music video

Atlas Sound – Quarantined

/ David James / 5 Comments

atlas-sound-bradford-cox

I am waiting to be…  changed

Bradford Cox is one of the only musicians working today who I feel, despite fronting a popular band and receiving wide acclaim, is less than fully recognized for his true genius.  My snobbier friends write off Deerhunter as indie/pitchfork ‘core’ while casual fans aren’t often bothered to delve into his often exquisite solo work as Atlas Sound, both on record and (more importantly) in the cornucopia of material he’s released free of charge over the years.

Debut Let The Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel, source of Quarantined.

My favorite pieces often combine a sharp nostalgic eye for the detail of pop songcraft with an otherworldly timbre.  On paper they’d make any head nod while in practice they alternately embrace and repel through a veiled fog.  Some display a truly off-kilter sense of place and time, pairing Phil Spector rhythms and shoegaze instrumentaion with lyrics about the inner terror of isolation and the damaged longing for freedom through metamorphosis.  For instance.

He’s covered Unchained Melody (seriously, listen) and recorded drone epics about tripping nuts all weekend with equal devotion and care. Cox most recently dropped a three hour, four volume slab of unreleased treasure on fans just because. Because he was neglecting his freebie-filled blog while touring and releasing multiple items with his main band? We certainly weren’t owed more; he is simply that prodigious and generous an artist.

After the dreamy debut masterpiece Let The Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel (from which Quarantined sprang) and slightly more straightforward follow up Logos, and a two year break, Atlas Sound is about to treat us all to another official LP of celestial pop on November 8 with Parallax. Check the artwork below for a bit of weird fun and to listen to advance single Terra Incognita. While you’re there, click on a window in the far right building to hear a bonus ditty I won’t spoil here. You’ll know it when you find it.

Also, another special pre-release “leak” of which I’ve grown fond: Te Amo (right-click and ‘save as’ to keep the mp3).

[while you wait get the Let The Blind… 2LP at Insound, or Amazon – there’s a full bonus EP of equally worthy music included and like other 4ad releases the packaging is gorgeous]

The Durutti Column – Otis

/ David James / 6 Comments

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Another sleepless night for me…

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Destroyer – Kaputt

/ David James / 10 Comments

Before 2011, I had heard one Destroyer album, Your Blues.  I recalled a very baroque yet earnest ballad named The Music Lovers, and nothing else.  I thought of Dan Bejar (the sole permanent member) as part of an indie pop milieu I haven’t found interesting in years.  Thankfully, Destroyer changed and I was wrong.  Kaputt is a utopian vision of space-age late night electronic jazz pop.

 

First I’ll mention the atmosphere: as lush as a Ferrari made of diamonds, parked near a waterfall…  bathed in the neon glow of some not-too-distant future.  Every reverb-laden trumpet blast and bright synth line feels magnified, submerged in the liquid cool of Kaputt’s immaculate production.  Some have mentioned the album conjuring memories of the 80s and I can’t disagree;  I think it’s more to do with the painstaking detail of the recording than any genre the band nods toward.   It was a time, after all, when ambitious pop albums were a slightly more common sighting.

If you’re familiar with Miles Davis‘ monumental Bitches Brew, you’ll have some idea of the tone and color the omnipresent trumpet takes on as it darts through the album from beginning to end.  Muted and echoed at godlike levels, it’s an apparition as much as a driving force.  Accenting and elevating the songs, highlighting the utopian feel, it’s a major aspect in cementing this sound in memory.  Another is Bejar’s voice.  With a deliver both earnest  and cool, his affecting lyrics take impressionistic flights spiked with lump-in-throat moments which remind us: he’s not just our tour guide on this  twilit adventure, he’s sharing the story of how we got here.

This chilled out, slickly psychedelic album is polished pop of the highest order.  Crackling with an energy and intricacy unheard of in Bejar’s (former) circles, it unapologetically stands out with a crystaline picture of a time we’re not living in.  For me, it’s the future.  I’m sure this has something to do with my upbringing in the aforementioned decade; this is how the future was supposed to sound then!  You may hear the past.  Either is a fantasy wholly worth inhabiting.

If you’re like me, you may need more assurance that this isn’t the tired indie pop you may expect (or fear) it to be.  So try this:

On second thought, everyone watch that.  One of the most original, thrilling, and straight up funny music videos I’ve seen in a long time.  80’s girls with wet hair, desert mirages, and flying whales!  Wow.  That just made me like this even more.  Anyway…

[you can get this straight from label merge, or even at amazon]

Lil B – The Age of Information

/ David James / 6 Comments

Here is the Based God with some truth.

Lil B started truly blowing up in 2010, releasing literally hundreds of youtube tracks and more than a handful of more-excellent-than-not mixtapes, each full of absolute gems which cannot be missed.  Unfortunately the deluge of material tends to intimdate the uninitiated, especially if they play a random track or two and find themselves baffled or recoiling at what they perceive.  I myself finally caved sometime in the summer and was taken in by the surreal wordplay and exquisite, twisted beats (or ambient soundscapes) his words are married to.  I was intrigued and drawn in, but always with more curiosity than love – until The Age of Information changed my mind.

This one combined some of his most prescient and observant lyrics with a laid back, psychedelic compression worthy of any spaced out Boards of Canada acolyte, orbiting a classic piano line dropping anchor for the heavily drifting wordplay.  Speaking of our generational disconnect with each other, with history, with the wider culture itself, he’s sharing thoughts imbued with far more earnest grace than originality; it’s the heartfelt truth of a young mind grappling with the very internet culture which has enabled his meteoric rise.

About that rise:  watch out for a lot more from this prolific and talented artist in the coming year – full length Angels Exodus just dropped at Amalgam Digital, and its (supposedly) massive follow up Glass Face is soon to follow.  I’m also putting together a mix, soon to appear on this very blog.  Keep your eyes peeled.  And check out Lil B at last.fm for the latest discussion and links and all that.

James Blake – James Blake

/ David James / 5 Comments

My first album of 2011. So infectious, I’m giddy with the prospect of holding its vinyl in my hands on release day – still a month off. James Blake set the blog frontier ablaze last year with two progressive leaps beyond the dubstep fray – the CMYK and Klavierwork EPs – but never gripped my attention, making my ears perk up, my spine tingle, quite like this. This self titled debut is easily this year’s (first) benchmark.

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Always Loved A Film

/ David James / 1 Comment

Underworld drop their latest studio album, Barking, on September 14th and are teasing it with the hilarious (and hilariously badass) video for second single Always Loved A Film.  Skateboarding, shoplifting, drinking, girls, joyrides and more… from a group of deliriously ecstatic senior citizens!

I’m guessing it’s a reflection of, or sly commentary on, the men behind Underworld‘s “grandfather” status in the electronic music realm.  They’ve come back with their most straightfoward party starting album (at least since the blissed out live Everything, Everything album and DVD) at a time when most of their peers are curating soft jazz shows on NPR or laying low in the south of France or some such idyllic place.  It may not be the most original slice of dance nirvana or within spitting distance of the band’s 1990’s apex (see Second Toughest In The Infants right here on Optimistic Underground for that) but it sure gets my blood pumping more than most of what 2010 has had to offer.

All I’ll say beyond that is to watch the entire video.  To say things escalate beyond mere (displaced) adolescent destruction is an understatement:  this ride gets wilder until the very last frame.  Enjoy

[pick up Barking soon at amazon or basically anywhere on the 14th.  as a longtime fan I can attest it’s a worthy purchase]

Flying Lotus – Mmmhmm

/ David James / 3 Comments

This is it.  The best music video I’ve seen in a very long time.  Flying Lotus not only outdid himself with Cosmogramma and this song, Mmmhmm, but the video accompaniment rides some serious upper-atmosphere currents.  So light up, sit back, and be blown away.  (and make sure to watch in full screen!)

Now how do you feel?  I believe a certain youtube commentator sums it up best:  “The most stoned video of all time!”  It’s at least a contender.

Accompanied by Thundercat (who helps elevate nearly every moment of Cosmogramma), providing luscious vocals and acrobatic bass work, Flylo strikes my pleasure center from so many angles it took me several listens to realize just how and why I’m in love with it.  From the airy atmosphere (perfectly translated on film) to the percussion that feels like a magnet gathering the debris of some exploded spaceship and compressing it, everything works together to evoke the “space opera” theme the entire album spins around.  The song itself is one half of nearly everyone’s favorite moment on the new album, when the celestial keys of this song stretch into infinity and the man himself drops in with some scatting to lead the way to Do The Astral Plane, his most straightforward balls-to-the-wall banger yet.  I doubt I’m alone in aching for that one to become the next single.

This just makes me imagine a full-album video.  Which, of course, is too much to ask for.  And probably dangerous.  Too many heads would explode.

[if you haven’t picked up the album, get it at the bleep store! You’re seriously missing out, hard.]