Cross-posted from The Elevator Skips My Floor

Hailing from Australia, electronic duo PNAU’s (pronouced: ‘now’) self-titled album was something I purchased purely based on the simple cover art a couple of months ago.

After not really hearing any albums that I’d enjoyed in their entirety ( Apoptygma Berzerk‘s Harmonizer had been the last), it was nice to have something to listen to on repeat until I hated it again.

The album starts off with the track “With You Forever” (with guest vocals by Luke Steele), which has it’s roots in disco, and continues on with several catchy electro songs with several stand-out tracks, such as “Dancing on the Water”, which was described by the band as sounding like summer. Ladyhawke (Paris is Burning, Back of the Van) does guest vocals on the song “Embrace”, and the song “Baby” was featured on a Dairy Farmers commercial. I would highly recommend it.

and moving on…

Over in Canada, Crystal Castles is a band that I heard and hated the first time I gave them a listen. Honestly, “Xxzxcuzx Me” and “Alice Practice” were the first and they sounded like noise. They still sound like noise to me, which is why I only have a couple of the songs from their self-titled album on my ipod. Stand out tracks on this album are the first, “Untrust Us”: in which we’re not really sure if Alice Glass is telling us to use cocaine or not in spanish, instrumentals “Knights”, “Airwar”, and “Magic Spells”, and the ‘blog house’ hit, “Crimewave”. This is a band that I think you should listen to more than once to determine whether or not you hate them. And if you do, you know there’s always HEALTH, CFCF, or Futurecop! to tickle your underproduced electro fancy.

Unrelated to those electronic albums (or is it?) is Of Montreal‘s new album Skeletal Lamping, which is as psychedelic as their discography can get. Considering

I am going to go see them next month, I figured I should give their new album a listen since they’ll probably being playing tracks from that primarily. While it sounds completely different than The Sunlandic Twins and is a step more psychedelic than Hissing Fauna, Are you the Destroyer?, I thought it was awesome. Their sound has evolved without alienating their initial fanbase, and the catchier lyrics can bring in those who weren’t already drawn in with “Wraith Pinned to Mist” (or that Outback Steakhouse commercial…you know the one). I really enjoyed the album in it’s entirety, and it was interesting that several of the tracks were actually two separate songs on the same theme. A few that stood out to me were “For Our Elegant Caste” ( the intro to this track is great), “Women’s Studies Victims”, and “Plastis Wafers”.

So, yeah. Try amazon or something should you want to purchase any of this. Or you know. If you don’t fail at the internet, I’m sure you could find all of them somewhere.
*cough*hypemachine*cough*

Head over to the linked blog to hear clips, because I can’t get flash to work here.