Posted on 27 August 2010
On their second album Hidden Lands, Fort Collins, Colorado octet Candy Claws get hooked on the conceptual. For starters, we’re told they opted to write the material on keyboards because they didn’t know how to play keyboards — I guess the idea of non-virtuosity/a learning curve offering an opportunity to tap into new approaches and spaces. Beyond that, Hidden Lands is labeled as “a musical companion” to Richard M. Ketchum’s 1970 book The Secret Life Of The Forest. We’re told “to derive lyrics, the band borrowed paragraphs from the book and used translation software to translate them back and forth between English and Japanese until they equalized…” Each song on the collection also contains a sample from all the other songs on the album. You can dig into this (and more) via detailed liner notes (and label scribble), but the 45 minutes are more enjoyable if you forget the above and allow the ambient whirl of keys, light percussion, soft bass, lighter voices, bird songs, strings, samples, and half-remembered Herb Alpert brass to flow without so many rules, references, and notations. But one more: For this “Silent Time Of The Earth” video the band “re-colored,” “re-sountracked,” and re-edited Ivan Ivanov-Vano and Soyuzmultfilm’s 1944 Russian animation, The Stolen Sun.
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Posted on 27 August 2010
“Live Prowler” is the opening track on No Age’s forthcoming Everything In Between. Randy Randall created this video teaser using the song as its soundtrack. And tease it does. Get pumped.
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Posted on 24 August 2010
Like her video for “Innundir Skinni,” “Crazy Car” has a soft, dreamy logic to it. It’s the only song on Ólöf Arnalds’ Innundir Skinni in English (and it’s catchy), so it becomes a default sing-a-long for those of us who don’t speak Icelandic. Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson does, but he joins Arnalds in the clip to assist with the lullaby. Since you understand the words, you can probably follow some of the images more directly than you did last time: “Please don’t go to America / Here’s your home, here are your friends…” as we trail cars en route to Keflavik (the international airport), etc. Kjartansson directed with Asdís Sif Gunnarsdóttir.
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Posted on 03 August 2010
As mentioned, Edgar Wright’s Michael Cera-starring film adaptation of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Scott Pilgrim is out in August with Nigel Godrich serving as executive producer of the indie-friendly soundtrack (to which Beck contributed original songs as Scott Pilgrim’s Sex-Bob-Omb) and the composer of an original score that includes collaborations — Cornelius and Beck’s “Katayanagi Twins vs. Sex Bob-Omb” and Godrich and Beck’s “We are Sex Bob-Omb (Fast)”and “Death to All Hipsters” — a couple of songs by Dan The Automator, and stuff Godrich did on his own. A la “Rumble.”
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Posted on 30 July 2010
Over the last two nights, I took distinct portraits of the artist. But then this is an artist with many incarnations and even more aesthetic angles. The line I constantly drop on Robyn is that she’s the increasingly rare pop star you can love without a trace of irony. But that doesn’t mean she’s not full of cheek (patiently prowling like a pugilist, peeling a banana to “Don’t Fucking Tell Me What To Do”) and chests of drawers (check the wardrobe changes both within the MHOW night, and the formalwear for the next evening’s mini-set for iheartradio’s contest winners at the tiny PC Richards Theater on 6th Ave. in Tribeca). I live-tweeted the crap out of Wednesday’s show, not something I often do because I don’t like annoying people, but there wasn’t a choice: between the vigorous dance clinic to rearranged Robyn cuts and Body Talk’s visceral triumph (“Dancing On My Own” received the extended applause reserved for classic jams, presumably so everyone clap off their goosebumps), she was at her most uninhibited, dancing creatively, ceaselessly, a two-drummer/two-keyboardist band at her back, full of thanks for our support in pulling off an unlikely mid-career transformation, from teen-pop sensation into the smart man’s pop projection. Robyn called Williamsburg her best crowd yet. With some basis for comparison, I’d agree.
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Posted on 30 July 2010
Mirroring a post title from earlier this week (via Real Estate), here’s one angled toward the sundown new wave electro-pop of ‘Gum Bowl teamer Elizabeth Harper and her Class Actress project, and a session filed for the Daytrotter crew: Herein you’ll find two from the still-lascivious Journal Of Ardency EP (the title track and “Careful What You Say,” mislabeled “Careful What You Ask For”), along with a pair slated for its full-length followup, due this year. They have names (“Love Me” and “All The Saints”), analog synths, lots of promise, and in the case of “Saints,” a Raymond Carver reference. Here’s what we talk about when we talk about downloading them at Daytrotter.
Posted on 30 July 2010
Following in Panda Bear’s footsteps, Avey Tare has himself a lone Animal album coming out this fall. Down There, recorded by the most elusive of Animal Collective members Deakin, is Avey’s first complete solo outing. It was reportedly inspired by crocodiles (reptiles, not the San Diego band). Take a closer look at the croc cover art while you read over the tracklist.
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Posted on 30 July 2010
New Jersey’s Big Troubles mention Lilys as an influence — I’d bet the house (and an ear) they’re talking about the old Slumberland/SpinART shoegaze/noise-pop Lilys, not the later throwback Kinks version. “Bite Yr Tongue” reads more like a Sonic Youth track. It’s from the forthcoming Worry LP. The video, set at various NJ fast food spots, was shot on Super 8 by Spencer Dennis. The band’s approach to eating pizza leaves a lot to be desired.
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Posted on 30 July 2010
I’ve been excitedly following the updates from Nathan Moore’s spontaneous tour through Northern California, dubbed the Hippy Fiasco Tour. What started with two iPhones and a lack of proper cell phone reception has turned into a High Sierra family reunion of sorts, with the crew getting treated to custom t-shirts, beer from Lagunitas Brewery, and a wonderfully welcome vibe from the fans in the area that are making sure that Nathan is staying busy and hopefully recouping some costs from his festival jaunt out here in the first place. When I first heard of this I immediately thought best to help out wherever possible, and the first thing that came to mind was that I really want to pack the Connecticut Yankee tonight when the tour rolls back through San Francisco.
The Yankee is a good spot for the gang and I figured it’d be ripe for a small crew of musical friends that would perhaps join Nathan on stage (Trevor Garrod, I’m looking in your direction). But nothing had been announced through yesterday, so being so bold as I was — I offered myself up as a DJ for the night to help bring out a big audience of my friends, Nathan’s friends, some of our random Twitter followers, whatever — I just wanted to help bring folks. And I’ve been working on this awesome space rock dub electronic one-man show lately called Dude House, and I’ve played a few slots around San Francisco and keep getting good feedback about some of the jams I’ve been laying down. Musically, space rock dub and Nathan Moore’s good-hearted folk tunes are a perfect fit. The crew loved the idea, so we’ve got ourselves a little shared showcase tonight as you’ll now get to see your trusty editor wrecking the decks at setbreak and following Nathan’s set. Sickness.
Hopefully this is the first of many of these type of events that I hope to start putting on in the future. I’ve been a fan of live music for so long and I’ve been working on music in the background for the past few years, this time coming firmly to terms with my love for electronic music, dubbed effects, and drum machines. And I feel that if I’m to sit here and be a critic and help drive some buzz online to the music I love, I also have to be willing to contribute to that world and bring some fresh music into being that the world hasn’t heard yet.
Join us tonight for the fun, and bring your friends. We’re also tentatively planning to webcast the show assuming we can get an internet connection at the venue; stay tuned for that and stay on our @LiveMusicBlog account to get updates from the show.
Nathan Moore
Support: Dude House
Conneticut Yankee
100 Connecticut St.
San Francisco, CA
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Posted on 30 July 2010
We posted a live video of Ra Ra Riot playing “Too Dramatic” at 2009’s Noise Pop Festival in their Progress Report for upcoming LP The Orchard. Now you can hear the longtime live staple in studio form:
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