Daft Punk to Release Electroma on DVD and Blu-Ray

Photo by Kirstie Shanley

It looks like North Americans are in for another summer of Daft Punk. The beloved French-humans-posing-as-robots will bring their robots-on-a-quest-to-become-human film Electroma to DVD on July 22 via Vice Records. The silent, experimental feature directed by Daft Punk themselves will be available on both DVD and the shiny new Blu-Ray format. The package is a metal case with imprinted cover images, and a 40-page book of stills from the movie.

In anticipation of the DVD's release, there are two screenings of Electroma scheduled for next week in Florida. [MORE...]

Ben Gibbard, Ted Leo, Patton Oswalt Help Out WFMU

Poster by Neil Numberman 

In the interest of upstaging those geezers in Yo La Tengo (and raising money for this year's WFMU pledge drive), Tom Scharpling-- host of the aptly titled Best Show on WFMU-- will be welcoming some very special guests to his show tonight.

Fellow Jerseyite Ted Leo, Death Cab frontman/Postal Servicer Ben Gibbard, and Comedian of Comedy Patton Oswalt will all be stopping by the studio tonight from 8pm to 11pm EST, musicking and comedying to help win your pledge money. (For your reference, WFMU can be found at 91.1 FM in the New York-New Jersey area, 90.1 FM in the Hudson Valley area, and streaming at wfmu.org everywhere.)

"So what's in it for me?" you ask. Well, a pledge of any amount will give you the self-satisfaction of on-air shout-out. In addition to Ted Leo playing songs for dollars, Yo La-style, Scharpling and co. have made sure that a more substantial pledge is well worth it. A pledge of $75 or more during the show will land you the fabulous Best Show WE DID IT AGAIN Fun Pack, featuring some stickers, a t-shirt, a bitchin' poster, and a brand new, totally exclusive Patton Oswalt EP titled Frankensteins and Gumdrops.

To receive these fabulous prizes, you must pledge live during the Best Show, by calling 1-800-989-9368, or on the internet at wfmu.org. In a world increasingly devastated by Clear Channel's army of darkness, WFMU remains one of the last bastions of truly independent freeform radio, and is 100% listener sponsored and supported. So yeah, give them your money.

For those of you unfamiliar with The Best Show, now is as good a time as any to join the fold. Aside from being a uniformly excellent musical program, Scharpling's show is host to some of the funniest on-air bits this side of, uh, anything. So tune in and pledge pledge pledge! Big Money needs to get pizz-aid!

Spiritualized Details: U.S. LP, Mister Lonely Soundtrack

Looks like Jason Pierce aka J. Spaceman aka Jason Spaceman won't limit the pleasure of enjoying the new Spiritualized album to UK residents only. Us U.S. folk will get our taste of Songs in A&E on June 3 via Fontana International/Spaceman Records. (Yes, it's Songs in A&E, not Song's in A&E, as previously reported. That erroneous apostrophe came courtesy of a post on the Spiritualized MySpace page. -- Ed)

The album's first single will be "Soul on Fire", and it will be released on CD and as a download.

What's more, the soundtrack to the upcoming Harmony Korine movie Mister Lonely, which features music by Spaceman and the Sun City Girls, now has a tracklist and release details. The soundtrack is scheduled for an April 22 release on Drag City, but the film will hit theaters at the end of March.

As previously reported, Spiritualized performed as part of the iTunes Live: London Sessions series of concerts last week. A five-track EP of songs recorded at the performance will be available on iTunes UK starting next week. According to a post on the Spiritualized website, the EP includes "two previously unreleased acoustic mainline versions of tracks from Songs in A&E plus three others."

Then, of course, Spiritualized kick back into tour mode starting in late April. [MORE...]

Justice Kick Off North American Tour
Add European dates in late spring and summer

Photo by Natalie Kardos

Once again, it's time to pick up those cross-shaped glowsticks and prepare for a pummeling, because Justice begin their massive North American trek tonight, March 3, in Austin, Texas. The MySpace Music Tour takes them places with Diplo, Chromeo, Fancy, and Ed Banger labelmates Busy P and DJ Mehdi.

Recently added to Justice's never-ending world tour are a handful of spring and summer dates in Europe. [MORE...]

Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin, Via Audio Tour

With Pershing set to descend April 8 via Polyvinyl, Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin have gone and done the unthinkable: they have booked a tour! Yes, folks, a tour! What will these crazy young men do next, share an mp3 off their new record or something? Ah, whoops.

Joining they of the long-ass band name will be New York City's Via Audio and Oakland's Port O'Brien. Each handles opening duties on a separate stretch of dates, with the whole succession of live nightly shows thing kicking off in earnest April 12. Someone Still Loves blah blah etc. have a few scattered dates before then, as do Via Audio. Dare to guess where you might find out MORE about all this?? [MORE...]

Mew Hit the Studio for Kites Follow-Up

It sometimes seems Mew exist and operate in a world slightly apart from this one, and lucky for the rest of us they're happy to invite folks in every so often.

With 2006's lush excursion into Mew-land And the Glass Handed Kites still tickling our psyches, the Danish outfit has revealed plans to hunker down in the studio and record the follow-up. To that end they've enlisted producer Rich Costey (twiddler of knobs for such high-profile releases as Interpol's Our Love to Admire, Franz Ferdinand's You Could Have It So Much Better, and Mew's own sparkling 2003 set Frengers) and booked some studio time in Brooklyn.

And what do we have to look forward to musically from Mew? Here's guitarist Bo Madsen: "Mew have danced to every song just to make sure. Lords of destruction are for real." Careful Bo! Don't want to give too much away, now.

In other Mew news, that photo up there. What the wow.

Ex-Cop Shoot Cop Dude Attempts Boneheaded Robbery

File this one right up there with the former Lifetime bassist who hoarded body parts in her basement. Michael Kaminski, onetime guitarist and percussionist for defunct New York City noise-niks Cop Shoot Cop, was charged with aggravated robbery and carrying a concealed weapon after attempting to hold up a video store in Akron, Ohio (the city he now calls home) late last month, according to an Akron Beacon Journal report [via Cleveland Scene's C-Notes blog].

The concealed "weapon" in question? A Stetson cologne bottle shaped like a gun, the Beacon Journal report reveals, that Kaminski tried to make more convincing through the application of some black marker. Well done, son! Once Kaminski's ruse became apparent, an employee of a nearby store tackled the would-be thief, shattering the cologne bottle gun and dousing Kaminski in the alluring fragrance of justice.

"America's Stupidest Indie Rock Criminals", coming soon to a Fox network affiliate near you.

The Death Set to Open for Bonde do Role on U.S. Tour

Photo by Frank Hamilton

As the worldwide release of the Death Set's debut, Worldwide, inches closer, the Baltimore punk rockers are putting their touring feet forward. All their current shows remain bound by the U.S. border, but the Set have padded their previously reported tour with dates that extend until mid-May, including a round of shows with Bonde do Role. The Death Set have beefed up their SXSW schedule quite a bit as well.

Counter Records will release Worldwide April 22 in the U.S., and the record will hit stores March 30 in Japan and April 7 in the UK and the rest of the world. The album's first single, "Around the World", will be out later this month. [MORE...]

Photos: Arcade Fire Members Rock for Obama [Nelsonville, OH; 03/02/08]

Photos by Drew Angerer

Nelsonville, Ohio's relatively tiny Stuart's Opera House could hardly contain the excitement last night as several members of the Arcade Fire-- including Win Butler, Régine Chassagne, Jeremy Gara, and Sarah Neufeld-- stormed through town to rally for Barack Obama.

Indeed, the Arcade Fire members went and added a second Stuart's show on Sunday to help accommodate the Obama-happy droves. Both sets included covers of Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Gonna Come" (a portion of which has landed on YouTube), David Bowie's "Heroes", and John Lennon's "Gimme Some Truth", plus a number of Funeral and Neon Bible standouts (and aren't they all?). The setlists, via photographer and show attendee Drew Angerer, looked like this:

First show:

"Intervention"
"Keep the Car Running"
"Heroes" [David Bowie cover]
"A Change Is Gonna Come" [Sam Cooke cover]
"Rebellion (Lies)"
"Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)"
"Wake Up"
"Gimme Some Truth" [John Lennon cover]

Second show:

"Heroes" [David Bowie cover]
"(Antichrist Television Blues)"
"Neighborhood #2 (Laïka)"
"Gimme Some Truth" [John Lennon cover]
"Wake Up"
"Rebellion (Lies)"
"A Change Is Gonna Come" [Sam Cooke cover]

The momentum keeps on rolling as the Arcade Fire folks Ba-rock Cleveland's Beachland Ballroom tonight. Stand for change, people, and don't be afraid to dance a bit for it too.






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Vampire Weekend Cancel Shows to Play "SNL"

Vampire Weekend drummer Christopher Tomson has returned from the hospital to deliver some VW news via MySpace blog. It's not purely positive news, but it's certainly good for the band: They accepted an invitation to play live on the March 8 episode of "Saturday Night Live". To do so, however, they were forced to cancel a quartet of sets in Florida, including a couple of shows opening for the Walkmen, and their appearance at Langerado on March 7.

(Hey, this sounds familiar...)

On the plus side, VW have already rescheduled their Orlando and St. Augustine shows for early June, and the Walkmen will still play the original dates this week. So really, it's just a single festival appearance and an in-store that are lost to the sands of time. And since we'll all get to see the band on "SNL" this weekend, we can handle that, right?

After they play "SNL", Vampire Weekend will scurry to meet up with the Walkmen and kick off their tour in Atlanta on March 9. [MORE...]

Photos: Atlas Sound [Chicago, IL; 03/01/08]

Photos by Matthew Taplinger

Deerhunter season opens again the weekend of May 9-11, when the Atlanta-based sonic psych-out artistes tear up ATP vs. Pitchfork. But until then, Mr. Bradford Cox has a no less stellar project of his own, Atlas Sound, a Best New Music-stamped debut album, Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel, and a tour of these lands with Kranky labelmates White Rainbow and Valet.

That Kranky caravan rolled into Chicago's Empty Bottle Saturday night, with White Rainbow's Adam Forkner, Valet's Honey Owens, Nudge's Brian Foote, and pal Stephanie Macksey filling out the Atlas Sound live band. Look for these sharply-dressed animal lovers at a venue near you during the days leading up to SXSW.

ATLAS SOUND








WHITE RAINBOW

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Bjork Show Cut Over Kosovo Talk? "Untrue," Says Fest
"EXIT Festival has never cancelled any artist's performance because of their political point-of-view or statements."

Photo by Bernhard Kristin/ILC

Following the shake-up last week surrounding Björk's politically-charged Kosovo song dedication and the subsequent (and, apparently, consequent) cancellation of a purported appearance at the EXIT Festival in Serbia, festival organizers have stepped forward with a statement.

To recap: Björk dedicated her song "Declare Independence" to Kosovo-- which recently declared its own independence from Serbia-- at a pair of Tokyo concerts in February. The singer rather plainly suggested the EXIT cancellation was the result of her remarks when she told Icelandic newspaper Morgunbla∂i∂, "Maybe a Serb attended my concert [in Tokyo] and called home, and therefore the concert in Novi Sad was cancelled." The story spread and was picked up by numerous news outlets, including Pitchfork.

Morgunbla∂i∂ reported that the cancellation was due to the festival's inability to provide enough security for performers and audience members.

According to EXIT's general manager Bojan Boskovic, "These stories are quite bizarre and untrue. EXIT Festival has never cancelled any artist's performance because of their political point-of-view or statements. We'd like to clarify that the festival is right on track and festival preparations are our best ever, we're really looking forward to announcing our program and, moreover, seeing everybody again at the event in July."

Boskovic continues, "EXIT was the first forum in the Balkans to gather people from all the former Yugoslavian countries after the civil wars. Started nine years ago as a student-initiated protest against the Milosevic regime, EXIT has become a symbol of togetherness and cultural diversity and is a social force that every year brings together more and more people, from every background and culture of the region."

The 2008 EXIT Festival descends on Novi Sad's Petrovaradin fortress July 10-13. Four performers have been announced thus far-- the Sex Pistols, the Hives, Paul Weller, and Nightwish-- but organizers would not disclose whether Björk would be playing or if she was indeed at any point a booked or considered performer. They also did not specify if Björk's performance had been canceled due to non-political reasons (namely, the security issue as previously reported).

Björk's publicist did not respond to emails about the matter.

Much more certain: Björk tours England and Northern Ireland in April and May, and has a couple non-EXIT festival dates lined up beyond. [MORE...]

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.)