last.fm removes track streaming

I feel like I've been neglecting posting anything lately and wow...! nothing for almost 2 weeks. That Go review I was promising is still in the works—well, yet to be begun actually—for whatever reason. I can’t think of a good excuse. Perhaps when I scramble all my thoughts together again, that will be posted, and soon I hope since I’m yet again behind on other things I would like to write about.

Sometime around last week, I think, some dramatic changes took place on last.fm. Primarily, the site has been stripped of all on-site track streaming and instead suggests redirecting the user to an alternative streaming service, all which claim to “scrobble” tracks like normal. Yes, this even happened to artists and labels who initially uploaded their music on their own to share with the last.fm community. No doubt, this instantly infuriated users who subscribe to last.fm, as the main service they pay for with their subscription is for on-site music streaming. I, personally, don’t subscribe since I live within the countries that are offered limited on-site streaming, but I would never even consider it now. What use is there in paying a company for a service when they only redirect you to an otherwise already free alternative site? Absolutely none, I think. It's only a complete waste of time and a selfish move on the part of those behind these changes. The last.fm “community” has been severely tampered with, and I don’t believe it will continue to exist in the same way as before. I used to be able to suggest and support last.fm for its convenience and excelling functionality in providing music for the online community, but now I can’t say that I will be able to speak for it as much.

["The artist feedback loop" from lastHQ]

[currently listening to: Mílanó - Sigur Rós]

The xx at the Showbox

Last Monday, just two days after seeing Jónsi, I saw The xx play in Seattle! Same venue too! The Showbox is a bit infamous for its unreliable sound quality. It really varies with the headliner, but I have to say the sound really delivered at both shows I saw. The show was originally supposed to be at the Nightlight way up in Bellingham, but it got closed down or something, so it was moved to the Showbox. Whatever it takes to bring these guys to Seattle, I guess. (I’m not going to Sasquatch :( … )

I was actually expecting a larger crowd to flock The xx show, but having arrived after the doors were opened, we found that not too large of a crowd had accumulated. I grabbed a place in the first row, right on the rail for most of the show (which I had been unable to do at the Jónsi show, despite arriving over an hour prior to the doors opening), after buying a copy of jj’s jj n° 2 at the merch stand (!!!). It felt like a beginning to a perfect night, you know?

I should have suspected that a show from identity-secreting and media-eluding Swedes, jj, should not sound as promising as I longed for it to be. Maybe the very amusing matchup of two-letter, double-syllable band names was a premonition of something too good to be. Whatever it is, jj seem to take touring as a joke, I guess. It took a few tries for The xx to get them to accompany them on tour and it seems like jj still aren’t convinced. Their live show is pathetic and disgraceful to both themselves and The xx. It consists of their music being played from a laptop while singer Elin half-heartedly sings, no doubt drugged up, in between drinking from a plastic cup and having a conversation on stage with her fellow band member, Joakim, whose main role appears to be facing backwards holding his guitar and occasionally jumping off stage. Unprofessional doesn’t even begin to describe it. Unlike Nosaj Thing, the first opener, they don’t even put effort into pretending to play their music. It’s karoke on drugs or something. Seriously, how snotty do you have to be to commit such disrespect, to both the audience and the band bringing you on tour? You can tell from the way Oliver Sim, bassist and vocalist of The xx, thanked jj for opening for them that their insolence had hit him somewhere.

The xx on the other hand, played such a fantastic show, definitely compensating for jj’s less than sub-par performance. They played nearly every song from their debut album and also a cover (the only song I don’t remember being played was Crystalised, but I could easily be missing something; I was having too much fun to remember the setlist!). Romy and Oliver’s voices proved to be very strong live and the instrumentals matched that. Their spacious pop music doesn’t seem to have much room for variance, but they managed to stick in some interesting twists while still keeping it very recognizable. I enjoyed the show as a whole, but if I am to recount “favourite parts” they would be: 1. The resonating thump of Jamie’s drum machine thing during “Fantasy” (the live version of that song also drew my attention to what Oliver to was singing), and 2. Romy’s vocals during “Shelter”. Beautiful.

Here be photos!—mostly taken by Monika Sapek, but I also snapped a few:

Nosaj Thing

jj

The xx

When was the last time I went to sleep before 11 on a school night?

[currently listening to: Basic Space – The xx]

Jónsi at the Showbox SoDo

By reading this blog entry, I’m going to very safely assume that you’re either reading about a concert of Jónsi’s for: A. the first time, or B. not the first time (maybe the millionth). Whichever it may be, I’m not going to waste too much of your time with words. What use is there in trying to describe something so indescribable? I can toss around words like “beautiful”, “otherworldly”, and “unbelievable”, but they won’t do much good. So I suppose that from this point you can either skip to the photos and videos below, or continue reading through my spurt of messy thoughts if you’d like; but do keep in mind that I’ve still got my head way up in the clouds.

I remember when it was announced that 59 Productions was working with Jónsi on his tour, they said that no way would this just be Jónsi on stage with an acoustic guitar through the whole set. And from watching the show preview videos I knew that they were planning to produce something more than just a live show. It would be mindblowing. It turned out that the show did start out on a soft note, Jónsi at first unaccompanied by the band, and gradually grew to an immense climax as more instruments and more energy was introduced. But as soon as Jónsi stepped on stage alone, holding just his guitar, and let his haunting falsetto hit the air in “Stars in Still Water” ( “then did a shiver erupt amidst the crowd…”), I knew he didn’t need an expensive production to wow us. His voice is enough to drop the jaws of his audience and glaze their eyes over with tears.

That said, with all the added elements, the show rose to an even more seemingly unattainable level of awesome. The music was perfect and the production gorgeous. Everyone in the band played with incredible passion. And as the show rolled along so many things began to happen in the background it was hard to decide where to look and what to focus on. My mum and I both admit to tearing up during “Kolniður”. Musically, I can say it was the greatest part of the show, and if you add that to its gorgeous animation of the running wolf unwinding in the background, you’ve got a recipe for the most heartbreaking performance ever. The sky seemed to explode during that blowing crash in the middle of the song. Oh, just thinking about it…! “Animal Arithmetic”, during the encore, was also especially memorable. Jónsi came out in a headdress and danced like crazy. It was so fun! The energy kept flying till the very end of the show through the dizzying “Grow Till Tall”. But oh! This was “Grow Till Tall” like you’ve never seen it! The musical crescendo was complemented by a visual one as blinding lights and snowflakes swept off the stage and straight through your very heart till you were high with sorrow and euphoria. Really, if this wasn’t one of the greatest shows I will ever see in my life, then I’ve got a hell of a concert-going future ahead of me.

cutest picture of all time ^^^

^^^ I met him after the show. He signed my CD in Icelandic and shook my hand :) Needless to say, it was the greatest day of my life.

Now, I'm hurrying off to go see The xx at the Showbox very very soon (same place, 2 days later! I feel some nostalgia coming on!). Might expand on this a bit later.

These photos were featured on [jonsi.com]!

You can see them on my [flickr] as well. I think I'm going to start using that thing!

[currently listening to: Passionate introverts (dinosaurs) - ASDiG]

ODDSAC screening

I think there’s a reason I’m a little afraid to watch Animal Collective music videos. So okay “Who Could Win a Rabbit” is pretty funny every so often, but just getting a glimpse at “Peacebone” unsettles me… It’s creepy, and not the same type of creepy as Aphex Twin’s “Come to Daddy” music video. There’s a “disturbing” factor involved, which is expected considering that AnCo’s music isn’t exactly easygoing all of the time (no MPP interjections allowed here). With this thought in mind, I purchased tickets to see ODDSAC somewhat nervously. I had little idea of what to expect. Did anyone really? The 30 second trailer for the movie didn’t provide much to expand on, but it turned out the movie didn’t either.

If you don’t already know, ODDSAC is a long-term visual album/movie project of Animal Collective and Danny Perez (who has done music videos for AnCo before). The idea was apparently conjured several years back whilst AnCo was on tour, which could explain why ODDSAC is dramatically different from the band’s 2009 releases. They claim it to be their most “experimental” work yet which I think I’m willing to agree with. The movie has been screened on 8 different dates so far (w/ multiple showings on some dates), and more is to come. I saw the most recent showing at the Egyptian Theatre in Seattle a little while ago. There is a release planned for the DVD this summer, but nothing concerning just the audio.

I’m not really sure what the hell these guys were thinking when they came up with the idea of this psychedelic horror film. 2009’s MPP was a leap for them, drawing in a new, larger audience, but I don’t think it made ODDSAC a safe territory to venture into. In a way, I’m also sort of glad they decided to retain their weirdness and create ODDSAC instead of continuing down the MPP/Fall Be Kind pop route (and I say this as someone who really enjoys their latest work), but it became a disappointing attempt more than a creative side-tangent. But perhaps one thing we can still admire AnCo for is their unpredictability.

Both artistically and musically, the movie begins somewhat ambitiously. The opening scene includes a little box-house in a dark field. From a window in the house, you can see dancing figures carrying lit torches or something outside. There is a girl inside the house who is looking rather unsettled and worried. Between possibly-artsy shots of the light-dancers outside and her in the house, the focus is directed towards the wall of the house. The girl is pretty interested in the battered wall, especially when it starts oozing bloody black goo which she then frantically tries to hold back, but fails as the flow becomes more and more intense. Things get messy and soon enough it seems as though the girl has stopped fighting the goo and instead is tossing it around almost with enjoyment. The music accompanying this scene is equally dramatic: layers of strange noises over a thumping ambience and somewhat-distorted low vocals. As the scene progresses, dark sounds erupt beneath the ambience that give a feeling of pounding drums (though nothing in the song actually implies clear instrumentation). These thumping echoes add an explosive and disturbed atmosphere to the goo-battle. I was actually excited by this scene, but disappointedly found that this is basically one of two parts in the movie that is aesthetically pleasing.

The canoe scene, along with the “canoe song”, is another well-recognized part of the film. Here, we see a creepy white monster thing (I honestly couldn’t recognize who was who throughout most the film— the guys from AnCo do play in it though) sailing his little canoe through what seems to be a dark cave, lit only by a light positioned on his canoe. The filming in this scene is gorgeous. The camera is never directly focused on White-Face Monster, but instead slowly reveals eerie shots of his canoe slipping along the dark waters, the white light illuminating just parts of his face. The music also does its part to add to the scene’s beauty. Not only is this the first entrance of Panda Bear’s lovely voice in the movie (are those sighs of relief I hear?), but that familiar voice is also singing to the dark melody of an acoustic guitar. What?! When was the last time we heard that in Animal Collective’s music? Beautiful song, and even quite relieving after the sea of messy noise that precedes and follows it. I had heard this song prior to the show (from a source which has now removed it), but getting to hear it along with the stunning imagery was all the more impacting.

Only about 20 minutes into ODDSAC, the artistic value of the movie begins to diminish and the entire thing goes downhill. We continue to see more unrelated scenes filled with dysfunctional creatures, each one more bizarre than the last, yet none of them seem to find any solid ground to stand on. Though there is no "meaning" directly conveyed behind the canoe scene and the goo-scene, those scenes make your mind struggle with their story and are interesting enough to invoke thoughts and ideas in the viewer/listener. Aside from those two scenes, there are only underdeveloped ideas that also float around through the film. Nothing too cohesive. There are marshmallows eating people, a vampire bleeding to death under the rays of the sun, some strange creature washing egg-like rocks in a river, and the White-Face Monster also makes another bizarre appearance at a girl’s slumber party. Most of it is incoherent, but a few of the more amusing scenes warmly invited some snickering and hushed what the fuck’s from the audience. But after carrying on through the same ideas for extended periods of time, the humor was easily lost. The musical accompaniment was no stronger, nor more interesting. Most of the music in the second half of the film is fuzzy seas of noise, a messy ambience that doesn’t actually get anywhere.

The scenes in the movie that have strong visuals and complementary audio raise interest and are worth seeing, but they are few and become overpowered by an incoherent mess. It also didn't help that the venue screening the film also had awful, awful sound and image quality. Nevertheless, it didn’t fail to attract an abundance of pretentious idiots shitting themselves over the film. Don’t get me wrong, I’m friends with plenty of AnCo fans, but just listen to some of these people talk. The guy in front of me spewed out the most illogical, babbling heap of a question during the Q&A, AnCo had no idea what he was talking about and I’m not even sure he did himself. Probably just fapping over the idea of speaking to them. I imagine they have to put up with a handful of those egotistical idiots at every show.

Thankfully there were some intelligible discussion during the Q&A. Which came first, the music or the visuals? [response below]. Where is Panda Bear? Well, he is in Lisbon and it’s sort of a long way to fly just to answer some questions. Deakin, are you back in the band now? What? I don’t see myself as ever having left the band. But please, let’s keep all questions about the film. I appreciate your concern though (lol).

So... did it blow my mind?
No.

Am I going to buy it on DVD?
No.

Am I glad I went?
Yes, as a big fan of Animal Collective, I am glad I went. (My dad on the other hand... ;)

[ODDSAC website]

[currently listening to: Villa Del Refugio - This Will Destroy You]

Godspeed You! Black Emperor reunite

Hot damn, that's right! After 7 long years, the most post of post-rock bands are re-stringing their twangy violins and guitars in preparation for several live shows this winter. Tour dates in Europe and in 9 US towns. Maybe possibly some new material? Oh pleeeease!

You can read their entire message right here.

Yeah, I did actually know about this yesterday, but was too lazy to right about it. But now I'm ready to share the Godspeed love on this blog. Time to listen to Lift Your Skinny Fists...

[currently listening to: Our Love Has Made Us Pariahs - Empire! Empire! (I Was A Lonely Estate)]

(definitely in the mood for listening to bands with long names containing obnoxiously placed punctuation. Oh and PS, I'll have that ODDSAC review up in a matter of hours.)

Posted by Anna at 10:50 PM | Comments (0)