A Random Mp3 Trilogy: Au, The Flaming Lips, Devendra Banhart
Photo by Daniel Addy
One of the more promising experimental pop bands to emerge in recent years is Portland Oregon’s Au. They just released their third consecutive EP. It is titled Versions, and is made up mostly of reworked songs from their first two releases. I usually don’t like rehash/remix EPs, but Au completely transforms their older material into something entirely new and equally as tremendous. Here is the first track, an original:
After At War With The Mystics I had completely lost faith in the Flaming Lips‘ future album making abilities, but it turns out I jumped off the bandwagon prematurely. Thankfully on Embryonic they took a sharp turn away from Mystics‘ stadium pop drivel and went back to where they really shine, being weird. Not every song on here is a home run, but even the misses at least contain some interesting components.
Photo by Lauren Dukoff
Devendra returns with yet another extraordinary effort, magically weaved together from seemingly normal, conservative musical elements. While he continues to move into more accessible territory stylistically, he still manages to retain that special intangible gift that sets him apart from the other billion folky singer songwriters. Freak scene purists may not be digging this one, but take it for what it is and I think it’s hard not to love.
- Posted by Davy Minor on November 5, 2009 at 7:19 am
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Live Show: Fuck Buttons (1/9/09) All Tomorrow’s Parties Australia
Fuck Buttons @ ATP NY
artist: Fuck Buttons
venue: Bourke St Stage, Mt Buller Ski Resort, Victoria, Australia
event: All Tomorrows Parties
date: 9 January 2009 19:45
01 – Sweet Love For Planet Earth Click here to read the entire post…
02 – Ribs Out
- Posted by Davy Minor on January 28, 2009 at 1:40 am
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Photos: ATP New York – Day 2 (9-20-08) in Monticello, NY
Click here to read the entire post…
- Posted by admin on October 1, 2008 at 12:31 am
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All Tomorrow’s Parties NY Day 2 (Saturday): This Festival Is Cool And All, But I Sure Wish Jack Johnson Was Here
Just Kidding. I noticed in the programs/schedules we got that they joked about a big thing that set ATP apart from other festivals being “that no one selected or even wanted Jack Johnson“, and if you read this blog regularly, you know I can appreciate that sentiment.
We stuck around until last call at the bar at The Raleigh Friday night, so the first band I was able to catch on Saturday was the end of Growing‘s set. The 10 minutes or so I saw, I thought sounded great. I’ll be looking hard into this noise jamming duo now. After that I gave a short listen to The Drones and Wooden Shjips, but neither was really up my alley. I watched Fuck Buttons next, and damn their set was serious. I listened to their album and thought it was decent but it didn’t really hit me as something special, but catching them in a live setting totally sold me on these guys. The two dudes used all sorts of cool devices stacked on a table including a toy mic audio recorder sent through some interesting effects resulting in sweet distorted vocals. Their sound came off to me somewhere between Holy Fuck and Indian Jewelry, which is a great place to be.
After that I decided to start partying and enjoying the facilities. The resort ATP was being held on was kitschy and weird, and at first seemed like sort of a dump. But around the second day we were starting to appreciate how cool a venue this actually was. It was really nice to have an entire resort completely to ourselves, and often times you would see the artists walking around, catching shows, and hanging. We hung out in their children’s playground for a bit and tried out some strange playground equipment I had never seen before. We hung out by the pond with all of the drinkers and smokers and chilled. The place had a lot of amenities, but was crappy enough that a festival crowd couldn’t do too much damage to it. Well, they probably could.
Anyways, I checked out about half of Edan‘s set, and that was really good. I’ve found myself getting really bored of hip-hop these days, a genre I used to love. I mean, the new Lil’ Wayne is incredible and all, but it is still pretty much the same old thing rappers have been doing for 20 years. But Edan and his partner for this show Dagha brought some originality to the game. I particularly liked how they utilized a delay pedal to accent certain syllables instead of having a “hype man” yell the last word of every line. Another trick I enjoyed was when Edan did a rap referencing all types of classic records while Dagha would shuffle through them and display each record he was referencing. I love a show that can be fun to watch and exhibit feats of musicianship and skill at the same time.
I did some more partying, caught a little bit of OM, thought it was cool but I wasn’t really in the mood for it, then did some more partying. Next up for me was Low. They really impressed me because I only liked a few of the songs from their last record, but they were making me love absolutely every minute of their “slowcore” set (which is a funny yet accurate for this band genre title). The amount of intensity they can can pack inside of such downbeat, soft, and pretty sounding stuff just dazzled me.
By the time Thee Silver Mount Zion Orchestra began their set, I realized I had been partying too hard and could not properly appreciate it. I went and grabbed some food and drink some water, and got myself back to a manageable level of intoxication. I then returned back to the second stage, laid down in the back, and just let the rest Mount Zion‘s epic two hour set wash across me. This may have been the show I enjoyed most all weekend. I am about to obtain every bit of material from this project I possibly can and get obsessed for a while, so expect more of that around here. In addition to their top notch music, I loved how the dude would respond to every single bit of crowd heckling and yelling and call people out and talk smack . All around, this show was just: Wow!
I caught the last part of Shellac‘s set and felt the same way about it that I did when trying out their records: it wasn’t bad, but nothing amazing. Among many other basic indie rock facts I learned over the weekend, I hadn’t realized this was Steve Albini’s band, and they did a little question and answer part at one point that was interesting. After that Lighting Bolt set up on the ground to the right of the stage with a big circular mirror hanging above them so everyone could see the chaos going on at the center of that sonic tornado. What a day!
I’ll have my Day 3/Wrap-Up post as soon as Biggie C gets all of his photos posted, probably around the end of the week.
Here’s a video of Shellac from ATP NY:
- Posted by Davy Minor on September 23, 2008 at 9:04 am
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