‘Controller’ by Hercules & Love Affair feat. Faris Badwan

April 17, 2017

Natalia Valencia New Releases No comments

After a two-year break, Hercules & Love Affair (DJ Andy Butler´s disco/dance/house lovechild) released a video for their single ‘Controller’ featuring English front-man for The Horrors, Faris Badwan. The video is directed by artist Rei Nadal and has Emmy award winner cinematographer Franklin Dow as Director of Photography, but if you look at the video, the dancer with the bandages feels reminiscent of a Lucian Freud painting. Except for the giant floating dark lips and platinum teeth, which pretty much makes me think of Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson also. Will it be another Blind? I don’t think anyone can predict that, Read more »

‘Waiting for the Stars’ by Vitalic feat. David Shaw And The Beat

January 22, 2017

Paul Brown New Releases No comments

The latest video release from this French artist is winningly strange and funky. Pascal Arbez-Nicolas aka Vitalic has been around for a good few years now. His 2005 debut lp Ok Cowboy was a particular favourite of one half of this blog back in the day and since then he’s been pretty busy, with his fourth studio album proper Vitalic (there’s also a live album and a DJ mix album). I guess you would describe his sound as electroclash disco with attitude if you were looking for a description. But I’m not, so suffice to say it made me jiggle my Read more »

‘Pills, Thrills & Bellyaches’ by Happy Mondays

July 9, 2016

Paul Brown Albums No comments

Revisiting the classic days of Madchester with the band who crashed genres and helped define an era. There are in any music lover’s life a handful of moments where hearing something for the first time acts as a kind of epiphany; when a piece of music grabs you, shakes you, shocks you even and nothing in your world of music is ever quite the same again. I can clearly remember the moment when, as a 17 year old working in a shop, the opening chords of a particular song caused me to almost involuntarily stop what I was doing, walk Read more »

Playing on and on: 3 of the best from Basement Jaxx

November 27, 2015

Paul Brown Articles No comments

As one of the world’s pre-eminent dance acts of the last 20 years Basement Jaxx have produced one gloriously catchy hit after another. They’ve also given us some pretty amazing videos and in this post we take a look at three of our favourites… Felix Buxton and Simon Ratcliffe met in 1994 in a pub in the borough of Clapham, in south-west London and bonded over a love of house music. Ratcliffe had already accumulated enough hardware for a small studio, and the duo quickly set about making tunes together, subsequently setting up their own label, Atlantic Jaxx, on which Read more »

Unforgettable Live Performances: Daft Punk at Bercy, Paris – 2007

August 14, 2015

Natalia Valencia Articles No comments

Choosing this unforgettable performance was difficult because there a 2 specific Daft Punk performances that come to mind and both are just visual and musical experiences that I feel are pretty much unbeatable, the runner up performance was Daft Punk at Coachella in 2006 (more on it bellow) but I decided to go with Live at Bercy because it ended up becoming the Alive Album, released in 2007 and which went on to win the Grammy for Best Electronic/Dance album in 2009 but most importantly, the hearts and devotion of a generation! Daft Punk Alive – Paris Bercy 2007 – DVD Fan Read more »

New Reels: “Go” – The Chemical Brothers feat. Q-Tip

May 11, 2015

Paul Brown New Releases No comments

Having already seen the return of fellow dance pioneers The Prodigy, 2015 also marks the arrival of a new album by Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons aka The Chemical Brothers. The album will be titled Born In The Echoes and this, released last week, is the first single to be taken from it. It not only features A Tribe Called Quest’s main-man rapper Q-Tip but also marks a re-acquaintance with French director/auter Michel Gondry, having previously worked with him on 1999’s ‘Let Forever Be’ and 2001’s ‘Star Guitar’. The video features seven girls and two poles and is trademark Gondry Read more »

The Tuesday Playlist No.1: It has to start somewhere…

March 10, 2015

Paul Brown Playlists No comments

Introducing our new weekly Spotify and or YouTube playlist featuring 15 songs to brighten your week! Those of you who know us quite well by now will have cottoned on to the fact that we like a playlist or two, and we have for almost a year now been presenting you with our themed 60 track affairs which we hope at least some of you have enjoyed. However, we started toying around with the idea of much shorter playlists for two reasons. Firstly, because we accumulate a lot of music on Spotify that we think you would like to hear that Read more »

New reels: ‘She Keeps Me Up’ by Nickleback

March 9, 2015

Paul Brown New Releases No comments

Canadian rockers Nickleback display new disco/dance sound on latest single. It’s hard to think of too many bands who inspire the kind of dedicated and committed level of derision that Nickleback do, and yet you can’t help thinking that they are having the last laugh. After all, here are a band who’ve sold some 50 million records and filled countless stadiums in the US and beyond. None of this matters though to the legion of people who love to hate Chad Kroeger and his chums. Why do we love to hate Chad Kroeger and co? Of the main accusations leveled Read more »

New Reels: “Living For Love” – Madonna

March 5, 2015

Natalia Valencia New Releases 2 comments

We review the latest Madonna single and ask is the Queen of pop getting too old for this kind of thing? Just because she is not “in” right now, and it is actually trendy not to like Madonna and apparently is amusing to talk about her fall, it does not mean that her new single is not one great dance track! Living For Love – Madonna Ok, ok, so this video has grown on me. I cannot say much for the rest of Madonna´s 13th (unlucky 13th?) studio album, I´ve only heard 6 tracks, of which I like this one and Read more »

New Reels: “Huarache Lights” by Hot Chip

February 11, 2015

Paul Brown New Releases No comments

When we were writing our 00’s Decades playlist, released just a few days ago, there was one track that had we here at MVD bubbling about how great it still sounded, how insanely catchy and addictive it still was. That track was ‘Over & Over’, and in 2006 (yes it was that long ago!) it was pretty much the buzz track of the whole year and along with the accompanying album The Warning helped propel Hot Chip in to the mainstream. And whilst their more recent singles haven’t bothered the charts much they still garner plenty of critical acclaim for Read more »

New Reels: ‘Nasty’ by The Prodigy

January 14, 2015

Paul Brown New Releases One comment

The Essex dance-punk trio return with a typically brutal new single and an album to follow but can they ever regain the relevance they had in the 90’s? Some 25 years ago 19 year old raver and classically trained pianist Liam Howlett created a demo tape of various tracks he’d made on a Moog Prodigy synthesiser which ended up in the hands of a guy he’d met on the Essex party scene called Keith Flint. He liked what he heard so much he went back to Howlett and insisted they form a group together with Flint and his friend Leeroy Read more »

A Charlie Brown Christmas: Christmas (and life) in 25 minutes

December 24, 2014

Natalia Valencia Articles No comments

As the festive season draws to a close for another year we take a look at the enduring Charles Schultz Christmas classic. Today I have decided to write a post on one of the greatest Christmas classics: A Charlie Brown Christmas. I am talking about the first musical animated television special based on The Peanuts. (My personal favorite comic strip of which by the way I am sure I will write about again). It aired on December 9th 1965 and even though the world has changed the infinite wisdom contained in the strip will be relevant for many decades to Read more »

History of the Pop Video Pt.4: The Thrill of Michael Jackson’s Thriller

November 1, 2014

Paul Brown Articles No comments

Halloween is upon us once again. Not only that but so is part 4 of this series. On top of that MVD is almost a year old, and so it would seem like a more than appropriate time to discuss a video which was not only the greatest of it’s age, and maybe of all time for that matter, but also one that changed the (white) face of MTV, as well as being in many ways Michael Jackson’s crowning artistic achievement. Actually it’s unfair to couch Thriller in terms of simply Michael Jackson, with the song written by Rod Temperton Read more »

New Reels: Billie Ray Martin, Kiesza, & Jungle

July 19, 2014

Natalia Valencia New Releases 3 comments

It is time for the second post on what we are listening to right now and would like to recommend. Since they are mostly new artists, there is not a lot of info, so bear with me and I hope you enjoy the suggestions. Kiesza´s “Hideaway”, Jungle´s “Busy Earnin´” and “After All” by Billie Ray Martin. Kiesza – Hideaway This Navy code breaker, beauty pageant participant, classically trained ballerina and singer and song writer could not be cooler. This video was shot in a single take…yes, a single take while she is dancing around Brooklyn. It was released in February Read more »