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Today I'll give you a little audio preview of some out-of-towners coming through for the Dong Dong Festival, which kicks off this Thursday and will pack the weekend with enough shows to send you into early winter hibernation. Check out our handy little Dong Dong Primer here. And read on for tunes from around the world that will all be moving east this week:
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First up is St. Lô, a band from "between Brooklyn and Brittany." Music is electronic beats with some live instrumentation and vocalist Miz Walidah spitting somewhere in between swagger hip hop and boudoir R&B. They're playing the Durex Rock'n Love Night so you can maybe expect St. Lô to get you in the mood... Here's their big single to date, groove w/ it:
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Headlining Day 2 of Dong Dong at Yugong Yishan is Bonaparte, a bacchanalian groove collective led by Swiss singer/songwriter Tobias Jundt. Real raw wires, these guys. Here's a live video for their jam "Computer Love," which features a sexy anthropomorphized desktop monitor and the lyrics, "I'm your glory hole to the universe":
On record Bonaparte sounds tightly produced and hermetic, as on "Too Much" where Tobias sardonically mocks post-modern information overload or some such thing. But the live tracks show a bestial rock'n'roll appetite for distortion and grit. Here's some more:
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Emika plays Day 2 at Dada. This electro chanteuse cut her teeth in the Bristol scene as it was transitioning from drum and bass to dubstep, then bounced to Berlin in 2006. She worked as a sound designer for industry-leading DJ software/hardware producers Native Instruments and seeped in the late-night soundscapes of Berghain, in the process coming up with her own slowed down, glitched out dark dub. Her production is quite good but functions as a backdrop for her voice, which has a murky, noir charisma that holds all the pieces together. Here's the penultimate track from Dva, her 2013 double LP on Ninja Tune:
And if you care to fire up your VPN, here she is just killing it in the Boiler Room: YouTube it.
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Finally, here's Télépopmusik, Dong Dong's main exhibit. Télépopmusik at its core is three French electronic musicians who've worked with a staggering number of vocalists and producers over the last decade. Focus is on textural, swelling atmospheric jams where the beat fades in just long enough to get you moving before putting you back into a feverish dream state. They're playing on Sunday, November 10 at Yugong Yishan. Here's one to zone out to in the mean time:
*** There's your first taste. Keep checking in, later this week we'll have an in-depth interview with Teddy Boy Kill from New Delhi, who are playing at Dada on Saturday along with Emika.
