UNKLE - Broken (War Stories)

Yo yo - real talk - if you don’t listen to UNKLE, honestly, I don’t know how to define you.  It’s ok.  I will help you.  

In the late 90’s UNKLE emerged as the duo of James Lavelle and DJ Shadow.  If DJ Shadow doesn’t ring a bell, please see cnn.com — as you are clearly lost.  UNKLE put out Psycence Fiction (which Thom Yorke sings on) and Never Never Land (which has some amazing tracks), and than Shadow sorta stayed in the dugout, letting Lavelle play the field with other musicians.  However, now they’re no longer only electronic with samples of real instruments.  Lavelle, now doing UNKLE sans Shadow, enlisted Richard File, Ian Astbury, and Chris Goss and made the most badass rock-n-roll with an 808 record of all time - War Stories. It’s so rock and roll that I’m shocked that they blew past every single rock record of 2008.  Radiohead Schmadiohead.

Key tracks: HOLD MY HAND, RESTLESS (with Josh Homme of Queens of The Stoneage), and BURN MY SHADOW.  Spike Jonze went on to use a B-side, HEAVEN, for his skate video.  Type “Heaven” Unkle into YouTube, or go back many pages on this blog and find it.  It’s incredible.  Explosions and skateboards and green-screens? Yes, please. Maybe I’ll go nuts and post more than one track.