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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).

Oh, not much, just STILL MAKING KICK ASS MUSIC. He released an EP called Pattern+Grid World in August not long after he showed up at the 48th Ann Arbor Film Festival to perform his own original soundtrack to the 1962 art film Heaven and Earth Magic. Unlike Comsogramma, his full length released earlier this year, the new EP is not so much a breakthrough in form or style but rather it displays elements not so discretely borrowed from contemporaries like Aphex Twin and Dilla and it also takes cues from Drum and Bass. Here are two tracks to sample.
Flying Lotus – “Kill Your Co-Workers” by Some Kind of Awesome
Flying Lotus – Camera Day (taken from Pattern+Grid World) by Warp Records
He also performed his Cosmogramma track, “Drips”, with the jazz ensemble of the Los Angeles Orchestra. FlyLo plays laptop (LOL). The orchestra seamlessly segues from “Drips” in a Dilla track, “Take Notice”. It’s beautiful and incredible that a track from an album like Cosmogramma can receive a live treatment like this.

Miguel Atwood-Ferguson Ensemble “Drips/Take Notice” feat Flying Lotus from Miguel Atwood-Ferguson on Vimeo.

“Impossible Soul”, the final song of The Age of Adz, takes me back to watching the chorus line of my high school’s production of West Side Story. In my memory, that day, the Sharks joined hands with the Jets (the dead ones revived, their shirts stained with prosthetic red blood) to sing the finale of the musical. They danced, they sang, and they bowed together.  A scene like this forces the audience to wake up and cross that blurry line that separates fiction from reality. I remember the end of a show, rubbing my eyes, standing up, gaining my balance and commenting on the production to the person next to me – my smile felt stiff and fake because moments earlier I was watching Tony die, absorbed in that fictional reality. Like walking out of any sad movie, it’s hard to shake that feeling that something really terrible just happened.

And thus, “Impossible Soul”, is full of enough absurdities (autotune, 25 min long, a really cheesy interlude…) that it functions like the joining of hands between the Sharks and the Jets. These idiosyncrasies break your engagement with the fictional production. Yet, just as the finale of a musical runs through every leitmotif and theme, “Impossible Soul” repeats enough lyrics and melodies from throughout the album that you are ultimately called back into the emotional roller coaster that is Age of Adz.

I don’t really want to preface this so just click the link and watch the video.

Apologeeeez

all around for the long break in posts. I guess it proves how reliant I am on my sister’s incredible and tasteful prolificity.

Anyway, because I’m really busy with finals and truthfully not too good at this, here’s a post to keep things going and to keep us rolling: Let’s Go!

I hope you’ve been enjoying “Power” by Kanye. It’s pretty hot. However, there’s a new band that P4k’s picked up on, giving them the prestigious “Best New Music” title a week ago. The band is Tame Impala and I’ll be damned if you don’t think they sound like the Beatles. (Zach Kelly at P4k says, “Frontman Kevin Parker shares an eerie vocal similarity with John Lennon, both in tone and in the way he allows his voice to soar with each melodic turn or rhythmic surge.” Quite true.) I’ve added their track “It’s Not Meant to Be” to the player so check it out. (Wait that’s not Lennon!?) They’re not a ripoff but just as my friend Tom said, “It’s like the Beatles kept making songs, but didn’t age.”

Next, I’d like to show you this kickass video for the Jaydiohead mashup that was made not long ago (Radiohead + Jay Z = Jaydiohead… derp). The mashup is brilliant and if nothing else, be impressed by this CLASS-A dancing in this video.

Also, Radiohead’s Phil Selway released information and cover art for his new solo album, titled Familial, which is set to come out August 30. Yay? (I don’t think it’ll upset.)

Phil's album cover. Looks promising!

Thanks guys for bearing with us.

George

Finally, after disgracing himself with 808′s and then with that Swift chick, he’s done something worthwhile. It’s called “Power” and it is really cool. Like M.I.A. cool.

PAH!

Listen over at the hypemachine.com

You’ve got to love a band that can release all of their music for free and still peak at number one on the U.S. Billboard 200 chart on retail release of the physical form. You’ve got to love them unless you’re a struggling artist who saw that move as a real slap in the face.

That was Lily Allen’s opinion of Radiohead’s release of In Rainbows. She saw it as a promotion of music pirating and had a whole blog post dedicated to its condemnation. Eh, it’s more like she’s just jealous but I do get how it can seem wrong when someone can pull off that business plan.

But Allen had it all wrong. Radiohead was not promoting music pirating, but bypassing it. And they did it by giving us what we want for free.

And that’s what Lefsetz of LefsetzLetter is saying, “In other words, the solution to the file-trading problem is not legislative, it requires business innovation.  Which I don’t expect to come from Ms. Allen, I’ve never heard she was a good programmer.”

And now everybody is doing it. They’re giving us music for free. Grooveshark, Lala, and every artist releases a free single as a preview before their album -The National giving away “Bloodbuzz Ohio” before High Violet, Yeasayer giving away “O.N.E.” before Odd Blood - just to name a few.

But illegal activity will continue. Yeah, such is life. The newest craze, Dropbox, uses cloud computing to enable users to store and share files. It’s cool because folders are shared through email,and you kind of become a member of that shared folder. There is a feed that shows all recent activity so you can tell who is uploading new material. The space for free use is limited but deleted files can be restored. It’s illegal to upload copyrighted stuff, but it’s going to happen anyway.

/\/\/\Y/\

^ This is apparently the title of M.I.A.’s new album. She’s dropped two songs from this album already, both of which are incredible, and one even sports a really gruesome video to go along with it.

The most recent track is called “XXXO” and it has two manifestation currently, a remix by Blaqstarr, and the much better original. Listen to the original here:

The remix version can be heard on her label’s super badass blog.

EDIT: Violence seems to be a theme with videos these days (oh my delicate sensibilities!). Watch Nine Inch Nail’s Trent Reznor’s new band How to Destroy Angel’s bloody new video over at pitchfork.tv

“Trent’s been really busy lately what with his new wife and all.”

Rumor has it that Trent Reznor and his new wife, ex-West Indian Girl Mariqueen Maandig, have been “getting busy.” Well let’s hope so.

Actually, they’re making music… WHAT? Who do they think they are? Sonny and Cher? Well they call themselves How to Destroy Angels (HTDA) and I’m not quite sure what to make of it yet. Here’s a list of things that could happen:

a) More post-Year Zero refuse (how typical of you Trent)

b) A soundtrack to a documentary about Trent and Mariqueen and how they chose the worst name for a band ever

c) Something unpredictable (and hopefully really good [à la the Fragile])

d) An EP of music that sounds like NIN making music under the name HTDA

My guess is option D but I’m wishing for option C. Who knows…

Hold on a second, that’s not Trent’s hand…

Back in 2008 Radiohead DJed during a webcast. One of the most notable moments was when Thom Yorke broke down into his usual spastic dancing to his mix of M.I.A. Someone on YouTube described it as a, ‘psycho bunny dance.’ He just seems to lose control of his limbs but I’m telling you, it’s one more reason I’m enamored of the guy. You can view below.

M.I.A.

Check out new song Born Free and its video on her labels website, N.E.E.T. The song is great, the video is horrifying and graphic and the site ‘is flashy and screams in your face’ (George).