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Kyle Barnhart

NEWS 10/1/09 7:00pm

Boys Noize's Power fizzles and sputters on turntable

By Kyle Barnhart

When Alexander Ridha, better known by his stage name, Boys Noize, announced that his heavily-anticipated sophomore release would be entitled Power, people got excited. And for good reason.After all, 2007's Oi Oi Oi was a stellar debut by the German DJ and a masterpiece of the contemporary electro house movement. Power's audacious title conjured up images of melting speaker stacks, lasers moving over sweaty, dancing twenty-somethings at 160 beats per minute and brownouts in European rave districts. There was certainly no reason to expect anything less: Boys Noize has been known to deliver the goods.

NEWS 5/15/08 7:00pm

Hercules and Love Affair anything but pretentious

By Kyle Barnhart

Eponymous albums with Internet buzz are hot right now: First Vampire Weekend, and now the new self-titled LP from Hercules and Love Affair. The latter has been touted as a "reinvention of disco," which is sort of like reinventing New Coke or trench warfare or anything else that sucked, then died. H&LA is signed under DFA Records - the label behind !!! and LCD Soundsystem - and DFA has been known to straddle the fine line between cool and pretentious music. Doesn't it already sound like an album you won't understand?Luckily for the listeners, Hercules and Love Affair is an album that transcends the pretentious attitude of anything with a dance beat. It's everything you love about subtle bass guitar and drums fused with semi-androgynous, powerful vocals and an element of atmosphere that can only be described as, well, mythical.

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