Art is
via my uncle Timbo:
Art is
more expensive than sausages
more expensive than women
more expensive than anything
Tinariwen on the speakers.
Archive for the music tag
Feist + The Muppets
Mondays are always better with Feist and the muppets of Sesame Street. If this video doesn’t bring a smile to your face, you got entirely too much coal in your stocking when you were a kid. give yerself a big hug and a lollipop quickfast.
Happy Monday.
Don’t Think I’ve Forgotten
Following up on the Dengue Fever post, Don’t Think I’ve Forgotten - Cambodia’s Lost Rock and Roll is a recent documentary directed by John Perozzi, who also directed Sleepwalking Through the Mekong.
During the 60’s and early 70’s, as the war in Vietnam threatened its borders, a new music scene emerged in Cambodia that took Western rock and roll and stood it on its head-creating a sound like no other.
Cambodian musicians crafted this sound from the various rock music styles sweeping across America and England, adding the unique melodies and hypnotic rhythms of their traditional music. The beautiful singing of the renowned female vocalists became the final touch that made this mix so enticing.
This documentary film, “Don’t Think I’ve Forgotten,” provides a new perspective on a country usually assocated with war and genocide. By celebrating this powerful music, and the people who created it, Cambodia’s musical heyday emerges from the shadows of tragedy into the light of history.
The site for the film has several songs that help define the sound, they are a trip. Surf Rock from an alternate dimension.
Dengue Fever
Tiger Phone Card is my new favorite song of the moment by Los Angeles band Dengue Fever, whose primary inspiration is 60’s era psychedelic Cambodian surf rock complete with lyrics in cambodian and english. Their music is wicked and their vibe is totally left field. There’s a new film about their pilgrimage to Cambodia Sleepwalking Through The Mekong and the trailer goes into their influences and how they’ve arrived at such an original sound.
The odyssey is a homecoming for singer Chhom Nimol and a transformation for the rest of the band as they perform with master musicians and record new songs along the way.
More than a rockumentary, the film serves up a portrait of modern Cambodia as the band tours through Phnom Penh and beyond, crossing a great cultural chasm with the same spirit of Cambodia’s original rock pioneers.
Cambodia is often synonymous with the brutal Khmer Rouge regime that left millions dead and scattered refugees around the globe. This tragedy overshadows the story of Cambodia’s music scene in the 1960s and 1970s. Cambodian musicians reinvented Western rock n’ roll with a distinctly Khmer flavor to crete a sound that is at once familiar and completely original.
- Dengue Fever (wikipedia)
- Dengue Fever (myspace)
- Dengue Fever on NPR (recent interview)
- Tiger Phone Card
- Sleepwalking trailer
- More Dengue on YouTube
- More on Cambodian rock music
- My photos from Cambodia
Yeasayer Take Away
Recently I’ve been incessantly listening to Yeasayer’s hit from last year 2080 (i’m late to the party, as usual). La Blogotheque’s Take Away Show idea is rad and i’ve linked them before. They’ve got a new episode up with Yeasayer performing 2080 and I have to say I almost like it better then the original. Stripped down to acapella vocals, piano, spontaneous choir and banging and clapping makes the song even cooler then it was before.
Update: I ripped the song to mp3 so I could bump it on the regular. I hope the Yeasayer kids (and Blogotheque) don’t mind, it seems to be within their politics and general vibe to be cool with this. Download it here.
The Playlist’s Soundtrack Series
The Playlist is “a place dedicated to that sweet spot where movies and music meet”. It’s the place to go if you’re a soundtrack junky like me. Articles usually focus on not-so-commercial upcoming film news with an emphasis on soundtrack related info. Their movie and music tastes follow my own, their sense of humor is unorthodox* and they’re in my top five daily blog reads.
The Playlist has an on-going feature called The Sountrack Series where the author picks a director who has an established sonic palette that accompanies their films, and creates 20 song playlists of music that could be used in said director’s films. The series is ongoing and current volumes include: Sofia Coppola, Jim Jarmusch, Cameron Crowe, Michel Gondry, David Gordon Green and Miranda July, Noah Baumbach, Quentin Tarantino and Wes Anderson. I downloaded the David Gordon Green volume (part 1) and dug it so much, I’m now downloading all 12 parts in the 9 current volumes.
This series is more then just an ode to soundtrack genius, it’s a great resource for discovering new music and possibly listening to music you’ve heard before through a different context. It’s a great freakin’ idea and I’m nonplussed I didn’t think of it first. As a consolation prize, I have hours and hours of new music to listen to. go check it out.
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* read: good and twisted
Thao Nguyen
I just stumbled on to the music of Thao Nguyen. She goes under her first name Thao and her music could definitely be the soundtrack to any modern day water mountain sliding odyssey. Lots of acoustic guitar and whispery cat power-esque vocals. Her new album We Brave Bee Stings And All just came out on Kill Rock Stars (yeah, she’s cool like that).
Fader has a post on Thao’s handmade stop-motion video for the first single “Bag of Hammers”, super nice!. And for added cool points, here’s a video of Thao doing an excellent beat-box rendition of Gary Glitter’s Rock-n-Roll and then some acoustic-solo music over at imeem.
Listen: Swimming Pools | Beat (Health, Life & Fire)
Yes, We Can.
Just in case you didn’t know where I stand, check out this wickedly good music video Yes, We Can. featuring Will.I.Am, John Legend, Common, Scarlet Johansson, Kareem Abdul Jabar and a bunch of other people who I recognize but lack names for. Here’s the original speech from new hampshire, which admittedly, I hadn’t seen til just now. Go Obama! This time must be different. We want change.
Yes, We Can.
End of an Era
On our way through Los Angeles, I had to sort out a storage locker full of crap from my pre-mexico life. Including but not limited to years of collecting graphic design books, magazines, art, interior decorations, my entire artistic career - every last thing I ever drew/painted/designed/photographed and last but not least 1500+ records. 10+ years of daily crate digging. Countless trips to the Pasadena City College swap meet and many long nights after work, digging through dusty crates in run down record stores across L.A. Every genre you could possibly think of, equal parts early-mid 90’s hip-hop, early reggae/ska/dub and funk/jazz/soul records.
My vinyl weighed a ton and after years of figuring out how to get the bulk of it to mexico, I came to the conclusion that this dream would never pass. So with weary eyes pointed to the ground, I trucked my 15 boxes of records down to Amoeba Records and said my goodbyes. Back whence they came, to light up other people’s faces. Better then a most certain death, south of the border, to heat, humidity and no second-hand market.
The upside? Ya see, the rub is this: I didn’t own the records, they owned me. I was their guardian and once I found them a new, good home. I was free. I did end up saving about 150 of them. The really good ones. The ones that will never make it to CD or even MP3, ever. Plus the ones that are really good on record. One Technique 1200, a Griffin iMic 2 and WireTap Studio Pro and I’m all set up to listen to my surviving collection directly from my computer. Ahh, techmology.
Gamelan
Gamelan is technically a musical ensemble made up of metallophones, xylophones, drums, and gongs; bamboo flutes, bowed and plucked strings. But what it really sounds like is a highly orchestrated junkyard symphony of oddly melodic mix of banging and clanging. and I love it. It usually accompanies the Legong, Berong and Mahabarata dance performances. Back in the CalArts days, I’d sit in my design crit room, zoning out during a critique to the sounds of the clanging instruments floating in from the Gamelan classroom down the hall. I will always associate graphic design with Gamelan.
Here are a few of my favorite Gamelan tunes, right-click to save: one, two, three
The Whitest Boy Alive, part 2
Live, super grainy, shaky, bad audio, unedited concert footage taken on a little Canon point-n-shoot, from The Whitest Boy Alive playing “Don’t Give Up” at F.Bolke (bar / art gallery / concert venue) in Guadalajara on Nov.10th, 2007. back story here.
RCRD LBL
RCRD LBL just opened today. It’s a great idea. part record label, part mp3 blog with exclusive tracks for free and legal download from a bunch of killer indie bands and djs. Downloads are kept off the main rss feed though, so in order to get fresh mp3 tracks to your rss reader you have to subscribe to each of the “sub-label” feeds. Totally lame, let’s hope enough people complain loudly. [via DS]
The Whitest Boy Alive, part 1
On Friday, in between visits to the orthodontist and dentist, we stopped off at my favorite pizza joint, Funicula. We has just ordered and were enjoying our sangria when guess who happens to wonder in the door, none other then Mr. Erlend Øye (Kings of Convenience, The Whitest Boy Alive). We flip our shit and as he walked past me I tap him on the shoulder and said hi. We’d met him back in the late spring when Kings of Convenience, Leslie Feist, Broken Social Scene and Rubies were all staying in Punta Burros and happened to come in to Roots for a little dinner and impromptu sing-along (i wrote about this here). Erlend asked me if he knew me and I mentioned Roots and he said “Oh, yes” and related a story of having stopped by Roots again to see everyone, but that Roots was closed, so it was a pleasant surprise for him to run in to us. After taking a seat we talked for a little while. Turns out that he and the band (The Whitest Boy Alive) are staying in Punta Burros for a while, recording a new album and enjoying the pacific mexican coast. They were in Guadalajara for a show on Friday night. We promised to check out the show (which we did, post coming soon), I gave him my card and a smile and Erlend was back to the band and some good pizza. It was great seeing him again and I hope he gives us a call, it’d be great to hang with them again.
Spoon - Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
Late to the party as usual, I’ve been listening to Spoon’s newish album Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga for the past week or so. it’s on heavy rotation. The last album I listened to that was this cohesive was the last Shins record. Top to bottom killer record, 3/4 of the songs on this disc could be singles. Every day I have a new favorite track. and putting a studio shot of artist Lee Bontecou on your album cover is innerestin’. check out this recent spinner.com podcast.
Dean Ween talks up La Cucaracha
Dean Ween talks to The A.V. Club about the making of Ween’s new album La Cucaracha (that pitchfork review is heavy). great interview. great band. [via The Playlist]
Ida Maria
I’m currently diggin’ on the music of Ida Maria. She’s got some punchy norwegian post-punk action going on with a killer, versatile voice and drunk-pixy-with-a-crush-on-Charles-Bukowski lyrics. I’d throw in a list of people who she sounds like, but that’d be a little redundant, go check her out. My Old Kentucky Blog has some mp3s. Stand-out tracks: “Oh My God”, “Louie, I’m always drunk”, “You Look Better When You’re Naked” and “We’re all Going to Hell”. you get the idea.
The Largo Movie
‘The Playlist’ has the skinny on a documentary about Jon Brion’s Los Angeles club ‘Largo’. A notorious Elliott Smith hangout and essential stop for scores of killer musicians. Paul Thomas Anderson is producing. Personally, I really kick myself that I only made it to Largo once. I always saw people standing around outside smoking cigarettes, but never got wise to the place until very late in my LA tenure. I was always stuck at the dumb apple martini bar across fairfax with my less-then-hip friends.
Edit: Andrew van Baal, the filmmaker of the Largo Movie commented on the Playlist post (linked above) that PT Anderson is not producing and all info about the film will be posted at the official Largo Film website.
Made In The Dark
new Hot Chip album ‘Made In The Dark’ due in February. the anticipation begins now. woohoo!
Radiohead - In Rainbows
NPR: All Songs Considered did a great show, last week, on Radiohead’s new record ‘In Rainbows‘. Check out the ‘All Songs Considered’ podcast. They had some killer things to say about the album and kinda puts it in context with Radiohead’s previous albums and briefly touches on their process behind developing these songs. great stuff.
Business Week Hachets Steve Jobs
Universal Music Takes on iTunes. Business Week does a hatchet job on Steve Jobs and iTunes. John Gruber ways in with a clear and lucid look at the Universal Music service called “Total Music” and the crack-pot writing methods of the article’s authors: Ronald Grover and Peter Burrows.
R. Kelly - Real Talk
Steve Isaacs digs up this gem: R.Kelly video for ‘Real Talk’. The video works perfectly for the song and the song is bananasly funny. R.Kelly may be a freak, but dude is creative. the ending is a big red cherry. NSFW, unless you got headphones.
Walk Hard
So we saw Knocked Up last night. It was hilarious, there were so many good jokes, I couldn’t laugh at them all. People in the theater were laughing at me, laughing at the jokes. After Super Bad, Judd Apatow’s next movie is called Walk Hard and here’s an article about Michael Andrews working on the soundtrack (he’s the guy who scored Donnie Darko and Me You & Everyone We Know, skills).
Feist at #8
Put Feist in an ipod commerical and her album goes from #28 to #8 in one week?! go Leslie. [via DS]
Radiohead’s In Rainbows
Looks like Radiohead’s In Rainbows is getting early mixed reviews both for encoding quality and record engineering quality. I wonder what the real deal is. Update: the album is very raw (and i don’t know if that’s the encoding or not) but the songs are killer. gotta hear this one on vinyl.
The Archivist EP
Free music! The Archivist has an EP for free downlow over at his site. Go downlow it now, you won’t regret it. the songs are gorgeous ‘Jeremiah’ runs through my head as I sleep. [via GvsB]
José González: 3 videos
Blogothèque is a french blog with a show called “les concerts à emporter!” (The Take Away Show) an interesting concept: Take a really influential and cutting edge musician or group and film them playing their songs live in odd places. Here is José Gonzalez performing 3 songs from his intensely wicked brand new album In Our Nature. great songs and videos too, very appropriate for his music. Other bands featured: Beirut, The Shins, Tapes N Tapes, Andrew Bird and many more. I gotta get up on some new music. [via PF]
Kanye West has a blog
Kanye West has a blog and he posts 2 to 3 times a day?! unbelievable.
