As posted on the fab Fader blog.

When we last spoke I was halfway through my European festival tour, reaching grueling levels of travel erosion, feeling the wear-and-tear of sleep deprivation and nonsensical flight routings. I had two days “off” in London, which only meant that I didn’t need to go to an airport during those days, not that I was actually resting. My next show was in Norway for the OsloLive festival, in a park inside the city. That show was a lot less of a mission than the others, in the sense that we didn’t have to drive out into the wilderness and my set was at a civilized hour. Even within city confines, Nordic crowds like to get down and scream in unison. The Scissor Sisters played right after me and I’m currently obsessed with their album. I also met Tony Senghore, whose tracks I’ve been spinning in my sets for the last year or so. He’s Swedish and he was talking to me about various Swedish producers who live in isolated towns up North, far from everything. Reminded me of this show that I did many years ago on a boat in the land of the Svensk. But I digress.

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New video for Chromeo “Don’t Turn The Lights On” directed by Keith Schofield. I had to watch it about 5 times to catch all the details in the background…

I have an older brother, his name is David and he has a band called Chromeo. You know this, right? I just need to make sure once in a while.

(Are you following them on twitter yet? They’re new in town.)

Chromeo have a new album just around the corner, and having witnessed the brick-by-brick assembly of that beast, I can’t wait for the world to hear it. Dave always sings me his songs before he records them. Somewhere on one of my old MiniDV tapes I have footage of him doing Momma’s Boy on the air-Wurli and air-bells when it was just in his head… I need to dig that up. But I digress. They recorded the new album at a studio just a few blocks from my apartment, so I’d go visit them every evening and was the go-to “how does this sound?” guy. I even tracked their vocals on one of the songs. But truthfully, the way they work is extremely self-contained. If they do reach out to someone on the outside, it’ll be some random saxophonist, which has happened a few times already.

Now it’s all done, and it is my pleasure to present to you: “Don’t Turn The Lights On”.
Buy it on iTunes! (That’s the US link but it’s also out in the UK.)

If you’ve walked around the mean streets of New York in the last 2 weeks, you may have seen one of these snazzy Bushmills billboards, including this one with the FG crew next to the Alife Rivington Club. Or maybe you saw the Chromeo one in Williamsburg which is, oh I don’t know, 20 times bigger:

They actually painted them! It was a real trip to watch this guy paint my brother’s sideburns.

For more pics of the campaign you can check out the Bushmills Facebook page.

Here’s a behind-the-scenes video from the shoot itself, at Jonathan Mannion’s fabled studio.

Both my brother and I were featured in this documentary on the Electro scene, which I believe I slated to premiere at WMC in a few weeks. It also features Justice, Steve Aoki, MSTRKRFT, DJ Premier, LMFAO, Lil Jon and an actual sidechain compressor. For more info check thelectrowars.com.

Look who’s coming over for dinner! Chromeo have a new blog, bookmark this baby with the quickness.

Another zany video to add to Chromeo’s collection. This one was directed by Jeremie Rozan from Surface To Air, who also did “Tenderoni” for them and the pottery version of “aNYway” for Duck Sauce. Check out my brother’s moves!

More info on “Night By Night” on the Green Label Sound page.

Philippe Zdar on the Yamaha CS80 from will seelig on Vimeo.

I’ve wanted to post something about Zdar for a while, so when I stumbled upon this video it seemed like the perfect pretext.

Philippe Zdar is 1/2 of Cassius (who in the 90s were known as La Funk Mob and used to produce hip hop tracks for MC Solaar) and he’s also my favorite mixing engineer. One of the true wizards of sound. He mixed down Chromeo’s Fancy Footwork album, which is how I came to hearing endless stories about the man and the myth, through my brother. Sometimes I mix Chromeo’s live backing tracks and I try to match Zdar’s work. It’s impossible. His tracks sound like they’re straight from the late 70’s, they’ve got more warmth and attitude than anything else out there today. He’s done a good part of Phoenix’s music as well.

In this particular clip however, he shows the good folks at Future Music his CS-80 synth and it’s just fun to listen to his accent.

Seriously, you need this in your life. I love a good 2-parted track. Siriusmo is my favorite producer of the year, and if you don’t know how I feel about Chromeo then I don’t know what you’re doing on this blog. The combination is everything I hoped it would be! Recommended.

Also if you’re in NY this Friday don’t miss Chromeo live at Brooklyn Bowl! More info on the FG blog.