11/25 - Baby Monster

I've been holding Portland, Oregon's Baby Monster in my headphones like a precious diamond for the last month - shining and shimmering brighter in my ears every time I give it light. Here is a rare example (for me) where you have a group who not only make their own popperfection, but also lend remixes to other artists and actually significantly improve those artists' original songs. To me, in a world where all electronic artists long to put their treatment to the dials on others' tracks, I find that remixes rarely pan for the gold in the heart of the originals, polish it to a radiating glow and nestle it in a display of their own making (where the point of the display is to feature that gold rather than swallow it) in the way that Baby Monster manages to do with both Ellie Goulding's precocious "Under the Sheets" and Wolf Gang's already excellent "Pieces of You."

Additionally, though, Baby Monster shines on their own original songs - as seen in spades in their recently released first single "Ultra Violence and Beethoven." It starts off like a lost MGMT anthem, but spirals off into a moody falsetto chorus (yeah, really - moody AND falsetto)that feels like a vitamin shot. In the first days of crisp Fall, it's like the last gasp of Summer.

If I sound like I'm speaking in a lot of hyperbole, that may be the case, but I see big things ahead for this group.

Now, if only so many of these groups would kindly make their singles available in the US at non-extortion import prices... You can purchase "Ultra Violence and Beethoven" in a nifty turquoise vinyl 7" from Pure Groove in London, but it'll cost you about $14 to get it from there to your record player if you live Stateside. As of yet, none of Baby Monster's remixes or originals are available via any of the conventional download sources. The one saving grace of ordering from Pure Groove, however, is that they usually limit the production of the records to a few hundred, and often (as in the case of my recent Marina & the Diamonds "Mowgli's Road" 7") they will even come signed by the band/singer. So if you're going to spend the money, you may as well spend it with a shop that cares about good music and the people who listen to it.