Music Banter - Last album you bought, downloaded or listened to

I've downloaded a few albums of the past month and here's three of my faves:

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Fever Ray is a side project of Karin Dreiger of the Knife, a Swedish electronica band. This album feels like a continuation of the Knife's brilliant Silent Shout cd. The Knife is brother/sister duo of Karin and her brother Olaf.

Fans of Portishead, Massive Attack, Imogene Heap and Goldfrapp are likely to enjoy the dark frosty atmospherics. Fever Ray is one of my favorite 2009 releases and I'm hoping both Fever Ray and the Knife's music reaches a wider audience.

The Dreigers have used amusing tactics to make social statements in the Swedish media. In 2003, the Knife was nominated for two Swedish Grammis awards. However, the Dreijers boycotted the ceremony, sending two people in gorilla costumes to protest the dominance of male acts in the music industry

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Asa (pronounced Asha) is a Nigerian singer who is now based in Paris. Jailer echoes lot of the themes of social justice and rasta conciousness in Bob Marley's music. I think she's one of those uniquely gifted young artists from Africa, like K'naan, who will have a big impact on the direction of mainstream music over the next decade.

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I recently downloaded a remastered, expanded edition of Pylon's 1980 masterwork Gyrate. Pylon was "that other band from Athens Georgia" that never acheived the commericial success of REM. Pylon was one of the earliest bands to experiment with an angular guitar sound that defined the music of Gang of Four, Mission of Burma, the Au Pairs and the Mekons (at the time). I saw Pylon live at CBGB in New York and the Rat in Boston in 1980 and they were on of the best live bands of the post-punk era.

Up until this recent remastered edition of Gyrate-Plus, the album was kind of a holy grail for American music collectors because it was never widely available in the cd format or as a digital download. Unfortunately Gyrate can't be downloaded by UK fans because of copyright restrictions in Europe, which is a good excuse to grab it at a pirate file sharing website. I've never thought of downloading out of issue or unavailable music as piracy, anyway. As a matter of principle, however, I'll never download music which can be purchased through legal channels.

The expanded edition of Gyrate adds five singles released after Gyrate during the Pylon's short lived 3 year recording history. Unfortunately one of the weaker cuts, Danger, was the only You Tube video I could find. Their most powerful cuts like Feast on My Heart, Dub and Volume aren't posted on You Tube because of copyright restrictions.