Tag: The New Mastersounds

When you need a sunny groove to light up your grey morning, Hippo Campus is ready.

White Denim, part of the eminently surfable wave of psychedelia we’ve enjoyed this past decade, finds it easy to freely pummel you with some of the most massive riffs you’ll encounter on this side of the water’s surface. Shout out to our caller who could possibly be Murrdawg on alternate Sundays here on KAFM. Check out their show!

As the name successfully implies, this outfit is a heady blend of Chicano funk and other sources. Pumping bass lines that could drain the Baltic Sea in minutes and horn stabs that could be entered as evidence in a court of law fill out the package.

Every so often, I’ll gather up some of my favorite tracks from the last sixty minutes of my three-hour radio show and create an entire episode of The Final Hour, this one being the third such installment. This is the music that is played between 11pm and midnight, and it’s generally darker, more instrumental, sometimes even experimental, and this is an opportunity for the chronologically challenged to experience some of that closer to their regular waking hours.

It’s a formula as old as time — take four Japanese ladies, dress them up in color-coordinated dresses and makeup, and have them play aggressive earworms featuring kawaii harmonies and the lethal precision of a veteran death metal band. And yet somehow Otoboke Beaver rise above the rest of the entrants in this crowded field. Who am I kidding, they are one of a kind, and if you’re not listening to their latest album on repeat, you are missing out on a lot of endorphins.

I used to get a couple of dozen packages containing CDs each day, but these days receiving even one is something that happens once in a blue moon, a rare treat. It’s even more special when it contains a couple of releases from Sex Clark Five, one of my personal favorites. They sound like blurting out that thing you told yourself you weren’t going to say but felt good to say.

Sunny, loose-limbed, and grinning from ear to ear, this collection of infectious and sometimes intricate funk sounds like the songs that play in your head as your foot touches the sidewalk on the first day of spring.

It took Cheo a couple of years to get back into his usual Latin-flavored slinky tinkles after leaving his previous band, but we’re all glad to hear he’s returned.