EXCLUSIVE Erol Alkan & The Long Blondes
So you’ve already had a few days to freak out over the immaculate freshness that is The Long Blondes’ “Fulwood Babylon” (the b-side to their latest single, “Weekend Without Makeup”) but now I’m gonna do you one better and hook you up with the other two tracks from the Blondes’ sessions with dance producer du jour Erol Alkan. “Platitudes” and “Last Night On Northgate Street”, as their called, don’t come close to matching the perfection of “Fulwood”, but it’s interesting to see what Alkan, in his first time ever producing a band, can do with these tracks. “Platitudes” is a bit more experimental than I’d like my Long Blondes tracks, with intentional feedback consistently popping up throughout, but it’s got that signature Erol Alkan depth and a mediocre Long Blondes’ song is still better than the bulk of material coming out of Sheffield right now (not to knock the vibrant Sheffield music scene, I just don’t think there’s another band there right now operating at the same level that the Blondes are). “Last Night On Northgate Street” is the real keeper of the two, with the same jangly, skittery guitars and compelling narratives - not to mention some more of that great spoken word action - that we’ve come to know and love from the band. All in all, these three tracks get me extremely interested to see what Alkan was given the opportunity to get some more production experience with other bands (the mere thought of a Bloc Party-Erol Alkan collaboration leaves me needing a fresh pair of undies) and this is definitely an impressive start to his fledgling production career.
MP3s:
“Fulwood Babylon” - The Long Blondes ((highly recommended))
“Platitudes” - The Long Blondes
“Last Night On Northgate Street” - The Long Blondes
September 16th, 2006 at 3:23 pm
Last Night On Northgate street, soooo good. (as is fulwood babylon)
September 16th, 2006 at 7:28 pm
thanks for the mp3s! i was too lazy to get them of my 7″ and well, they are GREAT!
September 23rd, 2006 at 3:13 pm
Once and Never Again is probably twice the song Fulwood is.
September 23rd, 2006 at 3:59 pm
Questionable at best Jamie, questionable at best. I’ll have to reserve judgement until I hear the studio version once the single comes out, but it would have to make leaps and bounds from the demo to be half the song Fulwwod is.
January 10th, 2007 at 8:36 pm
i hate to say, but it appears the links don’t work anymore, when i right click them and select save download as… it show that ‘they’re .htm files, so i was wondering if there’s anyway you could get me these songs. maybe fix the links or maybe you’d even be kind enough to upload them in one file on something like Megaupload… I’d be forever grateful…