Girls

Album LP

Lust For Life

Big Bad Mean Mother Fucker

Hellhole Retrace

Lust for Life

From the Don’t Look Down series

via Pitchfork.tv

The National

Alligator LP

Baby We’ll Be Fine

It’s been a rad summer here in Philadelphia. We’ve been living, laughing, loving, and all the other L words that you do during summer. And now we’ve reached our 200th post at The Daily Rag. I appreciate all of you loyal readers, however often you come visit us. There’s lots of change in the air. New seasons, birthdays, new jobs, new leases on life, but no matter what changes, we’ll still be holdin’ it down here at our online home.

There’s also some exciting things in the works for our fair blog: year end/decade end lists, new contributors and new dope shit for your eyes and ears. Hopefully you enjoy what you find here and continue to come back.

As a little personal thank you to all of you, this is a mix I’ve been listening to myself for the last couple weeks. There’s stuff on it i’ve already posted, and stuff I haven’t. Hopefully you enjoy it as much as I’ve been. Thanks again! Have an amazing weekend!

The XX

XX LP

Islands

Dirty Projectors

Bitte Orca

Stillness Is The Move

Diamond Rings

PS I Love You 7″

All Yr Songs

Yeasayer

Dark Was the Night Comp

Tightrope

Atlas Sound

Logos LP

Walkabout ft. Panda Bear

The Beach Boys

Little Deuce Coupe LP

Girls On The Beach

Little Joy

Self Titled LP

Unattainable

Sunset Rubdown

Dragonslayer LP

You Go On Ahead (Trumpet Trumpet II)

Wale

Back to the Feature Mixtape

Um Ricka ft. K’Naan

The Dead Weather

Horehound LP

I Cut Like A Buffalo

The Antlers

Hospice LP

Bear

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart

Young Adult Friction 7″

Ramona

The Rural Alberta Advantage

Hometowns LP

In the Summertime

Man Man

Rabbit Habbits LP

Mysteries Of The Universe Unraveled

Thee Fair Ohs

Summer Lake 7″

Summer Lake

The Very Best

Very Best LP

Warm Heart of Africa ft. Ezra Koenig

We’ve always know Beck to be a mad scientist, but he’s finally let us in on the tinkering that goes on in his laboratory. Mr. Hansen has started his quite ambitious Record Club experiment based out of his home recording studio.

For lack of a better explanation of what Record Club is exactly, I’ll let the man himself explain it as he does on his website:

“For those new to the Record Club, it is an informal meeting of various musicians to record an album in a day. An album is chosen to be reinterpreted and used as a framework. Nothing rehearsed or arranged ahead of time. A track is put up here once a week. As you will hear, some of the songs are rough renditions, often first takes documenting what happened over the course of a day. There is no intention to ‘add to’ the original work or attempt to recreate the power of the original recording. Only to play music and document what happens. And those who aren’t familiar with the albums in question will hopefully look for the songs in their definitive versions.”

The first edition of Record Club is the definition of ambitious and ballsy. The players for this first go round chose The Velvet Underground’s Velvet Underground & Nico. Wow. And as you might expect, it’s a bit hodge podge, but seriously fun to listen to and watch.

The songs are being released as videos on his website. One song per week, though they are all recorded in a day. The impromptu band put together for the recording of the VU classic includes Nigel Godrich, Joey Waronker, Brian Lebarton, Bram Inscore, Yo, Giovanni Ribisi, Chris Holmes, and from Iceland, special guest Thorunn Magnusdottir, and of course Beck.

The second project from Record Club is Leonard Cohen’s Songs of Leonard Cohen and includes Devendra Banhart, MGMT, Binki Shapiro, etc. So far two of that album’s songs have been released to the site.

Check out it out for yourself, and dream of what your life could be like if you too were part of Beck’s scene (as I too have been doing).

And if anyone can find this as mp3′s, please let me know.

Record Club Site

Here are a couple of my favorite interpretations from the VU session.

Sunday Morning

Run Run Run

I’ll be Your Mirror

No Age

Losing Feelings EP

You’re a Target

Grizzly Bear

While You Wait for the Others Single

While You Wait for the Others ft. Michael McDonald

Raekwon’s new Only Built 4 Cuban Links II comes out this week. It’s a solid follow up to part one that was 14 years in the making. As is the case with most Wu solo projects, it’s full of guest spots from the entire clan, including a guest starring appearance from Ghostface who’s on almost every track.

Raekwon

Only Built 4 Cuban Links II LP

Cold Outside Ft. Ghostface

New Wu Ft. Ghostface & Method Man

10 Bricks Ft. Cappadonna & Ghostface

Raekwon

Only Built 4 Cuban Links LP

Criminology Ft. Ghostface

Rainy Dayz Ft. Ghostface

Guillotine [Swordz] Ft. Ghostface, Inspectah Deck, GZA

Mayer Hawthorne

It Just Ain’t Gonna Work Out 10″

When I Said Goodbye