Posts tagged with beach house

08/17/2010

Beach House – Lover of Mine (Roman Ruins Remix)

One of my favorite quasi-under the radar remixes of this year is the Ring Trick Remix of the excellent Beach House track “Zebra”. It was really neat, but really understated for the most part. My initial disdain for anyone trying to remix Beach House was replaced with acknowledgement that it could be done in a non-terrible way. So I was pretty excited to check out this Roman Ruins remix that seems to be popping up all over the place. And while I definitely dig it (it doesn’t hurt that “Lover of Mine” is one of the most listened to tracks from their latest album), it is definitely not understated. I was pleased after listening to the remix to learn that Roman Ruins is Graham Hill, who’s actually the touring drummer with Beach House. So it’s somewhat comforting knowing that someone that close to the operation wouldn’t mess with one of these tracks and do the unthinkable (whatever the unthinkable means to you with regards to remixes). I can buy into this.

I took the picture above at Pitchfork Fest this year, maybe one of my favorite pictures from the whole weekend. I like the way Victoria Legrand uses her hair in her performances. Is that creepy?

Beach House – Lover of Mine (Roman Ruins Remix)

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07/21/2010

2010 Pitchfork Fest Day 3 in Pictures

Day 3. Ah, day 3. You cruel temptress, with your best lineup ever when you know that I barely have the energy left to make it there in the first place. I knew day 3 would be a great and exhausting day, but I don’t think I really had any idea how right I would be. I think I caught a at least a little of every act save 3 or 4 that day and I have the pictures to prove it. Things I learned on day 3 (plus a whole boatload of pictures from day 3):

Read the rest of this entry »

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04/18/2010

coachella day 2: low expectations lead to huge success

Day 2 started out with extremely low expectations. I was up really late the night before and couldn’t sleep in that late, so I thought I would be a little out of sorts all day. But luckily after 3 breakfast burritos (the third with extra jalapeno and hot sauce) and a few bottles of water, I was feeling a little more like myself again. I took a look at the set times for the day and while I was looking forward to a few acts, I hadn’t made any decisions about the night, and nothing really struck me as must see.

And I think its because of these low expectations that day 2 of Coachella was one of my favorite festival days of all time. It started out simply enough, with us sitting outside the Mojave tent to listen to a few tunes from Camera Obscura. I’d decided that since I just saw Beach House, I would head over to the Outdoor Theater to see The Temper Trap, but not until I met up with my cousin who was also in town for the fest. By the time he and his friends were ready to head to the Outdoor Theater, we could only catch “Sweet Disposition”, which was good and kind of made me wish I’d seen the rest of their set.

But up next was one of my festival must-sees, none other than Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros. Their album is a favorite of mine, and it’s one of those that I just love every single song so much, so I couldn’t wait to see it live on stage, complete with their huge cast of characters. They opened up with “40 Day Dream” and went into “Janglin’” and their performance was exactly what I’d expected (though this was one part of the day that I did have high expectations for). About 10 people on stage, all playing various instruments from trumpets to pianos to guitars to washboards, and some of the happiest music on Earth. The love and energy up on the stage really carried through. My personal favorite was “Up from Below”, which really came to life on stage. A few songs after that were a bit out of key at times, but the set finished strong with perennial favorite “Home”. Various members of the band jumped in front of the stage to crowdsurf at various times, and Alex Ebert lent his shirt to a young man in the front who had a cut on his head. Hopefully that young man doesn’t have any sort of infection now. Just kidding, Alex, we love you kids. And special thanks to girl on guy’s shoulders #2834 for taking a few pics for me from up there.

Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros – Om Nashi Me

buy it on Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros - Up from Below (Bonus Track Version) - Om Nashi Me or amazon

At this point, my two highlights of the weekend were hilarious because they were COMPLETE 100% opposites. The upbeat, free-love Edward Sharpe et al, and the dark, haunting Fever Ray. The mere fact that I got to experience both within just a few hours of each other said enough about this weekend.

Next up, we decided since we were already at that stage that we would just stay for the XX. I wasn’t particularly excited to see the XX mostly because I thought that it would not live up to the happiness of Edward Sharpe, but I gave it a shot and really enjoyed it in all its minimalist glory. I was surprised to see that they didn’t have a drummer, but rather a sort of live beat-maker. And Jay-Z even showed up, since he loves the indie rock now. Also notable was that during their set, the top of the main stage seemed to catch on fire, with black smoke billowing away. But it stopped after about a minute fortunately.

After stocking up on water for the rest of the night, we headed back to Mojave to catch some of the Dirty Projectors. It was great to see them again with their interesting compositions and incredible and versatile voices. We didn’t stick around too long because we all needed to stock up on some food and water before spending some time at the Sahara tent.

Now, let’s take a minute to talk about the Sahara tent. If you recall from my Lollapalooza recaps, I spent a lot of time at Perry’s last summer. Perry’s, which was expanded last year and I believe is being expanded again this year, is the DJ section of Lollapalooza. It’s all open air and under the trees, and the crowd forms a sort of semi circle around the DJs, and there’s always some great dance music going on. It’s the perfect place to spend some time when there isn’t really another act going on that you want to see.

The Sahara tent is the same concept, only it is in a humongous tent which has a crazy light setup both on stage and throughout the whole ceiling. I described it on twitter today as Perry’s times a million on crack. Just unreal. I can’t wait to get this video put together next week so I can show some of the radness that goes on there.

After devouring a delicious falafel wrap and some garlic fries, we headed into the Sahara tent to catch the rest of Kaskade’s set. It was fun beyond belief and we had such a great time that we decided to stay for David Guetta, who, as you may recall, I had a ticket to see in Rio last summer before we unexpectedly cancelled the trip. So it was sort of fate that I was going to see him on this night. And wow, did he deliver. Some of the hotter drops that I can remember were Imogen Heap’s “Hide and Seek” (she seems to be a positive recurring theme this weekend) and with Major Lazer performing at the same time next door in the Mojave tent, Guetta paid tribute dropping in “Pon de Floor” at one point.

On the walk back to the other stages, I noticed the large string of balloons again in the air that stretched from basically one end of the fest to another, blowing violently in the wind, which had changed in color from white the day before to purple today. They were also flying free in the morning and tied down in the evenings, or so I thought. I’d been wanting to check out the pot of gold at the end of the balloon rainbow, basically to see how this thing was held in place without going away. And today I found out. There is a human being who literally holds this GIANT string of balloons down all day. I was so shocked that I had to take a picture. And all the while he’s just chatting up a storm with whoever’s around, as if it’s no big deal. But believe me, it’s a big deal, and crazy.

So, I skipped Hot Chip, MGMT, and Faith No More, but it was all worth it. We danced our behinds off for hours between Kaskade and Guetta, but the best part was, Tiesto was still to come. We made it back to the main stage in time to catch the end of Muse’s set, which I wasn’t planning on since I’d just seen them, so that was a nice added bonus. Then, like salmon swimming upstream to fertilize their eggs, we fought the crowd leaving Muse to see just how close we could get for Tiesto’s night-closing set. Amazingly, we ended up nearly dead center, about 20 rows back. This is not that impressive unless you’ve been to a night-closing set at a main stage of a major music festival. I’ve never even been remotely that close before in a similar scenario, so I was pretty pumped.

After the 40 minute wait between sets, it finally began. I couldn’t believe that the day had turned into a straight up electronic music festival, and had not planned on that at any point throughout the day, but as Tiesto killed it over and over again (man, those lights/lasers were intense!), I was glad that this was the way the day had turned out. Some of my favorites were his take on Editors “Papillon”, a song I didn’t particularly care for when it first came out but that I loved on this night. The other songs I recognized that found their way into the mix were Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ “Heads Will Roll” as well as “Feel it in my Bones” and Tiesto’s Adagio for Strings remix, which he introduced by saying “Here’s the old Tiesto classic of the night”, or something like that. Once energy had reached a fever pitch, the set ended with a Flaminglipsian touch, with gobs upon gobs of confetti being thrown into the crowd. As we walked out of the show, the ground was pretty much completely covered.

Then we left the parking lot with no wait, again driving over the fence that someone had knocked down the day before, and proceeded to blare fantastic 80s tunes the whole way home. A great ending to a great day and night.

So, the moral of the story is, sometimes music fests turn out exactly the opposite of how you expected them to, and sometimes that’s for the best. Looking forward to day 3, which features some of my favorites. Plus I get to see my friend Sarah spin at 3:45 in the green zone area, or whatever it’s called, between Mojave and Sahara.

I probably forgot a lot, but I’m glad I’ve been able to get down in writing whatever I can remember from each day, and I hope you’re enjoying it too. How I wish, how I wish you were here.

Again, sorry for the lack of pics, but I promise you I will make up for it with my video, if I can figure out how to use iMovie once this fest is over. My goal is to get a full glimpse of all aspects of the fest, and I think I’ve done a decent job at capturing lots thus far. But I really really like the picture below of the girl on the guys shoulders. So I’ve got that going.

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04/14/2010

beach house – the arrangement

It should come as no surprise to you that this one man editorial team is a rather large fan of Baltimore duo Beach House (and excited to see them again in a few days at Coachella, even though I just saw them a few weeks back). But to make them even cooler, they are taking part in Record Store Day, which is this Saturday, April 17. The main purpose of Record Store Day is to get people back into the independent record stores that have done so much in supporting independent music over the years. And to do so, many artists are releasing limited edition records only available in stores on that day.

Beach House is offering up a limited edition Zebra 12″ with some new songs and edits.

Side A:
1. Zebra (UK Radio Edit)
2. The Arrangement

Side B:
1. Baby
2. Ten Mile Stereo (Cough Syrup Remix)

And the good folks of Subpop are making “The Arrangement” available to stream for one week only, so give it a listen! I kind of wish the Zebra (Ring Trick remix) could have made it’s way onto something like this, because I love it so very much. But kudos to Beach House and all the other artists putting out special releases for Record Store Day and helping to support the little guys. And you should all do the same this Saturday.

Beach House – The Arrangement by subpop

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04/02/2010

beach house @ the crofoot 4.1.10

Of all of the many shows coming to town these past few months, none was more highly anticipated than the Beach House show which, as expected, was moved from the tiny Pike Room to the much larger Crofoot Ballroom. But after all the waiting, it was finally April 1, and a beautiful early April day nonetheless, made even better by the fact that I did not have to work the following day.

We arrived a little after 8:30 just in time to catch opener Bachelorette, with whom we were highly impressed. We couldn’t really tell where she was from but later learned she was from New Zealand, “the land next to the land down under”. One thing we knew for sure is that any office job would be happy to hire this lady, because she was an amazing multitasker. As a one woman show, she was pretty amazing, manipulating a keyboard, beat pad, loop pedals, guitar, computer and visuals all by herself. All of her songs built up into big and beautiful sounds, layered with harmonized vocals and rich electronic sounds. She was gracious and humble to the crowd for listening. I was so impressed that I bought her album which gave me the chance to utilize the cd player in my car for the first time in the 2 years and 3 months that I’ve owned it. Yo, living in the digital age? I snapped a few photos but the lighting was not abundant so none of them turned out. I’m not too good at capturing opening acts for some reason.

Then the wait began for the main event. I had a nice spot right in front of the bench where Alex Scally would be sitting. The stage was sort of decorated like a high school dance, with glittery streamers coming from the four corners of the stage converging in the middle, and with large geometric shapes that looked like two pyramids stacked upon each other throughout the stage. Then Victoria and Alex took the stage along with their drummer and the magic began. The lighting was very minimal as you’ll see, but most of it was coming up from the ground, so the band was always eerily lit, and the glittery materials all over the stage were illuminated from below which gave a pretty cool effect that matched perfectly with their dreamgaze sound.

The group worked their way through most of “Teen Dream” and threw in a few older tunes here and there, and let me tell you, the voice of Victoria Legrand is even more impressive live. As I mentioned on the twitter, she has officially become my number one indie rock crush. And I think someone needs to cast her in a shampoo commercial because her flowing locks were such a huge part of the show, whether carelessly brushed over her face, or bouncing around while she rocked out head down. She graciously thanked the crowd many times, saying that this was their best crowd thus far and said it was their fifth time playing in Detroit, but by far their best time. While I feel like artists say this kind of stuff all the time, you could just tell that they really meant it. I didn’t witness this myself, but the group posted on their Facebook page that it was the first ever crowdsurfing at a Beach House show.

I don’t know what it was, but something just felt special about this show. It definitely didn’t hurt that it was the first amazing weather day of the year and that even at night it was comfortable being outside in just a t-shirt. This was amplified by the fact that the Crofoot has a FANTASTIC two level outdoor patio connected to the main room, so there was an extra element of happiness from me being excited about the impending warm weather and the fact that all of the smokers were comfortably outside (May 1 is right around the corner, which means the start of the smoking ban in Michigan, but luckily many venues have already begun enforcing it, which makes for much more enjoyable shows). It was magical. Highlights for me included “Lover of Mine” and “Zebra”, which was probably the biggest crowd favorite.

Victoria said she wished they could just play for us for 17 hours and Alex commented that he wished they could take us all on tour with them, and I wouldn’t disagree. As a further testament to the good people that they are, Alex spent 10 or 15 minutes talking with the few fans that were left before the venue kicked us all out.

Ok, time for a quick rant. If you are tall and standing in the front row, and I am short and standing in the second row, and I kindly ask if I can stand in front of you for just one song to take some pictures, it’s sort of a dick move to say, “I don’t think so.” Who does that, really? Your line of vision will be exactly the same since you are at least a full head taller than me, and it’s one flippin song. Ok, I’m done, people are just weird sometimes.

Overall, the night was sort of magical with the combination of the warm weather, the dreamy visuals, and Legrands flowing hair and sultry voice. I wanted it never to end. Check my pics below, with larger versions available on the dailybeatz Flickr page.

And I think the pictures might be a little more enjoyable if you listen to this song while you peruse, and imagine hearing it live.

Beach House – Lover of Mine

buy it on Beach House - Teen Dream - Lover of Mine or amazon

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02/19/2010

beach house – zebra (ring trick remix)

I make no secret of the fact that I typically write up these posts a few days in advance. Because, let’s be honest, I’m kind of lazy, so its tough to keep up with something on a daily basis. But I just heard this one late at night and decided to write it up on the fly. My first thought when I saw a Beach House remix was, “Oh no they di’in”, because I expected it to be terrible. Actually, I think I just had no idea at all what to expect from a remix of a song from one of my favorite albums of the year thus far (qualifying statement: despite the fact that it’s only mid February, it has already been an exceptional year for new music). But any doubt I had was quickly relinquished thanks to San Fran’s Ring Trick.

It does take a minute to get on board with what’s going on, but then I found myself thinking, “This is pretty nice. Not at all what I was expecting, but I guess I don’t really know what I was expecting, so I’m pleasantly surprised.” I was waiting for the big sort of big peak in the remix. And I waited and waited and then started thinking, “Maybe this is it. I was hoping for just a little bit more, but I’m OK with what I’ve got.” Then about 3 and a quarter minutes in, you really hear “Zebra” in its original form for the first time and it’s a great contrast to all that was going on before that. Which leads right into the downright glorious electronic section that was well worth the wait, enough to put a smile on my face at least.

Check out this track on Ring Trick’s myspace page, just so you can say “I listened to this on Ring Trick’s myspace page when it only had 41 listens.” Kind of like how I was one of the first 100,000 people to view “David After Dentist”.

Beach House – Zebra (Ring Trick Remix)

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12/15/2009

beach house – norway

beach house

beach house is the baltimore band composed of victoria legrand and alex scally (and im pretty sure their myspace page background is a picture from cute overload. their third album, entitled “teen dream” is being released in january and is among one of the numerous highly anticipated releases coming in the first quarter of 2010. besides working on a new album in near isolation, the band contributed a track to the fantabulous “dark was the night” compilation that ive oft blogged about through the year, and vicky (i bet she hates being called vicky, what do you think?) also provided vocals to grizzly bears “slow life” which can be found on the “gag” new moon soundtrack.

im liking this first song thats been released from the new album. im not going to lie and pretend im an expert on the whole beach house discography, but from the little ive heard, i really feel like this track is a great step forward (not that there was anything bad about the previous steps theyve taken). the swirling organs and legrands one of a kind vocals add to a song that seems to be much more driving than some other beach house tunes ive heard. but im probably completely wrong, which really wouldnt surprise anyone. i cant wait for 2010 music time.

beach house – norway

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