Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Reznor Turning "Year Zero" into T.V. Series...

It looks like Trent Reznor has been working on turning his Year Zero album concept into a T.V. mini-series that would be on HBO.  Still a ways off, but moving forward...

Rolling Stone has the story here.

Monday, September 27, 2010

Few things to deal with...

Arrived at work this morning, browsed through my feeds, and it looks like several places have some cool stuff to check out!

Here we go...

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

OK Go do it again...

Here's their new video for "White Knuckles"


AMAZINGLY WELL TRAINED DOGS.

Pavement on Colbert Report

Pavement plays Gold Soundz and Stephen Malkmus gets interviewed.

Linked up by pitchfork.

Monday, September 20, 2010

A Perfect Circle dates...

Here it is!  The plan is three nights at each venue, with night 1 being Mer de Noms, night being Thirteenth Step, and night 3 being Emotive.  Exception: Vegas only has two nights and drops Emotive.

Dates.

Still no word on ticket prices.  Keep y'all updated.

Deerhunter & Tricky Albums Streaming

The new albums are up for streaming now.

For your daily dose of Deerhunter...

And, for your daily dose of Tricky...

Friday, September 17, 2010

The Social Network score sampler...

Here's your homework for the weekend...

Go here, surrender your email address, and download a 5-track EP from the Social Network score.

The Social Network is the Facebook movie that's being scored by Trent Reznor (NIN) and Atticus Ross.

enjoy.

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Damien Jurado and Richard Swift

This great indie music blog, the Aquarium Drunkard, posted this about a week ago and I'm finally getting around to it.

In August, Damien Jurado and Richard Swift (both great singer/songwriters) teamed up to record Other People's Songs Vol. 1.  They mention the following on their website...

Other People’s Songs Vol. 1is a collection of covers recorded on the weekend of August 21-22, 2010 (with the aid of a four-track cassette recorder and a Coles-4038 ribbon microphone).  It is available to you (the world) via the inter-webs for FREE.  These recordings came about spontaneously, and we wanted to share them in the same manner.  Look for another one around Winter time. “Thanks, Brochacho” - DJ/RS

The whole album is also available for streaming here, so go do that today!  It's really beautiful, chill work and it's great to hear Damien Jurado push his vocals outside of the norm on a few of the tracks.

Thursday, September 9, 2010

Mary Anne Hobbs' Last BBC1 Show

I will be back to post my thoughts on the show at some point soon.  But, in the mean time, reserve two hours at your computer or around a computer to listen to Hobbs' final show on BBC Radio1.  You have ~6 days until it's taken offline (at least off of BBC's site).


LISTEN NOW!

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Deerhunter's "Helicopter" Video

If you missed it a few days ago, go to Deerhunter's website and click on the article's text to see a video for the new track "Helicopter".

All black & white, it's basically just a close-up video of the face of singer, Bradford Cox.  With lots of other video spliced in (in much the same way that the Animal Collective/Panda Bear videos were... see my last post).

If nothing else, give the track a listen.

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Panda Bear @ the Glass House

After complications with FYF last weekend, several shows immediately following were discounted to ridiculously low prices.  One of these was Panda Bear (The Goat opening) at the Pomona Glass House for $5.

I can't avoid discussing The Goat for a second.  I guess I was pretty thrown off.  I mean, you go to a Panda Bear show, pumped to have the entire venue basically drowned in dense layers of incomprehensible vocals and samples.  And then, a pretty vulgar "skate rock" band opens the evening.

I have to admit that I was considering walking out to spare my ears for a while.  But after I saw the keyboardist smiling and laughing during the performance, it made me realize that they're having fun, and that's what the music was about.  Whereas Panda Bear would come come out in ~45 minutes to play his heart out with songs that express some pretty intense emotions, The Goat were there to simply rock out to some more shallow songs (I hate to use that word, but it's deadly accurate here) including a cover of DMX's "Ruff Ryder's Anthem".

Anyways, when Panda Bear (Noah Lennox is his actual name, btw, and I will use these names interchangeably, b/c sometimes one seems more appropriate than the other) did finally come on, it was his usual type of setup.  Lennox stood behind his altar of effects processors, synths, keyboard, what-have-you, with his guitar strapped on and ready to go.

Two projectors (stage left, stage right) shot out light across the heads of the crowd, landing it on the back walls and having a Disco Ball 2.0 effect.  Then, a third projector shot video onto a stage wide screen behind Lennox.  This should immediately make fellow Animal Collective fans think, "ODDSAC."  And rightly so.  Not only was the recently released DVD being sold in the front (thank God, I finally got my copy), but over the next hour we would be treated to a very similar "visual album" type experience.  In fact, some of the visuals from the projected video looked a little familiar to ones seen in ODDSAC.  Imagine your favorite media player's visualization package (Windows Media Player, iTunes, Milkdrop, etc.), then make it more coherent, and splice in actual videos of people that are blurred into the spinning and stirring visuals.  Pretty magical.  My favorite bit was a few minutes where several clips of (what I'me pretty sure were) fans reactions at a sporting event were mixed in, and looped over and over, revealing a little more each time they came through.  The effect was strikingly emotional when accompanied by Panda Bear's intense music.  Another memorable bit was some passionate lovemaking looped over and over during "Song for Ariel / Guys Eyes".

Onto the music... the most important thing to mention here is the vocals.  It's very clear (through both Panda Bear's past work and Animal Collective material) that Lennox is not afraid to belt it out.  His voice is not a storytelling/sharing accompaniment to the music.  His voice is an integral part of the music.  Using lots of "st" and "pft" noises throughout his songs and dragging the vowels into endless sustain, it looks like Lennox is further exploring what he can do with that beautiful mouth of his (was that too creepy?).  Indeed, in a recent interview with the L.A. Times' music blog Pop & Hiss, Lennox reveals...

"I’ve been listening to a lot of crooners like Sinatra and Scott Walker. There’s such a power there, and I’ve never really been into literary concerns as a lyricist so I wanted to focus on that forceful presence." - Lennox for Pop & Hiss

As I was hoping, Panda Bear performed bits of Animal Collective tracks along with his solo material.  Most interesting was his tortured version of "Daily Routine" from Merriweather Post Pavilion.  For those unfamiliar with the track, there is a super-catchy part where Lennox sings a line and then he answers back immediately with a sort of jingly synth riff.  Lennox would start this call and response session but only got around to giving the response after several abrupt starts and stops.

I didn't catch the full setlist, but he did play my personal favorite "Comfy in Nautica".  And he also played the new tracks "Tomboy", featuring a prominent "kst" sound as mentioned above, and "Slow Motion".  You can check out the new track here and here.

The much awaited album, Tomboy, doesn't actually have a release date yet.  But the first single has already been released and plans to release the second in October appear to be working out.

Keep your eyes on this guy.  He's a fantastic musician, an excellent performer, and he puts together a great visual show as well.