking for forgotten gems to play in the tape deck of my girlfriend's Saturn. Since she only has a tape deck in her car, and this is the only mode of transportation we have right now, I have been revisiting old favorites that I compiled many moons ago in a dusty basement with nothing but my record collection, a creative imagination and my trusty JVC dual cassette deck. Similar to the warm crackle of vinyl, the grainy hiss of a cassette tape gives it a more raw, analog sound that is largely missing on the highly digitized reproduction of a compact disc. Because of this, I am more drawn to compiling mix-tapes than mix CD's. Lately, there have been numerous books released which discuss the merits of making mix-tapes and reflecting on mix tapes that remind us about the best and worst times of our lives. My favorite book on mix tapes is called Mix Tape: The Art of Cassette Culture which was curated by Thurston Moore. From th...

Today is probably one of the first times that I have featured a fairly new album in its entirety at a great bitrate. The reason that I have chosen to stray from the normal policy is that this fantastic Sublime Frequencies release from Omar Khorshid came out back in May and went out of print within 6 weeks of its actual release date. This is an astonishing feat to say the least, and I feel that it should not fall on deaf ears. While I wasn't fortunate enough to snag a limited pressing of this record, I was lucky enough to download the complete album from a friend on Soulseek at an astonishingly rare 320k bitrate. For those of you who are familiar with the discography of Sublime Frequencies, you know that the quality of their albums is top-notch and that their releases typically go out-of-print at a rapid rate. Hisham Mayet, along with Alan and Richard Bishop (from the now defunct and legendary experimental band Sun City Girls) started Sublime Frequencies a few years ago to primari...

It hasn't quite been a month since I've posted on here, but it's definitely not due to a lack of creative ideas. Lately, I have been listening to a wide variety of albums from 2010 as I gear up for the annual "Best Albums of the Year" list. Be on the lookout for this list when it officially drops in December. Until, then, I will whet your appetite with some of my favorite records from 2010 in an upcoming I Hear a New World podcast. Also, for those of you who live in Portland, OR, get your ass to Dante's this Friday to check out Thee Oh Sees. What comes to my mind when listening to Thee Oh See's lates EP Warm Slime is an image of a speeding freight train as it violently careens off the tracks. This isnt too far from the feeling one gets when experiencing their live show. When they bring their catchy brand of psychedelic-garage rock to Dante's, you can bet that the whole place will be a sweaty mass of bodies frantically bobbing up and down to the sound ...

As I promised two week's ago, here is the answer to the latest Plain Brown Wrappers: Tomrerclaus- En Spade Er En Spade. No-head decided not to ruin it for the rest of the readers, but it turned out that no one else even ventured a guess this time around. Anyway, En Spade Er En Spade was a towering achievement for this phenomenally talented guitarist from Denmark who played nearly all of the instruments on the record himself. As far as I know, this record is way out of print, so I hope that you enjoyed it. Today, I am introducing a new series to Eclectic Grooves called One From the Vaults. This series will showcase out-of print and extremely hard to find records that have generally been slept on by the general public. I figured that this record by German kraut-psych masters Roman Bunka would be a perfect album to introduce this series to you. All I really need to say about Dein Kopf ist ein schlafendes Auto is that it transcends genre tags, throwing every imaginable musical style i...