Javelin has been a band I’ve been following up on for a while now. They have always made amazing chill beats (I hate that I just used the word chill but it’s true) that I can pretty much throw on at anytime of the day. They’re usually lyric-less, and I feel that they provide the best background noise in the vein of J Dilla’s Donuts or pretty much any Thievery Corporation/ Air etc.
Seeing these guys live took it to a whole new level for me. I never
thought two white boys from Rhode Island could grove so good*. Melissa and I got to check them out at the Brooklyn Knitting Factory to a crowd of 2+ people. It was like at 12pm on a Friday during CMJ. Needless to say they still were full of energy, accompanied by 2 high stacks of boom boxes instead of amps, and a drum pad. It was pretty ridiculous when they started asking the four people there for request.
Still an amazing set. I was entertained.
As for the new album, No Mas (Luaka Bop) it is amazing. Well maybe it’s just something I’m buzzing on right now, but I think it may blow up pretty big. I couldn’t put it in a genre. Some songs (like intervales Theme) could have been a bonus track on Donuts. I mean these guys heavily sample, and may be just
as big record bin nerds as he was (rest in peace). The song “Dep”
reminds me of a funkier (cooler) MGMT track.There is a Russian pop song on here called “Moscow 1980”, and a Go Team- esque song that feature some phenomenal whistling called “Tell Me, What Will it Be?”.
The single off the album seems to be “Oh Centra,” which I think I prefer live. It does however feature hilarious helium vocals on the album, and is about Kangaroos I think.
That’s another spectacular thing about this album, the vocals. Although not overly complicated, certain song vocals have a very haunting sound to them. The fit perfectly, and I am super psyched that they started to create deeper, more dimensional songs then the early tracks we heard off the album like “Vibrationz” which is still a very good song. Songs I recommend, other than all of them, are “Off My Mind”, “We Ah Wi”, and “On It On It”. The latter which I predict will be heavily sampled in da’ clubs.
-JOE PAOLUCCI
Modern Mystery 