While doing our weekly radio show The Let Out in the cozy, mirrored studio at East Village Radio, we routinely bump into friends, artists, readers, listeners and crazy people. We talk shit, play records, dance and loiter on the sidewalk for two hours during what has become a Friday night microcosm of all that The FADER stands for: good music, good times and an open mind. And for that, we owe much gratitude to the proprietors of EVR. So thanks, EVR for letting us do our thing for the last few years. It is in this spirit of communal radness that the same guys who gave us our show are throwing their first music festival this Saturday at Pier 17 of the South Street Seaport, with free music from Boris, Devin the Dude, Mark Ronson, Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, High Places, Vivian Girls, Crystal Stilts, Bunnybrains, Hex Message, plus others; cheap delectables from Frank Restaurant, Lil Frankies and Supper; and a free shuttle bus from 19 First Ave to the Seaport. And KRS-One is providing free edutainment. Somebody nominate EVR for mayor! We will be there for sure, rain or shine, and so should you. In the meantime, listen to show streams at East Village Radio and check out some of the performing artists' songs on RCRD LBL.

UPDATE! The festival has been moved to Sunday due to threat of rain from Hurricane Hanna. Same start times, same location.

Make no mistake, we're fully literate in this piece, but when we first heard the opening sample for "She Got Her Own," we were pretty much hoping it had been the Heatmakerz who'd kidnapped Cam'ron all along, and sent this as a mislabled Protools file. Instead we get NeYo dressed up as Ralph Tresvant and Fab finally repaying that "Make Me Better" favor. Either way, its Friday! Oh yea, Cam'ron, if you're out there...if you can hear us...we miss you.


Download: NeYo f. Fabolous & Jamie Foxx, "She Got Her Own (Miss Independent Remix)"

We've come up with a new term to describe Koushik's Out My Window LP coming out in September on Stones Throw: Crushing Hangover Soul. We used to think he was more ideal for the actual experience, but his soft voice, blissful sampling and mellow drums are in fact much better for dealing the day after. However, Koushik made a special mix for The FADER that might be more up your Friday night alley—madcap jazz fusion, Quasimoto, Endless Summer surf ballads, psych funk and Rush. We're having a hard time focusing just listening to it right now, so be careful. To sweeten the deal, we've got a special contest set up with Stones Throw and iMeem in which you can win the following freebies:

Koushik's Out My Window LP on CD/Vinyl
"Lying in the Sun" 7-inch
Fan Club 45 7-inch
Stones Throw T-Shirt

All you have to do is embed the mix below on your MySpace, blog, website, or whatever and send a link to that embed to Imeem Contests to win. Good luck. Stay free.


Koushik's FADER Mix

We've been cranking Passion Pit's "Sleepyhead" for a good long minute, but it wasn't until last week that we had good reason to put it up for download. One of our favorite music blogs, Good Weather for Airstrikes, gave up the grind of talking about music for the grind of putting it out on their new label Neon Gold Records, and "Sleepyhead" is their first 7-inch release. And, as a lesson to all crusty label heads out there, they've put the mp3 up on their own site for download. Pwn3d. Coincidentally, our friend Michaella Solar-March, from Australian radio station FBi 94.5, recently interviewed Michael Angelakos from the band, so grab the song, then read what he had to say about love, life and french kisses. Passion Pit's Chunk of Change EP is out on Frenchkiss Records on September 16th.


Download: Passion Pit, "Sleepyhead"

I’ve heard stories about a Valentine's Day EP for your girlfriend... Did Passion Pit begin as a passion project?
Kind of, but more like a guilt project. I'm so bad about being timely with anything, including presents and such. My girlfriend and I have kind of marked Valentine's Day as our anniversary, but last year I, in character, did not have anything to give. I had been playing around with writing music again as I hadn't written anything in awhile. I was just making little beats with pretty, simple melodies that would make my roommates dance. They liked it and I soon realized she liked it, so I just continued to base the entire project off of how much of my nonsense she has to put up with. Believe it was effective. But, to sum it up, Passion Pit was never meant to be anything but just that… a little present.

So, are you still dating?
Yep.

How did you team up with Frenchkiss Records?
To be completely honest, I'm not exactly sure of how they heard of us. I believe it had something to do with a show we played with Girl Talk, someone having kind words to say, and then the guys at FKR liking the mp3s. We met up soon after but I was pretty much certain that they were who I wanted to work with, judging from their approach within the industry, their roster, and just their personalities in general. I really have nothing but good things to say about everyone I've been working with. The ink hasn't even dried so to speak so, you know, we're all still really excited.

Was making music something you always saw yourself doing?
Yes. I used to sing "This Old Man" at the top of my lungs on these carpeted, boxy constructs at this shoe store in central New Jersey. I was like on loop. I was about 5-years-old when I recorded that tape used at the beginning of "Better Things." I had tons of fake bands throughout elementary school and what not as I was really the only person who learned how to play anything beyond saxophone or trumpet. Not really sure why that was. I come from a musical family, so I grew up listening to good music, personally drew many ideas from the Beach Boys and the Beatles. Even more recently I tried to convince myself that music was the last thing I should do, and that I'd be better off pursuing other endeavors, but I've never really felt quite as comfortable or confident in myself as I have when writing music. I suppose that's as much a curse as it is a blessing.

How did Ian, Thom and Ayad come onboard for the live shows?
Ian and our drummer at the time approached me after the first show (which I performed solo with a laptop) and said, "If you'd like, we should flesh it out sometime." I took them up on it, though it took awhile to arrange the music from being these square-ish, quantized, mechanical pieces of pop to songs for a five person, all-by-feel band. Things worked, things didn't work, and, essentially, we're still learning. It's certainly been an experience and it's way more engaging and exciting than laptop pop right now—not that we don't like laptop pop. We just like stressing ourselves out on stage and playing as many of the parts as we can.

How do you write and record the song then? Most songs fall in place quite easily. Parts of songs become mantras, loops, bits and ideas that are scattered in my brain. But then I'll sit down and it will miraculously come together really quickly. The Chunk of Change EP was very sporadic, very quickly thrown together, and that was the idea—it was never meant to be anything but that, really. But songs like "Sleepyhead" and "Better Things" were even moreso written on the spot, or as I went along the recording process. They were very manic, hyper, and energetic (as I was at the time of their creation), but that is what I guess yields lyrics that are pretty honest and sincere. It's like blurting things out, or lying half-conscious describing your dreams. The point is that the process is pretty much entirely in my head, I have sounds and visuals and can feel and hear how they are all supposed to work with each other. I don't expect myself (or many people that create similarly) to actually pull off more than half of what they imagine, but that at least leaves you with a lot of leg-room. But it usually all begins with an overwhelming feeling or something someone says that tips me off. I know it when I feel it or hear it.

What can we expect from your debut album in 2009?
It's going to be really beautiful, I'm really happy with it so far. I think it's a step in the right direction. It's hard to explain since it's not completed, but I can say with confidence that I think people will really get a lot out of it. It's a rich, highly textured pop album. It's being produced with my friends Grant and Matt of the group Landau at their studio in Brooklyn. There will be 10 tracks total. We'll start playing those songs live in the coming weeks.

We've been thinking a lot about the ’90s this week, but this new episode of The Tim & Eric Awesome Show could be this decade's equivalent of The Simpson's "Poochie The Dog" extreme satire. Watch part one above, and part two here.

After impersonating our favorite style icons (Monday=Francoise Hardy day, Tuesday=Bianca Jagger day, etc etc), our favorite pastime in the style department is probably shopping. But shopping is a lot more fun when you have a shop expert to help navigate the shelves/racks. Luckily our favorite stores are filled with lots of such specialists, all of whom know their German deadstock from their North American vintage.

For the second installment of Shop Talk we paid a visit to Houndstooth in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, to talk to shop owners Maria Chavez and Michael Kimmins. Filled with tons of vintage menswear treasures, it is well and truly one of the only stores of its kind. Chavez and Kimmins are master store editors and have an exceptional eye for design. They are also intensely focussed when it comes to quality (they have a strict no synthetic fabrics rule, too, which we love!) and regularly globetrot to bring in the rarest pieces.

"Take a dollop of Fresh Prince, mix in a generous helping of Cassette Playa, add a pinch of Hadouken!, crush in the fashion section of Super Super magazine... Voila! That should be enough to make those idiots forget that we're releasing a song about summer two months after summer in the UK ended."

Yeah, so, er, I quite like the video for Wiley's new single, "Summertime", I think. There's still no getting away from how awful the song is though.

I spent the day with Wiley and Scorcher in a tiny two room studio on an industrial estate in Chorlton, near Manchester earlier this week. They were up there together recording Scorcher's new album (that whole thing about them having "beef" seems to have been totally fabricated), which Wiley is producing a lot of.

Wiley, always quick to save a few quid where possible, informed me Chorlton was a good place to record owing the "cheap studio fees, innit". The fact they were paying to stay in the executive suite of the swanky Manchester Hilton didn't seem to bother him though.

Wiley spent most of the day sat in the reception area drinking Lucozade and playing songs from his new album on his laptop. From what I heard, expect an album of sub-par "Wearing My Rolex" clones.

Meanwhile, Scorcher was in the studio with a middle-aged engineer he kept referring to as "Mr Beardyman" and "the pirate" recording a couple of new tracks. The most memorable of which was an ode to rock stars in which Scorcher name-checked such rock gods as Guns N' Roses and, er, Oasis. While laying down verses, every now and then he'd hold his Blackberry in the air and shout "Blackberry power" for inspiration. Apparently he spent a year trying to get a Blackberry on Pay As You Go but eventually had to give in and get a contract, making him, as far as I know, the first grime MC ever to get a phone contract.



A couple of months ago I told you that Ny had vocalled Wookie's "Gallium". Above you can hear the result. Pretty epic, right?

Strangely, the odd bit of this new funky stuff seems to be taking a turn towards bleep from the early 90s—all eerie, bass heavy, quite pounding 4/4 beats with tinny syncopated percussion. (Check the amazing "Monopoly Refix" by D Malice for an example of what I mean.) Last night I was listening to brothers DJ Mak 10 and Marcus Nasty on Rinse FM and they played this one song that sounded like a tribal version of something that could quite easily have been made by LFO in 1991. I think Mak 10 pretty perfectly summed up the collective thoughts of everyone listening when he said: "I don't even know what this music is, I just know it's messy, it's crazy."

Before seeing them this Saturday at the East Village Radio festival, read T Cole Rachel's feature story on Brooklyn, New York's High Places from FADER Number 56.

Ever since he appeared on MIA's "Hussel" from Kala and reappeared on his own "One Day I Went To Lidl", we have been waiting for more of the offbeat lyrical stylings of Afrikan Boy. Well, apparently he has a new mixtape called Can of Whoopass, Vol. 1: The Rise of Captain Africa coming out soon and has posted a couple songs from it on his MySpace. The first is him over Donaeo's funky house jam "African Warrior," which appeared in Prancehall's Bass Odyssey in a Marcus Nasty 1Xtra playlist, and the second has him chatting dancesteps on top of Bablee's "Bablee Samuz" which we talked about here a little bit ago. Enjoy both and pick up that tape on or around October 1st.


Download: Afrikan Boy, "African Warrior (Remix)"


Download: Afrikan Boy, "Flap Your Clothing"

Ever since we heard Mark Ronson would be producing some bona fide rock 'n' roll in the form of the new Kaiser Chiefs album, we've been bugging him about hearing some of the new songs. Eventually, he caved and played us a few. "Never Miss A Beat" was one of them, and, despite our general indifference toward the band, we found it pretty darn catchy. How much of that is due to Ronson? We'll go with 90% because we like the guy, but it was probably closer to 70-75%. Either way, the video for "Never Miss A Beat" just hit the internet courtesy of director Goodtimes and Draw Pictures, and the band also recently posted the Yuksek remix of the single on their MySpace. The album from whence all this spawned, Off With Their Heads will be out in October and was entirely co-produced by Ronson and Britpop producer of the moment Eliot James.