Why? - Alopecia (Anticon, 2008)

Simeon's Dilemma is one of finest tracks on Why?'s incredibly fine album, Alopecia. It also utilizes an interesting spelling of the name 'Simon'; it looks Old Testament. Stranger still, is the little known story of how I came to be made aware of Why?'s music. Not very oddly, my old housemate - an excellent source for quality music - alerted me to the existence of Why?, recommending I give them a listen.
My old housemate's name: Simeon (spelt with an 'e').
Yet, the story does not stop there, for before I was able to give Why? a listen, I received another email from Simeon. He faced a dilemma brought on by a heady mixture of hard inner-city living, a fondness for the amber ale, life as a part-time student and a full-time connoisseur of only the finest musical delights.
Simeon's Dilemma
Weird... and Why?'s music is a little bit weird too, but in a very cool way. An eclectic melding of inie-guitar-pop-meets-a-little-bit-folkie-meets-ernest-hip-hop-troubadour. When is the NME going to start coming to me for genre descriptions?
Alopecia is an album unlike anything else your'e likely to hear this year. It is utterly original; a melding of music, words, and mulitple genres in order to create something entirely new.
Aside from all of my hype, though, the music is just really good. Listening to this type of music will make you cooler.

Key Tracks: The Vowels, Pt. 2; The Hollows; Fatalist Palmistry

Check Out: www.myspace.com/whyanticon

Girl Talk - Feed The Animals (Illegal Art, 2008)

Building upon the sampladelic stylings of 2006's much-lauded, Night Ripper, Girl Talk (aka Gregg Gillis) has taken his cut-and-paste-on-crack stylings to even greater heights on his latest release, Feed The Animals.
For music-nerds and dancefloor-fiends the world over, each new Girl Talk release is like some teenage wet-dream: a popping, locking, and dropping trip through modern musical history. Girl Talk's ability to bring seemingly disparate musical genres together is quite astounding; his ability to borrow from a multitude of artists to create something entirely new and original is, quite simply, jaw-droppingly brilliant.
To give you some idea of why we are so in awe of Girl Talk's skills, it is reported that in order to create Feed The Animals, Gillis managed to squeeze somewhere in the the vicinity of 300 hundred samples into the albums 14 tracks. Yet, it is not simply the number of the samples, but the way in which they are seemelessly interwoven, that reveals the true genius of Girl Talk.
Currently our favorite album track, Hands In The Air, blends Tag Team's Whoomp! There It Is, with Big Country's, In A Big Country, with Kraftwerk, and Hot Chip, and Afrikaa Bambastaa, and the Velvet Underground, and Aerosmith, and Michael Jackson, and Genesis, and so on and so forth. Excellent.
So, while copyright attorneys the world over breathe a collective sigh of despair, download Feed The Animals for the price you wish to pay, before the physical version hits record stores in September.

Check Out: http://www.myspace.com/girltalk

In(High)Fidelity Giveaway!!! Falcon!!!

You need only look below this posting to see what we think of Falcon's very cool debut EP. Now - in conjunction with the Planetary Group - In(High)Fidelity is happy to present you with the opportunity to win a copy of this stunningly assured set of songs.

The first two people who send benedmonds@hotmail.com an email, with "Falcon Giveaway Yes Please" in the subject line, will each receive a copy of the EP... Good luck.

Falcon - Self-Titled EP (Friends Of The American Songbook, 2008)

Falcon's debut EP is as good as any that In(High)Fidelity has heard in recent times. Soaring and cinematic, even at is most powerful moments, there is a fragility to Falcon's music that keeps it from floating beyond the stratosphere.
Jared Falcon was a song-writing prodigy in the small town of Petaluma, California. Recording over 300 songs onto a Fisher Price tape recorder before finishing high school. To say that Falcon was prolific a prolific writer would be an understatement. Sadly, though, while Falcon was able to translate his view of the world into songs of heartbreaking beauty, he was not able to detach himself from that same heartbreaking world, and, as a result of poor mental health, was never able to properly record his amazing songs.
Enter Shannon Ferguson and Neil Rosen, two of Falcon's classmates, who, having relocated to New York City, have paid the ultimate tribute to their troubled comrade, by recording his songs in a manner that does them the justice they deserve.
The opening track, The Sandfighter, is a slow-burning gem, that sets the tone of this compelling collection of songs. Comparisons to the likes of Arcade Fire and the National start here - and are well deserved.
With five songs recorded for this EP, In(High)Fidelity's mathematics whizz has calculated that their remain... a lot of songs yet to be put to wax (and he didn't even use a calculator). With so many songs yet to be recorded, we can only hope that a full-length Falcom album will follow shortly.

Check Out: www.myspace.com/falconmusic

Key Tracks: It's only five songs... all of them.