Rick decided to spin up a little "Guess the 80's movie and artist" game for us to play last week. Final scoreboard after the jump.
This week we're spotlighting several members' videoblogs on MIX. First up, ksawyer does a weekly music round-up show called New Sound Now. In this first episode, he showcases some great music videos, sources for free music, and discusses the usefulness of artist videos. I love the video he features from the Raveonettes, the chorus from "Dead Sound" has been stuck in my head since. ksawyer also fosters some thought-provoking discussion on censorship.
I don't know how I came across Bluejuice. I was in all probability following some online breadcrumb trail. All I know is that once I clicked on the music video for their song Vitriol, I literally had to be dragged away from the computer in order to stop playing it. Okay, that's a little extreme, but the song is damn good. The video features Bluejuice performing as a religious cult on a city street. You can see by people's faces that most were extremely confused. I mean, since when is it okay to really dig the music of a group who may be totally insane? The answer: always.
Each week, we here at EPIC FU highlight someone or something who is giving the ultimate FU to the status-quo. This week, the FU of the Week is being served by Jonathan Coulton, the former computer programmer turned Geek Rockstar.
In 2005, Jonathan stopped writing software and started writing song lyrics. He immediately tapped into his online roots and decided to release a song a week for an entire year as free downloads on his site. The combination of the web's love of free things and Jonathan's readiness to take creative risks turned the experiment into a crazy success. The project, called Thing a Week, garnered a legion of loyal fans, who are now the core of his online community and continue to fuel his music career.
French director, Romain Gavras, directs Justice's newest music video for the song Stress. If you could epitomize what stress would look and sound like in a music video, I think this would be it. Romain and Justice take you to that place that gets the heart pumping with frustration and anxiety. I love how this video really grabs hold of the beat and just doesn't let go. A great marriage of video and sound.
[via mdfsmash.com]
Just before we spoke with Chris Burke and Paul Owens about the Blip Festival documentary, Chris (AKA Glomag) gave us the pleasure of an impromptu live performance in an atrium of a hotel. Aside from being a pioneer in the chiptune scene, Chris is also the creator and host of the Halo machinima talk show This Spartan Life.
Brooklyn's Santi White (AKA Santo Gold) is often compared to fellow proghopper M.I.A. The video is an homage to the 1973 cult film The Holy Mountain. I expect to see more dancehall/reggae influenced hip-hop artists rise up over the next few years.
M83's forthcoming album Saturday = Youth is supposed to capture the essence of teenager angst in the 1980's. The band's sole member, Anthony Gonzalez, has specifically referenced John Hughes movies like The Breakfast Club and Sixteen Candles. Watch the video for Graveyard Girl and tell me you don't see a Molly Ringwald resemblance.
(via Stereogum)
So there's not much backstory that I can find about this DJ, so if anyone has any additional info let me know and I'll add it to the post. It's pretty impressive how this guy uses his feet as good as anyone would use their hands.
If you are amongst the legion of coding noobs, you better listen up to The Poetic Prophet's (AKA The SEO Rapper) Design Code rap. :)
When you use CSS, your page will load quicker
Client satisfied like they eating on a snicker...
The new video for "In The Night" by Basia Bulat is an instant pick-me-up. It features an interesting cast of characters, including furries and dancing skeletons, and that instrument she's playing is apparently called an "autoharp." Also the whole thing is shot in one long take -- no cuts. This track has "Apple ad" written all over it.
It's always cool to see music labels moving towards the digital era. Matador Records just released their yearly "Intended Play" sampler album as a free download for the first time. There's some cool stuff on here -- including a few not-yet-released tracks and a live track from The New Pornographers (who I recently mentioned in a different article). Definitely worth the download.
Track list after the break.
On this week's show, Zadi talked about free music from SXSW. Paul Ford from The Morning News went a step further (or many steps, rather) and reviewed all the free tracks available on the SXSW music page. Yes, all 763 of them. He kept the reviews to 6 words each and rated them on a 5-point scale. Not a lot of meat there, but still you gotta give the guy some credit.
Trent Reznor of NIN posted a video to YouTube asking fans to create visuals to accompany the 36 instrumental tracks from Ghosts (we featured Ghosts on EPIC-FU a couple weeks back). The project is billed as a film festival rather than a contest and entries are being submitted via a YouTube group. As of right now, there are 99 videos posted to the group. Very cool idea, and definitely a great way to spread your music and let others participate in it creatively.
This is a few months old but I just stumbled on it. And boy oh boy I feel like I just struck gold! One of my favorite indie rock bands The New Pornographers asked fans to cover one of their songs in the style of Michael McDonald (a Yacht Rock legend) -- and post the results on YouTube. What a brilliant idea for a contest! The winning video by dancebuffet almost, almost brought me to tears.
First listen to the original:
Then watch dancebuffet's cover:
Our friend Paul Dateh was in New York and went to see our friends at Rocketboom. The result? A charming casual Friday episode. :)
Here's an interesting project called Sound of Color. Five musicians, including Swizz Beatz, The Ravonettes, and YouTube star Marie Digby, were assigned colors and asked to write original songs. The tracks were then given to 5 directors who made music videos, also inspired by the colors.
All the songs are downloadable and I like the diversity of music genres represented. On the downside the project was sponsored by GAP, which makes me wonder about the clothes they're wearing and how it plays into GAP's marketing campaign. But still worth checking out.
A dog with fresh beats? What more can you ask for?
This made me laugh pretty hard. Play around and record your own mix.
Last December, Oakland DJ Amplive announced he would release a free remix album of Radiohead's In Rainbows. But he made the mistake of not getting permission from the Radiohead camp, which apparently was a no-no because he received a cease and desist from Radiohead's management and the whole project was nixed.
Sometimes not having a loved-one on Valentine's day isn't the worst thing in the world, especially if the person you're dating hails from Psychoville. So for your listening (and viewing) pleasure, here are our top 10 songs to remind you that sometimes being alone and a little sad is far better than being together and totally creeped out... or dead.
I mean, what would you think if someone dedicated one of these songs to you after a few first dates?
Our friend Brian Lerner had introduced us to the guys in The Honorary Title some time back. We listened to their album Anything Else but the Truth and knew we had to interview them for the show. That was a year ago. Since then, they've been rising to the top, releasing a new album (Scream and Light Up the Sky), playing to sold out audiences, and now making appearances on television shows like One Tree Hill. The lead singer, Jarrod Gorbel, also made a guest appearance on our most recent New Year's episode.
There's a behind the scenes preview of the OTH appearance that aired tonight on Justin.tv.
What a crazy ride. Congrats guys! Can't wait to see and hear what comes next!
The Teenagers video for Starlett Johansson was a runner-up for this week's spotlight video. For me its equally amusing as it is catchy. This YouTube comment pretty much sums it up:
"It's a wet dream translated into music with a creepy deep voice." -Wheelsgr
Explore the music video for Arcade Fire's Black Mirror at rorrimkcalb.com while deconstructing its tracks while you listen. Press the numbers shown underneath the video to enable/disable the tracks. A very haunting experience.
One of our viewers, Jimsin, sent us a link to this awesomely bizarre music video. It's by a band called The Native Hipsters, and it's the creepy off-beatness that makes it great.
Jimsin says:
...they recorded their first (and only) single in their bedroom back in 1980 and it got played by John Peel and made it to number 5 in the indie charts & they had to stamp all 5000 copies of the single by hand using a rubber stamp.
Thanks Jimsin!
Another Robot Sunset is Postal Service meets Commodore 64. They are pretty much your typical 2-white-dudes-and-a-robot hip-hop group. Here's a snippet from their bio:
cadence used to be a rapper. then he died. but he died while jacked in to the matrix, and an imprint of his personality and rap skills was preserved on his deck. this deck was purchased by a delightfully nerdy scientist named paul padgett, along with a poster of 2Pac that said "Only God Can Judge Me" and a previously unused Roomba. [Read more]
Check out this music video inspired by Barack Obama's Yes We Can speech. It's one of others starting to pop up and features a star cast including John Legend, Scarlett Johansson, Herbie Hancock, Amber Valetta and others.
Thanks to Steve Garfield for pointing it out to us.
We've been laughing at this all day and we figured we'd post it here for those of you who may not have seen it yet. It has to be one of Sarah Silverman's funniest bits. Enjoy. :)
Umm yeah I think the title pretty much says it all. These guys are eco-friendly in their own way.
This is a free download over at thesixtyone, a digg-like music discovery site we featured a couple weeks ago.
This past week on the show we spotlighted Bat for Lashes, the UK band headed by Natasha Khan, a Brighton based singer/songwriter. The group (whose female counterparts have included Ginger Lee, Abi Fry, Caroline Weeks and Lizzy Carey) mixes the sound of drums, guitar, piano, harpsichord, and occasional hand claps to create a sound that is dark, haunting and consistently intriguing.
This amazing and compelling musician was originally blogged by Göran Wallin on MIX. He writes in response to a comment:
...the instrument is called "hang," and was developed from steel drums around the year 2000, so it's a completely new instrument. You can read more about hang drums on Wikipedia.
Göran's profile is here. Awesome find by him!
I just finished watching this really cool six-part documentary series called Eternal Children about the freak folk music scene. It features two of my favorite musical artists, CocoRosie and Devendra Banhart, among others.
It's a pretty interesting look into the thoughts and lives of these artists as they navigate their own very unique creative waters. Definitely worth checking out. The complete series after the break.
"The pre-recorded performance will include all of the tracks from "In Rainbows" plus some "other bits" as Thom says."
I'm sure this thing will be archived all over the web -- so no worries if you're going out to celebrate. Have fun!
Check out the Holiday Sweater Song music video our friends at Indy Mogul made - a whole bunch of our friends are in it. It was written, directed and edited by Justin Johnson and the music and half of the lyrics were written by Steve Nelson. We TOTALLY missed the deadline in sending in our holiday sweater portion - but the video turned out great. Happy Holidays! :)
If you haven't checked it out yet, makes sure to download the free 8bitpeoples 8 Bits of Christmas album. 8 songs, composed by 8 chiptune artists, on 8 different videogame consoles. It was made in 2003, but is still one of the only holiday chiptune albums out there.
Cross-genre covers are popping up a lot lately. Here's 30 Seconds to Mars cover of Kanye West's Stronger. Much different feel than the original.
"Sleigh bells and neighbours wishing well Singing christmas carols makes me feel unwell. I'd like to eat the mistletoe, bury me out in the snow, 'cause Christmas makes me blue"
I just discovered Simone White's new song "Christmas Makes Me Blue." Simone is a Hawaii native now living in Venice, California. Her voice is melancholy and fragile. Her videos are nostalgic with a touch of the strange. You can download the holiday MP3 along with some of her other songs from her MySpace page.
I just started using imeem for music and it's actually very cool. After signing a deal with Universal last week, they now have agreements with all 4 major labels, so they have a huge library of full-length songs you can stream and embed on your blog, Myspace, Facebook, etc. The nice thing about this vs. Seeqpod is you don't have to worry about the song disappearing off a random sever.
It also gives me a great platform to showcase cool music on the blog. Here's a bunch of stuff I'm listening to right now. The Nada Surf song is from their unreleased album Lucky due in February.
