Sometimes I come across a band I’ve never heard of before, and discover a real gem. This week I found a group called Rayzd, who have an awful name and a horrendous website. I don’t even like most of their music which I’ve been able to download from the various websites hosting their stuff. There’s this one track though… Thugbrat (which you can download directly here, via GigAmerica). It’s ostsensibly a hip-hop track, but there’s a bluesy backing to it, with a big band horn section stabbing away at the chorus. It’s pared-down, simple, yet somehow relentless. I’ve been listening to it on repeat all week.

A little digging reveals that Rayzd are mostly ex-members of the excellent Yallopin’ Hounds, who stood out amongst the crowd of late-nineties neo-swing bands because they blended hip-hop and rap with their swing (honestly, it worked, no matter how awful a concept that sounds). Their albums made explicit the notion that swing was an urban thing first time around, that throughout the fourties belonging to a big band was a way out of poverty and into high society – much like rap music in the eighties and nineties.

One of my favourite shopping websites, DesignObject, has slowed down a lot of late. I think it’s being neglected somewhat.

Where to go then, for shiny new beautiful things? Well, it’s not as consumer-oriented, more of a trade thing… but MocoLoco is a very lovely resource indeed.

Today, I want one of these, which I was pointed to by MocoLoco. I was amazed to find it was designed by Phillipe Starck, when I usually detest his work.