a quiet end

I Break Horses - Winter Beats

Gorgeous video. & from a great album too.

There’s been a slight delay in the Past Fragments EP release, but the music is done and it should be out very soon…

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Nine Types of Light

Candy’s gonna fall out of the sky.

There’s another song post about the EP on it’s way, but given that this album was released today, I really wanted to throw something related up here as it’s something I’ve been looking forward to for a long time now.

I’d thought to post the video for ‘Will Do’ at some point after it was released a few weeks back, but I’m glad I held off, as what the band is doing here extends much beyond only a single form music video.

The film is described as being “…as much an album as it is a movie by TV on the Radio. The movie is meant to be a visual re-imagining of the record, and includes a music video for every song on the album. The band personally asked their friends and the filmmakers they admired to help direct the music videos. Tunde Adebimpe, the director for the full Nine Types of Light movie, storybooked the music videos together with interviews from local New Yorkers on various topics, including dreams, love, fame and the future.” Right from the incredibly interesting opening dialogue, a framing device for the the film, as well as the album, an astoundingly curious and engaging set of themes begin to emerge. 

Liars, another great band who have some relation with TVOTR, did something similar a few years back with the excellent Drum’s Not Dead, making videos for each song that were released on a DVD along with the album. That record might have had more of an overarching concept in the music than Nine Types of Light does, but the way the film pulls the separate videos together as a unified set of work that adds a structure to the album’s themes and flushes out the depth that lies there more thoroughly, presenting the whole work as a large country worth exploring in detail.

There’s some videos in the works for songs from the EP, and though they are likely a ways off still, I’m hopeful they’ll pan out. There was some early discussion of doing shorts for each song, but it didn’t seem to be a realistic option, however in the future expanding musical ideas into a different mediums that can add further context, or borrow but operate in a separate thematic world, or both, is something I’m very much looking forward to exploring as a more expansive project and collaborative endeavour.

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a sunday diversion

Mogwai - San Pedro from Rock Action on Vimeo.

Have been enjoying this album immensely over the last while. One of their better records, but if anything, Mogwai are consistent; meticulously tight, pristine production, and always engaging musically. An incredible live act to boot. 

It also has one of the best titles in recent memory.

Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will.

Well said.

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Saul Williams - Explain My Heart

I have a lot of music/EP related stuff I’m looking forward to getting to posting over the next week or so, but I really wanted to stick this video up. 

Saul Williams is probably amongst my favourite artists to come around in the past ten or so years. He has one of those careers that is not limited by narrow definitions of what an artist should be, and like another long-standing influence of mine, his career spans multiple mediums, from poetry to music to the occasional acting role.

On every level, Saul’s work challenges both expectations and rigidities, not only within concepts like hip-hop and music generally, but those of art, love, creativity, race, and all with an emphasis on the meaning of living an artistic life fearlessly and without constraints. And doing so for it’s own sake.

I’ve had the opportunity to see Saul in concert a couple of times in the past six years or so, and the first of those shows in particular will forever stand out in my mind as one of the most memorable concerts I’ve ever been to. Because it wasn’t just a ‘great show’, though it certainly was that as well, but it was like being struck by a powerful artistic force; and not one that was simply performing for an audience, but was actively embracing it, taking it into it’s arms to share in its energy firsthand. It was inspiring to say the least, and I came away from that feeling like I took a little bit of it away with me, and things I wanted to do suddenly felt more possible somehow, and I, more hopeful about them, even though at that point I had no idea what form they would take or how to go about it. It was like the show recognized a chord already resounding somewhere in my heart, and amplified it, the sustain stretching out further and more audibly than it had previously.

The man is a shaman in the truest sense. Much respect.

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The National - Conversation 16

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Broken Social Scene - All To All

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Massive Attack - Splitting The Atom

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Boduf Songs - Pitiful Shadow Engulfed In Darkness

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Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - City Of Refuge

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