Archive for the ‘thom yorke’ tag

[album review] Flying Lotus – Cosmogramma

Steven Ellison could have gotten away with cloning 2008’s Los Angeles for his third Flying Lotus album. It would have been really easy – not to say that Los Angeles was artistically easy, only that “Los Angeles II” would have likely disappointed no one. Even with three different L.A. E.P.’s around, the complacency of following a highly successful sound would have been completely forgivable in this case. But Ellison decided to avoid that shortcut and NOT make the banger after-party album that I, for one, was absolutely hoping for. Cosmogramma heads in completely new directions; it’s 45 minutes of Ellison answering the question, “What is my next step?” And though the experiment doesn’t always have consistent momentum, there is still so much that deserves praise I can’t possibly blame him for pursuing something new.

On a first listen, it sounds like Cosmogramma is all over the place. “Clock Catcher” kicks things off with the album’s dirtiest bass line, only to fade into a shapeless interlude thirty seconds later. Then, in my most brief summary, the second and third tracks bust out into FlyLo’s brand of bebop and German electro, respectively. The entire album is similarly genre-spastic, but it definitely picks up by the fourth track, “Intro / A Cosmic Drama,” which sounds like the album’s real beginning to me. “Zodiac Shit” is the kind of beat I expected Los Angeles II would have sounded like, and the next ten minutes keep things so buttery smooth that I had no idea Thom Yorke was even on “…And the World Laughs With You” until I checked to see if the disembodied voice really was him.

What sticks out through Cosmogramma’s second half, and what I think becomes its greatest strength, is the abundance of guest instrumentalists that expand the sound. There’s harp, synths, strings, saxophone, and a bass that sounds like it was ripped right from 70’s prog rock. Each dissimilar element comes together in a product that isn’t hip-hop, isn’t neo-soul, isn’t Afro-futurist, or any genre that has described Flying Lotus. It straight-up sounds like a reinvention of jazz, and that is why Cosmogramma is a champion moment for Ellison. He is using his beats as a vehicle to bring him back to his jazz heritage, sometimes so far into them that tracks sound like live recordings done in one take. You knew that he’s John Coltrane’s nephew, right? I think Cosmogramma would have pleased Mr. Coltrane greatly.

Cosmogramma isn’t perfect, and I don’t think I will ever say it’s my favorite Flying Lotus album, but there are moments that really make me believe Ellison is poised for further transcendence. Where older material sounded like a one-man show (no doubt one of its strengths), moments in Cosmogramma come off as a group effort. Listen to “Dance of the Pseudo Nymphs” and think about how amazing it would sound as performed by a jazz combo. With Ellison texturing everything together as a bandleader, that performance would probably be chemically harmful to my brain. The most exciting and dizzying question about Cosmogramma is whether it will mark the moment when Ellison revitalized the spirit of jazz, and by extension, whether a cartoon program that aired Squidbillies was integral to that movement. He greatly succeeded in refining his signature, that sound that is distinctly his own, but the implications for his future border on scary.

Cosmogramma showed me that I underestimated the depths that FlyLo’s beat submarine could dive, and Cosmogramma is the sonic equivalent of Ellison steering it past all the pretty coral reefs and plunging towards the deep-sea trenches of his influences and his potential as an artist.

Flying Lotus – …And The World Laughs With You

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This review was written by dailybeatz contributor PJ Nutting, a Boulder, CO DJ/journalist

coachella 2010: the video! (and final thoughts)

For the last three days, you’ve all been hearing about the video. I’ve never made a video before, so I was a bit worried about it, but just tried to capture as many moments in time as I could in hopes that they could be spliced together into something not terrible. And now that the video is complete (thanks to iMovie being super easy to use), the time has come to share it with the world! I’m mostly happy because normally I would talk about doing something like this and find myself with 15 seconds of video at the end of the weekend. So I was happy to learn that I can, in fact, sometimes follow through.

WARNING: This was all shot on my old point and shoot camera, so the quality is going to look extremely grim in comparison to any other Coachella videos you’ve likely already watched. But I think it gives mine a more “authentic” feel to it. The everyday man’s Coachella recap video.

The theme of the video, much like the weekend, is night and day. And this seemed to be the perfect song to use for such a theme.

Wasn’t that fun? Did it make you a little nauseous? I hope not, but I can see how it could.

Here are some other final thoughts on the weekend, and then I will stop talking about Coachella, except for constantly and incessantly referencing it.

- This was my first Coachella ever, so I have no frame of reference, though it seemed like a lot of people were bitching about how crowded it was. Compared to other fests I’ve been to, this was by far the least crowded, and not only that, it was extremely easy to get relatively close up for almost any show, minus maybe a headliner or two, without camping out all day. It seemed that for the most part, this crowd didn’t really stick around from one show to the next, so if you were in position as soon as the previous show ended, you could usually get within the first 15 or 20 rows without a problem. Major plus.

- Favorites of the weekend. In no particular order, Fever Ray (queen of darkness), Local Natives (killer afternoon set. Just killer), Miike Snow (they always bring the heat, but it got even more broughten in a packed tent as the sun went down), Aeroplane (of all the fantastic DJs I saw all weekend, their mix of songs was the most right up my alley. And they saved what started out a miserable day). Honorable mention to Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros. I loved everything about it but I couldn’t get over the vocal issues. That being said, they got huge bonus points for happiness, quirkiness and energy and general fun. But really, I enjoyed most of the acts I saw quite a bit.

- Wish I would’ve seens. Thom Yorke, not sure what I was thinking on this one. Hot Chip, because I don’t know when I’ll get to see these guys again. Deadmau5, despite conflicting with Fever Ray and even though I just saw him recently, mostly because of this video I saw of his SIIIIIIIICK dj table. Shit looks crazy!

- I said it before, but the Sahara tent is off the hinges. The crazy lights and all day dance party are not to be missed. The only downside, the kids and their drugs. I’m not juding anyone based on what drugs they want to take, but I am judging people who are stupid and irresponsible about it. I had at LEAST 5 people directly surrounding me throughout the weekend just collapse and pass out. It was really gross to see. At the Gorillaz show, the guy behind me collapsed right on his face and didn’t wake up for a solid ten minutes. His friends’ response? “He’s done this a few times today, but he always gets right back up.” Like I said, I’m not juding anyone’s recreational drug use, but at least try to be responsible about it, and look out for your friends. It didn’t help that most of these people looked like they were barely old enough to drive a car.

- Cancellations. Shit happens, and it sucks. Nothing anyone could have done about any of it, but still grim to say the least. But overall I was happy with the acts I did get to see. And the people who are like “I maybe saw one good performance this weekend” on the message boards need to stop going to shows, because what’s the point if you never have a good time?

- The overall ambiance of the fest is the best I’ve ever experienced. The Chicago skyline as the backdrop of Lollapalooza is pretty spectacular, but being surrounded on all sides by endless palm trees and mountains is both spectacular and extremely relaxing.

- The layout of the fest is also one of the best I’ve seen. The long and narrow Lolla setup leads to inevitable clusterfucks left and right. And Bonaroo’s circular setup is a better alternative. But it seems like it only takes 10 minutes to walk from one end of Coachella to the other. A major plus when you’re trying to catch consecutive shows at opposite stages. The setup does lead to some issues, however, like when the whole world was trying to see MGMT and the crowd was essentially surrounding the Outdoor Stage (where the band was performing) and extended all the way back through the Gobi and Mojave tents.

- Cameras. What do people think about bringing their nice cameras? I saw millions of them and it seemed like security was allowing them for some reason, so I was debating all weekend if I wished I would have brought mine. I think that I wouldn’t want to have to worry about it getting damaged, a very distinct possibility in those crowds, but I was also pretty underwhelmed with my shots, so I guess it’s a trade-off. I think a small handheld video camera may be in order for my next fest, however.

- Diplo got some major props this weekend. Aside from what I hear was an absolutely bonkers Major Lazer set, both David Guetta and supergroup Club 75 included “Pon de Floor” in their sets. Not too shabby.

- The tents. The tents are good and bad. If you are inside the tent, they are amazing. I love the enclosed feel, the shade they provide, and the great sound. However, when the tents start to overflow and you find yourself on the outside, they kind of blow. But as long as you can arrive a little early to the show you’re seeing, this is usually not an issue.

Misc.
- Throw away your garbage, people.
- Children, stop trying to get to the front 5 seconds before (or after) a show starts with all 45 of your closest friends hand in hand. Spend more time making sure your 45 friends aren’t on course to have a drug-induced death scare before the day is over.
- What’s with all the feathers and face paint?
- There’s going to be traffic whenever tens of thousands of people are in one place. Deal wit’ it. Or drive over the fence like the guy in front of me did, saving me at least a half hour on the way out.

Thanks to Beta Mike for the rad pic above that I stole from him.

Here’s to a great Coachella 2011. I leave with a few remixes by Aeroplane, the act that really kicked things off for me this year.

Robbie Williams – Bodies (Aeroplane Instrumental Remix)

Au Revoir Simone – Another Likely Story (Aeroplane Remix)

coachella day 3: all good things must come to an end

Our bodies tired and a little sore, it was time for the third and final day of Coachella to begin. I’d been looking forward to the strong day 3 lineup ever since it was released and was glad that there were not too many conflicts today. Since Delphic had to cancel thanks to Icecanogate, our day was going to start out with an early afternoon set by Local Natives, a band that I didn’t know was among my favorites until today.

There’s really something special about a nice early afternoon set in a tent. It’s a great atmosphere (especially when palm trees can be seen behind the tent) and can really set the tone of the whole day. All I can say after this performance is that I am beyond stoked that I will be seeing them twice more this summer (including a tiny show at the Blind Pig in Ann Arbor). The energy was almost incomprehensible at times and their songs took on a whole new life on the live stage. Anyone who has the chance to see these kids live need to do it. As my friend Peabs said, Local Natives justified the price of his ticket and everything else was just gravy. The vocals were spot on (and harmonies are such a huge part of their music, so this was a good thing) and a lot of songs turned into big singalongs, namely the crazy parts of “Sun Hands” and the “oh oh oh oh ohs” of “World News”. Oh boy, I almost can’t imagine my head not exploding had Delphic nailed a set right before this. Here’s two bad pictures of the band. I believe the second was during the insane section of “Sun Hands”

Local Natives – World News

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We sat around for a bit until 3:45 because my friend Sarah was going to be spinning at the Green Stage, you know, the stage that has giant hamster wheels, a see-saw, hand cranks and stationary bikes, all used to create energy to run the stage. Her set was great and she gathered a pretty nice crowd, but I have to say it was pretty difficult riding that bike for more than ten minutes on a 90 degree day on the third day of a music fest. But it was pretty fun anyway, and it was great to see a long lost friend, especially since we’d been talking Coachella for so long.

Next up was another highly anticipated act, Club 75 (who I often mistakenly refer to as Beat 75). This DJ supergroup is made up of Busy P, Cassius (who I must say looks exactly how I envisioned him to look….extremely French), Justice and Mehdi. The set was pretty fun but I think in my head I envisioned this to be a Justice show, which clearly is not what it ever was advertised to be. And apparently when you’re 15 it’s still cool to start a mosh pit. After sweating up a storm we headed back out to take another breather, because next up was Miike Snow. Sorry for no pics. The bright backdrop sort of washed out all of the people. But video footage has been obtained.

This marks my third time seeing Miike Snow live. The first was at Lollapalooza last year, when I had no idea who or what Miike Snow was (maybe back when I thought it was a person, not a bad) and only knew that they had something to do with this Vampire Weekend remix that I really liked. Then I was blown away by their live show at Lolla and by mere chance got to catch them in Chicago a few weeks later at a tiny show at the Empty Bottle. So I pretty much knew what was in store for me. And even so, it was one of the rip-roaringest good times I had all weekend. I can’t quite describe what it is, but there’s something so cool about the way they combine great catchy pop tunes with heavy electro in a way that is completely organic and not forced one bit. And the extended electronic jams are just “the whip”. At the end of the set, lead singer Andrew Wyatt again reminded us that if we didn’t know, Miike Snow is the name of a band, and not a person in the band. And then he implored us to tell our friends.

I’m not sure what it was about this performance, but it was by far my favorite of the three that I’ve seen. It just seemed that the jams were harder and the beats were heavier.

It was time to get some food in mah belly (a slice of pizza that was much inferior to the one I devoured on day 1) before heading over to the Pavementhomyorillaz extravaganza. I’m not the hugest Pavement fan in the world (I like them, but just haven’t really listened to them in depth) but it was still great to see them and hear a few tunes that I really enjoyed like “In the Mouth a Desert” and the classic “Range Life”. In fact, “Range Life” offered up one of those surreal weekend moments where you kind of just look around at the whole scene and the mountains and palm trees that surround the grounds and smile a little bit.

After that, we decided our priority was Gorillaz so we sort of camped out there. We could hear some of Thom Yorke’s set, but I heard his encore was “Everything in its Right Place” aka one of my favorite Radiohead songs ever, solo on piano. So that was a definite fail on my part. I also hear that Flea is a ridiculous addition to Yorke’s music, so was a little sad to miss that as well, but we can’t make it to everything at these festys, now can we. Especially if we want any sort of line of vision for Gorillaz.

Just before Gorillaz took the stage, I noticed quite a few chairs and music stands on the stage. Were they going to have some sort of orchestra accompanying them tonight? The answer was yes, via a 6-8 member string section. They started out with, appropriately, the Orchestral Intro from Plastic Beach followed by “Welcome to the World of the Plastic Beach” with a special appearance from Snoop Dogg (if a prerecorded video of Snoop Dogg playing on the big screen counts as an appearance). They played a few older tunes and then hit up some of my Plastic Beach favorites, such as “Glitter Freeze” (which was for sure off the hinges), “Empire Ants” (with a guest appearance by my girl from Little Dragon) and “Melancholy Hill”, among others. Other guest appearances included De La Soul (during “Superfast Jellyfish”) and Bobby Womack (during “Stylo”).

The stage setup was pretty simple but pretty entertaining. There was a large “GORILLAZ” near the bottom just above all the musicians and a giant movie screen showing all kinds of crazy video content, much of which included the cartoon version of Gorillaz, but have no fear, Damon Albarn and company were on stage in the flesh as well performing live.

The group came out for an encore and played “To Binge” (again with vocals from Little Dragon) and a great version of “Feel Good, Inc” that the crowd really got into. And then in a strange turn of events, they brought out Bobby Womack to sing the final song, which I’m not quite sure what it was. And then the weekend was over, just like that. After 5 or 10 minutes when the crowd realized there wouldn’t be a crazy festival ending dance party to “DARE” as so many of us were hoping for at that point in time, we walked back to our cars, most of us completely satisfied with the fantastic weekend we had just experienced, with heavy eyelids and aching feet.

Gorillaz – To Binge feat. Little Dragon

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I know you’re all sick of hearing about Coachella from me, but I think you’ll be getting two more pieces of awesome this week, one of them a recap of the festival as a whole (highlights, misses, etc). And the second, the much talked about video. I definitely have lots of clips (it was all about catching little moments in time and connecting them to tell the full story of the fest), but now it’s just a matter of whether or not I can figure out how to edit them together. Although there are 118 of these moments and I haven’t looked at any of them yet, so they may all be scheisse. Wish me luck.

thom yorke – hearing damage

well kids, its happened. the twilight phenomenon has officially taken over the indie music world. as im sure many of you know by now, the next movie in the twilight series, new moon, is being released later this year and along with the release of the movie is the release of the soundtrack which is strangely full of many of our favorite artists like grizzly bear, muse, sea wolf, editors, lykke li, bon iver, and yes, even thom yorke. while im pretty tired of how twilight has taken over the world, i think the fact that we get some new tracks from all of these great artists is enough even to make perpetually bitchy looking twilight star kristin stewart smile.

the song sounds like classic thom yorke. pretty dark and pretty electronic. fortunately, i like this song way more than the last new thom yorke song i heard, the hollow earth. i have a feeling that most of the soundtrack is going to have this really dark feel about it, and i guess it will expose the teenybopper twilight fanatics to some of the excellent music thats out there, which i guess is a good thing, assuming that any shows of these acts are 18+. this intolerance of youngers is perhaps rooted in my seeing “where the wild things are” this past friday with tons of little children in the theater, and from my passion pit experience at lollapalooza. sorry kids.

thom yorke – hearing damage

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thom yorke – the hollow earth

does anyone else think its been kind of odd how radiohead and its frontman thom yorke have been sort of randomly releasing music left and right as of late? lets see, just in the past month or two, theres been the release of “harry patch (in memory of)”, the charity track written in memory of, you guessed it, harry patch, who was the last surviving uk veteran of WWI who passed away at the age of 111. then there was the completely random leak/release of the new radiohead track “these are my twisted words”, which didnt seem to be tied to anything at all. and then theres the weird upcoming radiohead track on the “new moon” soundtrack.

the latest is the release of a thom yorke single that contains two tracks, “feeling pulled apart by horses” and “the hollow earth”. after listening to both of these tracks, all im going to say is that maybe i need to give them a few more listens. but on first glance i liked “the hollow earth” a bit more. but this begs the question — does this mean that there is a new thom yorke album on the horizon? i was pretty obsessed with his first computer-laden solo album “the eraser”, always finding a new favorite song that i listened to on repeat, the latest of which was “cymbal rush”, which i fell in love with after seeing thom play it solo as the first song of the encore during the webcast of their show at the Santa Barbara Bowl last summer. its getting hard to keep track of all of these one off releases, so hopefully it all means that some sort of album in some form is coming soon.

thom yorke – the hollow earth

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radiohead – like spinning plates (live)

ive been having a minor internal struggle with the song selections ive been making. on the one end, im trying to bring some new tracks to all of you that you may not have heard before. but on the other hand, since im not that cool that i have an endless supply of these (and since youve probably heard most of them before anyway), ive been trying to find a balance between new stuff and other stuff that i like even though many have heard it before. i felt the need to post a radiohead song to round out my musical background, but couldnt think of the perfect one, until i remembered this live version of “like spinning plates” from many moons ago. reasons for awesomeness other than the obvious are that i was at the show where they first played it, and i found it online a few days later and learned to play it on piano myself.

it was a midsummers night back in 2002. at least i think it was 2002. we had driven about 4 hours to the blossom music center near columbus, ohio for our first taste of radiohead, in all of their live glory. the show did not disappoint as we waited for the group to return from backstage for the encores. mr yorke sat down at the piano and issued us a challenge of sorts, something to the tune of “if you can name that tune within the first 30 seconds, youre doing pretty well.” he also informed us that they had never performed this song live, so that narrowed down the list quite a bit, but who could even keep track at that point? there were a thousand reasons not to recognize the song right away. first, it was a track that seemed to sort of fly under the radar. second, it was musically ambiguous. you could hear the chords, but only in the context of some looping effect played in reverse. the live piano version of the song gave a whole new appreciation to the overlooked and complicated album version. the best part? we actually sort of get a glimpse into the real lyrics of the song, which are played in reverse on the studio track and pretty incomprehensible.

radiohead – like spinning plates(live)

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