Sigur Rós

Frustrated that I woke up early the other day for the fall tour dates ticket presale and didn't get a damn thing, I started poking around the Sigur sites. Also, I found a poster today reminding me that their new album is coming out on the 23rd!

What I discovered when I got to SigurRos.com is that you can already listen to the album, streaming, for free!! I'm doing that right now. So far, I have to say, this is a real transformation for Sigur Rós. This metamorphosis was evident in gobbledigook, whose energy was as young and vibrant as the actors in its video.

This light, youthful abandon carries into the second track, and it becomes clear that Sigur Rós is not just about the long, dramatic epic anymore. They are also capable of calling in quick songs that pack a flowery punch to the ears. In and out.

Track three is a quiet ballad, soft and sweet. If Jónsi didn't have such a distinctly sweet voice, you would easily forget that for three tracks you've been listening to the band that brought you albums like Ágætis byrjun.

These tunes are almost pop. ALMOST. There is still a quiet sense of importance, of the impending arrival of something great, something bigger than us.

Then comes track five. As it begins, "festival" is cavernous and echoing, the song's lyrics remind one of "e-bow" from (), as though the original track had been stripped down and sung by Jónsi alone in the dark. The song serves as a reminder that the somber tones that have made the band the tearjerker that it is are still incredibly relevant to the band. By the end, the sound is big and bold, pompous and seemingly in fanfare. Hoorah! So beautiful.

The choir and strings on track seven are delightful and cinematic, and still somehow Sigur Rós. Yet another track that proves just how flexible this band really is.

On "All Right," the last track, Jónsi sports English lyrics. Almost every Sigur Rós song to date has been in Icelandic, the exception being all of (), the lyrics of which were all in the made-up language of Hopelandic. But don't get your hopes up about finally being able to understand the words in a Sigur Rós song. Despite the vocals being featured, the words are surprisingly indistinguishable. They bleed into the song like dye in fabric, taking their time to fill the space. And while that means losing definite form and content, it also means a beautiful layer that operates just the same as the vocals always have. This track is maudlin, sober, like a funeral march - a fitting end, perhaps, for the end of the album. It ends silently and sparsely, sneaking out the back door before you can realize it's gone.

Overall, the album is pretty great. It lacks some of the things that have made me adore Sigur Rós, but provides new ones. This band is extraordinary and sensational, and they have begun to sweep the music world anew of late. It's a beautiful thing to watch.

Also, if you finish listening to the stream of the whole album, you get lots of fun behind-the-scenes video clips to enjoy as well.

Sound of Ebay

I like to share things, relatively personal things, with you when I can. I don't mean personal stuff like when I lose my virginity (soon!) or how many eggs I like in my omelet. I mean like stuff I make. Or stuff similar to that. It can be tough to do though, since I don't really have webspace of my own just yet. Nowhere to host stuff, ya dig.

I didn't exactly MAKE this, but it was made for/about ME. The folks over at The Sound of eBay have a super fascinating tool that turns your eBay user data (all statistical stuff, not like your credit card number or something) into a musical sensation. So even if you're not musical, now you've got a song that's sort of by you. Take it on the road!

Here's mine.

Ultimate Reality

Words escape me tonight. I know that you know that's pretty unfathomable, because alas I not only like to talk, I like to use lots of words when I do it. But Jimmy Joe Roche and Dan Deacon have changed that, and tonight I will be silent. I let their work speak for them. I need only say that whether you are a fan of Schwarzenegger or not, your mind will be sufficiently blown if you watch all six parts of this thing.

May I present you with Chapters 1-6 of 40-minute-epic Ultimate Reality. (Watch it as soon as you can. It's only up for a week, and I don't know how long it's been up. Then again, you could always buy it on DVD.)

Noise-Rock vs....

OK, I'd like to take a moment to talk about Noise-rock of any kind. This is a genre that really, really confuses me. My introduction to noise-rock occurred about two years ago not by being introduced to the music itself, but by being introduced to Kip.

Kip's head was in the right place - art, film, and music, across the board he had good taste. Kip was a sweetheart, too. True, he lived a bit on an island that could make him a bit difficult to access. But he was nice. Kip had a noise-rock band in Syracuse whose name had something to do with Skeletons and Closets. Kip told me stories about throwing around large sheets of metal to make noise, and the gashes it cut in him and others. Injuries in general, he informed me, were commonplace when his Skeletons and Closets namesake band performed. This gave Kip a weird street-cred that didn't really seem all that earned, and yet he had it.

Since then, my experiences of noise-rock have been few and far between. But when I watched this video of Ptv live performance by Health, a noise-punk band, I felt like I wanted to try to "talk it out:"



Watching this makes me think two things:

1) This is ridiculous for me, as a spectator, in the pejorative sense.
2) This reminds me of jambands, where the disparity between the experience of producing the music and listening to it seems massive.

Now, I can appreciate what's happening here. There's something exhilarating and important about reductionism, not in the sense of tonality or rhythm or anything like that, but in the reduction of the self - the stripping away of the ego and superego. Noise-rock seems clearly driven toward exposing a raw sense of self through the exploration of sound as it comes out of the body, in a feral way. As Dr. Arthur Janov will certainly vouch, there is a therapeutic benefit to accessing deep, primal sounds and noises. Others, too, would agree that there's plenty to be gotten out of a combination of childish and animalistic freedoms of behavior. And I think it's something everyone should consider.

Also, on an intellectual level, I get it. Music sometimes seems to have hit a wall, and there's the desire to break through the wall. Rock 'n' roll, punk, noise. These were all primal desires to break through the wall of staleness. To do something new. To appeal to the inner flame of innovation against stasis. So I get it there, too.

But who wants to watch this? I mean that not sarcastically. I mean, obviously people want to watch these kinds of bands perform because otherwise there would be no bands, much less bands playing on Pitchfork TV. But why not just do this stuff yourself? It seems that all the thrashing around and screaming that the crowd might be doing are so close to what the band is doing, that it's kind of just like an orgy.

Maybe therein lies the rub. The counter-point could be that like with an orgy, where one could choose to just have sex alone or with one other person but chooses to have it with many partners, the orgiastic primalism of noise-rock concerts beg the throngs of the masses to achieve something that can't be achieved just thrashing and screaming at home.

And hell, this is actually kind of pretty to listen to (also Health):



Thoughts?

Jens

This is an old find, and yet, three to four months in the bowels of the internet haven't rendered Jens Lekman a dollop less charming, adorable, or delightful.

#SPLIT - Jens Lekman - Shirin
by lablogotheque

Explosions in the Sky

Tonight I had the privilege of seeing Texas instrumental post-rockers Explosions in the Sky.

Wow, what a show. First of all, the guy in the band who actually says anything into the mic at all is about as sweet as the day is long (so about 24 hours worth of sweet... but packed into every word). He graciously pointed out at the beginning that it was the largest show they'd played on their own (meaning a headliner and not a festival), and when the crowd begged for an encore, he came back out to express his genuine gratitude, saying how much it meant to the whole band to have such a positive response, and that it was his regret to have to say that they wouldn't come on for said encore (for the record, they've only done like three in their entire career). You could tell he meant every word he said. Which is awesome.

As for the music... I compared it to hearing their album for the first time. When you first hear "Greet Death," for instance, opening "Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Die, Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Live Forever," it's hard to express the awe you will feel if you enjoy it. It is incendiary shit. After listening to them for years, it doesn't dull down how rapturous the music is for you, but it's more familiar. But then, seeing them live, it is comparatively the same experience. This was the first time I'd ever seen them live, and every moment was nothing short of sensational. I used the word "rapturous" a moment ago in a literal sense. I would imagine that if Jesus Christ exists, and one day he returns to Earth to judge our souls in a time of both incredible suffering and incredible bliss, it would sound and feel like seeing Explosions in the Sky live. Never in my entire life have I wanted to hear something so painfully loud for so incredibly long and want to bathe myself in every decibel.

The band members themselves, you can tell, are into it. Each has his own signature move, which he does for the entire duration of the concert. Whether it be standing, leaned slightly back, with arms locked in an extended fashion, or rocking out, or looking like you intend to, on the count of three, launch your guitar into orbit using nothing but centripetal force and bliss, he does it from beginning to end. And in the last gutwrenching moments of their performance, every note on every guitar is played with arm and fist slamming. Every guy on stage looked like he wanted to KILL HIS GUITAR in the ultimate expression of an undying love, and I grinned like a fucking idiot to see it.

Frat boys and other misplaced idiots aside, their was nothing about this concert that I didn't like. There were a few minutes perhaps where I felt like it was long, or had a headache from the sheer volume and the thrashing of my head and body that I was engaged in, but at no point did I feel like I was having a bad time. All in all, it was perhaps one of the (if not THE) best concert experiences of my entire life. They played everything I wanted to hear, the concert was exactly like I'd imagined and hoped it would be except more real and even better than I could have purported, and my ears, somehow, aren't painfully ringing. If you get to see them live, you'd be a fool to turn it down.

Yesterday's Roundup

Yesterday was an incredibly busy day for this pilot, so this morning (AFTERNOON!) is a roundup for yesterday.

- Ptv -

OH MY GOD. Less than a week left in the countdown to Pitchfork TV. Admittedly, I wasn't excited about it at all. I figured it'd be a great way to see some new music videos, nothing all that different from the Forkcast.

I have been so wrong.

The first week opens with the full length documentary about the Pixies, "loudQUIETloud," various documentations of shows, interviews, my God, who is going to have the time to WATCH this fucking thing?!?!?!?!?! I, for one, intend to just abandon all responsibilities to watch nearly full-time. Mark your calendars: April 7.


- Architecture -

Another beautiful Stumble find, this site of badass architecture needs no further introduction or description... which is lucky, because I know ZERO about architecture.


- Space Collective Gallery -

Still trying to wrap my head around what "Space Collective" is exactly... but this gallery of lots of things Space-Collective is sure to keep you busy for quite some time. Art, philosophy, design, and tons more, it's like wading through translucent mud and then deciding to put on a snorkel and stick your head under.


- M83 -

Just got their new album, which is fairly enjoyable, but seems to cop off of the previous two (similar vocal lines, story-telling clips). But regardless, I really like them because of their ability to project and propel me into a headspace that feels like I'm running away from some mecha-beast 100 years in the future.

Sorry, I don't know where I was going with that. If you like skateboarding, M83, and/or explosions, you're gonna LOVE this:

Videozz

Today's a video day, people! I've scoured the bowels of the internetz, and found some great videos for you to enjoy.

--BigDog--

There is something unsettling about BigDog. It's not how much he weighs, it's not how much he can carry, and it's not even the fact that he's a machine. What made me feel sick to my stomach watching him move is how realistically he handles treacherous terrain, getting kicked in the side, and slipping on ice. Maybe it's the noise he makes, too, but the absurdly life-like mannerisms of this incredible machine are staggering. And of course, BigDog NEVER goes down.



--Clapton Shredzz!!--

This video from artist Santeri Ojala is hilarious. Using real footage of Eric Clapton playing a guitar solo with his band on-stage, Ojala overdubbed crappy guitar lines that are strikingly accurate in their attacks, if not in tone, so the illusion is almost completely seamless. And the result is something pretty entertaining. I laughed out loud a couple of times. Can you believe people like Clapton wouldn't want this stuff on the internet? Come on guys, you're talented and famous. Let people have a little fun with you.



--TAKE--

As Dave Burnes pointed out to me, the New York Times knows how to handle the arts, fashion, media, and other right-brained miscellanea. Recently they launched T Magazine, seemingly for that very reason. Now, T Magazine online has begun "TAKE," a series of short short films (12, to be exact) starring "Hollywood’s bright young things" that, as a whole, lay out a single narrative. "Shot by the emerging New York writer and director Brody Baker during the recent Sundance festival, these 12 improvised vignettes were conceived to be viewed sequentially. Each episode, starring a different actor, will build on the previous one." The first one stars Josh Hartnett in arguably his best minute on-screen ever. What excites me most of all (yes, even more than the Band of Horses track in the teaser/trailer) about this is that what appears to be smart, invested, quality drama has been created SPECIFICALLY for the internet. And that's no small news bit. The future is the internet, people.

TAKE - Episode 1


--Hulu--

"The future is the internet," someone wise once said. Whomever it was, they were smart. Welcome to TV on the Internet. No, it's not some Brooklyn indie-band. It's Hulu, where you can watch a bunch of your favorite shows AND movies, streaming, for free, with limited advertising interruption. What distinguish this site from Peekvid, a predecessor, are great design value and big-name advertisers, including 20th Century Fox. That's right, their shows are on there for free and they're bout it bout it. While Hulu has some holes (for instance, not much in the "Scrubs" department), there is a wide and phenomenal breadth of media available, and I don't see this thing going under anytime soon with all of the corporate backing it already has. We may very well be witnessing the beginning of free media.

HULU


--Goldfrapp--

I just got the new album from Goldfrapp, entitled "Seventh Tree," and I can't stop listening to it. Nonstop for days, this album has been playing on repeat in my computer. Apparently more mellow than their earlier stuff, Seventh Tree is a haven of honey-sweet vocals, lush soundscapes, and a heartbreaking lightness. The video for A&E, a personal favorite, is bizarre and slightly disturbing, but does not manage to detract from the heavenly vocal arrangement. And if you've got three minutes that you never want back, you can also check out the Rex The Dog






--Pitchfork.tv--

Pitchfork has been advertising the unveiling of Pitchfork.tv lately, which goes live on April 7. Promising to be a phenomenal source of indie music video splendor, there is little information available about the format, but the site sports a lovely wash. I guess we'll just have to wait a few more weeks.

Pitchfork.tv



That oughtta keep you busy.

Sigur Ros

I'm a little behind on this post, but it's exciting to announce that Sigur Ros has put their entire film, "Heima," on YouTube! I scrambled to get the DVD in december, but didn't even get the special edition that I wanted. Regardless of my own pettiness, now everyone gets to enjoy this film for free! Freeculture, hurrah!



Also, they had a contest called "Minn Heima," or "My Home," where people could remix and re-edit footage from the feature into their own film. Below is the a thank you from the band themselves, and the winner of the contest for best "Minn Heima."






If you've been living under a rock, then you might not be aware that Sigur Ros has made some of the most beautiful music and music videos around. Here are a couple of memorable music videos that match their music so well that sometimes you want to cry, they're so beautiful.

Sigur Rós - Glósóli



Sigur Rós - untitled #1 (vaka)

Phillip Roebuck

I saw this fella last night on the subway, and I tell you what, I didn't even want to catch my train. Tons of people swarmed around him, mesmerized by his one-man-band performance. When he broke a string, people took the opportunity to throw money in his little box. When a song was over, they paid him. When the trains arrived, they paid him. I have never seen a street/subway performer make nearly as much as he did in the ten or so minutes that I watched him play. The videos on his site don't do him much justice, although I do like this one.

Bowed Piano

Stephen Scott does something interesting. It's not entirely unique at its foundation... classical composers have experimented with playing the piano strings directly, putting metal pins in the hammers, etc. But never before have 10 people played one piano. Until now.

Born Free

I stumbled upon this video very randomly. My dad used to sing this song to me, a much more subdued version, when I was a kid, to put me to bed. There were other songs in the medley that he would sing, accompanied by his acoustic guitar. At the moment, the only other I can think of is Moon River.



Sleep well.

The Hood

I just found an amazing site called The Hood Internet. The mashups on this site are amazing - nothing short of it. You should browse around for yourself, find some hip-hoppers and indie rockers that you like that are butting heads. But I'll recommend the following song to get started right:

MMMM

Big shit poppin.

Win Butler <3 Barack Obama

I agree with Win, of Arcade Fire, on every word. And not just because I like his music. This is, In My Opinion, our last chance to elect someone sane before we do so much damage to our country and the world that it takes the rest of our lives (time that we just plain don't have) to get them back.

What the Win Said

Upppphphhhhphphhphph

That's the noise your lips make when you watch these videos. Afterwards, you probably will dookie a shooter. IMO - This guy needs his own show. Nay, his own country. CAN SOMEONE PLEASE GET THIS MAN A COUNTRY TO RULE?!?!

Sub Pop is Above Par

Sub Pop has just announced it's download program, whereby you can download some great Sub Pop tunes straight from the horse's mouth! I've yet to look into how much of the money is going to the artists, but Sub Pop has a record of doing good by its clients. And what's best of all:

"You can download the files you've purchased from your account page at any time and multiple times-- if we update the download in any way (think bitrate or bonus tracks or whatever), you can just log in, go to your download page, and get the new version of the file."

Link to the relevant Pitchfork article:
http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/news/46952-sub-pop-opens-digital-download-store

Correlation

According to a study done in Canada, there is a positive correlation between the amount of P2P sharing done by a person (Canadian, anyway) and the amount of CDs that that person buys. This is according to:

http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/2347/125/

In my opinion, this is an exceptionally important find, the results of which strike a firm blow against the music industry. This proves that FREE p2p sharing can actually have a POSITIVE influence on a revenue-driven market, thus serving to legitimize p2p as something good. It proves a level of responsibility on the part of consumers.

In short, it means that free is not necessarily bad. It's a good thing to look further into as a possible solution to end the Piracy War.

BQE

In light of my most recent post on The Dead Chinchilla, entitled "BQE,"I thought I would share this little video from Pitchfork. It's a rehearsal of Sufjan Stevens' "BQE," which will premiere in part this Sunday on David Garland's "Spinning on Air" radio show.

Awwwwwwww FUCK YEAH!

Yeah! YEAH! YEAHH!!!!!!!! FUCK, GOD YES!!! Man, all these young kids, they're SO GOOD at stuff nowadays. This takes me back to my hair-metal days... Jesus, this kid makes me want to freak out and throw shit out my window. In a good way.

Rilo Kiley

The extended music video is an interesting genre... difficult, to be sure. Sometimes the three minutes of video to a song aren't enough to hold one's attention, so why risk it at 10, 15, or even 20 minutes?

The new Rilo Kiley video for "The Moneymaker" doesn't suffer in it's length. It presents a very long and interesting background that at times is even more interesting as an exploration of the porn industry than the song and part of the film/video that has the actual music over it.

Definitely worth watching:

http://themoneymake.com/themoneymaker.html