The Audio Muffin authors have been tapped to judge a Battle of the Bands at the Good Hurt on July 16th. The bands performing run a wide range of musical styles, including rock through spinning, so it should shape up to be a pretty interesting contest. One of the Muffin authors even has his band participating (hopefully he sucks or our judging days are over). But anyway, if you will be in Los Angeles next week, here is the full info:

TDP Battle of the Bands
Wednesday, July 16th
Doors open at 8 p.m.

The Good Hurt
12249 Venice Blvd
West Los Angeles, 90066
http://www.goodhurt.net/

Now there were a few really awesome albums that dropped this week. I was planning to write about the new Albert Hammond Jr. album, knowing full well that the new Ratatat album had finally been released too. But the blogosphere has really beat the Ratatat hype to death. So being that most people heard much of the album in the past couple of months I wasn’t anticipating much new shit from Ratatat this week; boy was I wrong.

The album is great, with every track interesting and pushing their sound in a different direction. Which is especially noteworthy being that you will hear the same instruments being repeated on each track - but in completely different ways. The new album has gone from my desktop, to my car, to my laptop, to the iPod, etc. I can’t take a drive without needing it on full blast. This album is also completely instrumental, mixing electro styles with classical music. In fact - I found it hard to describe a similar sounding group to my friend Paul the other day - I guess you just gotta take a listen.

The first track I’m posting is a definite must listen for anyone unfamiliar with Ratatat (although, like I said, it has been pimped all around the net for the last couple of months so most people can skip it). I decided not to post my favorite track on the album, saving it for my next Robot Music installment - which is coming close to completion so watch out for that (but honestly, if you are looking forward to that post and you are an internet shopper, you may want to order your helmet soon, because it will be coming very soon and those shipping schedules on helmets are never accurate, and that post is surely going to whack you on the melon).

Ratatat - Mirando

Ratatat - Dura

Ratatat = LP3