IKRS Fanzine, over indie/electro/whatever muziek!

Welcome to the site of IKRS, a fanzine for people who love music. In this post you can find everything there is on the site, neatly gathered at the top of the blog. For news (wrapped in stories), interviews, live reports, and reviews/first listen/ album features; it's all here honey! Don't forget to check the Clip of the Day, which is refreshed (almost) daily. Read about what we do and what we stand for in our About IKRS section (just Dutch, unfortunately). For more information you can mail ikrszine@gmail.com or you can pm/add me on www.last.fm/user/sa34 .Or follow us on twitter: www.twitter.com/IKRSzine.

(News) Stories:
05 June:
Jamie Jones to release sophomore album
The Walkmen release album today
This month's news

Reviews/Reports:
Bleed Bleed Bleed by Thieves Like Us - Album Review (External link)
05 Days Off - Escort & WhoMadeWho @ Paradiso (External link)
Aabenbaringen Over Aaskammen - Album review (External link)
Azari & III live at Trouw 
Owen Pallett and the Noord Nederlands Orkest live at Catharinakerk (External link)
 
Daily/Weekly Columns:
Daily Clip (18 juli)  
The Weekly Froth #48
Now Playing... 'Under the Westway' by Blur
The Weekly Froth #47
Now Playing... 'Would That Not Be Nice' by Divine Fits


Features:
Favorite Albums of the first half of 2012 - 10 / 9 / 8 / 7 / 6 / 5 / 4 / 3 / 2 / 1
Best live performances of 2011 (compiled in bad vids that don't do justice to the real thing)
Other fav things of 2011, and things I'm looking forward to in 2012
Favorite Albums of 2011 - 10 / 9 / 8 / 7 / 6 / 5 / 4 / 3 / 2 / 1 - Overview of the lists
Favorite tracks of 2011 - 50-46 / 45-41 / 40 - 36 / 35 - 31 / 30 - 26 / 25 - 21 / 20 - 16 / 15 -11 / 10 - 06 / 05 - 01
Interview archive

The Weekly Froth #48 (with Marcos Cabral & Jeremy Glenn, Tensnake, more!)

The Weekly Froth! A weekly take on six tracks, most of which have recently popped up somewhere in the blogosphere. Bit of a mixed bag with a slight leaning towards house, disco, and remixes, but generally just anything that for some reason tickled the writer’s fancy.

Track of the week: ‘Partytime’ by Jeremy Glenn (Marcos Cabral remix)

We know Jeremy Glenn has done some good work recently, and we know that Marcos Cabral can bang out a (house) tune. So put the two together, and you’re on to something, right? From the get go, this thing is on fire. Love the beat with the piano seeping through, and then it really gets rolling with more and more instruments being introduced. Cabral will not be rushed, and I like that in an eight minute song. If you are going to do something for eight minutes, might as well show some patience and make sure you pick up all the momentum you can gather. And so he does and so it rolls on, constantly tweaking it slightly to make sure it doesn’t get dull. The change-ups are there as well (just look at the shape of the SoundCloud thingy). The first one strips it back to a percussion led fragment (which changes mid gear as well into something more synth), and the second change-up also strips it down a tad This all, of course, to build back up to the main beat, which comes back in not too much later. Personally I would’ve loved for that return to go together with a bit more of a punch, but that doesn’t change the fact that this one keeps on rolling and will keep everyone on dancing. Sans vocals, by the way. … Continue Reading

The Daily Clip!

8De clip van de dag heeft elke dag een nieuwe clip, hopelijk zorgend voor een blijvende stroom van nieuwe, leuke, en/of goede muziek. Vandaag is de clip van de dag... *tromgeroffel*

‘Look at Where We Are’ by Hot Chip! Saw a bit of them on a live stream on YouTube this weekend I believe, and they sure can still make you dance. That sounded pretty good. This one not that dancey, and I still think they can do dance better than ballad, but that’s personal preference for you I suppose. Clip directed by Danny Perez and futures a bit of sci-fi elements. 

Now Playing... ‘Under the Westway’ by Blur

Now Playing – twice every week, a roundtable of our writers will give their views on some of the recently-released new tracks. It’s as simple as that! If you want to tell us what you think of the song, feel free to leave a comment below.

Track: ‘Under the Westway’ by Blur … Continue Reading

The Weekly Froth #47

The Weekly Froth! A weekly take on six tracks, most of which have recently popped up somewhere in the blogosphere. Bit of a mixed bag with a slight leaning towards house, disco, and remixes, but generally just anything that for some reason tickled the writer’s fancy.

Track of the week: ‘Do I Believe in God’ by Late Nite Tuff Guy

No he didn’t. ‘Controversy’ by Prince is just an awesome tune, and some fantastic remixes have already been made of it. Late Nite Tuff Guy, who has already taken on a lot of classics to make them pure love for the dancefloor, is the next to try, and with such material, how could anyone fail? He starts with this sound to dance to, and slowly you begin hearing that Prince guitar from the song. An impatient person would’ve gone straight in at the half minute mark, but LNTG waits a little bit more, builds it up a little bit more, and gives people a little bit more time to realize, Oh hey, I KNOW this! So wait for it, wait for it, and then, at 1:37, there it is! ‘Controversy’ by Prince. What a funky tune, and that build-up makes it all the sweeter. I think any dancefloor must go bananas on this, and I’m curious to see if he gets clearance to release this (fat chance, probably). If not, that would be too bad, because this should be banging on every dancefloor. That guitar, those vocals, that funk, and LNTG puts emphasis on all the right things to make it even more of a dancefloor monster than it already is in its own right. He throws in a bible verse there, which might or might not be to your taste, but it’s short and the funk is nine minutes long, so even if, who cares. These are the things that make me happy. … Continue Reading

Our favorite albums of the first part of the year- Nr. 01

So here we are again. Nothing changes, it all stays the same, nothing ever happens. For the umpteenth time now, we put in our 2 cents of what has been doing it for us in the first half of this year music wise. Hopefully you can find something in there that you agree with, which you overlooked at first, or which you maybe never even heard of. So much great music out there, this is our little grab out of that hat, enjoy!

01. Linda

Artist: Lotus Plaza

Album: Spooky Action at a Distance

Label: Kranky

I thought this was an average, nice album, till the moment I put it on my headphones when I was walking through the park on a hazy sunny day (yes, we did have some of those this year). It just clicked. It might not be the best album to put on at a dinner party, or in the background when you're doing some work, but for walking around the city with your headphones on to block the noise, this the perfect shoegaze/noise rock/dream pop option. It is, you might say, sublime. 

Tracks switch from ambient dreamy pop (Strangers) to more assertive guitar based tracks (White Galatic One), without ever losing the flow of the album. Some way or other, it all still fits together. 

And yes, Lockett Pundt also just so happens to be that guitarist who stands, unshaken and unassuming, next to the terrific Bradford Cox when they play as Deerhunter, but lets give credit where credit's due and judge him on his own merits. 

01. Stef

Artist: John Talabot

Album: Fin

Label: Permanent Vacation

And so here we are, number one, and for me, I’ve just got a weakness for these kind of albums that for some reason or another I find perfectly suited to listen at midnight to. In the train, or walking around in the city, seeing the city lights, and then music can be just the perfect companion. Luckily, every year there’s sure to be one album that will accompany you when it has all gone dark and the city lights are all you see in abandoned streets with only the bums and the youth alive as its inhabitants.

Last year it was Nicolas Jaar, I certainly count Circlesquare’s album to that category as well. And here, John Talabot has done it to perfection too. All three manage to make such elegant, understated songs that put me in escapist mode when I’m thinking about love and law and poverty. The combination of the vocals, the beat, and just the overall complex compositions of these songs (in combination with a full moon, though full isn’t a prerequisite) just manage to hit me like no other albums can. John Talabot, with his lovely songs, his collaborations with Pional (another talented man right there), manages to evoke exactly the right atmosphere and emotions on this album that make me want to wander from lamppost to lamppost. 

Our favorite albums of the first part of the year- Nr. 02

So here we are again. Nothing changes, it all stays the same, nothing ever happens. For the umpteenth time now, we put in our 2 cents of what has been doing it for us in the first half of this year music wise. Hopefully you can find something in there that you agree with, which you overlooked at first, or which you maybe never even heard of. So much great music out there, this is our little grab out of that hat, enjoy!

02. Linda

Artist:POLIÇA

Album: Give you the Ghost 

Label: Memphis Industries

Not that many debut albums made my list this year, but this one definitely stood out for me. The amount of reverb on this album might scare a lesser band, but they've managed to make it work. The best description of the album I've read is that it sounds a bit like a sad robot (cue Marvin the robot) that is trying to recreate the 80s in its shed. 

'Dark Star' and 'Lay Your Cards Out' are two singles that will hopefully get the band the attention they deserve for daring to come out with something like this. What they are great at is balance. Whereas opening track 'Amongster' is made up solely from drums , singing and a synth, other tracks, such as 'Dark Star' have a wealth of instrumentation behind them. Both tracks still manage to sound light, sculpted and catchy, and that's a hell of a trick. Also: they have guitars! Yay!

02. Stef

Artist: WhoMadeWho

Album: Brighter

Label: Kompakt

I’ve loved a lot of what these guys have done, though I’m not sure I’ve actually loved a whole album. This, I love as a whole album. It has those great vocals that I just adore (that’s a real weak spot for me, which might explain why this album is higher on my list than on others), and all these songs have a tight rhythm that propel them forward.

I also like the aesthetic of the songs. It has this atmosphere I really love, this slight slant towards the melancholic/detached. Yet, the songs, thanks to the tight rhythm section, are all pretty danceable, and they are very “active” songs in the sense that they are pretty full on and accessible and catchy. That contrast between the content in the form, in this case, forms a wonderful combination that, instead of opposing each other, actually heightens both. Great album that I can listen to over and over again without growing tired.