The Presets: Through good times and bad

Modular may be pound-for-pound the coolest label on the planet, given they bankroll pretty much every good Aussie band out there (Cut Copy, Presets, Van She, Wolfmother) in addition to some damn good foreigners as well (MSTRKRFT, New Young Pony Club, YYYs). The only worthwhile Aussies not in there are The Sleepy Jackson and Midnight Juggernauts, the latter of whom would fit quite well with the jagged electropop/dance acts on Modular.

I saw the Presets last week opening for the Rapture and it was a really great show. I don't need to blather about the Rapture, they're my favorite live band so it was magical blah blah blah. But the Presets' club-friendly stuff also worked well with an audience that mostly hadn't heard of them. They also do a cross-fade between songs where they sample Daft Punk's "Da Funk," which upon further review I strongly believe to be the best electronic song ever produced.

Midnight Juggernauts / "Tombstone" (from Motel de Moka)
Midnight Juggernauts / "Shadows" (from fluo kids)
The Presets / "Girl & The Sea"
The Presets / "Are You The One?" (left-click)
Van She / "Kelly" (left-click)
Van She / "Sex City" (left-click)
Cut Copy / "Saturdays" (left-click)
Daft Punk / "Da Funk [Live at Coachella]"

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Stereogum was pimping The Twilight Sad a couple weeks ago and I'm unclear why no one else is catching on. Their music is very layered and intense, and at times things get kind of chaotic like BSS. Their lead singer also has a very noticeable Scottish accent, which is kind of interesting and surprisingly not annoying.

The Twilight Sad / "And She Would Darken the Memory" (from Stereogum)
The Twilight Sad / "3 Seconds of Dead Air" (from Stereogum)

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While cruising around youtube I've noticed links to "Ask a Ninja", but it just seemed kind of corny so I never bothered checking it out. Plus, back in the day I distinctly remember the Officials Skins Homepage (bonus points if you know what I'm talking about) had an "Ask Jackie" section where you could ask Jackie Chan questions about life. So I feel a little ahead of the curve on this. But I finally chcked out "Ask a Ninja" the other day and it's actually really funny--there's surprising depth to the humor at times.

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Inside Man + Memento = Unknown. At least conceptually.

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The superior version of Royksopp's "Remind Me" is not on the album (and interestingly also not used in the song's video).

Royksopp / "Remind Me (Someone Else's Radio Remix)" (from Mr. Brightside)

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Revenge is painful.

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So I saw Borat and I have to say it was funny but the second-best movie of the year? Give me a fucking break. To Sacha Baron Cohen's credit, there's actually a narrative and some new jokes, but mainly it's more of what you'd expect from Borat. I am (for unjustified reasons) proud to say I got on the Ali G bandwagon even before it came to HBO, but I think I'm about done with Borat. It's run its course. Fortunately, while the show looks done, my favorite character Bruno is getting the feature film treatment now too.

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Slate wisely continue their slew of Borat-related articles, this time telling us what Borat gets right and wrong about Kazakhstan.

In Borat's Kazakhstan, popular sports include cow punching and "shurik, where we take dogs, shoot them in a field and then have a party." In reality, Kazakhs, like most of the world, prefer soccer. But they also like horsemanship, wrestling, and, occasionally, buzkashi (literally "grabbing the dead goat"). In this popular game (a precursor to polo), players on horseback try to control the "ball"—the headless carcass of a goat or sheep. Then they have a party.

In other Slate news, I totally agree with Dan Kois' reasoning for why Studio 60 isn't that good.

When you begin your series with a soliloquy on the maladies of television, you're offering yourself up as the cure. And you're promising your audience that not only your show but also your show-within-a-show will be exemplary.

It's not just that the sketches aren't funny, although they're not. Take the third episode's centerpiece: a game-show parody called "Science Schmience," in which fundamentalists of all stripes—an Orthodox Jew, a Taliban member, an evangelical Christian, Tom Cruise, and a witch—attempt to refute science with faith. In premise, it's promising, if cluttered (that's a lot of yahoos on one stage). In practice, though, it's painful. To the evangelical, who's just claimed that life began 6,000 years ago, the game show's host pronounces: "You understand that archaeologists are in possession of a 3 million-year-old skull found by Johannesburg, which would put your answer off by 2,994,000 years." Yeah, it sounds about as funny as it reads.