ENCYCLOPEDIA PICTURA

After watching a couple of videos I thought they have some things in common I realised that they both are from the same collective that is called Encyclopedia Pictura. If you go to their website there's not a lot of information of the people who are working under this name and you just can find their creations and some pictures of animals instead. Another thing you can find is some of their leitmotivs or Fields of Interest: Virtual Reality, Psychokinetic Energy, Cryptozoology, Natural Geometry, Psychedelic Shamanism and Fruit Sandwiches. Strange but maybe reasonable when you watch their creations. Anyway, I think they are doing the most interesting and original music videos I've seen for a long time. One of these video is the Grizzle Bear clip for Knife I posted some weeks ago and here you have the other one:

SEVENTEEN EVERGREEN - HAVEN'T BEEN YOURSELF


These are the only two music videos they've made but you can see other projects they've done in their website:
http://encyclopediapictura.com/

GILBERT AND GEORGE RETROSPECTIVE AT THE TATE MODERN

Today Luis and me went to the Tate for the Gilbert and George exhibition that is taking place there from 15Th February to 7Th May. We didn't have great expectations but at the end we both enjoyed it so much. The exhibition is a retrospective of all the different periods these subversive artists have gone through, from the end of the sixties to nowadays, maybe not so clear at first sight but different enough once you read all the information of the program. I also have to add that they have not lost the power of subversion and they will probably continue making interesting things in the future.
Here I adjunct the webpage link that the Tate Modern has dedicated to them with interesting video interviews where they explain some of the aspects of their creations.

http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/gilbertandgeorge/

Album of the week: DAVID KARSTEN DANIELS - SHARP TEETH / BENJY FERREE - LEAVING THE NEST

and yes...two records together again. And two folky records again... but...
Do we need more folk-pop troubadours? If they are like those two the answer is YES!!!
David Karsten Daniels' new record, the first one published in FAT CAT,has some of the ingredients that makes me love a record. For example, the first song starts little by little, and develops in a final crescendo of violins and choruses singing LA,LA,LA...; the second one starts nude with an acoustic guitar and suddenly a trumpet orchestra is added in the middle of the song; the lyrics of the fourth song are classic but irresistible, and so on...
Benjy Ferree's album is the cause Domino Records have signed up for the first time in their long life an American artist in exclusiveness. Only for that, you can imagine that is worth. But I also can add that his sound, songs and voice are different and personal doing something that millions have done before.

And here you have the video for David Karsten Daniels' Jesus and the devil

New LOW video

mmm...No comments for the new Low video for their song BREAKER. Judge yourself



As you maybe already know, last year Alan Sparhawk started a new project called Retribution Gospel Choir. They made some concerts around the States and sold a couple of EPs during that shows. Their sound was an extension of what Low were doing in their The Great Destroyer period, more noisy than in their previous records; a project that after hearing the new LOW album that escapes from these raw sounds, has even more sense now. Most of the songs that they were playing during that shows ended up in LOW's last record, DRUMS AND GUNS, but in a very different version. Here you have a visual proof of how they made that same song live.

LCD SOUNDSYSTEM'S SOUND OF SILVER REMIX PROJECT

Here we have the umpteenth example of the Internet terrorism: the appearance of a free-to-download remix project of the new LCD SOUNDSYSTEM record before its date of release (it was upload a couple of weeks ago). I have to say that the project, called SOUND LIKE SILVER, is enjoyable as a complement of the record but also in isolation. You can dowload it song by song or as a Bit Torrent file at http://lcdremixed.com/

ARCADE FIRE live at the Brixton Academy

Last Thursday, Luis, Susanna, Eva and me went to see the quickly sold out act that is an Arcade Fire concert nowadays. One week after its publication, the new record is already number two in most of the sales lists worldwide, an incredible thing taking into account that the first single has not been published yet and the popularisation of the first record was a mouth to mouth process that nobody expected to rise that way. Once again, we have here another example of the power of the new technologies to spread the word. They performed all the songs of the new record and remembered three of the most emblematic songs of Funeral. Now they are even more people on stage, the performance is great, the new record too but I couldn't avoid to have the sensation that something has been lost in their way to heaven...

Album of the week: FEIST - THE REMINDER

Three years after she published Let it Die, the record that made her famous after including her song Mushaboom in a TV advertisement, the whitest voice alive comes back with another great record. Not many new things: the habitual collaborations(Mocky, Gonzales and Jamie Lidell) and her voice as the main protagonist. White soul, white pop and even the white soft gospel of Sea Lion Woman. The first single, My moon my man, is already out in the shops but we'll have to wait until the end of April to get the record and see her live at the Shepperds Bush Empire.

Back in black

During the last year we have attended to a new fashion promoted by the record labels that consists into re-release the first single of an album that has been growing up little by little and has become popular after a year the first single was out. We've seen it with Hot Chip's Over and Over, Gossip's Standing in the Way of Control and now is the Klaxons turn distributing again their first single, Gravity's Rainbow, with the excuse of the new recording version of the album and with a new video for the occasion, with less glow colors and all dressed in black. The fact is that these three examples have more good songs in their records worthy to be singles but I suppose that they don't want to run the risk...
And here you have the new video:

Tribute To The Anthology Of American Folk Music By Harry Smith

In the next link:
http://www.hinah.com/catalog/?l=en&t=g&ref=hinahgift013
you can find a free-to-download compilation that covers every track of the American Folk Music Compilation by Harry Smith, three volumes originally published in 1952 and a fourth one just published some years ago. While the first three volumes covered the period between 1927 and 1932, the volume number four covered the years comprised between 1928 and 1940.
The free download tribute compilation is still in progress and the people of Hinah records upload the songs to the website as soon as they receive them. At that moment you can find already more than 10 songs to download, most of them from the great Duluth folk revisionist Charlie Parr. You can also find a lot of free-to-download tracks from Parr in his own website:
http://www.charlieparr.com/

Don't miss his cover of Henry Lee, famous song due to the Cave & Harvey performance of that song in Cave's Murder Ballads record.

deceptions of the year

Welcome to another section of this meaningless blog. This time: deceptions of the year. What's about? disapointment and frustrated expectations. Once on top, and now into the rubish basquet.

Chapter one: "The Science of sleep" makes me sleep.... Boring new film from Michael Gondry who once made the dynamic film Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind and many great videos for people like Daft punk or White stripes. This new film is boring, has the Amelie syndrome and an erratic developement.

Chapter two: Cocorosie's "The adventures of ghosthorse and stillborn": Pretencious from the title and not a big deception as I was expecting it would be that bad (and I don't know why...) Most of the tracks are just stupid and they try to find new ways of expression, as the second album was a copy of the first one, but these new ideas (ambient and hip hop?????????)just don't fit them so well...

SCOTT MATTHEW

Next march 13Th will be published the DVD of one of the most controversial movies released last year: Shortbus. For the people who missed it on Cinema I highly recommend to buy/rent the DVD as I suppose it's going to be full of extras. And one of the best things about the film is not the fact that it has sex explicit images, he's not the one that made it first, but the soundtrack and the way that the music appears in the film: Azure ray, Yo la tengo, Animal Collective, Hidden cameras and a great discovery that is the still unpublished Scott Matthew, a kind of pop troubadour, whose voice can remember Stephin Merritt's, and if he finally publishes a record this year, it's going to be for sure on top of the best of the year's lists.

album of the week: AVEY TARE & KRIA BREKKAN - PULLHAIR RUBEYE

Last week I considered the Panda Bear new record as my record of the week, and just one week after that, I have here the new record from another Animal collective member, Avey Tare, this time together with her new wife, Mum’s Kria Brekkan. This super couple duo is about to release the album in April but they’ve already published online the first track of the album, Sis around the sandmill, in two different formats: normal and reverse. And you can also find the complete album online in both of the formats. The amazing part of the entire story is that they threw the rumour they will publish it in reverse, that they prefer it that way, but as you can also find the normal version online, I’m not sure of what is going to happen at the end.
I have to say that both versions are amazing and I recommend downloading the version that is not going to be published to understand the whole part of this experiment. If this is an experiment, because maybe they are laughing at us with this reverse advance and at the end it’s going to be published just the right way. Nevertheless, whatever is the final version, all this story is so interesting and takes advantage of the myspace era to play and create expectations as nobody made before.

If you want to read Avey Tare explanation to all this controversy I recomend to read the following link:

http://www.prefixmag.com/blog/prefix/2007/03/01/avey-tare-kria-brekkan-pullhair-rubeye/