As all of you hopefully know, Radiohead’s new album, the King of Limbs, comes out on Saturday. However, 8 hours ago they tweeted a new status, in Japanese. According to google translate it comes out as “Hachiko Square Shibuya, 59 minutes at 18 Friday”

Now this is curious. Because of translational complications and the general ambiguity associated with Radiohead this tweet could mean a number of things? Are they playing a secret show at the Shibuya square at 18:00 Japanese time? Is the album 59 minutes long? Will they perform at the square for 59 minutes? Will they perhaps use the giant screens of the square to broadcast a tracklisting or some other strange promotional material? Will they do a live webcast from Japan at 18:00?

It’s all too confusing to know for sure now, but stay on your toes anyway. 18:00 Japanese time on Friday translates to 3:00 am EST on Friday for all you east-coasters. Good luck! Also, make sure to check back next week for our review of the King of Limbs! Will this finally be their bad album?!?!?

Not that we think that they have the #1 album of 2010, but we’re happy to see them win a Grammy. Check out that site posted below for some SERIOUS laughs.

http://whoisarcadefire.tumblr.com/

Our friend, Abbas Rattani, just finished and posted his review of Kanye’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy and well, the world finally has a comprehensive, in depth, excellent review for this album (P4K’s, as described by George, fell wayyy short). Abbas writes his review by addressing each track, its artists, and alludes to everything from Kanye’s previous albums to Aristotle’s Poetics. It’s clear a lot of time and critical thought went into this review – probably more than anyone’s given it so far so I’d say this is a must read. Oh, since I must have said something brilliant and relevant, I’m also quoted in this review. Naturally, now I’m a fangirl.

Here’s how it begins

Kanye West is a hip hop game changer, his recent album is avant-garde done right; he is the only rapper that has the capability of doing something like this.  He challenges normative assumptions of what it means to be a rapper, while testing the boundaries of hip-hop.   This album is full of personal emotion, vulnerability, and self-reflection; something that is often absent from rap.  While listening to this album you feel like you are witnessing something paradoxically new, yet oddly familiar; musical history in the making.  It seems reasonable to conclude that he (along with Kid Cudi) inadvertently created his own sub-genre of hip-hop, teetering on alternative, indie, and pop.  Welcome to the era of transcendental hip-hop.

GO TO AbbasRattani.com FOR THE WHOLE REVIEW

If you’re going to pay attention to one top ten list this season, it should be Bob Boilen’s from NPR’s All Songs Considered. At first glance it looks esoteric. Infuriated by the choices Boilen, my hero of music dissemination, had made, I was really about to cast his list aside (actually I was about to criticize it in this post). He left out some of the greatest shapers of music the year– LCD Soundsystem, Kanye – and did he do it purposely just to prove that he knows something we don’t?

So I sat down to analyze his list and find all the reasons why his no name bands have no place on any top ten 2010 list.  But after listening to every one of his selections, I have to say Bob Boilen’s choices had me asking, “How had I missed these this year?”.  Most importantly of all, his list isn’t just a permutation of all the albums we already know are going to appear on every top ten list, and despite this he still manages to pick unbelievable albums. However, Boilen does have one of the “knowns” on his list and it is Sufjan’s Age of Adz. Dare I give this away, but I whole-heartedly agree with his choice and placement. I continued down the line to his #2 pick, Jonsi. Alright, this was also an ambitious album and, as Boilen points out, a mix of electronics and strings similar to Sufjan. Additionally, it’s always impressive when a soloist can leave a band and make music that’s even better – like Jonsi did without Sigur Ros behind him (we can’t even say the same for the love of our lives, Thom Yorke).

By his fourth choice, I was in awe at the list Boilen had put together. Buke & Gass are the artists of Boilen’s #4 choice and he describes their album as, ”the freshest sound I’ve heard this year.” I’d also have to agree – and I wondered why hadn’t I heard these guys? This is great! I continued down the list and was turned onto everyone of Boilen’s picks. I can’t honestly say that these choices are any worse than some of the big guys and proving Boilen wrong was what I had initially set out to do. Many of these albums are difficult listens, super complex and layered, but each of them has a distinct reason for appearing on Boilen’s top ten list and Boilen convincingly gives you those reasons in his few sentence write-up.

Finally, Stereogum’s “Album’s We Are Most Excited About in 2011” made me really happy. I’m a Wye Oak fangirl. And they include a song preview!

Sufjan Steven’s brand new video for his Adz track, “Too Much”, is very appropriate and very cool. I wish more people danced like this (at a slower than life frame rate I mean).

I’m not really an Ariel Pink fan, but this video for his 2010 track, “Round and Round”, was directed by the Flaming Lips’ Wayne Coyne and the visual effects are subtly trippy enough to make this a very fun watch. Who does he think he is, Kurt Cobain? Cut your hair!

Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti – Round & Round from Delo Creative on Vimeo.

Next is a video of our beloved Gorillaz, fronted by the lovable Damon Albarn, playing a cover of the XX’s “Crystalised”. Also available is the group playing acoustic versions of their Plastic Beach song “On Melancholy Hill” and the ft. Daley track “Doncamatic“.

That’s My Bitch

Lastly, there’s a New Jay-Z/Kanye Track floating around the interwebs and it’s very awesome. Kind of an old school hip hop beat on top of a nice 8bit bass line.

Sideways visor, flourescent tape, weird dance moves. I saw a chicken head in there. This is apparently Sufjan Steven’s live outfit. Larissa had the unbelievable fortune of getting to see him live for realz. I have to settle for Jimmy Fallon.

Last night Sufjan rocked Fallon, which seriously begs the question, why is Sufjan on Fallon? (I’m sorry Fallon, you’re actually a cool guy.) Whatever… He performed an abbreviated version of “Too Much” on the late night show. Though he kinda looks like a mess, Sufjan rocks well and quite competently (actually way beyond competently). CHECK IT:

This one is longer and, in my opinion, WAY better than all other Girl Talk albums. Aphex Twin + Lady Gaga? Funny. Portishead + Big Boi? Kick ass. M.O.P. + Miley Cyrus? OMG RITE?!!? Anyway, DL this masterpiece here and take your pick between one big mp3 (which I think Girl Talk aka Gregg Gillis might prefer) or play it safe with the 12 separate mp3s.

EDIT: Track added to playlist.

We’d be a really lame blog if we didn’t tell you about the newly leaked Kanye song, “All of the Lights”, featuring everyone and your mother (ha). Not like we don’t wet ourselves every time Mr. West even so much as tweets (for which he is recognized as best tweeter in the industry) but this song is also incredibly awesome: blog-worthy. We heard part of it in Kanye’s experimental film “Runaway” which we showed you a couple weeks ago and “All of the Lights” truly does have a saturated list of featured artists: Rihanna, Alicia Keys, John Legend, The-Dream, Fergie, Kid Cudi, Ryan Leslie, Charlie Wilson, Tony Williams, La Roux’s Elly Jackson, and Elton John (!!!!!). The only slightly disappointing part of the song is that Elton John has quite a cursory role offering just a peppering of piano midway through the song; other than that, this song is very very enjoyable. Good ass job Mr. West.

It’s that crazy multicolored rectangle with “Aphera Music Player” written on it. It looks like this…

If you click on it you get a box that pops up with a whole playlist of music you can listen to. The music on there comes from my weekly playlists and George’s recommendations.

It’s been there since the birth of the Aphera Music blog. But it’s recently come to my attention that many of you were unaware of it…

The question that comes to mind is, why have you still been reading our blog?! The highlight of Aphera is this player. Sure, it doesn’t really let you download the music, but it’s a GREAT collection of songs. The reason we hide it is so that we don’t get shut down like some of the other blogs that post illegal music on their site.

So start using Aphera to its fullest potential. Do it, click on the box. You may just be pleasantly surprised.

click image for video

I am delighted, and it is an honor to present to you, “Runaway”, directed by Kanye West.

Abridged notes from my first viewing:

1. Like a good party, this film is full of good music and beautiful women. Ha. and Aphex Twin.

2. Kanye isn’t the best actor but maybe that’s what makes him so endearing (yeah I think he’s done with the whole asshole schtick).

3. In fact, this movie isn’t even that good, it’s just like… I mean it’s far better than ODDSAC as far as visual-musical pairings go (this film at least felt very inspired, whereas ODDSACa was a film obsessed with the novelty of the medium) but that’s irrelevant.

4. Whoa. Kanye is the definition of cool. This music is incredible.

5. HOLY FLYING BIRD WOMAN (reminds me of Terry Gilliam’s Brazil).