The Giant Golden Radio

Happy birthday America, you lucky tramp. Our belated gift of a perfectly assembled podcast dedicated to you and your inhabitants almost sucked. This summer it seems, unintelligible lo-fi, scratchy acoustics, and mumbling “stuff” is in.  Since June, all the music we’ve come across sounds like it was mixed down in the back of a van by a stoned tweenager, using only the song in his heart and a karaoke machine. Determined, we dug onward. Eventually agreeing upon sixteen gems we feel succinctly narrate a season best known for all the moments one needs music the most: barbecues, road trips, boarding gates, vigorous Shake Weight-ing, etc.

Seattle based hip hoppers Shabazz Palaces help push the top back on 24′s twisted journey with “Blastit”. I’d tell you more about Ishmael Butler of Diggable Planets’ new project, if there was anything on the internet about it for me to tell you about. LCD and Neon Indian roll in with new heat and a kind of professionalism that we’ve all grown to expect from these vets, though this episode are far outnumbered by new projects.  Bye Bye Blackbird introduce themselves with “Happy High,” track title revealing all too much about these Norcal bred electro pop kids.  Also included is Twin Sisters’ early 2010 release, “Lady Daydream”.  While the internets were in fact, going nuts over the hazy “Cassette Version” of this single, 24 offers the non-demo version we quite prefer.

Folks let me be clear, Episode 24 is one of the best GGR’s to date, though it was hard fought. John and I have both spent fruitless hours indoors clicking through music blogs, far removed from the summer sunlight. I have spent evenings lobbing hundreds of music links at him over email only to be shut down with statements like, “I could give a fuck about your lo-fi chillwave garage rock band.”  So hook up your ear buds and give this episode the proper room to sink in. Or to put it in the words of Shabazz Palaces: blastit.

1. Shabazz Palaces – Blastit
2. Neon Indian – Mind, Drips
3. LCD Soundsystem – All I Want
4. Bye Bye Blackbird – Happy High
5. Broken Social Scene – All to All
6. Twin Sister – Lady Daydream
7. Wild Nothing – Chinatown
8. Johnny Bertram & The Golden Bicycles – At The Wake
9. The National – Terrible Love
10. St. Vincent – The Strangers
11. Delorean – Stay close
12. Miike Snow – Sans Soleil
13. Gold Panda – You
14. Foster The People – Pumped Up Kicks
15. Lo-Fi-Fnk – Marchin’ In
16. Liquid Liquid – Cavern

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