Monstrous Media!

Whoever gave me this album, own up. You deserve some credit. François Virot’s Yes or No must’ve been sitting in my “to be listened to” queue for the last 4 months at least, before one of his infectious tracks forced it’s way into random play, and then into my consciousness. I have no doubt that this record was awarded to me in a huge music swap at some point in time and never given proper attention. Well today, I’m here to declare, that this stuff is mesmerizing.

Mr. Virot is a french songwriter who has the vocal inflection of Avey Tare circa Pullhair Rubeye, only if Avey had a good voice and could actually carry a tune. Virot’s instrument of choice is acoustic guitar often backed by hand claps, snaps, vocal ticks and other forms of bodily percussion. Other than that it’s his enchanting wail that leaps all over the melodic spectrum grabbing listeners perched on all levels of any given auditory wavelength. His songs are sweet but abrasive, catchy but foreign (not just cause he’s french). Try him.

After doing a bit of research into the world of François Virot I came across a lovely, startling coincidence. On his myspace he has a direct link to the page of amazing french 8-bit-synth-garage-pop band Clara Clara. This grabbed my attention because Clara Clara had a track represented on this year’s Friends and Friends of Friends compilation, organized by me and put out by Portland’s Tender Loving Empire. The song rules. Clara Clara rules. So it turns out that Mr. Virot plays drums in Clara Clara and is sibling to one of the other members. Fancy that. Virot’s rule. Clara Clara will also appear on a split with Kickball due out next spring on TLE.

François Virot – Cascade Kisses

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François Virot – Say Fiesta

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Clara Clara – Dolphins

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Hi everyone. Sorry it’s been ages since my last post but often when I don’t publish for some time I get stuck in a writer’s block cycle that’s difficult to break.

However, the recent news has prompted me to return with a tiny ice-breaker. Hopefully you’ve all heard, but just in case you didn’t, I’m happy to be the first to tell you.

Scientists have confirmed the existence of water on the Moon. The above picture (although not too exciting itself) is a photograph of the plume of water and ice made by the probe that NASA shot into the Moon.

Now, I can already hear some of you saying, “So f-ing what?” I’m not gonna gush on here to try and convince you of why this is a tremendously awesome discovery… instead, I’d just like to point out that this is an incredibly substantial feature about our Moon that humans, before like yesterday, we’re not aware of. This means that from this day onward, it is every human’s task to change the way they think about the Moon. It is, in fact, not a desolate, barren rock desert like we have all been led to believe for the last century. This epic discovery shows us that the Moon is a truly dynamic and active celestial body that is worthy of our foremost attention and respect. Plus, water equals the ability to sustain life. Ever entertained the idea of living on the Moon?.. well it’s about 9 million times more reasonable a concept than it was yesterday.

I’m getting to a point here…

To elaborate on my point a bit further, I present Topic B; dinosaurs. The above illustration is of Dilong paradoxus, a tyrannosaur. You will note that it is covered head to toe in feathers. This may look strange to you because dinosaurs are supposed to have scaly, leathery, brown and green skin, right? No. Actually, surmounting discoveries over the last decade plus have taught us that a large, LARGE portion of the dinosaur kingdom was elaborately feathered. Household dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus Rex and Velociraptor had grand displays of vividly colored feathers covering their entire bodies. Fact.

Now, I can already hear some of you saying, “Big f-ing deal.” What I’m trying to point out is that we humans all share a collective understanding the universe. This collective knowledge, what we call fact, is an ever-evolving, rapidly shifting awareness that we have to be on top of. Humans have to be prepared to abruptly rework our understanding of the way things are, the way things were, and the way things will be. It is imperative to our growth as a species to have the ability to accept a multitude of realities as they present themselves. Question everything, understand the facts, and do your homework. There’s a lot to learn.

Here’s what I’ve been listening to:

Julian Casablancas (Dude from the Strokes) – 11th Dimension

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The Dirty Projectors – Ascending Melody (B-side)

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Dead Man’s Bones – My Body’s A Zombie For You

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If I could actually successfully kick myself and do any decent amount of damage, lord knows I would be doing so right now. I’m mostly angry that my dumb ass only got around to giving the Mint Chicks a good listen until NOW. NOW that I’m living in their country of origin, New Zealand, and NOW that I’ve conveniently terminated my resisdence in the city that they’ve since relocated to, Portland, Oregon. We did the ol’ switcheroo, the Mint Chicks and I did. I remember so clearly reading about them in the local weeklies and thinking that the descriptions of their tunes were right in line with something I’d enjoy. They’ve been playing low-key off they radar shows in Portland ever since they moved there a few years ago. The story goes that they left New Zealand after a quick rise to near super-stardom for a more un-noticed, out-of-the-spotlight lifestyle. It’s true, they are a big deal here. Their videos get played on the local music television stations and everyone knows who they are. They’re even returning sometime this year to headline some huge national music festivals. This elusive phantom band has grabbed my attention for more reasons than I just listed, and they are as follows:

The Mint Chicks’ new record, Screens, fucking rules. It’s like a blow-pop you dropped in the dirt. Screens is a pop record, specifically, it’s bubblegum pop but it has a just the right amount of contemporary modernization to push it past the its-all-been-done realm. The vocals are often fuzzed out in a lo-fi styling and electronically chopped to pieces. There are gritty synths and tinny drums speckling the record like shiny pieces of gravel and hair stuck to said lollypop. This record is fun and easy to listen to, but it engages and forces you to listen deeper and see what actually going on. When I first got it I seriously listened to it six, yes, six times in a row.

The Mint Chicks – Red, White, or Blue

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The Mint Chicks – 2010

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The Mint Chicks – Don’t Sell Your Brains Out, Baby

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Another reason that I have a boner for the Mint Chicks right now is that they do though provoking excellent experiments with new tunes. Recently, they released a new song, but the only way to hear the song was to go to a web site they’d set up with four separate videos embeded within it. Each video contains a separate part of the song, and when played simultaneously they come together to formulate the new song. It’s an absolutely brilliant way to engage your audience a in the fibers of your art (though not the first time, see The Flaming Lips’ Zaireeka). I love it and I would love to see many, many more experience-based musical endeavors be celebrated and proliferated throughout the mainstream. Cheers, Mint Chicks.

Watch the four video song thing here.

Brilliant. R.I.P.

Leif Podhajsky’s Portfolio
The artwork of Leif Podhajsky is becoming a huge influence in the new Nurses music video I’ve been working on. Give it a look.

It’s been raining in Wellington for about 3 weeks straight and I have to say, I haven’t one complaint about it. At the same time that I slowed my pace and stopped in Wellington all of my lingering and supposed/proposed projects came to a head. Production on the Nurses vid started, Andrew from the Chairy Arms asked me to start working on his album art, my dad bought a domain name and has asked me to design his new website, and FWS4 and I are trying to release our all-ukulele Beatles cover album in the next few months (not to mention I should be writing/recording Royal’s breakout release). However, the timing for all this really couldn’t be any more perfect; I have a comfortable place to crank out my work, and I’m not even tempted to go outside because the weather has been complete shit. Thus, a more fitting statement couldn’t be conjured: “When it rains, it pours, motherfucker.”

This is a proposed album cover for the new Chairy Arms EP, Amber Street Lights.

Here’s a link to my Dad’s new website Science Visualization, still obviously under construction. He will be using it to showcase critiques and gallerys of outstanding images of scientific subjects alongside a portfolio archive of some of his own work.

These are images from an incredible photo blog called THEM THANGS run by Justin Blyth. It essentially emulates exactly what I wish my life looked like. Have a good long look. It’s incredible.

I’m really into retro shots of hot babes. This New York photographer Marley Kate does and excellent at just that. Awesome work.

ok, that’s all for now. Hunker down and hope for rain.

I’ve been meaning to write about this album for a while now. Recommended to me last summer by FWS4 it immediately presented itself as a glimmer of genius. Three descriptors come to mind when speaking of Apes and Androids’ Blood Moon; over-the-top. This record is perhaps the only existing example of glam-psyche-rock trip-hop pop. Lead by heavy bass synths and layered falsetto vocals, Blood Moon sounds like the record aliens from the 70′s would listen to while they construct a city on their newly conquered planet. Most of the songs are danceable but you’re not gonna feel too good about yourself whilst dancing… you might feel a little underdressed. The whole record has a lovely element of theatrics, from the overt vocal delivery to the robot/spaceship take-off and landing sounds introducing and leading the record out. Give this one a go for some fresh, blindsiding, nonsensical awesomeness.

Apes and Androids – Hot Kathy

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Apes and Androids – Make Forever Last Forever

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Apes and Androids – Golden Prize

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The premise of this film will revolve around a very loose story-line which follows one main character on a romp through a non-sensical, visually overloaded, psychedelic clusterfuck. The first half of the video begins in a fruitful, stable wonderland and shows the piece by piece destruction/dismantling of the universe completed at the hands of said protagonist. At the climax, the world has been rendered a desolate, destroyed, baron, grey, wasteland due to the actions of the protagonist. At this point, the main character is struck with a visceral realization that the world stripped of everything is no good, presented as a bombardment of color and psychedelia. He proceeds to build and plant and re-implement color and chaos to return the world back to it’s original state but is quickly overwhelmed by a rapid acceleration in his restoration results. In the end he is smothered by to much stimuli.

The idea is to represent the necessity of balance. Simply, the destruction/removal of things is the negative and replacement/addition of things is the positive. When the negative/dark is over emphasized the world becomes hollow and when the positive/light is restored it is overshot and smothers, thus outlining the importance of the balance between the two.

SO, with all that being said, the visuals:

This was an attempt at capturing what the universe would be like in the beginning of the video when things are still balanced… kinda creepy but with accents of bright whacko colors. The scale of things in this world is also outta whack (beetle to human ratio).
This short running loop is our main character attempting to eliminate a rhinoceros beetle with a magnifying glass. For this particular shot I imagine the beetle being zapped quite quickly and turning into a puff of smoke. The the main character would turn to his next target in a fast-paced fashion leaving little time for the viewer to process what had just happened and allowing for a rapid change in environment. Think; pulling pins out of machinery, knocking stars out of the sky, black paint on colorful flowers, stopping the movement of windmills… frying beetles with magnifying glasses. Any negative action could work here.

Here are some reference images I thought were cool conceptually for what the world would look like once everything is removed. They’re not my drawings but I quite like the rigid, dark, obsolete style used.

And this is what the epiphany will look like. It is the climax, the realization that when everything is eliminated, the world is no good. It is the urgency to recreate what had been removed (sorry i forgot to tack music with the upload).

I want to render this entire video in stereoscopic 3D. Like, 3D glasses 3D. I have been doing preliminary testing with the above footage and the results are mesmerizing. The amount of added depth you can get with this technique is outta this world and I’ve been trying to experiment with it for a while now.

The sorta issue with making such films is that they are impossible to fully test without a functioning stereoscopic projector and a set of glasses. This makes testing shots a pain in the ass but I have a ghetto work-around. Essentially, you render the two stereo angles on a small scale and place them side by side. You look at them from a little distance and cross your eyes until they overlap and you can see the 3D effect. I know it’s whack but it works and will allow me to test my shots until I can get into an actual screening room. Below are some stereo stills you can try it out on. It takes a sec to get used to but it works and it’s worth it.

The other inherent problem with creating 3D films on an independent level is that venues at which you can showcase such works are limited. Fortunately for us the only independent theatre/gallery with a stereo projector in the western hemisphere is in NW Portland… and I’m buddy buddy with the VP. I’ve already sent out an email asking permission to screen there. I’m sure they’ll let us because I know they’re hungry for content.

So yeah. Let me know what you think. I am more than open to comments/suggestions/criticisms/ideas/questions so fire away. I’d love to elaborate on the concept more or explain stereo techniques further but I think we’ve gotten a bit wordy here as it is.

Andrew

At first listen, it was easy for me to brush off Family, the newest release from Le Loup, as another choral, reverb-soaked, vocal-driven indie-mush record, ready to go up on the shelf with Band of Horses, Fleet Foxes, My Morning Jacket, and Co. But, much like the latter recording artists, over time the true beauty underneath the way-too-commonly-used production style, shined through. I’m obviously not here to celebrate Family as a work of pure genius but it certainly deserves a bit of praise and definitely a good listen. Le Loup has done a wonderful job layering soft, jubilant melodies over more and more layers of polyrhythms. A friendly banjo guides listeners into many of the arrangements, reminding us that we don’t HAVE to cry if we don’t want to. And, yes, the vocals are drenched in puddles or reverb, but these cathedralesque hymnals won’t drown you; these are the positive kind of hymns. Give Family a try and I bet it’ll probably stay off the shelf for the majority of the winter. Also, go see Le Loup when they come to your town cause chances are they’ll be playing with Nurses.

Le Loup – Grow

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Le Loup – Saddle Mountains

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Le Loup – Sherpa
(takes a sec to get going but shows another side of the record entirely)

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Dates:

10.08.09 – Princeton, NJ – Terrace Club
10.09.09 – Baltimore, MD – The Ottobar ^
10.10.09 – Philadelphia, PA – Kungfu Necktie ^
10.11.09 – New York, NY – Mercury Lounge ^
10.13.09 – Cambridge, MA – TT the Bear’s ^
10.14.09 – Montreal, QC – Il Motore ^
10.15.09 – Toronto, ON – The Drake Hotel ^
10.16.09 – Chicago, IL – Schubas ^
10.17.09 – Minneapolis, MN – 7th Street Entry ^
10.18.09 – Omaha, NE – Slowdown Jr. ^
10.19.09 – Denver, CO – Hi Dive ^
10.20.09 – Salt Lake City, UT – Kilby Court ^
10.22.09 – Vancouver, BC – The Biltmore Cabaret ^
10.23.09 – Seattle, WA – Chop Suey ^
10.25.09 – Portland, OR – Doug Fir Lounge ^
10.27.09 – San Francisco, CA – Bottom of the Hill ^
10.28.09 – Los Angeles, CA – The Echo ^
10.29.09 – Costa Mesa, CA – Detroit Bar ^
10.30.09 – San Diego, CA – Casbah ^
10.31.09 – Tucson, AZ – Plush ^
11.02.09 – Austin, TX – The Mohawk ^
11.03.09 – Dallas, TX – Cavern Ale House ^
11.05.09 – Atlanta, GA – Lenny’s Bar ^
11.06.09 – Chapel Hill, NC – Local 506 ^
11.07.09 – Washington, DC – Black Cat ^

^ – w/ Nurses

AIR MUSIC VIDEO SING SANG SUNG from MATHEMATIC SAS on Vimeo.

Directed by : Mrzyk & Moriceau @ El Nino
Producer : Jules Dieng
Animation & exe : Mathematic Studio

I will most likely rip-off the majority of these concepts in the future.

YEAH! Check me out! Today Monstrous Media was listed as number 7 on the Hype Machine’s most popular tracks for the Casiotone for the Painfully Alone track I posted a few days ago. This is sweet because first of all, it’s an awesome song, and second of all that means people are following through to MM to read the post! Yes! So for all you Hype Machine users, get out there and “love” this track so I can get to the top.. or at least stay featured for a few days For those of you who have no idea what the Hype Machine is, go there and find out, cause it rules. For the rest, listen to this awesome song and favorite me!