jj no. 2: A mix of Scandinavian balearic (I know)/outer space R&B/folk-y gloriousness...

I can find very little info online about this group, "jj," except that they're Scandinavian, they're mysterious, and their album is this amazing mix of spacey R&B, reverbed-out balearic guitar washes, Ali Farka Touré-ish guitar lines, and flight-y & folk-y lyrics. It's basically awesome. One track, "Ecstasy," is based around a sample of Lil Wayne's "Lollipop," but makes it sound like something on Italians Do it Better; other tracks are like a haunted Ciara singing over Studio's "West Coast." I'm flagrantly street teaming for this at this point, but it deserves it.

The Fader has an MP3 Here: http://www.thefader.com/2009/6/25/freeload-jj-from-africa-to-malaga-mp3/

http://www.thefader.com/ys_assets2/0009/3945/JJ.jpg

Does anyone know anything else about them?

Hmm, that song sounds a bit like Liz Frazer covering Paul Simon...

http://www.sincerelyyours.se/produkt/YOURS0115.jpg

The whole album is streaming here

"from africa to mlaga" is very pretty and nice, yes

ha, the one with the "lollipop" sample sounds like invisible conga people

yes

They're on Sincerely Yours, The Tough Alliance's label, and I suspect they're TTA with a girl singer, but I've got no proof. And I havent looked into it enough, or at all, to be proven otherwise.

Played this straight through three times today! I don't know Tough Alliance at all... what should I check out?

you shouldn't

i really love the track "1981 -" off of A New Chance fwiw.

This is great!!

Yeah I played From Africa To Malaga last night and it definitely hit the spot. I need to get the album really don't I?

"album" - it's only twenty six minutes. They seem enamoured of the 2.40 - 2.50 range.

"Ecstasy" is so great and vaguely disturbing.

i listened to it yesterday and really wasn't feeling it at all

the 'lollipop' one just made me want to listen to 'lollipop', which i don't even like that much. the much promised ciara vox never happened. nothing much happened, actually.

Kind of with the Lex on this one. But might give it another chance if I didn't have to keep hitting play every 30 seconds.

It reminds me a bit of Pooka and parts of the first Heather Nova album.

Yeah this thing of having to reload very 30 secs is killing me. I think hearing this at work on small speakers is not doing the music justice either.

It's the kind of thing I *should* like. And for £5.40 I should really splash out.

However, the first track comes on with that kind of cod-ska thing that was all the rage a few summers ago when everyone from Lilly Allen to Paris Hilton was doing it and I really can't stomach any more of it. Even if the rest of the album is nothing like that.

cod-ska?

I'm sure that's the wrong term and I knew that as I posted it. But I hope you know that thing I mean.

i think these guys are running with my least favourite things about Air France (this sounds a lot tweer/less melancholic than No Way Down for me) and Tough Alliance (less robust production) instead of the best bits. could be a grower tho.

I know the thing you mean kate but not the track? None of these sound like "Stars Are Blind"/"L.D.N."/etc. as far as I can tell.

The very first one! "Things Will Never Be The Same Again" comes in at 0:09 and it just makes me twitch.

No ska bassline or beat at all though. The light shuffly beat and watery bassline is just basic scando balearic pop maneuvers surely - though I can definitely see how that might make a person twtich.

I am convinced that you and I listen to music in such different ways that we might as well be listening to different records.

We'll throw it to the jury.

Do you just not hear that off-beat synchopated guitar coming in at 0:09? Accents on the 2 and 4 beats. That's the absolute hallmark.

I'd never seen this intro to LDN before! Fantastic:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6p_V0y7C9vc&feature=fvst

I can see the resemblance between these two tunes - that whole sunny vibe, light upbeat shuffly, 4X4 groove, keyboard stabs on the offbeat. I guess I just associate "cod-ska" with horns, reggae lilt, bass etc.

"Stars Are Blind" is such a great shameless example of all the elements:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gO3mGPXeSE

Those synchopated guitar stabs on the 2 and 4 beats are all over all those records.

Yeah sure but it's fairly backgrounded in the jj track so I barely noticed it until I went back to listen for it specifically. It seems like a pretty big staple on a lot of this scando-pop kind of stuff, so maybe I just don't associate it with "cod-ska" anymore - see Air France's "Beach Party" for example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58X5nMnziLQ

kate, you listen to music differently than we do. same thing on the black meteoric star thread.

i think these guys are running with my least favourite things about Air France (this sounds a lot tweer/less melancholic than No Way Down for me) and Tough Alliance (less robust production) instead of the best bits. could be a grower tho.

― Hard House SugBanton (blueski), jeudi 9 juillet 2009 14:56 (49 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

This is exactly how I feel about this. At the moment, it does sound a bit too bland... It will probably grow on me a bit, but there's no way I'll like it as much as TTA or Air France.

I think I know what Kate's getting at although I have yet to hear the track in question. You do hear it a lot in this sort of stuff partly because it's a bit of a route-one signifier for 'laid back, light and summery'.

Yeah, I think that's exactly why I don't like it. It is lazy songwriter's shortcut to "summer voibe" - stick some reggae/ska offbeat accents on a guitar and some vaguely steel drum tones (or synth sounds occupying a similar sine wave tone soundspace) in there. Don't really like that Air France track posted either, for the same reason.

But, then again, I guess to me the 4-part harmony says "summer" in a similar sort of way thanks to west coast sunshine pop of the 60s.

i wonder if kate would like kuniyuki takahashi - i think i said on the air france thread, and it applies here too, that this stuff strikes me a as a twee, mimsy, kinda irritating take on what he does.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8wtUl6Y8zU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cg6-IBzZUJg

oh i didn't mean to post the first one! 2nd one, 'you get me', is more similar to what we're talking about, w/the smooth female vox and blissed-out feel.

huh i hadnt thought of that lex--i guesss i can kind of hear it but takahasi seems so clearly to be coming out of a like pat metheny place whereas air france is so st etienne that i wouldnt have compared them

Kate I get yr point above totally. I think I was just thrown because Paris Hilton etc. were reviving ska so much more ostentatiously, this is more like generic ska cues that get mixed with everything.

Also the kuniyuki stuff is awesome. But yeah sort of more Studio vibe than Air France vibe, if you were going to come up with balearic scando-pop reference points.

NO NO NONONONONOOOOO THIS HAS THE DREADED STAMP OF LITE JAZZ ON IT AND MAKES ME WANT TO BREAK FURNITURE

this is more like generic ska cues that get mixed with everything.

which is much more why I don't like it.

one of the things that i find so cool about the concept of balearica or beardsmic is the way you can have studio and air france and takahashi all arrive at similar places but come out of very different traditions

i don't actually hear half as much st etienne as y'all do in air france and jj - i think insofar as st et appeal to me, it's because of their lyrical and melodic focus, not the "moods" they create, so once that's dissipated, i'm left with a whole lot of nothing.

kate im just going to warn you, the deeper you get into anything that gets called "balearic" the closer you get to lite jazz, so you may want to turn back now

haha yeah kate is otm about the lite jazz in kuniyuki. didn't realise it'd be a turn-off!

IIRC kate's favoured strand of balearic is lindstrom et al, which in the context of air france and kuniyuki, seems like a completely different genre

i dont know anything about takahashi but i always assumed he WAS a lite jazz artist who had just been "found" by the mysterious curatorial forces of balearica

I always want to pimp out the first Heather Nova album to everyone, jj reminds me a lot of this but jj is just very nice whereas this is been cherishable since I was 14:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9jEhBjIEZI

when i was first starting to listen to the nu-balearic stuff (& get into the old stuff) i was working at an office where the smooth jazz station was playing all day & i couldnt help but notice the huge overlap between the things i was "discovering" (chris rea & whoever) and the playlists of magic 985 or the wave 1013 or whatever the station was called

From now on all Balearic should be labelled by time of day. Air France is like midday, Lindstrom is closer to 9 or 10pm, Mungolian Jet Set is way past midnight and Studio is sometime after the sun comes up and everyone's still mashed but too exhausted to dance.

takahashi is 4-4:30am imo

kuniyuki is when you abandon the party but can't sleep so you just go and sit in the park all afternoon

ha xp

And you wonder why I get so confused by all these umbrella genres. I like the stuff that sounds like the more wibbly end of Krautrock (comparisons to Tangerine Dream, Cluster, etc.)

Anything that brings in the dreaded SMOOTH JAZZ elements is just too far into botox disco for me.

I do like girly vocals, though, so that was why I was thinking that some of this stuff might be good for me.

So basically Kuniyuki is Air France but kind of soiled by 24hrs of partying?

ARGH GAH does that Heather Nova track ever start sounding any less... Lillith Fair? Do not want. That makes me want to go and listen go the cheesiest French electro I can find.

kate, i'm pretty sure you'd like some of the stuff on the permanent vacation label comp if you haven't already heard it - kathy diamond's 'tic toc', the superpitcher remix of 'iridium' etc...probably shouldn't clog this thread up with youtubes though

kathy diamond's 'tic toc' - 8pm
superpitcher remix of 'iridium' - 4am

i'm not hearing much of a similarity between Air France and 'You Get Me' altho it did remind me of (also Swedish iirc) Koop.

"ARGH GAH does that Heather Nova track ever start sounding any less... Lillith Fair? Do not want. "

yeah I know! the secret is that "lilith fair" is not nec. a bad thing.

A lot of nu-balearic is about redeeming certain stylistic decisions from the aura of bad taste. But I think I'd find the process of listening to a lot of this stuff very traumatic if i didn't already think "lite jazz" or "lilith fair" could mean good music.

Kate would probably like the Isolee remix of Recloose's "Cardiology", but it's not on youtube.

Lillith Fair is an UNBELIEVABLY bad thing. And I'm not just saying that because of the gender implications thereof. (there are so few pidgeonholes that female musicians get stuffed into, but the Lillith Fair "we will heeaaal the earth with our femininity!" one is the one that particularly irks me maybe the most.) I really dislike that end of folk music in particular.

I just went and listened to some Boys Noize remixes until I felt the hair growing back on my metaphorical chest!

I mean, I like girly. I *LOVE* girly, meaning pink wine and lambrini and glitter but Lillith Fair just makes me want to kill small woodland creatures.

I think a lot of stuff (even Sarah McLachlan herself) associated with the dreaded phrase "female singer-songwriter" gets misjudged as some kind of women's fertility god prayer circle soundtrack when the music doesn't correspond to that at all.

But anyway, i like to think any musical strategy, including let's save the woodland creatures with our acoustic guitars, can yield amazing music.

The balearic/beardo/etc scenes are very interested in resurrecting stuff like Sally Oldfield. It would be inconsistent to draw a line there and deny that there's any value in, oh, say, Happy Rhodes.

If it wasn't 2.30 in the morning here I'd start a rolling youtube thread of lillithry.

Thank you, no. I'd rather revive stuff like Wendy and Bonnie, really.

And before you think I'm being sexist, the only thing I hate more than female singer-songwriter is male singer-songwriter. When you've been to as many folk open mic nights as I have, you start to recognise them a mile off and you just want to strangle them with their guitar strings. I know what you're going to do. You're going to do some awful version of She Moves Through The Fair with awful awful wibbling and then you're going to sing some awful song about your indie girlfriend that broke your heart. DO NOT WANT.

i like the heather nova album that maria has. can't remember if its the first one. i like this jj song. for a second i thought it was gonna turn into an everything but the girl song. but it didn't. i like the breeziness.

This record is completely generic but fortunate to be in a genre where 'generic' doesn't really matter yet. Could do with some bass mind, it sounds a bit like a connection of demos.

The Lollipop one made me feel a bit queasy.

it's strange that the song "ecstasy" is called that - despite being very very druggy it falls on the other end of the drugs spectrum, toward the heroin/spacemen 3 side of things

i also like how utterly straightforward and cheap everything is, especially the percussion - it's the opposite of air france's gorgeous meticulous watercolor collages

Tracer have you ever had a smacky pill before? It's a bit like "ecstasy".

Do you remember when ecstasy was an emotion, rather than a drug experience?

Also, what, like Spacemen 3 never had any songs involving ecstasy (as an emotion or an experience or even a song title - erm, hello Ecstasy Symphony, Ecstasy In Slow Motion, etc. etc.)

This is kind of why I hate drugs culture. It's completely hijacked words/phases/sensations that used to be much broader, conceptually.

Or, you know, has added new meanings to words which can in fact be multivalent.

Yeah, because the word "ecstasy" never had any multiple meanings or ambivalence until a drug was named after it...

http://wordbandit.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/the-ecstasy-of-st-teresa11.jpg

Yes, a little pill made all previous usages of the word obsolete & irrelevant for the rest of time.

Hurrah, we've absurdly misread & caricatured each other's arguments.

yeah im sure it was real confusing when the drug got popular and people would take it and go "ecstasy!!!" the other people in the crowd wouldn't know if the person like wanted more drugs or was just really happy or both because you see now the word had more meanings

This sounds like Anything Box to me... Pleasant, but nothing ground-breaking. Not sure how it scored so high at Pitchfork though?

I'm pretty sure that the first line of the song is "When I'm in the club, I'm always on his drug..."

So, you know, kinda reasonable to talk about the more recent version of the word in that context. But correct me if I'm wrong!

In other news, "gay" used to be a great word to describe someone who seemed happy and carefree.

I'll combine this album with the latest El Perro Del Mar thing and end up with a full albums worth of blissed out electro-folk with whispy vocals. Win/Win for me.

this is awesome! it's like Beach House made a disco album.

weird.. this album samples this:

<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/7EugLwoAQMw&hl=en&fs=1&";></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/7EugLwoAQMw&hl=en&fs=1&"; type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

haha

This isn't anywhere near as good as the El Perro Del Mar record but I do like it a lot.

you can just post a youtube link here and it will embed

anyone else feeling O'Spada? http://www.thefader.com/2009/06/02/freeload-o-spada-time/

swedish boogie. bridge is sorta jamiroquai, but rest is great.

"time" is cool, i havent heard anything else

this doesnt feel very balearic at all tho!

i'd also choose the new el perro del mar album over this jj stuff. her vocals almost always leave me flat- the one exception being "ecstacy" but she's basically rapping there. for this reason i also really dig "intermezzo"

... that o'spada track is great, nobody said it was balearic did they?

just curious why it was getting mentioned in this thread

I cannot get this song out of my head. Except in my head it's this extended fuzz-feedback jam that gets more and more intense and grandiose, like some early Sterolab concert, huge pianos and Leslie speakers and guitar shrieks until you can barely stand it anymore. Which makes the actual song kind of disappointing.

uh which song?

uh fuckin "ecstasy"

how was i sposed to know

BECAUSE THAT'S THE SONG IN MY HEAD, DUH

they have a song with weezy?

oh never mind apparently they just sampled his verse off a trina track. that's... disappointing.

many things about jj are... disappointing. imo

do aspects of jj, tta,other sincerely yours vibes remind anyone else of pills n thrills era mondays - (obv without swr hollering all over top)

i'm thinking mainly holiday, bobs yer uncle, dennis and lois etc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCCn9nlIrzk&feature=related

I really love these guys. I only heard them in December but j2 quickly became one of my favorite albums of the year. I wish I were seeing them in March, but they're playing the night of Passover.

new album has leaked. so far so great. not very happy mondays.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/b4/Jj_-_No_3_Front_Cover_2.jpg

1. my life
2. and now
3. let go
4. into the light
5. light
6. voi parlate, io gioco
7. golden virginia
8. you know
9. i know *
10. no escapin' this

Note: "i know" is on the LP version only.

I am liking the new one more than the first. More minimal. Less caribbean influence. I am hoping that 'i know' is a bark psychosis cover? but that's just me wishing.

So good. "Let Go" just blows me away every time I hear it. Beyond gorgeous. It almost hurts sometimes to listen to it.

i thought i liked jj but this new record is AWFUL! man. feels like the worst kind of late-90s trance-pop pawn shop dollar-bin dreck.

and what's the deal with "Light"?
tell me / where would I be / if you / had the right to choose?

this stuff is alright for like... before you go to bed but i think people jamming jj need to up their standards

la la la la la, it's all around the world

i do enjoy the new record but i will freely admit to having low standards. what should i be listening to instead? has anyone claimed to be "jamming" JJ? i always figured them for a strictly headphone pleasure and this is especially true of the new one.

not really sure wht jordan means been listening to no.2 and it's pretty great

If loving jj is wrong I don't wanna be right.

lol @ the lite jazz discussion upthread, so true

not re:jj

yeah i don't get it - i like the tough alliance and love air france thus by rights i prob should like jj but i don't. snooooze.

they took the bad bits from both instead of the good bits. this has grown on me a bit tho (at least From Africa To Malaga and Ecstasy have).

no idea who those two bands are, will investigate

serious coz?

'balearic' totally passed me by (I'm assuming they're balearic); big blindspot. only acts I've heard in any depth are studio, d. lissvik and mungolian jetset

yes, balearic they are/were considered

try meanderthals lp also cozen

oh yeah, I have that too (and a few others that don't come immediately to mind)

will def look into air france/tough alliance cos I really like the jj stuff

try smoking weed on the beach too if ur into that kind of thing

so into that kind of thing

both these records are great imo

they are basically as much old-fashioned "indie pop" as balearic tho no?? kinda need a taste for that kind of stuff.

half the shit labelled balearic just sounds like saint etienne 2 me

balearic is a ~~mindset~~

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QXJy-wlZe8

few influences here and there

didnt think i really fucked w/ the st etienne indie end of balearic but i will fuck w/ this in a second, the version of that akon song they do is the best of their rnb covers, but i guess just bc i dont like the orig. (on the other hand their lollipop and birthday sex covers are just limp sounding 2 me)

what is the reason that their 2nd album is so much less acclaimed same review in p4k i think gave it like half the score?

also this is shockingly awesome

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sycfHnxJdHg

they are good at being "inscrutable"

what is that 5 minutes thing? from their 2nd album?

no its from swedish radio, like a mini mixtape i guess

I'm grindin' until I'm tired
You say you ain't grindin' until you die

you posted on the wrong lil wayne thread

blasphemy, i'm sure, but these days i'd rather hear jj than The Game

well yeah, it's just weird that you posted those lyrics as if she wrote them

wasn't my intent. just love the way she sings them.

these days i'd rather hear jj than The Game

^^^^^

these any day

http://stereogum.com/591901/jj-cover-the-dream/video/

their schtick has grown soo tired imo, it's starting to remind me of those open-mic acoustic guitarists who take pop songs and just slow em down and sing em all heartfelt-like

yeah that cover reminds me of youth group music in the worst way. zzzzzzzz.

i think it sounds really pretty but i'm a total sucker for jj's sound

http://www.sincerelyyours.se/yours0159.php

How much mileage do you think is left in this idea? I am enjoying this mixtape but I can see how it's twee feyness would irritate.

Scandinavia doesn't feel very Balearic these days:
http://www.weatheronline.co.uk/Norway/Oslo.htm

everyone who like these guys should check out the high summer ep - i'm really loving it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYF7ptiLBsw

i'm as far as you can get / from the american dream
yeah

http://i.imgur.com/1bKQ1.jpg

Metro Video Centers

I was so repulsed I tweeted about it the other day. ~~modern era~~

lana del rey - "west coast"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKxuiw3iMBE

tove lo - stay high (habits remix) (feat. hippie sabotage)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYM-RJwSGQ8

sorry, i didn't mean "west coast" i meant "ultraviolence":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFWC4SiZBao

Lol this band put an album out recently. Anyone hear it?

Metro Video Centers

― buzza, Saturday, November 17, 2012 10:27 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i am weirdly nostalgic for this kind record and i cant find my copy of it anywhere

loll never knew that quote in 'my way' is charlie manson

"ecstasy" was their only good song