Pitchfork: Le Tigre Member Revamps Hair Salon

12 Items

Page 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | More... <Prev Next>

Wow. Director/designer/Tomato-associate Graham Wood and animator Ian Freeman have assembled an appropriately eerie, nightmarish mindfuck of a video for Scott Walker's "Jesse", from this year's Best New Music'd The Drift. The piece, which recalls both Stanley Donwood's work with Radiohead circa OK Computer and the storied 4AD aesthetic, features familiar symbols and pictograms (smiley face, generic man and woman, cross) a-Drift in a kaleidoscope of dissolving lines, patterns, and textures. Might not sound so unsettling on paper, but trust me here-- this shit haunts.

Posted by Matthew Solarski in video on Tue: 08-29-06: 03:10 PM CDT | Digg this article | Add to del.icio.us | Permalink

Sigur Ros to Perform Split Sides Soundtrack

As you very well already know, Sigur Rós released their Sæglópur EP/DVD in North America earlier this month via Worker's Institute. Disc one, aka the audio portion of the package, features a track from Takk and music expanding on the material found on the band's Untitled and Ba Ba Ti Ki Di Do EPs.

But Sigur Rós aren't quite done with Ba Ba Ti Ki Di Do-- originally composed and recorded for a project from acclaimed choreographer Merce Cunningham in 2003. The Icelandic quartet will make its way to Miami on February 25 of next year to once again provide the score for Cunningham's dance company's performance of Split Sides, this time as a part of the Carnival Center for the Performing Arts' citywide festival, Merce in Miami. The fest is scheduled to run through February and March 2007. Sigur Rós will play at the city's Ziff Ballet Opera House. [MORE...]

MP3: Sigur R�s: Untitled 4

Posted by Kati Llewellyn in festival, collaboration, theater on Tue: 08-29-06: 02:00 PM CDT | Digg this article | Add to del.icio.us | Permalink

The Like Young Break Up

We can't all be young forever, and I guess we can't even have the Like Young in our lives forever either. It seems the flame of music-making passion has expired for the Polyvinyl-signed power poppers, who've announced that next month's tour of the west will be their last.

One half of beloved tweesters Wolfie, husband and wife Joe and Amanda Ziemba formed the Like Young after their former group's dissolution at the beginning of this century. They leave us with three fine LPs, including this year's Last Secrets, and a handful of EPs and 7"s.

"There's no big drama, no inner turmoil," wrote Joe in an official statement. "The fact is, you can only take so much frustration and heartbreak before a once great love becomes something unpleasant and sad. The passion to create music is not what it once was for us."

Bid the band adieu at one of their farewell performances this September. Dates after the jump. [MORE...]

MP3: The Like Young: For Money or Love

Posted by Matthew Solarski in breakup, tour on Tue: 08-29-06: 12:59 PM CDT | Digg this article | Add to del.icio.us | Permalink

Rhino Compiles Hardcore Giants for Film Soundtrack
Sorry broheim, no porn here

It's essential for a music movie to have a good soundtrack, and doubly so for a documentary of a specific scene. With that in mind, Rhino Records has assembled a pretty solid compilation of tracks from local '80s hardcore scenes to soundtrack the previously reported forthcoming documentary American Hardcore: The History of American Punk Rock 1980-1986.

Sharing its name with the film, American Hardcore (the soundtrack) compiles 26 tracks onto a 37-minute album and includes contributions from the DC, New York, Boston, SoCal, NorCal, and Pacific Northwest scenes, among others. Big names (Bad Brains, Black Flag, Minor Threat) mingle with smaller ones (Battalion of Saints, Gang Green) on this record, which drops digitally on September 26 and lands in stores on October 10.

The film, which debuted at Sundance this year, opens in New York on September 22 and in Los Angeles and Irvine, California on September 29, with a nationwide release scheduled for October 13.
[MORE...]

Video: Bad Brains: Pay to Cum (Live at CBGB)

Posted by Dave Maher in compilation, film on Tue: 08-29-06: 12:30 PM CDT | Digg this article | Add to del.icio.us | Permalink

Master Musicians of Joujouka Cavort With Corgan

The Master Musicians of Joujouka and Billy Corgan

Billy Corgan is trying to preserve a legacy. No, not the Smashing Pumpkins' legacy (didn't he already ruin that with MACHINA?), it's the legacy of being the latest celebrity rocker to discover the Master Musicians of Joujouka. Previous fans of the group William S. Burroughs described as "a four thousand-year-old rock 'n roll band" include Rolling Stones Mick Jagger and Brian Jones, Sonic Youth's Lee Ranaldo, and jazz saxophonist Ornette Coleman.

Most recently, it was Corgan who took a break from recording the new Pumpkins album to visit the Musicians in Morocco to observe Boujeloud, their annual fertility ritual where a man drapes himself in goat skins to represent the god Pan (or Boujeloud in Joujouka) and the musicians play music to soothe him, scare him, and eventually drive him from the village. According to a press release, the music for this ritual "has several movements which would equate to a symphony or the score of an opera if it were European classical music."

Quipped Corgan, in a recent issue of Spin: "This is the closest any other music comes to rock...in its intensity."

Enter Sub Rosa, the record label responsible for releasing two previous records by the Master Musicians of Joujouka, 1995's Joujouka Black Eyes and 1996's Sufi. From the same sessions with producer Frank Rynne that produced those albums comes Boujeloud, an album-length recording of music from the ritual of the same name. Sub Rosa will release the record September 12, and it will come with an eight-page booklet of explanatory liner notes written by Rynne as well as previously unpublished archival photographs. And if all that wasn't enough, Joujoukans believe that "dancing to this music brings good health and a long life." Who needs the toe wop? Sign me up for the goat dance!
[MORE...]

Stream: The Master Musicians of Joujouka: Various Tracks

Posted by Dave Maher in album, misc. on Tue: 08-29-06: 12:00 PM CDT | Digg this article | Add to del.icio.us | Permalink

Centro-Matic Tour the West

It's been a good couple of years for Austin's Misra Records. Two pretty little releases by Great Lake Swimmers last year, a solid outing from Shearwater, and the Recommended Evangelicals record So Gone make Misra one of the most consistent-- yet still somewhat overlooked-- labels in recent memory.

Add Centro-Matic to that list. We gave their most recent record, Fort Recovery, an 8.1, and central Centro-songwriter Will Johnson has been touring extensively in support of the record-- in Europe with Centro-Matic and in the U.S. as a member of the Undertow Orchestra (with Vic Chesnutt, American Music Club's Mark Eitzel, and David Bazan, aka The Artist Formerly Known as Pedro the Lion). Now, he's hitting the American West with Centro-Matic to show us exactly what we've been missing. Dates after the jump. [MORE...]

Video: Centro-Matic: Triggers and Trash Heaps

Posted by Dave Maher in tour on Tue: 08-29-06: 11:45 AM CDT | Digg this article | Add to del.icio.us | Permalink

Neil Young Unleashes Horde of Videos

Neil Young's latest record, May's Living With War, was a surprise in that-- for an album recorded so quickly and with such an overt political message-- it wasn't awful. Young is following its relative success by making a video for each of War's 11 songs, gathered on a page on his website designed to look like a newspaper and displaying the logo "Living With War Today", made to look like that of USA Today.

The videos come courtesy of the LWW "channel" (the LWW looks like the CNN logo) and are paired with documentaries about the making of each song. You can stream all of the documentaries from Young's website, but only three videos have been made available so far: "After the Garden", "Families", and "America the Beautiful". They're pretty boring, consisting mostly of evening news-style clips played over the songs, but Neil has sort of earned himself a free pass at this point. It could be worse. He could be planning a hip hop album like a certain other celebrated songwriter.

Video: Neil Young: Families

Posted by Dave Maher in video on Tue: 08-29-06: 10:00 AM CDT | Digg this article | Add to del.icio.us | Permalink

XL Releases Serious Times Reggae Compilation

You're leaving one of Radiohead's recent shows. A reggae song comes on the sound system, and it's really good. "What is this darkly anthemic monster of a track?" you think to yourself. You ask your friends. They don't know. All you remember is the line, "I could have been one of the most notorious." To this day you wonder, "What was that song?"

Well to this day and no longer, because Pitchfork has your answer. That track is Turbulence's "Notorious", and it's featured prominently on XL's upcoming Serious Times compilation, a double disc package that comes with 20 pages of liner notes and is set for an October 10 release.

The first disc is a mix of tracks from the second (in addition to a few dubplates not featured there) done by Cham/Rihanna tourmate Federation Sound (aka Max Glazer). The second disc features the tracks in their unmixed form, along with a couple of remixes of the title track by Gyptian that are not featured on the Federation Sound mix. In addition to "Notorious" and "Serious Times", the compilation also features the 10-year-old QQ's "Poverty". If you need a descriptive preview, Dave Stelfox raved about all three tracks in the January installment of the Month in Dancehall. And yes, there are two different songs called "Rolling". Figures.

Click on the link below to hear an exclusive remix of the title track. [MORE...]

MP3: Gyptian: Serious Times (Bye Product Remix)

Posted by Dave Maher in compilation on Tue: 08-29-06: 09:00 AM CDT | Digg this article | Add to del.icio.us | Permalink

Lou Reed, Antony to Perform Berlin Live

Lou Reed's career is full of challenging material (ahem, Metal Machine Music), and right up there is his third solo record, 1973's Berlin. An ambitious concept album about a drug-addicted couple named Jim and Caroline, Berlin was never performed live-- until now. Thirty-three years later, Art at St. Ann's, the Sydney Festival, and UCLA Live will sponsor Reed's first live performances of the album at New York's St. Ann's Warehouse, from December 14-17.

According to the St. Ann's website, each show will be a "theatrically realized" version of the album. We're not quite sure what that means, but we do know that our favorite friend of Lou's will be part of the performance. No, not David Bowie, though that would be cool. It's Antony, so get your tickets now and have your family's super depressing holiday theater outing covered.

Reed has a handful of tour dates in the meantime, beginning in September in Kingston, New York and ending in November with a bunch of shows at California colleges.
[MORE...]

Video: Lou Reed and John Cale: Waiting for the Man (Live)

Posted by Dave Maher in tour, collaboration, theater on Tue: 08-29-06: 07:01 AM CDT | Digg this article | Add to del.icio.us | Permalink

Mew Plot North American Invasion

It seems like Danish dream pop wackos Mew were just in North America, but they're already coming back. The band behind the Pitchfork Recommended LP And the Glass-Handed Kites will open for (cringe) Kasabian on most dates.

Mew recently recorded acoustic versions of four songs (two each from Kites and 2003's Frengers) for AOL's "The Interface" podcast. You can hear those songs and an interview with the band at the link below. Tour dates after the jump. [MORE...]

MP3: Mew: Various Tracks (The Interface Session)

Posted by Dave Maher in tour, audio on Tue: 08-29-06: 07:00 AM CDT | Digg this article | Add to del.icio.us | Permalink

The Gossip Tour With Erase Errata, Mika Miko
That's just a dirty rumor!

This fall-- and depending on who you are, where you grew up, and how you dance-- your life will be saved by one of two people: either the Hold Steady's Craig Finn, or the Gossip's Beth Ditto.

If it's the latter, you're in luck, 'cause the Gossip just announced their fall tour with Kill Rock Stars labelmates Erase Errata and Mika Miko. Check the dates after the jump.

And if you're rocking it in the suburbs, you can still get your fix with the twice-fresh Gossip and Erase Errata videos (for "Listen Up!" and "Tax Dollar", respectively). [MORE...]

MP3: The Gossip: Listen Up!

MP3: Erase Errata: Tax Dollar

MP3: Mika Miko: Capricorinations

Posted by Mairead Case in tour, video on Tue: 08-29-06: 07:00 AM CDT | Digg this article | Add to del.icio.us | Permalink

Photos: Aloha [Schubas, Chicago; 08/20/06]

Fluid was the word of the night as dewy, jazz-tinged indie rockers Aloha entertained a sell-out Chicago crowd at Schubas last Sunday-- band members shifted fluidly from instrument to instrument, songs transitioned into one another in fluid, kaleidoscopic fashion (the highlight, appropriately: "Boys in the Bathtub" into "Water Your Hands"), Cale Parks drummed like he had fluid tentacles instead of jointed arms, and vocalist Tony Cavallario's expressive eyes seemed ready to cry out saline tear-fluid at any moment. Now if only they had covered Andrew W.K.'s "I Get Wet"...

Aloha say hello to Japan this October. Tour dates and more photos after the jump. [MORE...]

Posted by Matthew Solarski in tour, photos on Tue: 08-29-06: 07:00 AM CDT | Digg this article | Add to del.icio.us | Permalink

Page 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | More... <Prev Next>

Do you have a news tip for us? Anything crazy happen at a show you attended recently? Do you have inside info on the bands we cover? Is one of your favorite artists (that's not somebody you know personally) releasing a new record you'd like to see covered? You will remain completely anonymous, unless we are given your express permission to reveal your identity. (Please note that publicists, managers, booking agents, and other artist representatives are generally exempt from this rule, but will also be granted anonymity if requested.)

Fri: 05-16-08: 07:00 AM CDT
Cat Power, Vampire Weekend Play Rogers Picnic