We love Metronomy, we love Empire of the Sun and we love covers. Having said that, we fucking hated the Metronomy cover of Empire of the Sun's ‘We Are the People'. Well, most of it. I get the arty approach that Joseph used on this song by adding that sad, wilting robot voice - the same one he used in ‘What Do I Do Now', from the latest EP ‘Not Made For Love' - but in this case, it just doesn't work. And worse, when he sings with his falsetto voice, the song comes really close to a good interpretation. Unfortunately, you can't win all the time.

The cover was recorded during their Australian tour at the end of 2009 during Like a Version, a radio show for Triple J, so, yeah, no big deal. Download the artsy cover below and be sad.

By now you'll know that some time ago, the three piece that was Metronomy, turned into four.

Let's do a bit of Metronomical maths here:

Old Metronomy, 3: Oscar, Gabriel and Joe

MINUS -

Gabriel Stebbing, now of Your Twenties

PLUS +

Former Lightspeed Champion drummer Anna Prior and Gbenga Adelekan on bass

EQUALS =

New Metronomy, 4: Anna, Joe, Oscar and Gbenga

I hit Joe up with some quick questions a few months back and have recently gotten me some answers.

Can you please introduce the new members and what their role in the band is?

Hello, this is Gbenga, he plays bass guitar and sings. This is Anna, she is a mean drummer.

How did you go about hooking up with the new additions?

Anna has been a friend of ours for a long time. Gbenga won the auditions.
 
Is this going to change your sound/song writing process?

No...maybe.
 
How are things with Gabriel and Your Twenties?

Don't care.
 
Changing/replacing band members is kinda like when they replace a beloved character on a TV show: it's just not the same for a while, and sometimes the newbie is never quite accepted by the public, but people get used to the new face/s eventually. How do you think this will impact on your live shows - are you keeping the lights and dance moves (please say yes)?

Of course we have kept the lights and the moves, although the dancing is harder to incorporate now that we are playing everything live. As for the rest, of course it will take time to adjust, but that is the joy of it. People will realise what a burden Gabriel was. Anna and Gbenga are twice as good looking as Gabriel and one of them is a girl! Finally boys will like our band.

...

And heeeeere you are, we've been sitting on these for a while now, itching to post them. To show you that their sound is still just as fantastic in a teaser for the upcoming EP, Not Made For Love, due out on the 21st of September (which has three songs and a slew of remixes for each), here's the Ebola remix for 'What Do I Do Now' and the Joakim remix of 'Not Made For Love'. Awesome stuff.

YAYAYAYAY WE'RE (STILL) IN LOVE WITH METRONOMY!

While Christel has been hollering around New York and watching some really good gigs, I was in the countryside of Brazil staying at my parent's for 10 days (that is the cause of the lack of posts). It should be back to normal this week. Sorry.

The Very Best @ NYC

photograph by Santiago Felipe

One of the gigs that Christel went to last week was from the brillant Afro-pop fusion project of the Swedish duo Radioclit with the Malawian singer Esau Mwamwaya known as The Very Best. In the middle of the gig Vampire Weekend's Ezra Koenig went to the stage to sing 'Warm Heart Of Africa'. The amazingly sunny song just becomes The Very Best new single which means that we have a packet of remixes to download.

After being remixed by Radioclit in their latest single, Metronomy  returns the favor by making 'Warm Heart Of Africa' an extraordinary mix of lazy synths and funky bass. It's not only a total different song, it's a Metronomy remix. So, yes, you know it's good.

Also very good, is the brass section used in the Architecture In Helsiniki remix. It's captured the 20s so well that you can almost see black & white girls with perfectly symmetrical hair and white pearls smoking long cigarrettes and doing those silly dances.

Modernaire

I've been a huge fan Modernaire since mid 2007, when I first heard them play in a dingy pub in Manchester with Dolby Anol and this awful awful act called Bitterly Ironic (of all things). They stood out a mile, with their eerie girl vocals in perfect harmony and their dirty dark, swashbuckling pop electronica. I've said before that the band on first glance might seem a little pretentious; but their razor sharp wit and a tidy vocabulary belie a sense of humor that's rarely seen in the current musical climate.

They've been fairly quiet since they released their EP 'Velvet Never Dries' in 2007, only hitting out occasionally with wiiiicked remixes for the likes of Metronomy, MGMT and Empire of the Sun (cop them all below). All of them are brilliant, seriously, keeping the soul of the original tracks but injecting some of their very own deliciously noir, eerie pop chic into their remixes.

Now on releasing 'Faites Vos Jeux' they've also remixed WhoMadeWho, continuing the build their stellar portfolio of excellent remixes for great bands. Modernaire's treatment of 'Keep Me In My Plane' is an echoey disco number, playing around with percussion, putting the bouncing guitar into the background and filling the space with dirty mid-range synths, that have a vague Metronomy feel. It's a super clever remix as all of their remixes are; taking into account the whole personality of the original track and restyling it a la Modernaire without obscuring WhoMadeWho in the slightest.

The single Faites Vos Jeux drops next week on roXour Records (alongside our friend TEPR) in the UK, but we've got it here for youuu:

FAJjin hell!

Remember a little while back when I told you about FAJ, the design duo from East London? Well they've freshly graduated from college, killed their end of year show amongst all those sorts of shenanigans, and so, finally, their real fun can begin.

Jess and Fanny let me in on what's coming up next for them, so y'all better watch out because they've got a whole bunch of stuff planned in the coming months, like a moving art installation for one. The girls have just brought a car that they've covered in their tie dye fabric on the outside and pasted their look book all over the inside. Can I make a suggestion that you call it the FA-JAY-JAY-mobile?

Already they've planned a diffusion line to extend from their main collection that has more of a womenswear slant to it that's going to be unleashed in a catwalk (as RuPaul would say) extravaganza eleganza in July, complete with a short film made by Danny Sangra - director of a new video edit of Metronomy's 'Radio Ladio' and who also created FAJ's logo. Besides Danny and their Fa-Jay-Jay mobile, to add more fuel to the fire, the girls are also teaming up with Bourgeois and Maurice (his lashes are genetic, his compassion fake; she's alright once you get to know her - you'll never get to know her) the neo-cabaret act.

All of this will be culminating in a par-tay at the beginning of July. *PHEW!* It's going to be a gang bang of epic proportions.

In the meantime, to get your appetite whet, here's a shoot that the super talented Mark Cant did of their collection for you to geeze at.

GALLERY

Charlie Le Mindu. Hair Designer (beyond) Extraordinaire. Photography by Kim Jakobsen To. Styling by Jamie Bull. Make Up by Thomas De Kluyver. Model: Nicolette

Charlie Le Mindu, l'enfant terrible and hair maverick, is proudly releasing his lookbook into the wild! Having just showed the first ever (and hotly anticipated) hair collection during London Fashion Week AW 09/10 to much acclaim, his hype is justified.

Hailing from Bordeaux in France, Charlie made a name in Berlin cutting hair in nightclubs before moving to London about a year ago. It's been up and up ever since.

Charlie is doing some amazing things. Besides his London Fashion Week success, he's just finished doing the hair on a limited edition number of Barbie Dolls dressed in Roksanda Ilincic and Danielle Scutt for Barbie's 50th Anniversary (Barb's being tricked out in loads of different designer clothes) to be sold at Colette in Paris and Dover Street Market in London. Charlie has collaborated with designers as well as beauty edited for various magazines. He was named in last year's Guardian Summer Cool List (no. 22), he's been featured in Vice Magazine, Vogue Russia and Diane Pernet (A Shaded View on Fashion) mentioned that she loved the show we did at the last London Fashion Week besides a load of other press both online and print; not to mention the hair styling he's done for magazines like i-D and SuperSuper.

But let's drop some names like bricks shall we? He caresses the tresses of people like Carrie Cassette Playa, Joe Mount of Metronomy, Peaches (as in the Teaches of - not Geldof), Kap Bambino (who also did the wicked soundtrack for the show), Bloc Party, Angie Reed and Cobra Killer to name a few; and even makes wigs for the tabloid tranny Jodie Harsh and the B52s on their recent tour (and he's also responsible for my cold left ear in the London winter, having shaved the left side of my head).

Charlie doing hair in the club

He's just finished up being featured in Peaches' upcoming single Talk To Me amongst other bands (including hair for Metronomy's next vid)...AND Charlie's collection is available for viewing at Blow PR's press days from the 1st - 3rd of April. For more information please contact Lisa@blow.co.uk

GALLERY

Topman: Joe Mount aka Metronomy, in CTRL

As Raphael was on his way out to DJ (Feliz aniversario Michell e Fubah!) at a birthday party, I slunk in from Topman’s opening CTRL night curated by METRONOMY. It was a rather well turned out crowd, dressed in a way that those big guns at Topshop/Man would be proud; it was an event that they could marvel at their cleverly executed marketing strategies to see the very neatly eclectic and nattily groomed lads and lasses who filled the gig room at the Hoxton Bar & Grill. (I, in fact, was also incidentally in Topshop; sporting a black panelled body con skirt that I’ve taken to wearing at every opportunity with anything and everything in my wardrobe, and that night it was coupled with amongst other things, my favourite asymmetric Ann Sofie Back cardigan).

Anyway, the gig room was absolutely rammed. So, taking a deep breath and squaring my shoulders to forge through the crowd, I ended up meekly apologising to all the people whose drinks I accidentally knocked as I squeezed past them, ducking my head and weaving like Beyoncé. Even having mad weaving skillz such as I, it was still a struggle to get in and out of the obviously fashionable event.

Your Twenties (+ Metronomy on drums)

By the time I arrived and found a little space where I could comfortably obscure someone else’s view of the stage (unfortunately I was standing in front of a short girl - okay, I was wearing my beloved four inch platform Opening Ceremony wedge boots; I was probably actually her height to begin with), I had unfortunately missed Koko Van Napoo but skidded in time to catch Your Twenties. Who were accompanied by, to my surprise, Joseph Mount (curator of the night) of Metronomy fame on the drum kit - I didn’t realise that he had joined Your Twenties to drum to Gabriel Stebbing’s (keyboards/bass in Metronomy) vocals and guitar. Apparently not though as Gabe explained; Joe had kindly stepped in as their usual drummer had traded this gig to go to America with a band that was breaking up anyway (burrrn!). Your Twenties glided through their tightly harmonised set, charmingly nostalgic yet gently modern in their Metronomy tinged take on Beatles flavoured indie pop. Kamerakino then stepped up with their brand of jangly, quaintly noir gypsy throw down.

Kamerakino

I exited after that as I had a cameo to make at the bar I regularly haunt. It was their first karaoke night and I promised I would stop by. It was brief but intense, and as I was walking away one of the owners came running out after me yelling “Christel you’re on! They’ve got Britney! Quick!” WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY (but I did it of course. And it was beyond fun).