My good friend / quasi half brother and talented archi-DJ Tomas Ceron has launched a blog containing some of his mixes and other music goodies. Go check it out at http://tomasceron.blogspot.com/ and make sure you’ve got your patent leather shoes on.
Patent leather shoes = zapatos de charol… calcule.
My good friend Gabe and I made it to Mr. Talking Head David Byrne’s concert at Radio City last night. Mr. Byrne was of course his quircky-goofy-smart-loose kneed self and the concert couldn’t have been better. He sang while walking backwards, spinning on a chair, wearing a tutu, running the talking heads run and completely intermingled himself with the choreographies. We both were probably amongst the youngest ones in the crowd, which means we got schooled on the knee-breaking-elbow-flapping dance moves of the 80’s.
I’ll post some clips later this week.
My good friend Gabe and I made it last night to Irving Plaza to see Tricky. I had seen him play at the same venue about 5 years ago and the concert was horrible, so I had my doubts about this one. This time around though it was absolutely incredible.
Among the first set, was a cover of ‘The Lovecats’, The Cure’s amazingly good ‘83 song. Every one of Maxinquaye’s (still a favorite) songs was beautifully performed. And his daughter (Masey?) rocked.
Saturday we made it to Liberty State Park in N.J. for the All Points West festival. The only reason for going on Saturday, for me, was to see Radiohead. Chromeo was also up in there in the list, but playing at 2 pm, there was no way I was going to make it.
Radiohead was of course incredible. They played 2+hours and had 2 encores. The visuals were pretty nice: two large screens as well as what seemed to me (from my spot) like strands of fiber optics hanging and creating simple patterns. The screens had 6 different views of the stage and every now and then some interesting patterns.
Some pics after the jump. Some clips coming up in a few days.
(more…)
For their latest video from the album In Rainbows, Radiohead has gone super hi tech, by not using cameras at all, and instead relying on Geometric Informatics and Velodyne Lidar (?!) technologies … I won’t try to explain it in my own words, so I’ll just quote from the Pitchfork article quoting from the press release:
“The Geometric Informatics scanning system employs structured light to capture detailed 3D images at close proximity, and was used to render the performances of Radiohead’s Thom Yorke, the female lead, and several partygoers. The Velodyne Lidar system uses multiple lasers to capture large environments in 3D, in this case 64 lasers rotating and shooting in a 360 degree radius 900 times per minute, capturing all of the exterior scenes and wide party shots.”
via [Pitchfork]
Bunghole Bunghole Bunghole Bunghole. This might be the only rap song I could actually listen to.
Trent Reznor keeps pushing the envelope regarding music freedom with his latest release: The Slip.
The album is being literally given away for free in four different formats including the artwork, all released under the Creative Commons “attribution noncommercial share-alike” license, so you’re free -and encouraged- to do with it as you please.
This is the post in NIN’s news:
(thank you for your continued and loyal support over the years – this one’s on me)
Go download it at NIN or get the mp3 files here (86 megs).
via [wired]
I wonder what Radiohead will do now to top NIN…
The new video for Justice’s Stress by Romain Gavras. I’m still trying to parse it.
View it here @ fubiz
via [motionographer]
Last night was Goldfrapp’s concert in The Beacon Theater. It was the first time I got to see her but it was very good.
It is always quite a treat seeing an absolutely incredible singer and Alison Goldfrapp is definitely one of them. She was getting over a cold (and complained a few times about how bad she sounded). The way she effortlessly goes to those glass shattering highs is quite astounding.
She also happened to look incredibly sexy wearing her skimpy little gown.
Go after the jump to see some lousy clips.
Here are the original storyboards for our Radiohead video entry in Aniboom -Nude- and some goofy initial tests for the video.
Click here to go vote for it
From the beginning, we had a pretty clear idea of the look, mood and speed the video should have.
The video is meant to be a play between the beautiful and the grotesque, by taking an all to familiar yet bizarre part of the body as the mouth and pushing its ‘normality’ a bit the idea was to displace that sense of familiarity.
The ‘narrative’ is pretty independent from the lyrics but they connec in very specific points: you’ll find something missing / you’ll go to hell for what your dirty mind is thinking.
This was a pretty fun charrette project to work on and we’re definitely super happy with the (semi) final result.
Finally, the animatic for our Radiohead video is done!
Go register and vote for our entry in the Aniboom here
Here is the storyboard for our entry for the Radiohead video. The song is Nude. The animatic will follow up in a few.
I’ll post the link so you can go and vote 5 BOMBS for our video in aniBoom.
Here is the recently released video for Portishead’s “Machine Gun”, from their latest album Third. The album has to be, in my view, one of the best albums of this year. It is absolutely fantastic. Go buy it *once its out*
Thanks Gabe for the pointer on the video
The NY Times today posted a making of video for the new Bjork ‘Wanderlust’ music video. Apparently, the whole thing took nine months to make with these guys sleeping on the set and not being paid for much of it. They start the interview off with a confession to using illicit drugs as part of their creative exploration. After watching the video, I’m not sure if they were so much explaining their process as apologizing.
One would think that in that amount of time you’d be bowled-over by this video, but instead all I kept thinking was, really, nine months? They reuse shots so often, it made me wonder how much of their footage hit the cutting room floor. To be fair, I’m not judging the final piece which is supposed to be viewed in 3D with stereoscopic glasses (oh yeah, I’ll just go to Rite-aid and pick up a pair of those…); but I would hope that they would be concious of the fact that most people are not going to see this video in 3D and that with Bjork giving them “as much time as they needed” they could create two equal pieces, one 2D and one 3D.
They use puppets, clay characters, hand drawn elements, choreographed live action green screen footage and (what the hell is that at the end?) CG. That’s all fine and good, but I don’t want to be able to tell which ones you’re using and when. Just because you have fine ingredients and you’ve mixed them in a pot doesn’t mean you’re done creating your gourmet meal. And I’d argue the ingredients here are less than fine. And I’m not opposed to a Low-Fi stylized look either, but unfortunately the video comes off as more highschool-project/ amateur hour and a bad comedy club. Perhaps like a comedy club injects you with large alcoholic drinks before the show, they should provide us all with a little psilocybin to dull and heighten the correct senses.
Have I judged enough? Now it’s your turn…let’s hear what you think.
For some reason I haven’t been able to get this song out of my head… I know I’m probably one of the few living beings who remembers this ever existed anyways.
The song is Pancho Villa, by Magazine 60, an 80’s French band. Party on Garth.
Last night we got treated to this awesome display of talent in the 4 train (at 1:30 am…) from Bleecker to 86th Street – non stop. I’m still singing: chicken noodle soup, shake shake chicken noodle soup… do it for the ladies…
View the full ride after the jump below.
Looking for a music video of Argentinean super star Charly Garcia, I found this gem from a while ago.
He then asks one of the journalists to bring him a coke…
Upon the question: Where did you leave your Superman cape?
In your bedroom… He replies.
Oh snap!
Steve Forrest/Insight-Visual for The New York Times
The NY Times has a pretty interesting article on Radiohead’s “In Rainbows” -on the actual making on the album and the effects of the pay-what-you-want scheme after freeing themselves EMI .
Read it here.
I haven’t been able to get this song out of my head in the last few days – don’t ask me why. Check out those kicks and radio(?)watches. This is Righeira in 1983. If only the future were that cool.
