A Sunny Day in Glasgow — “So Bloody, So Tight” and new EP

A Sunny Day in Glasgow is keeping their ever growing ball rolling in 2010. The group that produced 2009’s wonderful album Ashes Grammar has announced a new release called Nitetime rainbows EP, a clear 12″ vinyl/digital download. Nitetime Rainbows was one of Ashes Grammar’s many highlights, and the track sees three remixes on the EP by Buddy System, Benoit Pioulard, and Ezekial Honig. Also on the release are a new mix of the same song, Daytime Rainbows, So Bloody So Tight, and Piano Lessons.

So Bloody, So Tight has already received the music video treatment. The video appears here. It may be the band’s best video yet. Each member of the group is painted in camouflage as a different background, a brick wall, a blue house and other urban landscapes. They escape their situations, encourage each other to dance around the town, and finally (keeping theme with numerous other early decade videos) prance through nature buck naked (SFW most likely).

So Bloody, So Tight may be a left over from Ashes Grammar, but it is epic, light, energetic, another fantastic song from a band that only now seems to be hitting its stride.

Sam Amidon’s “How Come That Blood”

Sam Amidon’s upcoming Bedroom Community release presents Amidon covering a multitude of American folk / Public domain songs (plus an R Kelly cover), and the first of them is “How Come That Blood.” The song, as well as the rest of the new album, was produced by Iceland’s Valgeir Sigurdsson. Nico Muhly and Shahzad Ismaily handle the arrangements, and Amidon provides the old country crooning.

The four musicians together create an interesting and somewhat exciting blend of American traditional folk and contemporary classical composition. A match made in heaven…or New England.

“How Come That Blood”

Read more about the track here.

Little Red Light’s top 16 albums of 2009!

1: Dan Deacon: Bromst
Most artists can’t manage in one album what Dan Deacon does in one song. His compositions are laced with references to greats Philip Glass and John Cage, while also referencing popular hip hop, ranges of pop music, sometimes blues, sometimes jazz, a host of unprecedented sonic intricacies, all while maintaining the innocent colorings of morning cartoons. With Bromst, Deacon changed directions and took on, in appropriate amounts, adult concerns. His first album Spiderman of the Rings may have very briefly touched on the damage mankind does to the world, but it never gave up its childishness. On Bromst cut “Snookered,” Deacon sings with rare clarity and self-awareness, “This taste of milk is almost gone, still got my shape but not for long / Been wrong so many times before, but never quite like this….” As if to further annunciate his feelings, he includes in a massively delayed and effected, acapela Southern funeral dirge “Wet Wings.” But sooner or later each of these songs sores with amazing imagination and chaotic, youthful abandon that we expect from the Acorn Master. At such an early point in his career, Deacon seems to already have mastered his medium and we are left to wonder in what ways he will amaze next.

2: Grizzly Bear: Veckatimest
There is no denying Veckatimest was a departure from the wooden depths of Yellow House to a more dynamic — and shinier — pop. Of course what Veckatimest lacks in natural depth (“lack” is only a relative term when comparing any output to Yellow House) it makes up for in bolder, louder, and more intricate expressions. The band has taken over indie pop with well-crafted and sometimes strange tunes, but it’s timing so far has been perfect, which is just a shade better than this album.

3: Animal Collective: Merriweather Post Pavillion
MPP is home to some of the catchiest and well crafted pop songs Animal Collective has ever made, and because of that, along with steadily mounting attention and popularity over the last few years, this is the most popular AC album yet. While everyone can argue whether or not any of this should be the case, whether or not this album actually is any better than previous ones or just the result of wild popularity, the fact remains that with quality song after experimental but accessible quality song, MPP is indeed an instant classic and it deserves to be recognized as one of the best albums of 2009. AC have already shown signs of further evolution with newest release Fall Be Kind (honorable mention), which goes to show Animal Collective just may be able to do anything they put their minds to.

4: Dirty Projectors: Bitte Orca
The first few listens of this recording left me disappointed. But when I watched the band perform the better half of this album live, my faith was renewed and my backsliding had ended. Not only are DP one of the most successfully experimental pop groups around, they’re possibly the most talented live performers, too.

5: A Sunny Day in Glasgow: Ashes Grammar
I had high hopes for this album after 2007’s Scribble Mural Comic Journal, and this 23 track LP more than made my high hopes look like silly, little expectations. Someone sold their soul to the devil. It’s packed with gems such as “Failure,” “Close Chorus,” “Shy,” and the excellent back to back songs “Ashes Grammar” – “Ashes Math.” This album would have been very comfortable in the number two spot.

6: Memory Tapes: Seek Magic
Anything that mimics Aphex Twin so well gets an A from me, but Memory Tape’s release exhibits a life in an electronic world all its own. With myriad landscapes and double take inducing samples, this is easily one of the best electronic works of 2009.

7: Fever Ray: Fever Ray
A fan of The Knife from the first time I heard Heartbeats, I wasn’t sure what to expect from this solo album, yet Fever Ray carries almost all the strange soul of The Knife with an added eeriness no one thought possible.

8: Atlas Sound: Logos
A disappointement from Bradford Cox is still my 8th best album of the year. Cox continues to carry the brightest torches: ambient, garage, shoegaze, avant-pop, techno – they’re all here, even if a few brief moments are hit or miss.

9: Tune-Yards: Bird Brain
Tune-Yards has the looping ability of Andrew Bird and Final Fantasy with a little extra X factor: pop sensibilities that make each of these songs stick to listeners’ brains like the strongest transparent adhesive.

10: St. Vincent: Actor
Simply fantastic

11: Themselves: CrownsDown
I can’t say how happy I am that Doseone re-emerged this year with another Themselves album. Still one of the most frighteningly linguistic and thoughtful rappers around, Doseone pounds another nail in with this one.

12: Tiny Vipers: Life on Earth
“Tiny Vipers (Seattleite Jesy Fortino) makes the type of music that you don’t want to clap for after hearing it performed live for fear of breaking what’s left in the echoing air.”

13: Le Loup: Family
Copycats? Sure. But Le Loup take what they’ve learned from this year’s top three album artists, Dan Deacon, Animal Collective, and Grizzly Bear, and make a sound all their own.

14: Beirut/Real People: March of the Zapotec/Holland
There was little impressive about Beirut’s 2007’s Flying Club Cup, but March of the Zapotec feels like a worthy trip with artist Zach Condon down to southern Mexico, and the young musician’s complete abilities came through loud and clear when he turned off all those brass horns for addictive electronic compositions of Holland. Condon is a prodigious songwriter, and if this “double ep” is any indication, he’ll keep finding new ways to express himself.

YACHT: See Mystery Lights
This group seems to be one big collection of ridiculousness, which is why it took me a couple of months to finally push play on any of their songs, but after listening to See Mystery Lights and watching videos of their live performances, I have to consider YACHT one of the biggest pleasant surprises of 2009. Even the greatest critical acclaim couldn’t do what a simple minute of boredom and curiosity could.

16: Volcano Choir: Unmap
Folk-man Justin Vernon may have met his match in electronic outfit Collections of Colonies of Bees. Though this album could have done a little more with its time, the result of the Wisconsin-ites collaboration is gold.

electric didgeridoo

because it’s awesome

And for an even trippier effect

Created by electronic ambient artist Kyle Evans

Trailer for The Knife’s opera “Tomorrow, in a Year”

Swedish avant-electro group The Knife have pressed the limits of recorded music in the past few years, and by providing music for “Tomorrow, in a Year,” an opera inspired by Charles Darwin (seen through the eyes of Darwin), they’re expanding the realm of musical theatre as well. Of course, opera could have used a little updating.

The modern opera, currently in Germany and making its way through Europe to Budapest in the spring, features The Knife’s dark and eerie electronic compositions along with appropriately surreal set design and lighting. Vocals reminiscent to the group’s bent and shifted recorded style join with characteristic operatic modes, and the result is even more unsettling than the group’s already sinister norm.

The nearly seven minute trailer features an array of music and designs, but a dark, dreamy air seems to permeate the entire production – surprising few familiar with the group but still highly affecting.

The Knife may be on indefinite hiatus, but 50% of the group in karin dreijer andersson’s Fever Ray will be near the top of many 2009 top ten album lists with her similarly creepy debut.

LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy waxes philosophic

PItchfork posted in its “Echo Chamber” column today an excerpt of a recent James Murphy Myspace entry, in which the LCD Soundsystem frontman duly calls people out on being over-practical, self-denying salesmen i.e. the destroyers of meaningful communication.

Murphy’s amazing quote via P4K:

“things that are too ‘useful’… well, i don’t entirely trust them. i kind of like useless things. for instance– and this is a pretty facile and simplified metaphor here– art is useless, and nazis made lots of useful things. i like dumb meandering things that make me happy and confused, and don’t particularly like ‘effective marketing tools designed for maximum accurate data capture’ blah blah blah. it all sounds so sad and functional. i don’t like the idea of people sitting in a room talking about the best way to word things to get the right reaction from a base of ‘users’ etc. i don’t like thinking that those people used to love to do something, or wanted to be something, and would up measuring the best way to manipulate other people.”

Touche, Murph. And at the same time – In your face everyone else!

Speaking piano nearly nails human speech

Austrian composer Peter Ablinger transferred a student’s recitation of the “Proclamation of the European Environmental Criminal Court” into musical notes for the World Venice Forum in 2009. By using piano notes, Ablinger closely mimicked human speech. Quoted by Ablinger in the video:

“I break down this phonography, meaning a recording of something the voice, in this case -, in individual pixels, one can say. And if I have the possibility of a rendering in a fairly high resolution (and that I only get with a mechanical piano), then I in fact restore some kind of continuity. “

Berno Polzer also says:

“I think, its partially understandable, partially not. And it plays well with the limits of our construction abilities. That is, we hear sounds that obviously arent normal Music, but neither they are language, and one could say that sometimes, a bridging happens. Personally, I think you can understand individual words even without knowing the text, and the Eureka moment happens when you see the text, and suddenly, the language is there.”

The language really is quite clear, particularly the last and most fitting line “Another world is possible.” Scientists do have one concern with such technological capabilities, however. As everyone knows, once you get a piano talking, the thing never shuts up.

Review: Bob Dylan @ Moore Theatre Oct 4th

“Bob Dylan has more soul than you do. Don’t let it get you down.” That’s what Uncle Jig said. Uncle Jig (named after the saw, not the dance) has seen Dylan 12 times since ‘73 and still wears his tattered Blood on the Tracks tour t-shirt every Saturday. He doesn’t remember all of the shows, of course, but hell if he doesn’t remember the theatre smelled of anticipation each time around. Anticipation and incense. That was the case last Sunday night, too, when Bob Dylan and His Band played a surprise show in front of a packed Moore Theatre that wreaked of both. The crowd knew exactly where it was – in the same building as the greatest musician (why not?) in American history.

Dylan ripped through a 16 song set, which costarred impressive lead guitarist Charlie Sexton. The setlist was filled with mostly recent material. Modern Times and ‘09 release Together Through Life were both well represented, and each classic had been revamped. “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” didn’t register until Dylan started scraping out “It ain’t no use to sit and wonder why, Babe.”. The night ended with an all-too-brief encore of “Like a Rolling Stone” and an exceptionally impressive “Jolene.” A complete set list below.

It’s all you can do not to shout a little when you understand you’re in the same building as the man who wrote “Mr. Tambourine Man,” the masterpiece album Highway 61 Revisited and hundreds more songs, some of which you’ve never heard, yet all of which blow you away. Even those in the audience with their heads down Tweeting their important tweets were only serving to anchor their bobbing spirits anyway. Men were crying, women swooned, teenagers questioned everything they knew.

Even when we knew the band wouldn’t return after the first encore, we continued to clap hard in anticipation. The night couldn’t have gone by that fast. So we hooted and whistled, and when the house lights came on the whole place deflated — sad to see it end but still satisfied. It was Bob Dylan after all. One song could have been enough. But 12 times doesn’t seem like such a bad thing either.

Set list:
“Gonna Change My Way of Thinking”
“Shooting Star” (Dylan center stage with harmonica)
“Beyond Here Lies Nothing” (Dylan center stage with harmonica)
“Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” (Dylan on guitar)
“Lonesome Day Blues” (Dylan on keys)
“I Don’t Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met)” (Dylan center stage)
“Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum” (Dylan on keys, then center)
“Not Dark Yet” (Dylan center stage, with harp)
“High Water (For Charley Patton)” (Dylan on guitar)
“When the Deal Goes Down” (Dylan on keys)
“Highway 61 Revisited” (Dylan on keys)
“Nettie Moore” (Dylan on keys)
“Thunder on the Mountain” (Dylan on keys)
“Ballad of a Thin Man” (Dylan center stage on harp)

Encore:
“Like A Rolling Stone” (Dylan on keys)
“Jolene” (Dylan on keys)

Grizzly Bear Live @ Moore Theatre Friday, October 16

Holy Smoke and Hallelujah, the Grizzly Bear band is finally coming back to Seattle, playing Moore Theatre Friday the 16th. The band is still riding high off of the release of Veckatimest — and with all of the acclaim the album has received, they will until their next effort, no matter how many songs they contribute to the Twilight movies.

Tracks off of early album Horn of Plenty rarely receive much attention, but a recent performance of “Fix It,” is a seven minute long tour de force in which the band pulls out all the stops. The song overshadows just about any Veckatimest cut. We might have to wait until the next album for the band to bring back muscle like this, but one can hope to hear it live next Friday.

Former leaders of The Format venture into new projects

Though The Format (aka one of the most promising pop bands to come out of Phoenix since Jimmy Eat World) broke up at the beginning of 2008, its two leaders, Sam Means and Nate Reuss have both moved on.

Talented vocalist Nate Reuss now fronts the New York group Fun, whose orchestral pop album Aim and Ignite was self-released in August. Singles “At Least I’m Not As Sad (As I Used To Be)” and “Be Calm” mix a bit of Queen with Paul McCartney, strings and whimsy, so light and poppy they jump like fizz from a soda.

“At Least I’m Not As Sad As I Used to Be”

“Be Calm”

Sam Means is getting attention for six songs and 20 instrumentals he created for the soundtrack of “The Sinking of Santa Isabel,” a “quirky Indie” comedy film. His song Yeah Yeah from the album shows he’s still aiming for pop perfection and catchy harmonies without worrying about as much fun gloss.

“Yeah Yeah”