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Another beautiful video from another beautiful song from the second Bon Iver album ‘Bon Iver’.
If you haven’t listned to Justin Vernon’s latest full length offering yet, then check it out on [Spotify], it is well worth owning.
We’ve also done a little piece on him and featured the video for Calgary in edition 001 of our new online Music & Culture magazine: Heads Up [view edition 001]
Superstition
Short but amazing sophomore release by Disappears, called Guider. Noisy lo-fi hypnotic post punk garage rock featuring 5 short bursts of energy and one rather long and wonderful wig out for a 6th track.
Buy it. Seriously. And click here to hear a full live set in support of the Arctic Monkeys.
Found this over at gorilla vs bear [website]. Lovely tune taken from James Pants’ third album out on Stones Throw records [website]. This is his biog from the label:
The son of two Presbyterian ministers from an American backwater called Spokane, James Pants went from being the teenage DJ for a black nationalist rap group to a multi-instrumentalist who can count on fans as diverse as Flying Lotus, Zane Lowe, Erol Alkan and XL’s new teen hip-hop internet sensation Tyler The Creator, who calls James “one of the most creative fucking people to walk this earth”.
James met Stones Throw Records head honcho Peanut Butter Wolf after his high school prom and dropped a debut album in 2008, Welcome, which told the tale of a lone music obsessive who synthesized a staggeringly broad record collection into a coherent LP in a style he dubbed “fresh beat”, taking in ’80s boogie, synth experiments, garage rock and much more.
Since then James has toured the globe, released Seven Seals (a tribute to his beloved ’70s cult and New Age records), a self-titled third album, and uprooted from Colorado to Cologne, where he works as a studio engineer.
Disappears Live 8.6.11 Chicago by DISAPPEARS
We did a little piece on Disappears’ psyche noise rock in edition 001 of Heads Up. We also had their sophomore album Guider as one of our featured albums (actually it is on the homepage of the site as I write this), and bloody marvelous it is too. In fact, I bought it on vinyl (though still awaiting it’s arrival from the wonderful people at Norman Records.
Anyway, I follow them on twitter and yesterday they posted a full set they played supporting the Arctic Monkeys, taken straight out of the desk and it sounds great. So go check it out a their soundcloud [soundcloud] in all it’s glorious 43 minutes and 24 seconds… or listen from the embed in this post (if it isn’t at the top of the page, try refreshing… sometimes i have to, don’t know why, but hey, it’ll be worth it).
Rather cool, I have to say. Non powered amplifier speakers for mp3 devices, etc., made from moulding old 12″ vinyl. They are made by London designer Paul Cocksedge [website] and if you’re in London on August 27th then pop along to the Roundhouse with your vinyl and you may be able to get him to do one.
You can also buy some he made earlier (now if only Blue Peter had shown us how to do these, their ratings would have been up a notch or two).
We greatly approve.
So it appears that Apple’s policy of saying nothing about their inner machinations extends to not rally saying anything about front end experiences when it comes to their ‘customers’ accounts being hacked and fraudulently used. In fact, they’ve been quite happy to let the cash roll in.
Apparently it has been reported since late 2010 and is still going on. Nice. Cheers Apple. Enjoy your 30%.
Hypebot.com ran a feature on it which you can read here.
Though Scott Hanselman did a piece on it first as he was a victim, and he posits and interesting point of view on the rapid march towards having everything in the Cloud. Possibly not the best way forward at the moment, but make you own minds up by reading it here.
I’ve just got back from seeing this at the cinema and seeing as the Heads Up mag has already gone out and its too late to enter this into the ‘review?’ section i thought i’d talk about it here.
So…oh god, another ‘remake’ or ‘re-imagining’ of a classic film franchise looking to cash in on a great idea and screwing it up. This was running through my head as i sat down in the cinema this evening and being a bit of a geek fanboy of the original films and knowing how Tim Burton had screwed it up with his version i can’t say i was excited about this ‘re-boot’.
Well, i was wrong.
This was quite possibly, no, it was definitely the best remake, re-boot, i have ever seen. This was an intelligent re-imagining of the story with a great sub-plot (i won’t go into it and spoil it for you) which doesn’t come to the fore until the 3rd act and the very end.
The characters were all well acted and their story arcs were well thought out and the action wasn’t overdone, just enough to keep you on the edge of your seat, plus a few little extras kept in for the fanboys. Any cheesy bits, relationships etc, were kept to a minimum and used only to tell the story, great…no stupid sexy love scenes for the sake of it.
I really hate going into see a film and looking for those cringey bits which spoil the film for me entirely (there were a few in Super 8 unfortunately) but this movie had none, and the scenes that could have been cringey were handled so well that they only enhanced the story and plot.
My favourite action, blockbuster, B-movie film of the year so far…brilliant. If you’re a fan of the original Planet movies then you’ll love this…its actually better than the original…not in the sense that the original is a potent piece of pop culture that is of its time and can tell us a great deal about society and culture at that time, as well as being a great story, but in the sense of just great filmmaking, especially for this kind of genre which is usually mishandled in the worst possible way…take Transformers, or Wolfman or any recent disaster movie, all being entertaining but intellectually bereft of any interesting plot or characters.
Look, Rise of the Apes isn’t gonna get an Oscar…but it deserves to be held up as a great movie.
Go watch it.
Weird and wonderful Scandinavian post-rockers Mimas are doing a European tour in support of the Lifejackets album, so those in Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Luxembourg and the Czech Republic can watch them… with support from Dad Rocks, offshoot project of Snævar Njáll Albertsson, which makes a saving on the support band costs 
Dates below videos:
Mimas: Vadar In Burgos
First edition of our magazine online now. Read, watch and hear it here
Features including interviews with Spring Offensive and the photographer Kim Holterman. Plus
London burned in early August 2011, and with it a whole heap of indie label CDs and records which we in the Sony Distribution warehouse which was torched. Many music fans are rallying to try and help the labels, particularly the smaller ones, who got royally screwed by the situation.
Label Love are part of the helping process and this is what they have to say about themselves:
Thanks for stopping by the page. I have no doubt that if you’re here you’ll have heard the news that the PIAS distribution centre in Enfield has been burnt down during the London riots. What you may not be aware of is that the warehouse contained the physical stock for many of Britain’s Indie records labels. The subsequent loss of income and cash flow problems that this act of mindless vandalism will bring about may well be enough to push many of the smaller operators out of business.
Our aim is to try and rally the music industry, both on the artist and the audience sides, and see if we can raise some money to see those affected through the tough times ahead.
This is just a holding page at the moment but more details will be posted here as and when we have them.
So, after a couple of discussions between me and Si about the original site being too confusing and cluttered with so many ‘formats’ and our SEO being slaughtered by the fact all band names were kept hidden away in .xml files we decided to rip it up and start again.
I think that conversation was had just under 3 weeks ago. Just now, 23.45 on Friday 12th August we just uploaded the new site along with the first edition of our new, and now only, format the Heads Up magazine.
So what you may think? Well, have a peak. Read the rest of this entry »
Ah, Mr. Pip. He has his haters, even amongst my friends, but I really like him. I like his spoken word. I remember the first time I heard Thou Shalt Always Kill soon after discovering 6 Music. It was one of those wonderful music moments when you hear something that just blows you away. Same again with Letter From God To Man, which I’ve seen him do live as spoken word too… what a fanboi I am.
I have to admit that as much as I loved those I never fully bonded with the first album (Angles) and aren’t convinced by Dan Le Sac, but within his fanbase maybe that’s just me. This though, Introdiction, is exciting because it is a solo venture where he’s working with other producers and if this track is anything to go by then it bodes well. This is Scroobius as his most caustic and take-no-shit with his rap being embellished by the music rather than needing to fit into the music, which is how I felt about some of the stuff with Dan Le Sac.
Anyway, this is from his new album coming out in September and we’ve been told we’ve a copy coming from the press company handling it so hopefully it is shit hot and will be in Septembers edition of Heads Up. For now though enjoy this:
The Drums – Money by weallwantsome1
Great new single from The Drums forthcoming Album Portamento due out September.
Go Outside, by Cults from Boing Boing on Vimeo.
Wonderful New video by this great new band from Manhattan Cults. The video is a poignant reminder of the people who joined the Jonestown cult. I love how the band have been composited in the footage…the director (Isaiah Seret) did a really good job on the texture and colour of matching the the original footage. Amazing. Great song too…which helps.Enjoy!
New Album out on 9th August. They have kindly streamed it so you can have a listen before you buy…nice of them. What do you think?
We haven’t made up our minds yet…just click on the songs above to listen to each track in full.