Letters Have No Arms have packed their bags, put their travel hats on, and moved to a new land!

You should be automatically redirected to the post you were looking for (yes, the same one!) in 5 seconds. If not, visit
http://www.lettershavenoarms.com
and please don't forget to update your bookmarks.

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Letters Have No Arms Is Moving!

 
As we mentioned last week, Letters have no Arms will also be joining the Great Blogger Exodus Of 2010. We found a great new home over at www.lettershavenoarms.com and would be mightily pleased to see you there.

We're still ironing a out a few things over at the new site, but feel it's sufficiently presentable to welcome you there. Please bookmark/update your bookmarks! We'll probably keep this site up for a little while, but won't be posting here anymore. Blogger, you've served us well, but the time has come for our roads to part...

See you on the other side!




 !!!

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Commenting on this post is mandatory if you happen to be Japanese.


I'd like to introduce [clapclapclap] Akiko Hijichi - a person I know nothing about. I can only hope you will love the works of this talented artist as much as I do! (see how craftily I've avoided specifying gender there? If anyone here speaks Japanese or is familiar with Japanese names please let me know if that's a masculine or feminine one, please. Thanks. This is embarrassing.)





*

Hot from my inbox:

The e-mail said:
”Mayday Revisited is a one-off single from Swedish music producer Mojib (Staffan Ulmert). The track reconstructs the song ”May day” released in 2007 by UNKLE featuring The Duke Spirit. Using the vocals of Liela Moss the track is being mashed together with lo-fi indie act The Radio dept. Mojib then adds his own piano and acapella melodies."

Sunday, February 14, 2010

From the depths of my external hard drive: Valentine's Day Edition


For this year's Valentine's Day, we're time-travelling back to the 60s, folks. Enjoy!


Other LHNA V-day posts:

What would I do if I could have these songs dedicated to me today, but 10000 miles away someone else would fall off a bike and die ? Hmmm... 

 

(songs you should dedicate to someone today)

 

Give me my f**king songs back!

 

(songs you can no longer dedicate to anyone because they will be forever associated with that b***h/that bastard) 

 

p.s. the reason we haven't been very chatty lately is that we're working on moving the blog to our own domain, something I assume many blogs will be doing after the Blogger Scare of the past days. Worry not! We shall return mightier and awesomer* than ever.

 

*disclaimer: not a word; do not use in academical writing. 

Friday, February 12, 2010

If You Tolerate This Your Children's Blogs Will Be Next

 If You Tolerate This Your Children's Blogs Will Be Next

Phew, it's been quite a few days for the music blogging community. What happened? This week Google decided to take down (i.e. completely delete) a number of large and smaller music blogs hosted on the popular Blogger and Blogspot services. For supposed copyright infringement. While in the past, Blogger would simply delete the offending posts (if you've ever found a dead link to a post, that's usually the reason), they've now moved to deleting entire blogs. You can read the full story here.

This obviously places us in a rather difficult position (given the we're, you know, a music blog and all). We now run the risk of being deleted at any given moment if we post (or have already posted) music we have not been expressly given (or even that we have been given) permission to post. The same could apply to images/artwork used (like the one I stole to make the image above).

Clearly continuing like this would be impossible, so it looks likely that Letters have no Arms will soon be moving itself to an independently hosted site within the near future. So, unless they delete us before we move (please don't), you will therefore be seeing a few changes around here pretty soon! 
 
Until then, we'll simply have to be VERY careful with what we post, and will start with a few songs SENT to us this week. Of course we'll have to delete them as soon as any of these bands gets big and starts selling records,  after which their lawyers will hunt us down and delete our blogs. ;-)
 

Remember them? Dark clothes. A bit moody. Sounded a bit like the Jesus and Mary Chain, then didn't. Had a very pretty drummer, then didn't. Well, they're back (so is the drummer), and if you just ignore the horrific title (In fact I even suggest changing its title in the tag of the song, to something like, oh  don't know, how about, you know, just 'Beat the Devil'?), it's actually pretty good.
 
Speaking of names, how's THIS for you!? How could this NOT kick little fleeing human ass? Sounds a bit like Millionaire (early 00s and very overlooked - I know, what a fucking cliché - Belgian band) making out with Queens of the Stone Age in a dirty toilet somewhere. Listening to it might make you feel a little badass.

This one's all electropoppy and has a dark sexy vocal singing about ghosts (double sexy!). I can totally picture boys and girls in a club drinking cheap beer and doing that cute arm swinging thing they do to electropoppy music like this (you know the one where you kinda let it hang and swing it from left to right, occasionally mimicking playing a keyboard along with the music). Remix options aplenty as well.
 
Dreamy and sweet and perfect for Valentine's Day mixtapes.

Close your curtains, turn up the heater, fill your bath, close your eyes and pretend it's summer, you're at the beach, and those girls over there are actually looking at you.

p.s. Subscribe to Letters have no Arms via that pretty link I just installed at the top right of the page!

 
p.p.s. BUY a Metric t-shirt!

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

New music: Trash Kit




Album is out February 22nd.
No, I have no random trivia or annoying rants about it. You can sigh the glorious sigh of relief.
Just listen to the songs.

Thursday, February 4, 2010

[though said with hands in pocket, I mean it hand on heart]


So, Los Campesinos! rant today. Ready? Predictably, it's about the new Romance Is Boring, an album I've been listening to quite a lot these days. I am very perplexed by all the bloggers and journalists who have hastened to proclaim it the band's most "mature" work to date. Whatever they mean by "mature". This is the point where I feel the need to insert an innocent enough remark from a Pitchfork Guy that nonetheless quite bugged me. Here's what Pitchfork Guy said: "It's fun watching bands grow; it's been a pleasure watching this band grow up." My annoyance at that quote can be summed up thus: 

Change is not synonymous with Growth. 

 Yes, this is a band that has changed a great deal from that first EP but does that necessarily mean they've grown? Would you say the Editors' sudden decision to Experiment musically (ahem) is growth?* No, you wouldn't. Why? Because growth implies a (gradual, to the point of being sometimes imperceptible) change for the better. To me, what they're doing is more of a completely willful and somewhat stubborn change, something like an eight-year-old pounding his fists on the table and demanding to be a grown up already so he can eat whatever he wants and play video-games all day long. Growth doesn't happen like that. Growth happens instinctively, naturally, without you having to force its [metaphorical] hand.  We-don't-want-people-to-think-we're-twee-so-now-we're-moving-in-a-different-direction-just-so-they-can't-call-us-that-anymore is not growth.  [Parenthesis: there's nothing wrong with twee, you know. There's also nothing wrong with  catchy-ness and singalong-ability - both things the new album very much lacks.] Saying you're embarrassed of your previously-released material is really NOT growth. "There’s one or two songs that are a bit cringey, so we try to avoid playing them as much as possible. There’s one which I may have rid us of forever – 'We throw parties, you throw knives.' I don’t like it at all, I don’t think we’ll play that again. 'It started with a mix' is alright, but I doubt we’ll do that again either. But if I can get rid of Tweecore [2007 single 'International Tweexcore Underground'], I’ll be happy. Once that’s gone, onwards and upwards." Okay, I'm sorry: I respect this guy (for music he has made and lyrics he has penned) but that statement is just not nice towards your fans, especially towards that portion of your fans for whom the songs you now dis actually mean something. Personally, I LOVE "We Throw Parties You Throw Knives" and don't appreciate a) being made to feel self-conscious about that, as if my love for that song rather than the boring new These Are Listed Buildings means I am less intelligent/have bad music taste/don't "get" what they're doing now b) being told what songs of theirs I should have a preference for. Same with their statements about the new album. Okay, you might think that this is your best, most mature work and that's fine: most artists say that for every new album; they kind of have to. Just don't say- I can't remember the exact quote but something like - "anyone who doesn't think this is our best album is wrong." I'll pick my own favourite songs and albums, thank you very much. And because I suddenly feel I've portrayed myself as a whiny LC-hater (while I'm just an annoyed LC-lover) or, even worse, as the kind of person who thinks the first album or obscure EP (of ANY band) is always better than the new album because that's "too commercial, dude" I will also say the following. There IS one thing Pitchfork did get right:
For some, the cohesive, self-assured Romance will be their favorite Los Campesinos! record; others will continue to prefer the extremity of what came before. That's the breaks with an intensely personal band like this, I suppose; you're going to get intensely personal reactions.
Thanks for reading my intensely personal reaction. Now go listen to the album and develop your own. I'd love to hear all about it.


*Pitchfork's reaction to that debacle (Editors) was much more to my liking: "Give 'em credit here for going a long way towards dismantling what we've come to know about Editors." or "You know that kid in your dorm who took a semester's worth of intro lit and philosophy classes as a license to use the word "Kafka-esque" at every opportunity? 'In This Light and on This Evening' is for that guy."

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Die Antwoord = the answer



These are dark days. Rain. Cold. Darkness. Unemployment. Swine flu. And it's times like these that call for futuristic rap crews like Die Antwoord. Coming on like some twisted Chernobylesque Chris Cunningham, Flight of the Conchords, Chris Morris, Tim Westwood, David Lynch hybrid love child, Die Antwoord hail from ever-cooler South Africa, and have come to give us the fokkin antwoord

 
 
Based in his grandmother's house, beat-monster DJ Hi-Tek (he owns a PC computer, see) cooks up next level beats for zef rap-rave master Ninja's (he's a ninja, see) zieker dan ziek flow and crack-baby-chic jail bait bubble gum fre$h futuristik rich bitch YO-LANDI VI$$ER's 21st century answer to 90's eurohouse vocals.



  Fre$h!

 Die Antwoord - Enter the Ninja

 Check their interweb

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

A Little Lost


 
Hurray! Approximately 5 years* since season 5 ended with a pop, a bang and a collective WTF?, Lost returns to our screens tomorrow night - or for those outside the US, sometime Wednesday afternoon/evening (torrents permitting). As any true Lost fan and probably much of the rest of the TV-viewing world know, season 6 will be the final season of Lost, and the one in which fans will be looking for all loose ends to be tied up, their favourite couples to finally end up together, their favourite dead characters to be brought back to life and their least favourite characters to die spectacular deaths. Is it all a dream? Are they in Hell? A NYC block (a la Synecdoche, New York)? What's Smokie? Who's Jacob?
 Find out starting tomorrow night!
 

 
 
 Don't remember what's what or who's who? Catch up in just 8 minutes and 15 seconds:
 Songs, simply, with Lost in the title...
Phoenix - Lost and Found
 The Mary Onettes - Lost
Arthur Russell - A Little Lost
Radio Dept. - Lost and Found
Lightspeed Champion - Galaxy of the Lost

 Songs that may well bring back a few Lost memories...
 Petula Clark - Downtown
Mama Cass Elliot - Make Your Own Kind Of Music
  
 And, something you can play to make your friends think Lost has already started when they're still in the kitchen making that cup of tea...
 
Lost main theme (Michael Giacchino)



*or what sure felt like it