August 28, 2008
Birdmonster's new Tom Schick-produced album From The Mountain To the Sea is out early next month. We posted its "Born To Be Your Man" at the beginning of July and here we have the video for another Mountain track "The Iditarod." We're told the clip uses SLAM (aka Slide, Animation, Movies), a visual technique invented/coined by Greg Crane. The explanation:
Not too different from your standard stop-motion animation, SLAM takes the aesthetics to a new arty level. 95% of the video was created using digital still photos from a professional/high-end camera. Approximately 1800 shots were painstakingly and meticulously pasted together to establish that "motion."
Kind of like the technique used by Polyphonic Spree and Kaki King, though their processes didn't sound like a Chuck Palahniuk novel. Off to the races:
Continue reading New Birdmonster Video - "The Iditarod"...
Posted at 10:56 AM by brandon in ,
Tags: Birdmonster
Raleigh-via-Eau Clair BTW Megafaun debuted impressively earlier this year with Bury The Square. The trio nip-and-tuck experimental tendencies (tape splicing, white noise colliding with banjo, junkyard-laced spring reverb, screeching feedback at the tail end of a quiet back porch lament) and spacey explorations (see the second half of "Find Your Mark") into epic barber-shop Americana. It makes perfect sense they've toured and collaborated with Akron/Family (check out those three-part harmonies) as much as it makes sense that they're about to play some shows with the legendary German minimalist composer Arnold Dreyblatt (note the intro transmissions of "Tired And Troubled" before the hoedown starts). Bury came out in February on Table Of The Elements's Radium imprint. The guys recently signed to Portland's Hometapes. Expect the new album in Spring 2009.
Megafaun are here today because they also hold down day jobs. Drummer Joe Westerlund works for the coffee roaster Larry's Beans where he packages beans and does odd jobs. Banjo player Phil Cook works for Center for Inquiry Based learning, a non-profit out of Duke University, where he "assembles hands-on science kits for elementary schools." He's used some of these supplies as piano preparations and as instruments for the band's live shows/recordings. Phil's brother Brad Cook manages an independent record store, Schoolkids Records. Additionally, he co-owns Burlytime Records with Pitchfork's Grayson Currin and put out QYDJ alumni Bowerbirds' debut, etc. That said, I didn't bother asking about the label and instead went full-on into a job the three guys do together: Each year they temp for the Ironman of North America triathlon. I'm not kidding.
After our discussion about the state of record stores, coffee, science projects, and people suffering from organ failure during triathlons, take a listen to non-album track "Beloved Binge."
Continue reading Quit Your Day Job: Megafaun...
Posted at 2:53 PM by brandon in , ,
Tags: Megafaun
latest by jessie-bell
Longstanding Portland quartet the Dandy Warhols last stopped through to bring us "The World The People Together (Come On)" from their elliptical self-released sixth album ...Earth To The Dandy Warhols.... Building upon that title (and the fact that they had sci-fi writer Richard K. Morgan do their bio for the record), the Mike Bruce-directed video for "Mission Control" is broadcast via a television circa 1969 and finds the band decked in spacesuits and rocking out in zero gravity.
Continue reading New Dandy Warhols Video - "Mission Control"...
Posted at 11:10 AM by brandon in ,
Tags: The Dandy Warhols
latest by tk.
Our first taste of TVOTR's forthcoming Return To Cookie Mountain followup Dear Science was the funky, optimistic, mystic (and in the chorus, PM Dawn?) leaning "Golden Age," Kyp letting us know that, indeed, a golden age is coming around. Tunde-fronted "Dancing Choose" is taste number two. His scattershot lyrics and quick vocal delivery have more urgency, but check out the similar psychedelic smoothness in the chorus. Two other things worth your attention: Axl Rose gets a mention and "Dancing Choose" is a pun.
Continue reading New TV On The Radio - "Dancing Choose"...
Posted at 9:41 AM by brandon in
Tags: TV On The Radio
latest by jay
August 26, 2008
Unpredictable violinist and videogame fan Owen Pallett, aka sage advice giver, aka Final Fantasy, has cobbled together a pair of excellent post-He Poos Clouds EPs due for release this fall. The first to arrive is the five-song Spectrum, 14th Century, which finds OP collaborating with Beirut on "fake fields recordings." Like last year's "Hey Dad" 7", it was recorded during the Flying Club Cup sessions. Pallett tells us he and "the entire corpus" of Beirut went outdoors in Quebec where "Zach led the group in some percussion stuff and I got the four brass players (Zach, Jon Natchez and the Pratts) to be choral for a bit." We're also told, lyrically and sonically, it's meant to depict/map-out the fictional land of Spectrum. Think steel drums overlapping with bird songs, wood percussion, cricket chirps, horns, and Pallett's gorgeous string arrangements. Or just take a listen to lilting, chirping "The Butcher."
Continue reading New Final Fantasy - "The Butcher" & "Ultimatum" (Stereogum Premiere)...
Posted at 11:08 AM by brandon in ,
Tags: Andrew Bird | Beirut | Final Fantasy | The Hidden Cameras
latest by jarman
August 21, 2008
With the crazy digital animation we're seeing in videos, this Clyde Peterson-directed clip for the first from Jeff Hanson's new Kill Rock Stars record is charmingly old school. Old school as in elementary school: "If Only I Knew" is nothing but stop-motion construction-paper cutouts of the birds and the bees and Jeff coming to grips with a shitty Dear John letter. Fortunately for him, birds happen to be great at weaving uplifting banjo-flecked ditties out of torn up Dear John letters. Later the words of his ex become food for hatchlings, which is possibly a deep statement on the circle of life and love, or probably just a tidy way to end the video.
Continue reading New Jeff Hanson Video - "If Only I Knew"...
Posted at 12:28 PM by amrit in ,
Tags: Jeff Hanson
latest by Polly
August 20, 2008
I know what you read that as and no, this is not a Craig Wedren Remixes TV On The Radio post. The Dead Science are a Seattle-based avant rock trio, set to put out an LP based strictly on obscure comic book and Wu-Tang Clan references, which is a thing avant rock trios do. They'll probably remind you more of Xiu Xiu than Wu-Tang Forever, but the Dead Science are dead serious about this Wu-Tang thing. "Make Mine Marvel," a track from their forthcoming Villanaire LP, is full of straight up rips of verses from Forever's "Triumph." The version we're focusing on, though, is the Craig Dub Plate Mix, so named for the helping hand of Shudder master Craig Wedren, spiking the beats and rearranging things to give 'em a full on eerie intonation. Singer Sam Mickens is definitely from the Jamie Stewart school of singing, but when you hear him flip up into head voice while things get noisy and knotty behind him, it's not hard to see why someone like Mr. Wedren would be drawn to it.
Continue reading New Dead Science (Feat. Craig Wedren) - "Make Mine Marvel (Craig Dub Plate Mix)"...
Posted at 6:15 PM by amrit in ,
Tags: Craig Wedren | Shudder To Think | The Dead Science | Wu-Tang Clan
latest by Jonathon
Jennifer O'Connor's just your average singing/songwriting type, getting called up to cover Dylan at Lincoln Center here, knocking out an album with producer John Agnello in 12 days there. Her new album Here With Me's out this week via Matador, and on its first official video, director Zacarias Bezunartea plays out the tune full of relationship stalemates with the relatable stress, and mental and spatial chess, of sitting stranded in the kitchen with the one that's always in your mind but never really there. And this is Brooklyn, so don't say that "she could always just live alone." Do you know how high rent is here?
Continue reading New Jennifer O'Connor Video - "Always In Your Mind"...
Posted at 2:22 PM by amrit in , ,
Tags: Jennifer O'Connor
latest by Samantha
