Editors … and then there were five. Pic :: Matt Spalding
A fourth album from the excellent Editors was announced this week, and along with it came the first single A Ton Of Love. It’s a cracker, with all the hallmarks of the band’s previous releases.
The album, The Weight Of Your Love, is due to drop on 1 July this year, and was recorded in Nashville and is the first to include Justin Lockey and Elliott Williams as the Midlands band now becomes a five-piece.
Followers of Editors will remember founding member Chris Urbanowicz quit the band last year, citing that old chestnut “musical differences”. Maybe he wanted to move the band on from its driving indie-rock character.
But if this single is anything to go by, I’m sort of glad he didn’t succeed. Having said I might miss his wailing guitar chops and imaginative synth playing upon hearing the rest of the new album. We’ll just have to wait and see. With any luck he’ll get cracking with a new project somewhere.
There is a distinct lack of “electronica” on the single, but everything else sounds great, not least Tom Smith’s voice, which appears to have taken in more angst, rasp and venom, a step away from his sometime drawling deeper style.
And just to round this off nicely, here’s a video for the new track, too.
While planning my next big trip – South America is the destination this time – I got caught up listening to Athlete. For those of you unfamiliar with the band, they hail from Deptford, not far from where I grew up in Lewisham, south London. Perhaps that’s why I found something attractive in their music when I first heard them in the early noughties.
Athlete on stage at Union Chapel in London.
The band’s first album, Vehicles And Animals, went platinum in 2005 and that was about as high as the band climbed. Three albums later, and a compilation of “singles”, we’ve not heard anything from them since 2009 when the fourth album, Black Swan, was released. But I still like them, the old and the more recent stuff.
Half Light was always one of my favourite tracks on Tourist, the band’s second album. Today, I discovered a delicious stripped down version of it from a recording they did of a show at Union Chapel in Islington in 2011. I heard the song in a completely different way and perhaps got a better sense of its meaning as a result. I’ll leave it to you to interpret the way you see fit but for me, listening to it as I planned a trip to a faraway land couldn’t have been more appropriate. I hope you enjoy it.
Just by way of contrast, I’ve posted the video of the original mix from the album too.
Sigur Rós has leaked another track off the forthcoming new album Kveikur. It’s called Ísjaki, which translates to “Iceberg” in English. Like the two other tracks that have been put out into the world from the new record so far, this one again shows a more rhythmic and edgy side.
It seems since losing Kjartan Sveinsson Sigur Rós has taken on a more upbeat mood. It’s not clear how much involvement, if any, Sveinsson had in the writing of this track, Brennisteinn before it or the album’s title track, which was played live on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon a month or so ago. Bass player Georg Hólm revealed they were working on new material late last year, adding that it would take the band in a new direction, an “anti-Valtari“, he said, the band’s wistfully moody epic record of 2012. But Sveinsson was nowhere to be seen through most of last year and appeared to have been detached long before it was confirmed during a Q&A on Reddit in January this year. There is a certain anger in the new tracks, perhaps onset by the split, but whatever has happened between the four of them, as a band Sigur Rós continues to deliver some truly awe-inspiring and unique music.
Personally, I’m loving the new direction. It’s punchy, powerful, bold, and when I heard Brennisteinn live when Sigur Rós debuted it at Iceland Airwaves last year, I was all sorts of excited to hear something truly different. Don’t get me wrong, I’m unnaturally obsessed with everything that’s come before Kveikur, but it’s all been very closely related. That’s not a bad thing. It’s just good to see the guys wearing a new musical costume.
Kveikur is out in June this year. It can’t come soon enough, on the evidence of what’s been let loose so far
[Hey, apologies. I've been away for a while. But now I'm back, so here's a long overdue post]
I went to see Oblivion, Tom Cruise‘s latest movie. I was excited about it, but when it was all over, I realised all I really enjoyed, apart from the memory of the Iceland in the vision, was the music. The film itself was a major letdown, but I’m not going to waste time on that because this is all about the music.
Tom Cruise on the set of Oblivion, a.k.a. Iceland, hopefully listening to M83 and not reading the script.
Director Joseph Kosinski, who made Tron: Legacy before this flick, picked out M83 to write the score for Oblivion. Given he got Daft Punk to create the music behind Tron:Legacy, his track record of picking composers is, in my view, faultless. It’s a shame his movie making skills don’t match those of his musical collaborators. But hey, I said I wasn’t going to talk about the movie, so let’s move on.
M83, or Antony Gonzalez as he is known off stage, has produced a stunning debut score for Oblivion. His epic soundscapes and dramatic electronic signature is evident throughout and matched the pictures absolutely perfectly. In fact I could watch sweeping Iceland landscapes and listen to his music quite happily forever and a day, minus the script in this case, which was completely uninspiring and almost superfluous given the visual and aural treat that overwhelmed it.
M83 obviously has a pretty solid track record when it comes to unique, dramatic sounds. Since releasing the self-titled debut album in 2001, fans have flocked to his music to, I imagine, escape the stresses and strains of real life and be swept away on a blanket of compositions that at times appear other-worldly. His chord structures have always been effortlessly beautiful and the score for Oblivion is no different. From the outset, it heightens your senses, thumping heartbeat kick drums, bold, lush pads through out and, above all, unwavering atmosphere.
Kosinski claims he was listening to M83 when he wrote the story of Oblivion. I can relate to that. Many times I’ve done the same, using Gonzalez’s sounds to empty my mind and help me concentrate on projects, particularly when photographing, where it has helped me countless times to find images I otherwise would have missed. Here’s a little clip on how it all came about:
Susanne Sundfør, who I’ve also been a fan of for some years, collaborates on the original song Oblivion, which I dearly hope is nominated for an Oscar because her and Gonzalez are a musical match made in heaven. Her soaring vocals, so wonderfully demonstrated on The Brothel album of 2010 and more recently The Silicone Veil, poured over M83′s incredible sound, is the audio equivalent of the most lush massage you can imagine. It’s breathtaking.
The one disappointment, though, is that all this music is associated with such an ordinary movie. Despite the money spent – the budget is reported to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars – and the awe-inspiring location that is Iceland, the film fails to create any emotion. Personally I had no empathy for any of its characters and while the action and special effects were exceptional, along with the sets and costumes, unfortunately I can’t recommend seeing it.
But I can recommend purchasing a copy of the soundtrack. Wrap some headphones over your ears, close your eyes and listen. You’ll be far more entertained and emotionally fulfilled than you will watching the film, and hey … it’s cheaper, too.
So there is a new album out from The Strokes. It’s called Comedown Machine, and it’s nothing if a little different. You’d be forgiven for thinking this was the forthcoming Phoenix release Bankrupt! if you listened to it without any visual reference. It’s got that aura of French pop bouncing on the sharp edge of a razor and, I have to say, I’ve enjoyed the first few listens. Whether that will last remains to be seen.
If you track the band’s releases backwards, you might think they’ve steadily got worse. The last long-player from the New Yorkers, Angles, wasn’t up to much. First Impressions Of Earth had a couple of toe-tappers, primarily opening track You Only Live Once, but then slid off a cliff as well. Room On Fire was pretty raw while debut record Is This It had all the hallmarks of a band destined for world domination more than 10 years ago now. They kind of did, but it feels sometimes that they strolled that domain with the complacency of a surly teenager, taking what felt like forever to complete every album since. But Comedown Machine comes barely a year after Angles, perhaps signalling new inspiration and energy.
Perhaps they’ve shaken off that spotty, grumpy frown and found a bit of happiness over the difficult trips in and out of dark recording studios. Comedown Machine sounds bright, amusing at times, contains hat tips to those early days, not least 50/50, a track of less than three minutes of fuzzy guitars that would shake off any self-inflicted emo depression you can muster. All The Time, the second track, also harks back to better days and will be fantastic live, I’m sure, if they even bother to tour this record. The lack of fanfare and hype for this release suggests maybe not. Slow Animals, too, is a sparkly and brilliant indie-pop firework, mixing the tight beats that have defined drummer Fabrizio Moretti‘s career with the equally characteristic choppy guitars that make The Strokes what they are. Check it out at the end of this post.
Thinking back, The Strokes have always had a Phoenix-esque sound. If Thomas Mars sang Last Night with his clear lungs as opposed to Julian Casablancas‘s more weathered pipes, that record wouldn’t have sounded out of place on It’s Never Been Like This. Perhaps both bands have inspired each other over the years. Who knows?
So while some long-term fans of The Strokes might initially be disappointed with the electronic input into this new record, and perhaps silky tracks like Chances and the almost 8-bit level of production level of One Way Trigger, one can only hope they listen a little deeper to what’s within. It’s aint so bad, and The Strokes, it seems, have a little life left in them after all.
Sigur Rós has announced another new album, its first as a trio since Kjartan Sveinsson left the band last year. It’s called Kveikur, which means “candle wick”, and will be out mid-June. Needless to say again, I’m excited. This is not just because I’m a wee bit obsessed with the band, but more because I think this record might be quite different.
The single from it, the completely banging and awesome Brennensteinn, suggests it’ll have a more edgy feel to it. I first heard this song at Iceland Airwaves last year, when the band debuted it on stage during its headline show. Loved it then, love it even more now, and I can’t wait for more. I’ll be hunting around the web for what snippets I can find, so stay tuned.
A cracking clip from Club Smith, shot on a GoPro and like the video, the song packs a punch, too. This isn’t new, though. In fact it’s about eight months since the band released its debut album Appetite For Chivalry, off the back of two EPs released in 2010.
But I thought I’d go back and listen to the album again after being sent to this clip via a GoPro mail-out. And I liked it, a lot, and wondered why it didn’t really penetrate in the same way as other British records have over the past 12 months.
Anyway, to be honest, I don’t rally care. It’s a great little record, nothing out of the box, but enjoyable nonetheless and full of ballsy beats and driving guitars. Stick it in the car for a road trip, slice off your roof, and go nuts. You’ll thank me later.
Daft Punk’s new album art, released by the band earlier this year.
So much has been floating around the Internet with regard to Daft Punk, it’s hard to know what’s true and what isn’t. There have been links to alleged new material from the French duo, most of which have been found to be fake, but, finally, we appear to have been given some sort of truthful tease from Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter. Or have we.
According to reports, a mysterious ad played on Saturday Night Live‘s 2 March broadcast, lasting 15 seconds, featured the music below accompanied by the band’s logo and ending with its iconic headgear. It was said to have been posted to SoundCloud on an official channel, but I’m buggered if I can find it there.
So we still have no name for the track or album, and no clue as to when it might be coming out. However, we do know that Nile Rodgers, founder and guitarist of legendary disco funk band Chic, is part of what Daft Punk is doing, and this teased track has all the hallmarks of his playing, that’s for sure. We also know Daft Punk has signed with Columbia Records for this release, thanks to the photo they put out on social media a while back including the company’s logo.
But until something official comes out, we’ll just have to keep guessing. I’m pretty sure this disco-groove is legitimate, but who knows? I have to say, though, Daft Punk’s secretive marketing strategy is working a treat in terms of building hype for this record. I’m already looking forward to it, and I don’t even know what it is. Pretty clever stuff.
There are too few words to explain how magnificent this is. Thanks to my good buddy Marcus for the tip-off. I could end up listening to this for months. It’s not often you get to see Dave Grohl, Josh Homme and Trent Reznor together, so relish this while you can. I know I will. It’s from the Sound City soundtrack, a film I’m dying to see.
And incidentally, you can stream the full soundtrack via NPR’s First Listen page, too. Happy days.
But I digress. Bowie is back, and he’s back with a bang as far as I’m concerned. The wait, a damn long one, has been more than worth it and if he tours with this record, it’s conceivable that I could very well wet my pants. Enjoy the clip, and more importantly the song. I did, in case you hadn’t noticed.
