If this doesn’t stop global warming I don’t know what will. The icelandic icon joined Sigur Ros on stage to perform their new single Gobbledigook as part of a ‘Nattura’ concert in the center of Reykjavik, to raise awareness for the effects of Aluminium smelting on the Icelandic topography.
Bjork always has somthing endearingly child/pixie like about her when she performs, even more so when she’s banging a drum like an 8 year old.
As promised here is the opening slice from Jay Z’s Glastonbury headlining set, a nice little ‘fuck you’ to Oasis and imparticular Noel Gallagher. In a sort of “I’m in your stage, playing your songs, stealing your audience” sort of way. He followed up immediately with AC/DC fueled 99 problems, apologies for the fawning cunt that is Zane Lowe at the beginning but it’s the best video I could find.
The rest of the setlist along with other Glastonbury highlights, of which there were many are all over Youtube. Here’s another one that has provoked quite a lot of “discussion”
Michael Eavis defended her by suggesting that someone had “grabbed her boob” but from the video I can’t really seen any boob gropage. Her whole performance was a little harebrained and all over the place, so maybe she though someone looked at her funny.
I was tempted to post this lovely interview the other day, but felt it wasn’t completely relevant but as he’s just come off the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury it’s a littler more so. Until the videos of his all conquering performance start popping up on Youtube this’ll have do to keep you sweet.
Ohh look! It’s another new Beck track off of his forthcoming album ‘Modern Guilt’, released in all reputable record stores on the 6-8th of July. Depending on where in the world you are.
Apparently this is going to be the lead single. Who still buys singles anyway?
Waste of time.
Also that Beck fellow has a rather funky/psychadelic/rockin promo video that’s on the popular video sharing network Youtube. It’s quite good.
MP3: Beck – Gamma Ray
I would have liked to of posted this video last week but MTV are truly embracing the concept of the internet by restricting videos to certain regions. Pricks
Anyway, it’s quite a nice, one take video, like their music it has a certain Wes Anderson vibe to it.
Interesting fact: It was directed by Richard Ayoade of IT crowd, Nathan Barley and Time Trumpet fame.
Those who like their Radiohead pre 1997 could do worse than to check out Thom Yorke’s younger brother, Andy Yorke, whose debut solo album ‘Simple’ is coming out this summer after departing from his old band ‘The Unbelievable Truth‘.
There’s a strong vibe of Pablo Honey’s and The Bends’ slower songs in the two tracks posted below, which is only reinforced by how much he sounds like his older brother. Think Thom Yorke in 1994 without a noisy and abrasive wall of guitars behind him and before he ditched his guitar and became obsessed with electronica.
MP3: Andy Yorke – Rise and Fall
MP3: Andy Yorke – Ode to a Friend
Posted in Music
Tagged Andy Yorke, Ode to a Friend, Rise and Fall, Simple, The Unbelievable Truth, Thom Yorke
Before I start this review, can I just say isn’t that the lushest lighting rig you’ve ever seen? I just want to dive into those lights and bathe in their glow in a highly pretentious manner.
Unfortunately the light show shown above was only truly unleashed for the final third of the show, due to the inconveniences of the English Summer that never seems to provide us with much heat but always plenty of light to ruin Radiohead’s LED lightshow. Oh and they didn’t play Paranoid Android for Christ’s sake! PARANOID ANDROID!
These were my only two grumbles leaving Victoria park amidst a sea of Radiohead ‘fans’ streaming down the roads leading to Mile End tube station, leaving dozens of motorists humorously stranded and beleaguered in the process.
I do have a third complaint, another slight taint on the event of seeing my favourite band in the flesh for the first time, but I’m not sure whether to attribute it to Radiohead themselves or their supposed fanbase.
It depends I guess on what camp you’re in; there are the “Hits first” group who think Creep is their best work and think everything Radiohead have done in the 21st century is a bit “weird“, they also believe that as they are playing to 40,000 people in a big outdoor venue they are obliged to play their “hits” from the 20th century. Creep, High and Dry, Just, Karma Police and No Surprises please! These people also, in the main, thought Bat for Lashes was a bit strange and ’boring’. The “Hits first” group aren’t very opened minded in the main and only really venture out to see live music at big events such as this. Because its like a day in the park drinking, sunbathing and seeing sum music as well innit?
The “Hits first” group can be identified by a bored demenour and confused, furrowed brow during Amnesiac songs.
Then there are the purists, who admire Kid A and everything that followed it, those who believe that Radiohead have gotten better with age, those who can appreciate the less accessible aspects of the band’s discography. They also respect a bands artistic freedom to play whatever the fuck they want.
The purist can be identified by their handsome, rugged good looks and radiant glow about them.
As you may have guessed by my humourously biased language. I am a purist. But getting back to my point, the third ‘complaint’ was that a significant minority of the 40,000 crowd were bored and unstimulated. Being near the front I expected it to be a bit more lively, but no, I spent large amounts of the gig with one man inparticular in front of me, looking lethally bored, I think he might have blinked during Just, but I’m not entirely sure, may have been something in his eye.
Now, was the crowd being a little dead and the atmosphere being a little dry at times down to Radiohead for not pulling out the crowd pleasers? Or the crowd’ for expecting a band like Radiohead to pander to this belief? Despite my feelings on it being the former, I can emphasise with those who wanted Creep.
And it is how you feel on this issue that decides how you felt about this gig, for me, it was brilliant. Viewing Thom Yorke dance like a crazy 21st century jungle shaman with suitably 21st century visions of doom, global warming, “Free Tibet” and all that. Is something to be experienced in the flesh, as well as his hauntingly beautiful voice and sense of humour as he peered down a camera placed by his piano, eyeballing the crowd.
Seeing Johnny Greenwood literally thrash into his guitar one moment, retiring into a darker corner of the stage the next. This time to fiddle with some complicated looking piece of machinery, producing atonal blips and ambient hums before finally emerging once again into his awkwardly held spotlight to play his guitar once again, but this time with a violin bow Dazed and Confused stylee, is utterly fascinating.
The other ‘supporting’ members of Radiohead are all recognisably them and for me at least, it’s hard to comprehend it is them, Ed O’Brien is just, well, noticeably tall and cheerful. Colin lurks by Phil at the back of the stage, utterly enveloped in his role as the unsung hero that drives so many Radiohead classics’ along, his constant, ecstatic waving of a shaker is a cruel teaser for someone such as me who is waiting for it to be used for that understated opening to Paranoid Android that never arrived. But I’ll forgive him as he seems a nice bloke and his bass lines make Airbag and provided one of the all too rare roars from the crowd with The National Anthem.
Phil Selway was unfortunately blocked from view by Thom Yorke or Thom Yorke’s piano from where I stood, but I bet he was wearing a suit and looking ridiculously sharp whilst playing the drums.
Once darkness finally descended the light show became a mildly religious experience when combined with the aural onslaughts of Airbag and Planet Telex, even for an ardent Atheist, as I imagine most Radiohead fans are. As adverts for carbon neutral lighting goes it’s a pretty good one.
Thom’s vocal peak in Nude was stunning, Greenwood’s riffs in Airbag devastating, How to Disappear Completely; hauntingly beautiful. Just beautifully raucous and Idioteque surprisingly anthemic and funky. I could go on forever, I could write a more coherent review, but I’m shit at writing about live events, so this pseudo stream of conscious rambling is all you’re going to get from me.
Just a final note to Radiohead.
More intimate venues next time please so we can enjoy your wonderful light show.
Setlist
1. 15 Step
2. Bodysnatchers
3. All I Need
4. National Anthem
5. Pyramid Song
6. Nude
7. Arpeggi
8. The Gloaming
9. Dollars & Cents
10. Faust Arp
11. There There
12. Just
13. Climbing up the Walls
14. Reckoner
15. Everything in its Right Place
16. How to Dissapear Completely.
17. Jigsaw
Encore 1
18. Videotape
19. Airbag
20. Bangers
21. Planet Telex
22. The Tourist
Encore 2
23. Cymbal Rush
24. You And Whose Army
25. Idioteque
Posted in Music
Tagged 2008, 24TH june, Amnesiac, Bat for Lashes, Hail to the Thief, Kid A, Live, Ok Computer, Radiohead, The Bends, Thom Yorke, Victoria Park
After briefly worrying that I might be a sexist, I’ve been scouring the internets for female artists in order to bridge the gender divide and come across “Little Boots” – no that picture of her sitting in undies on her bed wasn’t what drew me to her, her music is actually quite good too, which goes to show that women can be quite good at things sometimes!
She seems to only have two tracks out there but they’re both worringly good, I imagine it’s only a matter of time before she gets some exposure and a record deal. She is pretty much the only artist that I’ve been consistently listening to inbeteewn big Radiohead sessions after seeing them at Victoria Park. Anyway, I’ve uploaded those two tracks for you to enjoy and be simiarlly effusive about.
The first is ‘Stuck on Repeat’ a 7 minute disco/funk/electropop work out with a glorious build up and wonderful layering of beats and appregiated melodies complete with some seriously sassy vocoded vocals that give her voice a nice robotic metallic kick to them as she sings the songs central hook.
MP3: Little Boots – Stuck on Repeat
The second is a more straightforward dirtypop, sort of like Hot Chip meets Timbaland via, um I don’t know really. It’s good though!
Ok, so everyone else has already reviewed this, but it’s not going to stop me putting my own take on it.
Coldplay want you to love them, rather they want the critics to love them. Because there’s no doubt that the general public do. X and Y sold 8.3 million copies worldwide in 2005 and topped charts all over the world. Their brand of inoffensive soft stadium rock is obviously a favourite of people the world over. However the critics were not so similarly enamoured, New York Times critic, Jon Pareles famously called them “The most insufferable band of the decade” in the aftermath of the album’s release. The band appeared to be becoming more and more derivative and absent of anything new to offer to the musical table, to the extent that their new songs started sounding like some of their old songs.
So Viva la Vida is Coldplay’s reinvention, their Kid A, their Acthung Baby. Except; it’s not. Despite much talk of change and adopting a ‘darker’ sound, it remains just that – talk. Chris Martin still rhymes in annoyingly trite couplets, which often results in stressing completely mundane and uninspiring statements to levels of stadium rock ridiculousness. 42 is a prime example of the weaknesses of Martin’s lyrics weighing down an otherwise strong song, it opens with Martin proclaiming rather insightfully “Those who are dead are not dead/They’re just living in my head” Wow, really? That is such an amazing observation, thanks for reminding me that my dead relatives can live on in my memory. Super!.
The fact that Coldplay only seem to write their lyrics for the sake of adhering to a rhyme scheme is not the only thing holding them back from their reinvention. The main thing ensuring that Coldplay still sound like Coldplay is the fundamental lack of musical inventiveness, sure they’ve brought in vaguely tropical sounding guitars on Strawberry Swing, there’s a rather nice, if a little tame instrumental break on 42 and there’s a lot of ambient fuzz leaking out of every gap in the record, no doubt down to the father of ambient music; Brian Eno’s role as Producer. But it never goes as far as a revolution of sound, despite all the talk of a darker sound, Latin influences and Coldplay ‘rebelling’ it’s still pretty standard fare for a Coldplay record.
However there’s no doubt it is an evolution of sound, an admittedly slight one, but an evolution nonetheless. Fundamentally it is still Coldplay as you know them, it’s a shift far enough to please some of their critics, but not a change that will alienate their casual fanbase, the mums and Woolworths shoppers who just want a nice slice of musical fluff. As a result many of the changes are merely window dressing, much like the use of Kraftwerk samples in X and Y, the band are still very much a slick commercial entity with a clear audience to be targeted, any influences or nods to less commercially viable artists are kept to a minimum. That doesn’t mean of course that they can’t make good music and they do on this record, Viva la Vida’s darting strings and Violet Hill’s ‘heavy soft rock’ are brilliant pieces of unashamed pop songs, unrestricted by the albums confused identity and melded with some comparitavely tight, yet anthemic and populist lyrics these songs represent somthing far better than anything on the stale and insipid X and Y and arguably some of the best songs they’ve written even attempts at Shoegaze rock with ‘Chinese Sleep Chant’ are suprisingly well judged and performed
Viva la Vida is a good album, much of the criticism for this album is no doubt as a result of the band’s unfulfilled hype prior to release. Ignoring these grand statements and listening to the album in isolation for what it is rather than what it should be it’s clear that Coldplay still make good music and Viva la Vida is as fine a showcase as any to show Coldplay’s ability to write a good tune, even if the lyrics are shit.
6/10
Haven’t updated in quite a while, it’s not good enough and I hate myself for it but I’ve been being indulgently lazy now that I’m sort of unemployed, going up to bed at 6 in the morning and waking up in time for dinner is not fun or a good lie in, I wouldn’t recommend it. But I’ve found some time in my “schedule” to do a post now.
Anyway I’ve just gotten Girl Talk’s 4th album ‘Feed the Animals’, he’s “Done a Radiohead” so the album is available for free on his myspace. And quite frankly it’s fucking amazing, well maybe amazing is the wrong word, it’s not a classic piece of music, but it’s really, really fun. It’s one of the few albums that has made me smile constantly throughout, you can’t help but do it as you recognise samples from various and disparate artists merged together to create something new.
I mean the idea of creating a song by merging samples of Arvil Lavinge, Jay Z, Aphex Twin and Rod Stewart is inherently ridiculous, but he pulls it off and it’s a joy to listen, I’m not sure of the longevity of the album, I can see it getting very old very quickly as much of my enjoyment and “Lulz” is coming from recognising the samples, once I’m aware of them on subsequent listens it might become a little stale.
That’s not to say the songs aren’t great, it’s not just the novelty of the samples that makes it an enjoyable album, the songs are carefully crafted and he does a great job of creating hooks from hooks but the overtness of the samples in comparison to say, DJ Shadow’s seminal Endtroducing, means that the songs lack a certain depth. DJ Shadow’s Endtroudcing worked because you could rarely recall the samples used and if you did he often used relatively anonymous chunks of the song.
Here Girl Talk unashamedly uses the juiciest, catchiest and most recognisable songs from a broad section of the century’s most memorable tunes and it works just fine. Think of it as more of a journey through modern pop music, a celebration of pop in all its guises rather than a serious reworking or transformation.
If my persuasive and writing skills are that inept that I can’t persuade you to download a free album, I’ve attached a track below. Set it Off features Rhianna, Jay Z, Radiohead and Mary J Bilge to name a few.
Enjoy!
Posted in Music
Tagged Avril Lavigne, DJ Shadow, Feed the Animals, Girl Talk, Jay Z, Mary J Bilge, Radiohead, Remixes, Samples
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