Favourite Year-End Favourite

I always love reading The A.V. Club's Year In Band Names.

Goldfrapp on the brain

I've been listening to this song a ton since reading the PopMatters top singles of the year. I totally missed this one, but I've certainly made up for it since.

Beaten to the punch!

I was going to rip the audio from the hottest viral video in the city, "I Get on the TTC", but someone beat me to the punch.

Get it while it's hot! Also, the rapper is a Humber comedy student, and former MuchMusic intern.

/off Torontoist comment section

Latest obsession

The Hold Steady - "Sequestered in Memphis" on Letterman

--

I'm pretty much in love with new Hold Steady album. I hadn't really got into them before browsing Metacritic's top rated albums of the year a couple months back, but this album has been growing on me ever since. This song is killer, but the album's closer, "Slapped Actress" is sort of like indie rock's version of gospel. Highly recommended if you like contemporary rock that sounds simply classic. Note that's a small 'c' classic.

Yesssssssssssss!

LCD Soundsystem not splitting

/off Swarm again

Chocolate city

Too bad Richard Pryor didn't live long enough to take his rightful place as Minister of Education.

Fall of Joni

Contents sales are always bittersweet. Someone is moving away or has passed away, and outsiders come in like vultures to scavenge through a house filled with memories. The bittersweet part becomes especially obvious as people try to haggle the price of goods that they're already getting very cheap.

That being said, I find myself very lucky to have picked up six Joni Mitchell LP's and one John & Yoko LP, Double Fantasy from a content sale this afternoon. Song to a Seagull, Clouds, Ladies of the Canyon, Blue, For the Roses, and The Hissing of Summer Lawns were the Joni records... and I can't really complain about not getting a Court & Spark in there, but it would have been nice to have her first six instead of just first five.

I can't wait to spin a couple of these on this beautiful autumn day!

Massive Lotus... er... Flying Attack?

Flying Lotus is a hip hop/electronica producer from California with an album out called Los Angeles that I've been playing the shit out of lately. It's very cool, reminding me a lot of Prefuse 73 and there are threads you could trace back to a group like Massive Attack, which is curious, because check out these album covers:

Flying Lotus - Los Angeles (2008)



Massive Attack - Mezzanine (1998)


Both are wicked album covers, and introduce you to the music before you even hear it. It's kind of like the way you "eat first with your eyes" when it comes to presentation in food, except you "hear first with your eyes" in this case. Whether it's a direct nod as an influence is up for debate, as it could be totally unintended. However, the influence is clearly felt on a musical level. Los Angeles is definitely one of my favourites of the year.

Oh, also, Flying Lotus (aka Steven Ellison)'s great aunt Alice was married to John Coltrane. That'll give you a bit better context in which to enjoy the album's closer here:

Cross' still got it; Chris... not so much.

Locally renown music geek Alan Cross has a new project called ExploreMusic, a website and radio show dedicated to selling CD's at HMV introducing people to terrific new music.

I caught a bit of the show last night, which was on CFNY during the 8:00 hour. It's an interesting mix of news and new tracks, and differs from the Ongoing History of New Music in that it's much more timely, and covers current music events.

Here's something from the show's news section that really caught my attention: Timbaland is producing tracks for Chris Cornell's new album. You read that correctly.

Timbaland is producing tracks for Chris Cornell's new album.

And yes, it's just as awful as you imagined.

PLEASE, sit down for this:



So what's worse, Timbaland's Jesus complex or Chris Cornell's Jesus complex? Yeesh.
This one has been a long time coming for Mr. Cornell.

Anyway, ExploreMusic should be interesting. I've already bookmarked it, even though I don't buy anything from the iTunes store.

#4 with a bullet

M.I.A.'s "Paper Planes" is enjoying a surge on the Billboard Hot 100 lately, possibly due to the fact that the track is featured so heavily in the Pinapple Express trailer.

First issued in LP form on last year's Kala, the track has received a well deserved spike in chart popularity.

The track now appears to be heading into its chart decline, after peaking at #4 on the Billboard Hot 100.



Excellent for driving slowly past suburban public schools in a mini-van. (not actually recommended)

Snaith wins Polaris; Matt's taste > your taste

As predicted/hoped, Caribou wins the 2008 Polaris Prize.

Amateur video of the proceedings below (even though I just spoiled it for you):





After 2005's The Milk of Human Kindness, it seemed like there was nowhere else to go. How could Dan Snaith pull off another album on such an epic scale? Andorra takes it all to the next level. The sunny 60s pop, the 70s krautrock, and the 80s shoegaze, it all come together in one hell of an album. A great selection this year for the prize.

---

Polaris Prize site

Dear Science,: Best album of '08 or best album of all-time?

Drop what you're doing and go buy TV on the Radio's Dear Science,.

I'd say go download it, but you'd hear it and say 'Wow' and go buy it anyway, so I'm saving you a step.

Or stream the album from their myspace. Best track: "DLZ"



Good thing we don't judge the awesomeness of albums solely on video clips. Overall not that bad though, interesting idea.

Now go listen!

Forever Changes

From my recent trip to the UK: Here's an interesting art exhibition named after on the classic psychedelic folk album Forever Changes, a classic LA psych/rock/folk album.

Jim Lambie's exhibition Forever Changes is:

An exhibition of new work by the Glasgow-based artist... including a spectacular vinyl floor and several new sculptures.

The Glasgow Gallery of Modern Art is free, just like most of the museums in the city, as they're owned by the public.

That could never happen here, of course. Except when a gallery is re-opened after a renovation. And it'll be packed as hell.


---




This tune, probably the most well known on the album, was listed as #436 on Rolling Stone's 500 greatest songs a couple years back. It's a really interesting mix of flavours and genres, it combines all sorts of instrumentation to produce a vibe that is very psychedelic but also very unique.






Don't worry, they're mostly crap records. We checked. No sense in putting that rare Sonics bootleg in there; it won't do any good for the art.

There was at least one Carole King Tapestry album in there, though there's around 200 billion pressings of that pop masterpiece, I suppose it's really not that big of a deal to toss a couple in a piece of abstract art for the good of the cause.

Oh brother

Awesome track from one of this year's Polaris Prize finalists, Shad:

"Brother ft. B & F Kabango"



---


Also cool: the very cheeky homage to the Fresh Prince in the video for "The Old Prince Still Lives at Home"

Lights in the Sky

Wired: NIN Dazzles With Lasers, LEDs and Stealth Screens

With more than 40 tons of lighting and stage rigging, hundreds of LED lights, a daunting array of professional and custom-built machinery running both archaic and standard commercial VJ software, three different video systems and an array of sensors and cameras, the tour is nothing if not a lavish display of techno wizardry.

This is an awesome article detailing the technical aspects of the most jaw-dropping live show I've ever seen. I've heard people say that KISS shows were the best rock shows they've ever seen... I think I've had my KISS moment after this particular show, all it was missing was the 3-D glasses.

None of the videos available online even come close to doing this show justice. If you get a chance to see them before this tour is up, do it. Seriously. Awesome.

It's official!

Byrne and Eno to tour!

Free Mp3 inside! Free Mp3 inside!


*drools

Concert review: Weird Al

Weird Al - July 25, Casino Rama

First off, I was very impressed with Mr. Yankovic's rock star chops, he deserves a lot more credit than people give him. His howls during the climax of "Wanna B Ur Lovr" almost made me think he was lip-synching, but it looked pretty darn real. That song was a particular highlight with Al serenading the crowd with the double (and single) Prince-esque entendres.

His use of video was what you'd expect from a guy who made half of his career as a video artist, taking a nod from his heroes, DEVO. The set ran a cool 2:20, mostly because of the AlTV videos running between songs in the segment after the medley... every song needed a costume change and the the fake interviews (Eminem and K-Fed the especially hilarious ones).

Here's the setlist, as lifted mostly from a Yahoo Group. Looks like he's been using the same setlist for a while now. The medley was pretty much the same, though there might have been some variation. I wasn't keeping notes.

Fun Zone
Chicken Dance
Polkarama!
Canadian Idiot
Close But No Cigar
Bob
It's All About the Pentiums
You're Pitiful
Wanna B Ur Lovr

Medley:
Couch Potato
Do I Creep You Out?
I'm in Love with the Skipper
Headline News (updated)
Confessions Part III
A Complicated Song
eBay
Bedrock Anthem
Ode to a Superhero
Pretty Fly for a Rabbi
Trapped in the Drive-Thru
Gump
Eat It

The Saga Begins
Yoda
Smells Like Nirvana
Amish Paradise
White and Nerdy
Fat

Encore:
Cell Phones
Albuquerque

Awestruck: The National Parcs

On Wednesday, I'm interviewing The National Parcs for VoicePrint. From their bio up on their site:

The three young men were born in the backwoods of Quebec, Malawi and B.C., but bred on Montreal streets buzzing with the noise of every nation on earth. For this groundbreaking CD/DVD album, they strip back down to basics, returning to their roots in the bush. The great outdoors becomes their studio, and their songs come alive with all-natural samples of wood splitting, sand slipping, paddles slapping, water dripping. Their cameras and microphones are trained on the trackless woods around them, but their ears have been trained on Grime and Hip Hop, Afrobeat and Baile Funk, American Spirituals and Malian Blues. The resulting Timbervision tracks are an invitation for the world to dance, starting with the half-remembered hum of our own backyards and smuggling in the best that the world has to offer.

Without getting too much into hyperbole, this group is one of the best new things I've heard in a long time. The music and accompanying DVD are fresh, melodic and utterly unique. What more could you ask for? Check out their website - free downloads.

Another version of the truth

A few months back, Nine Inch Nails launched a YouTube film festival for the Ghosts album. Here's a friend's stellar submission:

Affinity pt. 1:



Affinity pt. 2:



On the whole, a lot of the entries to the fest are surprisingly watchable, most taking cues from either the Year Zero concept or Mr. Reznor's quote about Ghosts being a “a soundtrack for daydreams.” Not many of the entries feature a narrative of any kind.

Then, there are videos like this one, "The Craft of SackTapping", made by a group of savage mooks who hopefully were damaged in all the right places during the filming of this one. My guess is safety guidelines are not at the top of their list. Don't watch too much of it. I didn't get past about 10 seconds, but my guess is that it isn't pretty.

Videos of the world

I was watching the New Music the other day and caught this sweet new video from my third or fourth favourite novelty music act, Flight of the Conchords. Bonus points for the extended instrumental section.

Decent job on the CG as well, which is light years ahead of another video I can think of with similar, yet freakishly grotesque effects, Alanis' "8 Easy Steps".