Live Show: Final Fantasy (8/3/09)

My favourite Arcade Fireman Owen Pallett is returning to Atlanta November 21 at the Variety Playhouse repping his own solo project, Final Fantasy. Here’s a recent show to give you a preview of how amazing it will be:

Final Fantasy
Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester, UK
Monday 3rd August, 2009

Setlist:

01. Song Song Song
02. Adventure.exe
03. Midnight Directives
04. Keep The Dog Quiet
05. Lewis Takes Action
06. Dance Dance Dance
07. Flare Gun
08. The Butcher
09. This Is The Dream Of Win And Regine
10. E Is For Estranged
11. CN Tower Belongs To The Dead
12. Lewis Takes His Shirt Off
13. -encore break-
14. The Great Elsewhere
15. This Lamb Sells Condos

Download Lossless Torrent Here

On The Road: 2008 Is Ending Soon

It’s been a little quiet around here because I’m OTP at the beach for the week, but I’ve got some holiday posts coming soon. As 2008 draws to a close, it is time to put together my end of year lists. From the beginning, Ohmpark was primarily a music research project for myself, and these lists are the final culmination of that research. I strongly urge all of my readers to tell me the albums from this year that you love that I might not have covered because I want my lists to be as comprehensive as possible. Feel free to hit the comments of this post with your suggestions.

Much like I did last year when I headed to the beach for Turkey Day, I listened to a bunch of new albums on my way down here, so I’m going to go through them and talk about my first impressions of each. Before I started listening to new albums, though, I jammed some Deerhunter to get rolling. While Microcastle is certainly getting plenty of good hype around the web, I think the bonus disk, Weird Era, is getting a bit overlooked, because I like it as much, if not more, than Microcastle. It is great that on top of making such a perfect pop album they still gave a little something weirder for us Cryptograms fans. Here is a couple tracks from it I heart:

Deerhunter : Operation

Deerhunter : Vox Celeste

Next up I popped in the new Anathallo album called Canopy Glow, and it was so good I listened to twice in a row. I’m not sure how I overlooked this band up into now, but luckily the guys from Sorry No Ferrari turned me on to them when I went to Fest earlier this month. I’ll gush about Canopy Glow more later, but right this second I’d rather respond to Pitchfork’s lame review of it they posted yesterday. First, it is quite amusing to me that The Mars Volta has become the Anti-Christ to Pitchfork, and anytime they talk about a band they don’t like that can play more than 3 chords they invoke a TMV comparison. I really don’t hear much of a parallel except that both of these bands are clearly great. Also, they whine over and over how the singer from Anathallo sounds too much like Sufjan Stevens. Yes, their voices are a bit similar, but the vocalists from Fleet Foxes and Band Of Horses sound way more like Jim James than the guy from Anathallo sounds like Sufjan, and they sure love those cheap ripoff bands to death, so either get consistent or shut up and stop being a hater. Enjoy the new hottness:

Anathallo : Noni’s Field

Anathallo : The River

Next up I listened to Final Fantasy’s Plays To Please EP, which is a tribute to some Canadian musician I’ve never heard. It was a nice listen, but nothing that wowed me like Owen Pallett normally does.

Final Fantasy : Ultimatum

After that I listened to the latest album from The Notwist, The Devil, You + Me. It came out early this summer, but I never got around to it until now. This German band sounds really good and chill, and this album will be in my heavy rotation for a while:

The Notwist : Where In This World

The Notwist : Boneless

The next two albums I tried were the newest from Ruby Isle and The Streets respectively. I didn’t like either one. I’ve never loved The Streets, but Mike Skinner’s lyrics have been pretty interesting most of the time. Unfortunately Eveything Is Borrowed seemed so boring and cliche. Ruby Isle seemed like music for 15 year old pre-ravers, and totally annoyed me. It sucks because I truly love all of the cover songs I’ve heard them do, but I just can’t get into their originals.

Finally, I finished my journey listening to the new Wilderness album, (k)no(w)here. At first I didn’t think I liked it, but by the time I finished the album I was fairly intrigued and then listened to it a few more times since. The vocalist is certainly an acquired taste, but once you can get beyond that, this album is pretty stellar. If you’re like me and you enjoy a challenging listen, this album will provide a just reward.

Wilderness : (p)ablum

Ok, hit me up with your 2008 hottness!

A Random MP3 Trilogy


Photo by Adriano Fegundes

Lately I have been going through a serious Animal Collective kick. They have always been a band that I really liked, but now something has sort of clicked for me and I just can’t get enough. I’m starting to really lean towards considering them the best band to come out of this decade. Their entire discography is in my heaviest of rotations right now, but today’s obsession is Spirit They’re Gone, Spirit They’ve Vanished. Here’s a track from it to help you jump on the bandwagon:

Animal Collective : April And The Phantom

I’ve also been warming up more to The Dodos‘ Visiter lately. At first it struck me as too much of an Animal Collective ripoff, but now that I have been getting to know the language of that sort of music better, I can appreciate what The Dodos are doing. They are surely AC influenced, but they do some interesting stuff with those inclinations:

The Dodos : Jody

Final Fantasy dropped two tracks on the Internet today from two forthcoming EPs. If you are unfamiliar with FF, he is violinist/singer Owen Pallett, best known for his affiliations with Arcade Fire, and you should snatch a copy of his 2006 He Poos Clouds. One of the EPs will be reinterpretations of music by fellow Toronto musician Alex Lukashevsky and the other is a collaboration with Beruit. More info here, but jam a track from the latter:

Final Fantasy : The Butcher

Best 2006 Albums Of 2007

Before I inundate you with all of my best of 2007 stuff, I want to do a little addendum to my 2006 top 50 Albums list. Over the course of this year I discovered some albums that came out last year but wasn’t aware of because I wasn’t blogging and researching obsessively then. These albums here should all have deserved to be on my top 50 list because they are all amazing. Despite being released in ‘06, though, these albums will always make me think of this year because of all the great times I had with them as the soundtrack. Pick up these essentials:

Beach House : Beach House

Final Fantasy : He Poos Clouds

Midlake : The Trials Of Van Occupanther

Portugal The Man : Waiter: “You Vultures!”

Silversun Pickups : Carnavas

Snowden : Anti-Anti

Untied States : Retail Detail

What The Hell Am I Listening To?!?

Some really good stuff:

Menomena

This Portland 3-piece’s Friend And Foe is quickly becoming one of my favourites of the year. Describing this band is difficult for me, a little Clouds Taste Metallic era Flaming Lips, maybe a touch of old school Modest Mouse, maybe a touch of Morphine. I don’t know. Give these tracks a listen, and if you like, go get the album because every song on this thing is great.

Buy Menomena : Friend And Foe

Explosions In The Sky


Their new album, All Of A Sudden I Miss Everyone, is a great example of a band that just does their thing, and gets better and better. Many may think that this album sounds very much like most of their others, and that’s somewhat true, but some bands just do what they do masterfully, and that’s all they need to do. Sometimes a band just doesn’t have to head off into another direction (Modest Mouse comes to mind). Give a listen to a great band in their prime:

Buy Explosions In The Sky : All Of A Sudden I Miss Everyone

Do Make Say Think

Another great post-rock album i’ve been listening to is DMST’s You, You’re a History In Rust. Part of the Broken Social Scene extended family, these guys are really awesome. Where the new Explosions In The Sky record works to perfect an already “classic” style of post-rock, this album takes alot more liberties and avoids any derivative labels. Enjoy:

Buy Do Make Say Think : You, You’re A History In Rust

Final Fantasy

I knew when I did my top 50 List of 2006, that i would miss some albums that deserved to be on it because I had only a limited amount of time and resources. He Poos Clouds is the first one. Final Fantasy (aka Owen Pallett) is a violinist/vocalist who played with Arcade Fire on tour and even did some of the string arrangements on their new album, Neon Bible. This second full album as Final Fantasy is just simply phenonemal. You really need to get this:

Buy Final Fantasy : He Poos Clouds

Torrent Of The Day: Final Fantasy (2-23-2007)

I have been listening to He Poos Clouds alot lately so here’s a very recent live show:

Final Fantasy / 02.23.07 / Tranzac, Toronto, Canada / Flac

Final Fantasy
Tranzac
Toronto, ON
February 23, 2007

Recorded and uploaded by Winter.
Recorded on a Sharp MD using a Sony digital microphone
Recorded from the front, stage centre-right

Transfered using Total Recorder
Normalised and balanced using Sound Forge
Tracks cut using CD Wave (24-bit but saved backwards compatible)
Converted to Flac, tested and fingerprinted using Flac Frontend.

Audio notes:
Levels slightly exceeded levels part way through, they were adjusted on the fly (sample shows this)
The clicks you hear is the artist’s foot hitting his pedals.
The vocals are somewhat low in the mix, but that’s how they were meant to be. The artists requested such during the show.
Tracks with question marks are new songs. Titles are based on a blurry setlist photo.

1) Blue Imelda?
2) Do You Love
3) Bass Hit?
4) Hey Dad
5) CN Tower Belongs to the Dead
6) Flare Gun?
7) It took 2 years to break your heart
8) Paris 1919
9) This Lamb Sells Condos
10) Song Song Song
11) Lewis Takes Off His Shirt 1
12) Lewis Takes OFf His Shirt 2
13) Arctic Circle
14) Theme from Castlevania
15) This is the Dream of Win and Regine