A coworker turned me on to La Blogotheque today. It is a really extraordinary site where you can watch impromptu music videos and previously recorded live performances from some of the best musicians out there. Vampire Weekend’s performance was particularly impressive. The site really is amazing. It is in French so I would encourage you Americans, like myself, to click around until you uncover all the content that’s on the table. One part of the site that you absolutely cannot miss is the “Concerts A Emporter” section. There are some really exciting performances there.
Why don’t we have anything like this stateside yet? It’s a brilliant idea. This site makes me want to get out there and see more shows. It’s perfect for a Friday afternoon.
What’s the cheapest way to make a music video? Use your desktop computer, of course!
But I don’t mean using Final Cut or even iMovie or anything like that. No, take it a step further and use pretty much every other application.
I don’t know if you have to be a Mac fanboy or not to appreciate this (I naturally am) but it’s worth a watch either way. According to TUAW:
A digital filmmaker named Dennis Liu has made an amazing video for The Bird And The Bee’s lovely song “Again & Again”. The set? His Mac desktop. You sort of have to see it for yourself to understand; luckily, Dennis has dropped it on YouTube so that the world can see it in low-res glory.
And according to the comments section, the video took about 3 months to make. I lost count trying to track what programs they use in the vid, but a short list includes Microsoft Word, Notes, Photo Booth, iTunes, Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, Time Machine, a touch of iMovie or GarageBand, Finder, Quicktime, Spotlight, Widgets…crap…I lost count. The video ultimately ends up on YouTube and in the iTunes Music Store.
You really need to watch it to see what I mean. But it’s pretty f’ing incredible what you can do with your computer and a catching little song.
Just a month or two ago, Nine Inch Nails released an instrumental/experimental album online, for free. Now, a short time later, they’re thanking everyone who supported and downloaded that album, with another one - The Slip. This time a full lyrical album, but still all yours for free.
As a thank you to our fans for your continued support, we are giving away the new nine inch nails album one hundred percent free, exclusively via nin.com.
The music is available in a variety of formats including high-quality MP3, FLAC or M4A lossless at CD quality and even higher-than-CD quality 24/96 WAVE. Your link will include all options - all free. All downloads include a PDF with artwork and credits.
For those of you interested in physical products, fear not. We plan to make a version of this release available on CD and vinyl in July. Details coming soon.
Whether you like NIN or not, you gotta commend their “sticking it to the man” and distributing and selling their own music. And so far they’ve been nice enough to share it with everyone, for free. It’s pretty unheard of for a band as big as they are to do this type of thing, but it seems to be a trend that’s catching on and will hopefully continue.
Oh, and along with the free music download comes a 14-page PDF, with artwork for each track. Nicely done.
I have been waiting for some time now for Santo Gold to release her first album. It was finally released this week and it does not disappoint in any way shape or form. It’s a genre-bending album in every sense drawing from be best of pop, 80’s, rasta, hip-hop and rock. I first herd Santo Gold on Mark Ronson’s album Version. Her single, titled ‘Pretty Green’ really jumped out and me and I made sure to make note of her and watch for what she did next. There has been buzz around her for a while now and she has been making appearances just about everywhere.
Her new album is self titled and full of good music from front to back to back to front. There aren’t really any really weak tracks on the album and that is always refreshing. Head over to her MySpace page for a listen or watch the video above to hear the first track from the new album. If you are feeling it like I am, its an easy download off of iTunes.
Wow, this video is cool. I love Boards of Canada and this video for Everything You Do is a Balloon is fantastic, weird but fantastically so. The video splices in samples from “One Got Fat,” a (1963) bicycle safety movie. I have been a fan of the Scottish music duo, comprised of brothers Michael Sandison and Marcus Eoin for several years now. If you haven’t heard of them, take the time to look them up and do yourself a favor and buy one of their albums. They are mellow, but well worth the price of a CD or download.
As if Cee-lo and DJ Danger Mouse (a.k.a. Gnarls Barkley) could get any odder, they go and do this.
Only a couple months or so after the release of their newest album The Odd Couple, good ol’ Gnarls has a free download for you; it’s The Odd Couple. Backwards.
By the way, be sure to check their main site as well. They’ve got some great animations going on, along with some good looking wallpaper and other interactive features.
Adult Swim, who gained fame with their efforts to promote and support the likes of Dangermouse and MF Doom have released a new album of electronica that is available for free. I actually downloaded all of it myself and gave it a listen this morning before I thought I would write a post about it. The album is titled, ‘Ghostly Swim’. You can download it free here. It is surprisingly good. There are some really great tracks on the album and it is a really quality album to be giving away. The very first track is good and it kicks the album off strong and the album closes out well too with some good smooth tracks near the end. The album is a collaborative effort of several artists including Tycho (the musical stylings of design hero ISO50). Overall, you can’t beat something this good for free. Download it and enjoy. The album also comes with an image of the album art depicted above.
The new Mates of State video for the single ‘Get Better’ off of their upcoming album entitled, ‘Re-Arrange Us’ just hit the net. The full album is set for a mid-May release. Their last album was released in 2006. The new video was directed by Daniel Garcia, who also works as a designer and art director.
Here is the track list for Re-Arrange Us:
01 Get Better
02 Now
03 My Only Offer
04 The Re-Arranger
05 Jigsaw
06 Blue and Gold Print
07 Help Help
08 You Are Free
09 Great Dane
10 Lullaby Haze
And here are some upcoming tour dates:
05-25 George, WA - Gorge Amphitheatre (Sasquatch Festival)
05-28 Los Angeles, CA - Henry Fonda Theater
08-08-10 Jersey City, NJ - Liberty State Park (All Points West Festival)
I just have to write about the Melbourne, Australia-based band Cut Copy’s new album, In Ghost Colours. I bought it this week and I just can’t stop listening to it. I think I have listened to it about 20 times already and I just can’t get enough of it. It seems to take everything I loved about 80’s new wave and combine it with everything I love about indy rock. It makes me tap my feet and want to get up and dance. It wasn’t until I did a little homework that I also found that this band has a design twist.
Cut Copy began in 2001 as a project of front man Dan Whitford. In 2003 he joined forces with Tim Hoey (guitar/bass/backing vocals/sampler) and Mitchell Scott (drums). In 2005 they began touring internationally, opening for bands like Franz Ferdinand, Junior Senior, Bloc Party and Mylo. Last year they toured Australia opening for Daft Punk on the Neverland tour. Apparently the Sydney leg of the tour hosted an audience of 50,000 strong. Cut copy is signed to Modular Recordings who has also signed Wolfmother and the New Young Pony Club.
If you are not a fan of the 80’s, you probably won’t like this album. If you like to get up and dance, have fun and don’t mind listening to something poppy and optimistic, then this album is a winner. I absolutely love it and as I said, I just cannot get enough of it. It’s the best album I have purchased in a long time and my favorite so far this year.
So after all of that, you are still asking, ‘Where is the design twist?’ Well Cut Copy frontman Dan Whitford is also a graphic designer. You can read more about the design endeavours of Dan Whitford on his page at Modular here. He founded a creative studio called Altar in Australia while working on his music. You can see Altar’s work at their website.
Talk about serious talent, Cut Copy has it in spades. Good music and design. I’m sold.
A fellow Denverite, Anthony Cozzi who has worked under the name Snowblinded for some time now has started a record company called Plastic Sound Supply. They have just released their first CD entitled, ‘The Reprogramming Project‘. The clincher is that they released a video for the 8th track on the album (Scaffolding - Rebuild (Cacheflowe Remix) and the video has apparently been the most popular video this week at XLR8R. That is a pretty exciting accolade for a first video and Anthony is really excited.
You can view the video above. Congratulations Anthony.
The new Portishead album entitled, ‘Third’ drops April 29th. You can view the video from the latest release off the album entitled, ‘Machine Gun.”
I am a long time fan and I have no doubt there will be something worth listening to on the new album. It’s been 10 years since their last album. They will also be playing a series of live shows in the UK, throughout Europe and the U.S. to promote it’s release.
The album is being released on Island Records. It weighs in at 11 tracks and 49 minutes and 13 seconds. Portishead was one of the most influential British bands of the 90’s. Their album ‘Dummy’ released in 1994 and 1997’s self-titled album defined a new music genre dubbed ‘Trip-hop’. Other than a charity event in 2005 and a secret show mid-2007 there has been little seen of the band. They are coming out of hiding in a big way now, as you can see by the show dates below:
March Tour Dates
26 - Porto, Portugal (Coliseum)
27 - Lisbon, Portugal (Coliseum)
30 - Milan, Italy (Alcatraz)
31 - Florence, Italy (Sashall)
April Tour Dates
2 - Munich, Germany (Tonhalle)
3 - Berlin, Germany (Columbiahalle)
4 - Copenhagen, Denmark (KB Halle)
6 - Cologne, Germany (Palladium)
7 - Amsterdam, The Netherlands (HMH)
9 - Manchester, England (Apollo)
10 - London, England (Hammersmith Apollo)
11 - Edinburgh, Scotland (Corn Exchange)
13 - Wolverhampton, England (Civic)
17 - Brixton, England (Brixton Academy)
26 - Indio, California (Coachella Festival)
May Tour Dates
5 - Paris, France (Zenith)
29-31 - Barcelona, Spain (Primavera Sound Festival)
The band will be webcasting a performance of eight tracks from the new album on their website tomorrow. Current TV has scheduled to air the performance eleven hours after the debut on Portishead’s website. You will be able to view it there until after the official U.S. release on April 29th. It’s an interesting idea and presents good fodder for the already circulating argument as to whether the band is still relevant after a decade long hiatus.
Michel Gondry teamed up with his brother, yes he has a brother who is a video editor, to shoot a video for the French electronica band Lacquer. They mounted a camera on the backseat of a convertible to capture a cross country trip from the coast of Los Angeles to the streets of New York. Shot on 16mm film, they captured one frame every second during daylight and then one frame every 10 seconds at night. The video lasts 4 minutes and entails the entire trip over the course of seven days and nights. The song is also very good.
You could file this under the ‘why hasn’t anyone done this yet’ category. When you first see it this is the first thought that enters the mind and that is exactly why Gondry is a genius because he did do it.
Uber popular Music review portal and all around command center, Pitchfork Media has released a beta version of their online music network Pitchfork TV. There is already some great content on display including the fantastic new video Graveyard Girl video for the new album release from M83.
The new Bjork video that one of our other Editors, Celeste wrote about earlier last week premiered today. The video was directed by the maddeningly creative minds at Encyclopedia Pictura. It really is an amazing video but then again so is pretty much every single video that has ever been produced for Bjork. She is a crazy little woman and that is why I love her so much.
You can now view the video in higher resolution via Motionographer here. There is also a nice ‘making of’ video available here at YouTube.
I went to see Explosions in the sky last week in Denver, being as they don’t play too many shows each year I figured I should catch them while they were here. It turns out this was only their second time in Denver, apparently last time they visited was 7 years ago and there was no one at the show.
Being a big fan of “Post/Math” rock, It’s surprising I’m not a bigger fan of the band; I enjoy them, but I don’t “love” them. When I listen to them at work all the songs kind of sound the same, however, seeing them live was a good choice. When the first notes of “First Breath After Coma” kicked in I actually got goose bumps. The sound at the newly remodeled Ogden theater was really good, It was loud yet warm and clean. They performed flawlessly and the structure of the setlist was a good mix of soft and loud keeping the momentum.
What is going on with the audiences at these shows lately? It was a mix of indie rockers, middle aged bald men, and hippies! It’s been a long time since I’ve been to a show with that much pot blowing through the air. I guess epic instrumental rock is their only choice outside of Widespread Panic. Let’s just hope people don’t start confusing this genre with jam bands.
The anticipation of this video is killing me. Bjork’s Wanderlust by Encyclopedia Pictura is expected to premiere on Monday the 31st. I can’t wait. via YWFT
The Canadian Indie Rock/Folk Collective The Acorn released their new album Glory Hope Mountain in early March. “Flood Pt. 1″ is the first video release promoting the album and it is worth noting as a fine piece of art as well. The video was directed by Christopher Mills. Apparently Mills hasn’t really been on the music video scene for a few years now since his earlier work with a few of my favorite bands like Broken Social Scene and Interpol. The video is very unusual and puts in the work to help deliver on the narrative of the strangely driving if not somewhat tribal song. Production-wise it appears to be mostly 3d but the weaving in of analog accents like sketches and fine art give it a more visceral and dreamlike quality. It is definitely one of the most interesting and original videos I have seen so far this year.
Get back into making those slow jam mix tapes for your special lady friend with Muxtape. You just create an account load up your favorite jams, and send your
mixtape url to all of your friends and or lovers.
05/14 EDWARDS BACKS OBAMA A pleasant surprise for the Obama campaign today came in the shape of an endorsement from John Edwards. Do I smell a new VP on the Obama ticket?
05/12 EARTHQUAKE KILLS 9000 A terrible earthquake measuring 7.9 on the richter scale rocked Chengdu, China yesterday. Authorities are claiming it is the worst in decades and the death toll may now be close to 9000.
05/10 100,000 DEAD I am sure by now you have heard all about this but the scale of human tragedy is just shattering. As many as 100,000 may now be dead in the wake of the Myanmar cyclone. Please Myanmar, let foreign aid workers help you.
05/06 SDSU DRUG BUST Nearly 100 people, most of them students at San Diego State University have been arrested as part of a drug investigation. I am sure there will be plenty of room for them in the California Penal System. I think they are running short on inmates the last time I checked.
05/02 HEPARIN TAMPERING This case of what is now being called ‘deliberate’ tampering with the drug Heparin in order to substitute a cheap alternative and save money is deplorable. We have to hold the FDA to higher standards.
The Canadian Indie Rock/Folk Collective 
