CONTESTS: Win a limited edition New Era cap designed by YACHT

Sure, Claire Evans and Jona Bechtolt aka YACHT don't seem much like the cap-wearing types, let alone the baseball cap sort. But when The Fader asked the Portland, Oregon electro wave duo--currently riding a tsunami-like wave of praise for their latest disc, See Mystery Lights--to design a hat for New Era, they took the challenge in stride, creating this extremely limited edition hat, complete with the standard YACHT symbols of triangles, hearts and anchors. And we've got one of them for you. The contest's open to anyone in the US.

Here's how to win.

Using Twitter, re-tweet this message. Just copy and paste it and you'll be good to go:
RT @thecultureofme I wanna win the rad-as-hell YACHT cap!! Enter to win here: http://bit.ly/nUUUJ

Then, just make sure you're following us on Twitter. You should be already, but if you're not (weird), you can follow us by clicking here. Then you're all set. We'll run the contest FOR ONE WEEK and the winning entry will get a notification from us. The only other rule, though, is that you have to promise that you'll take that sticker off the hat, because, well, seriously, we hate seeing that garbage still on caps.

(mp3)    YACHT - The Afterlife

Godspeed!

Download: Erik Hassle - "Don't Bring Flowers After I'm Dead (Crystal Fighters remix)"

Oh dear, it's another Swedish pop genius to get hung up on has come our way called Erik Hassle, counting among his fans the likes of Little Boots and Florence & The Machine, and stealing all sorts of hearts and heads with his terrific mix of pomp and pop with drum hits and washes of guitars, keys and his sincere vocals that just beg the emotive responses out of the listener. This kid's going to be huge stateside for sure and he's already enjoying the kind of notoriety that the European hype machine elicits. Here's a remix of Hassle's song "Don't Bring Flowers After I'm Dead" by one of our favorite finds of the last few months, Crystal Fighters. Hassle's next single, "Hurtful", is out November 2.

(mp3)    Erik Hassle - Don't Bring Flowers After I'm Dead (Crystal Fighters remix)

Godspeed!

Photos: Fever Ray at Webster Hall on September 28

In what will more than likely be set in stone as the single most memorable concert we'll experience in 2009, the mysterious project from Karin Dreijer-Andersson, Fever Ray, played their first NYC show on Monday night to a sold-out-like-whoa crowd at Webster Hall. This is, of course, only appropriate as the self-titled debut from Andersson's alter ego also stands a rather large chance of garnering our top spot for albums this year.

For just about an hour, fans were treated to a laser light and smokey show with almost zero key lighting (meaning that almost the entire show was backlit and remained just as mysterious as Andersson we suppose intends to uphold). Accompanied by matched-to-the-beat stage lamps and four multi-instrumentalists, Andersson played straight through with zero stoppage to engage the crowd, but it didn't matter. Aurally and visually, we--and the entire crowd we're sure--were spellbound. There were no encores and the show was one of the more dark, ethereal and brooding events we've ever witnessed, foggy throughout and full of shadows, lasers and primal vibes.

Put simply, it was amazing. Enjoy the photos as best as possible, but if you couldn't make it out to either of their New York shows this week, it's probably only going to infuriate you. There are, however, some GIFs to make you feel a little more like you were there, so enjoy. Vuk opened up with a short set of organ and autoharp songs.

(mp3)    Fever Ray - Triangle Walks

Godspeed!

Video: Sunny Day Real Estate - "Seven (live on "Late Night With Jimmy Fallon")"

(Ed. note: this is one of the more "personal" of our posts here and it's inclusion on this Web site is probably going to go down as a favorite of ours forever. The ability to post a video where a Top-10 iconic act in our books is back together and reunited after fifteen years and can still play as flawlessly as this is something we don't take lightly. It is, after all, Sunny Day Real Estate.)

Last night, on "Late Night With Jimmy Fallon", the original line-up of SDRE played "Seven" from their record Diary, which we still have on vinyl and still play at least a few times a month. Here's the original music video for "Seven", for comparison/nostalgia/swooning sake. We got chills for the entirety of their performance--hell, even when Jimmy Fallon just mentioned their name and showed the LP that we still own. Welcome back guys. We know it won't last long, but just the idea of a Sunny Day Real Estate reunion ever happening would've seemed impossible when we thought about it as a young teenager in the 90s. Proving us wrong is the greatest feeling we've had in a while. The guys play the seminal Washington, DC venue 9:30 Club tonight.

(mp3)    Sunny Day Real Estate - Pheurton Skeurto

Godspeed!

Live: The Brooklyn "Meatup" is tonight

(photo by Scott Nyerges)

Burgers, beer, a wet t-shirt contest for the boys (gender-standard role-reversal!!), Jell-O shots and a great opportunity for all the single bloggers in the borough, one of our favorite blogs/RSS feeds about our favorite place, Fucked In Park Slope is teaming up with two other BKLYN Web sites/brands, Brokelyn and Brooklyn Based to bring you the first official "BK Meatup". With DJ sets and a special appearance by comedian/writer Sara Schaefer (Best Week Ever, "Late Night With Jimmy Fallon" blog), drink specials, "interesting, totally optional" games with rad prizes, it's for sure going to be a great time to meet other like-minded bloggers, maybe hook up and otherwise just have a rad time on a Wednesday night. Tickets are only $10, so get on that already.

Details:

Wednesday, September 30
Bell House
149 7th Street (btwn. 2nd & 3rd Aves.)
Brooklyn, NY 11215
7-11pm

Also, if you do head out there (which you should), don't forget to follow @BKMeatup on Twitter and if you are tweeting from within, 100% make sure to include the #bkmeatup hashtag.

(mp3)    Santigold - Guns Of Brooklyn

Godspeed!

Emerging: Heatherette

Sometimes we get clued into an act or artist that just doesn't have anything but an identifying sound to their name, no other stylistic calling card or capital-"M" media machine behind them creating image and referencing others in attempts to get coverage on Web sites like this one here. For Scottish bomb Heatherette--no relation to that Richie Rich fashion label--the case can be made that we know nothing of this woman aside from the two tracks on her very new and not-highly-trafficked MySpace page, her unsigned nature and her sound.

So, the sound? Yeah, well, imagine throwing The Cramps, Peaches, a drum machine and that "Dirty Boy" video by Angela Viracco in "The Last Dragon" into a blender with the puree blade on full blast, pulsing it a few times to make a textured sludge of amazingness. Which is to say, it's tons of fun, the guiltiest of pleasures and full of the pomp that only someone consumed by throwback metering and "Genius Of Love" would take into consideration. We really really love this song "Canary" with its stop-start drumming and arrangement of swirling cinematic effects and the washes of sometimes hushed and sometimes shouted vocals.

(mp3)    Heatherette - Canary

Godspeed!

Download: Steed Lord - "Royal Ruffian (LAZRtag remix)"

Part of the re-released debut album from Iceland's Steed Lord (packed with a second disc of all remixes), this treatment of "Royal Ruffian" from the boys in LAZRtag bridges the gap between the oh-no-he-didn't vibes of some of the earliest and most mass-appeal-friendly cuts from Steve Aoki's Dim Mak camp and the current roster of knife-sharp bedroom electro producers that toe the line between "pop" and "populist". It's a connective tissue of slithering effects and Nintendo synths, reining in the ferocity of Steed Lord's housey-rock while still maintaining a tremendously dancey beat. Steed Lord play Popscene in San Francisco on October 1.

(mp3)    Steed Lord - Royal Ruffian (LAZRtag remix)

Godspeed!

News: The Toxic Avenger's Scion AV Sampler release is out today

French electro technician and all-around destroyer, The Toxic Avenger has just dropped the Scion CD Sampler V 26 via IHEARTCOMIX and it's full-up with doses of heat from the likes of Switch, The Juan Maclean, Ladytron, Acid Girls, Ocelot and many more in the fourteen tracks that comprise the mix. We've heard it and it's really quite stellar and worth every copper penny you'll spend on it. Dude is also playing a select group of club dates next week in NYC, Austin, Cleveland and Philadelphia.

(mp3)    The Toxic Avenger - Rush Hour

Godspeed!

Video: Dirty Projectors - "When The World Comes To An End (live on "Late Night With Jimmy Fallon")"

Probably the most divisive band of 2008-2009, Dirty Projectors, stopped by our favorite new late night host Jimmy Fallon's show last night and debuted another Dave Longstreth-penned masterpiece, "When The World Comes To And End". It's emblazoned with the usual quirkiness, lush arrangements and interestingly-pitched vocal harmonies that have made this band, and their record Bitte Orca, one of the most well-received efforts this year. Truly able to discern and display both beauty and noise, Dirty Projectors are a name we hope we'll be hearing for a good time to come, even if we don't ever fully understand completely what they're all about.

(mp3)    Dirty Projectors - Temecula Sunrise

Godspeed!

Photos: Subdrive presents "Heat" on September 26

For the first "Heat" party of the fall, the dudes in Subdrive (the open-source music label/Voltron-like team of producers/DJs/vagabonds) brought out two heavy hitters--and two very distinctive DJs to play this past Saturday night at the North 4th Bar in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. We're speaking, of course, of the disco heaven-inducing VDRK and the soca-booty-drop-bass of the one and only Cobra Krames. They were joined by the Subdrive crew and DJs Dillinger and Terror Dactel, which made for an interesting blending of styles, BPMs and emotions, but one thing was certain: it was really really really fun. We sweated, danced, sweated some more and took a bunch of photos, but the best part was how the party quickly devolved into a chair-lifting, hanging-from-the-rafters affair with endless laughs, a few injuries and some overwhelming, not-so-clean fun.

(mp3)    Simian Mobile Disco - Hustler (Joakim remix)

Godspeed!