Drew from Baby Birds Don’t Drink Milk just passed along this video for the track “Fort Porkchop”, the opener to their newly released The Puppycat 3” CD EP on German label Edition 59. Hurry and scoop this up quick because, as the label name suggests, there are only 59 copies (all individually numbered) in existence.
Flipping some awe-inspiring nature landscapes on their head by mirroring each setting, the video is quite a conversation starter. For one, every scene looks like a Rorschach inkblot test, so there are certainly some Freudian-tinged sexual interpretations of the reflected mountains, valleys, and streams (or is that just me, and if so, does that mean I love my mother?). As for the track, it’s 5+ minutes of instrumental bliss which, when coupled with the video, makes for an ethereal experience. Well don’t take my word for it, check it out below:
Wow! This was a great week for music related videos. Some were so amazing, I couldn’t just wait around until the weekly round-up so I went ahead and posted a couple of my favorites already earlier this week. Not only that, but there were so many good vids that I decided to make this a sort-of mega-recap. So without further ado:
Seems like Göteborg, Sweden is continuing it’s quest for world dominance this past week. First came the amazing video for jj’s “Let Go”, then an equally impressive DIY-style video from Love Is All’s “Kungen” premiered on Stereogum a day later. Before long, we will all be eating pickled herring…
Although the latest LP from San Fran folk band Vetiver was a bit of a disappointment for me, this acoustic rendition of “Farther On”, captured by French zine WOW Magazine, reminds me why I originally liked this group so much:
The next video is another amazing acoustic performance, this time by the Danish ensemble Efterklang. Put together by the wonderful Austrian site They Shoot Music, this recording of “Me Me Me The Brick House” shows this seven-member incarnation of the group at it’s most stripped down. A really great listen! (Also check out The Shoot Music’s video for “Alike” here).
Keeping it in Denmark, The Raveonettes put out my favorite music video of this week with this awesome animation accompanying the track “Heart of Stone” (Note, if the video get taken down, you can watch it here — DAMN VEVO AND THEIR NO EMBED!):
Another crazy video snippet from the mysterious iamamiwhoami surfaced this past week, and I think it’s the best one yet. Who do I think it is? I don’t really care — as long as the music on the LP is just as amazing as these viral vids, they can stay an unknown!
Not really a video per say, but this recording of Beach House performing a new track entitled “The Arrangement” on Sirius XM Radio was too good to pass up:
My apologies to whoever originally posted about this video of Wounded Lion’s track “Friendly?” (I didn’t write down the source). Anyways, behold the amazingness of this MS Powerpoint generated music video:
Finally, it was only a matter of time before the sparse arrangements of The xx got covered by their equally minimalistic Göteborg counterpart El Perro del Mar (see, I wasn’t lying about the Göteborg takeover!). Well Sarah Assbring and company brought their own twist to the beautiful “Shelter” this past week in Brooklyn:
Man this has been a great week for music related videos! Here’s a live recording of a new track entitled “Give Up the Ghost” that Mr. Yorke played last night at the Cambridge Corn Exchange for a show benefiting the Green Party:
EDIT: Looks like Pitchfork was surfing youtube at the same time, as they’ve just posted two other videos from last night’s show which you can check out here.
Most of the time, the things that the reddit community find on the web are ho-hum, but sometimes they can be absolutely extraordinary! Case in point, this video, appropriately posted in the math subreddit, shows a cool logarithmic spiral visualization of one of the most famous pieces by 19th century Hungarian composer Franz Liszt, the beautiful “Hungarian Rhapsody #2″. I’ll let the video’s creater explain his motivation behind the project:
In a piano, notes repeat every 12 semitones (or keys, both black and white), and each whole interval doubles the frequency of these notes. Together, these notes form what we call a pitch class.
It occurred me that the shape of a spiral has all the correct properties to represent this relation between notes. So I wondered, how would piano music look like if it was represented as a spiral of keys?
In this representation, the notes with lower frequencies are in the center of the spiral, starting with A0 (as in the piano). Each radial block of keys represents a single pitch class, so octaves (when two adjacent notes of the same pitch class are played togeter) look like a pair of keys being pressed radially
For the musically and mathematically disinclined, it’s a cool plot that shows interesting patterns based on the similarities between the structure of a piano and a logarithmic spiral! Enough talk, check out the cool result:
Found this gem of a song from San Diego electro-rockers Beaters off the Volar Records website. Entitled “Fishage”, the track is a three minute non-stop raucous jam that barrels through at 100mph without pausing once for a quick breath. Maintaining a driving beat and a pulsating electro-bass line throughout, the song’s energy is set from the beginning and doesn’t stop for anything until the abrupt ending. If you are looking to get sweaty on a dance floor, “Fishage” is sure to do the trick.
Looks like Volar is repressing the group’s debut 7” (and, coincidentally, the label’s first release) which includes “Fishage” as well as the topically titled track “Obamanation” on a very limited red vinyl, so hurry up and snag one of the remaining 125 124 copies (also, Single Screen Records has a few of the repressings as well)! You can also check out the group live as they are slated to open for most of The Soft Pack and Nodzzz’s US tour.
My anticipation for this jj video was palpable, as earlier this week their Swedish label Sincerely Yours rerouted their site to a short not-safe-for-epileptics “video” (click through) showcasing crossed Euro signs, some Renaissance art, and, of course, flashing lights. Even by Sincerely Yours’ standards, this was a bizarre move — making you guess that something big was on the horizon.
And boy did this video deliver! It’s like a Swedish indie-pop version of Snoop Dogg & Pharrell Williams’s “Drop It Like It’s Hot”, full of Black Labradors, marijuana, and the occasional bling. Somehow, this is exactly what I’d imagine a video featuring Joakim and Elin would be…
Sorry to post this so late, but I had a pretty busy weekend of concert going. However, better late than never, so let’s kick off another week of some of my favorite video finds of the past week:
The first one is an incredible music video from Sierra-Leonean Janka Nabay. He has an upcoming 12” on one of my favorite labels True Panther entitled Babu King. Here’s the video for the excellent and highly publicized track “Eh Congo”:
At this point, I’m starving for any sort of new National material. Although I’m usually current with any latest developments (even filming a new song myself in Copenhagen), somehow I missed this live footage for another unreleased track called “Blood Buzz Ohio” that was filmed back in August:
The next two videos are so amazing that you can’t believe they are fan produced. The first is “When I’m With You” from a track off of Best Coast’s impossible to get Black Iris 7” while the second is a take on Memoryhouse’s “Lately”:
“Our Love Was Saved By Spaceman” is the first single off of The Pipettes forthcoming album. Probably due to all the recent lineup changes, their sound has taken a turn from 50s to 70s inspired. Take a listen for yourself:
Finally, the full video of Casiokids’s brand spanking new track has finally surfaced. I talked a little about the teaser for “En Vill Hest” earlier this week, and the full cut seems to be just as weird as the 15 second snippet:
In comparison to their northern neighbors, Denmark doesn’t have as much of a reputation for being a musical hotspot. However, there are severalDanishbands trying to change their country’s image and one of the latest and greatest is the surf rock group The Good The Bad.
I was fortunate enough to catch this band perform during the first warm-up day of the 2008 Roskilde Festival, where I just happened upon their set midway through and was astonished by the amount of energy they possessed. Going the strictly instrumental route (from the band: “We don’t need a vocalist anyway. The music speaks for itself. We use the music so we don’t have to say ‘I Love You’”), the group is a complete 180 from the cerebral acts like Explosions in the Sky or Eluvium — opting to rock out rather than create delicate soundscapes.
Playing mostly low-key venues in Copenhagen and around Europe, there is no doubt in my mind that they will shine at the dingy bar/club scene that’s 6th St. in Austin. Not only that, but with a sound that’s tailor made for the next Tarrantino film, they are sure to please the festival goers with their high intensity surf & flamenco tracks. With a spectacle to match the music, this group is a must see for SXSW ‘10. Check out this live video from one of their shows in Copenhagen:
When it comes to exclusives, Nathaniel and Connor over at I Guess I’m Floating have had their fair share of successes in the past (even premieringthreevideos I took while in Europe). However, nothing they have done thusfar compares to the two new tracks they’ve posted from Savannah, Georgia’s Sunglasses. Although they have only two songs to their name (it’s true — check their myspace), I can’t get either one of them out of my head.
The first unveiled, appropriately titled “Whiplash”, is a genuine summertime jam that will no doubt be put on several “getting through the winter” mixtapes. With the most insane head-bobbing beat I’ve heard in the post-Busta Rhymes era, you’d have to use restraints in order to not move around. Hell, even those stereotypical indie kids with their arms crossed at Hercules & Love Affair shows are sure to break out of their douchebag stationary position and dance with the person next to them.
Although not possessing as much flair as “Whiplash” (but to be honest, few songs do), “Referee” is still a freaking great song. With vocals sounding like you and your buddies are singing karaoke into a mic connected to Garage Band, there is something communal about their music — like it’s meant to be sung by everyone, not just the singers. This sing-along aspect to Sunglasses is what’s special about them; it’s like you get that feeling that you could be a part of their band.
Check out their amazing video they did featuring the dance moves of one “Double Dick Rick” for “Whiplash” as well as an mp3 of “Referee”:
I’ll start off with my favorite video posted by, as usual, Chris from GvB. I can’t come up with a better description than what’s given by the the artist’s Belgium label Crammed Discs:
The world has ended. All that’s left is a jungle on a floating rock where a paradise nightclub band is playing at the last cabaret on earth: the Las Vênus Resort Palace Hotel. The singer’s name is Sonja Khalecallon, and her band are Los Stroboscopious Luminous. Sonja Khalecallon is in fact one of the alter egos of Cibelle, the London-based tropical punkster whose take on music is entirely her own and “Lightworks” is her cover of seminal exotica producer and 1950s electronic music pioneer Raymond Scott’s track.
Videographer Ray Concepcioñ never ceases to amaze me. Evidently, I’m not the only one who’s captured by his cinematic talent as The Great Pumpkin included this video on an awesome recent post about Vermont’s folksy female group Mountain Man:
I seriously can’t get enough of this stripped down version of a new track entitled “Little Bright Fires” by West Texans Daniel Fluitt and Colt Miller of Thrift Store Cowboys (who you may remember put out one of my favorite 7′’s of ‘09). Take a listen for yourself and see how wonderful this song is:
Got to love the genius that is Michel Gondry. Here’s his latest music video for LA’s singer/songwriter Mia Doi Todd track “Open Your Heart”:
Words can’t not describe how pumped I am to check out St. Vincent this weekend when she plays Doug Fir Lounge. She had two great videos crop up this past week (the more official being her video for “Laughing With a Mouth Full of Blood” with Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein’s comic troupe Thunderant), however I prefer the cover of The National’s “Taken for Strangers”:
After hopping the pond for a handful of European dates, New Jersey native Dayve Hawk (aka Memory Tapes) finally got around to playing his first US show when he opened for Atlas Sound at Brooklyn’s Bell House this past week. Here’s a video of his rather nervous performance:
Finally, a video recap wouldn’t be complete with at least one Vincent Moon recording! This week’s pick is an early 2009 Montreal performance by recently deceased singer/songwriter Lhasa de Sela:
If these videos don’t take you through the weekend, head on over to my blog friend Adult Acid and check out what he has posted!
