Yeah…this is probably not safe for work. And if you’re a woman it’s gonna be rather offensive, but in a reasonably amusing and ironic way – I hope!
Breakfast – Le Le
LeftMyName found this song on a blog the other day and insisted that I listen. When I heard it first, I pictured in my head some misogynistic lecherous rapper, perhaps with a grill on his teeth with the word “Breakfast” made out in diamond studs. I imagined that while he was recording it, he was oiling up some woman’s jiggly ass – because that’s just what he does.
It turns out Le Le are a French/German pop outfit and the rest of their output, judging by their myspace, is your typical synthy europop-rap with some soul influences. ‘Breakfast‘ seems pretty different to most of their rest of their work. It is also comedy gold. To me, the voice sounds like a mix between Chapelle doing Rick James (bitch!) and Jemaine from Flight Of The Conchords. The conscientious part of me is, of course, appalled by the guys blatant objectification of women, the debasement of the subject to little more than food for the man to devour and other such feminist-literary criticisms. But that’s why it’s so good.
Sigur Ros have been floating around in my head a lot for the last month or so. Firstly, I got to see the fantastic Heima documentary – which is, according to IMDB the greatest documentary ever made. In the last four weeks, I think I’ve seen it three times. Doesn’t get old though!
Then of course, the new album came out. I haven’t given it my full and utmost yet, but Gobbledigook won’t get out of my head. But I’m completely ok with that.
Gobbledigook by Sigur Ros
And now State has alerted me to this fantastic video. If you’re anything like me, you’re for 46 minutes of goosebumps. And if you don’t have 46 minutes right now, make the time for it this week. I guarantee it’s worth it.
As some of you may be aware, the lineup for the Hard Working Class Heroes Festival was announced last week. My boys, Sideproject are among the 80 great Irish bands (and yet to announced Scottish bands “invading” the festival) and the lads are fairly excited. I’m pretty excited myself to honest; these lads would be among my best friends and I’m something of a part-time band member – having designed their 2 EP’s and almost all their posters as well as filling in on vocal duties from time to time.
But I have something of favour to ask of you, readers. HWCH have put up one track from each band as a free download. They’re tracking the amount of downloads each band gets and showing them on a download chart on the website. Shortly before the festival (within about a month) the top 20 acts will be put on a ‘Best Of The Festival’ compilation. At the time of writing, Sideproject are at number six on the chart.
I’m asking all my readers to go here and download their great song, ‘Outpatients’. In fact, you don’t even have to download it, you just have to click on the song and it will stream it. It will only take a minute of your time and there’s a really good song in it for you, free of charge. So please, do it for me?
So while our soccer team don’t appear to be au fait with the concept of “goal-scoring” and the rugby team have the combined catching ability of a toddler, it seems that Ireland’s Radiohead fans are the most generous in the world. The Examiner have it that, according to www.whatpricedidyouchoose.com, Irish fans of the band paid an average of €6.38 for their recent ‘download-only’ album, In Rainbows.
Those of you living under a rock/in Kerry might not know about In Rainbows, for which Radiohead are allowing people to pay whatever they think is fair when downloading the album.
Meanwhile the band’s homeland, Britain, placed just above places like Azerbaijan, Ecuador and Namibia as being one of the stingiest countries, paying on average only about €4.52. Not really something we can shout at the Brits from the terraces, but there you go. It’s the little victories that count.
There seems to be no music out there at all, to which I want to listen. The last really good album I listened to was Biffy Clyro’s latest. Before that, it was Brand New’s latest. Saul Williams has been pleasing me of late, but he hasn’t sated my thirst for something new; pastures thus far unchewed. But nothing out there is punching me in the stomach in the way music should.
That’s not to say everything is shit. Just last night, I saw two good bands in The Bróg here in Cork. Locallers, Elk (whom I still haven’t gotten around to writing up on) and a Japanese band called Lite. Lite, actually, were truly astounding; their musicianship was amazing and many of their songs were very good. My problem with them however, was that they were instrumental – post-rock/math-rock/whatever-you’re-having-yourself-rock. Normally, I would have said this was fine, but there just seems to be so much of it out there at the moment that it’s really starting to bore me. A post-rock band has to try much harder to impress me now, given there’s a lot of them, and Lite did just that. Still didn’t make me want to fork out 15 quid for the album.
I think I need that human connection you can only get from vocals, from a song. Right now, I can’t find it.
I got Fionn Regan’s album a few weeks ago. It was good. Very good in fact. Some truly great lyrics there. Like post-rock bands, (and most any other type of music now, come to think of it) the single guitar, singer/songwriter type guy has to really cut it to impress me. Fionn did that. And yet, I’m still looking for something. I’m still thirsty.
I borrowed Mates Of State from a friend, thinking I might find what I’m looking for there. No guitars. Just poppy singing, drums and synth. Very now, very fun. Again, they’re good, but my gut remains musically un-punched.
This is a time of huge change for music. Never before have we had so much at our fingertips. People are throwing it at us. Every band and DJ and kid with a Korg and broadband is clawing to get our attention. There’s something out there for me, I know that for sure. But it’s like I’m standing on this beach, looking for one grain of sand. I have no idea where to start looking. How do you other people do it? How do y’all constantly find something new? How are you constantly excited? What did I miss?
I’m so fresh from this gig, my ears are still trickling little bits of blood.
The best gigs are the ones that reaffirm your faith in live music. They can be huge festival sets or a guy with a guitar in a room with 10 other people. In fact, they should not simply reaffirm your faith in live music, but in all music. The Dan Deacon gig in the Liquid Lounge has done just that for me tonight.
It would be remiss of me not to mention the great Crayonsmith first though.
I’ve been a fan of these guys for a while (or this guy, seeing as it mostly seems to be frontman, Ciaran’s project) and it was them the drew me to the gig. It wasn’t their best set, but they played a lot of new stuff which sounds really damn good. Towards the end, Ciaran’s mic stand began to lean over and then fall which resulted in all manner of hilarity. Well…not quite hilarity. And there wasn’t all manner of it. But it was funny all the same.
Stop looking at me like that.
They played this song: Scarytale
But back to Dan Deacon. I had never heard of this guy before. Only yesterday did I listen to one of his songs and it didn’t really grab me. But I decided to stay – having paid 10e, I wasn’t about to leave without getting my money’s worth. I was pretty surprised to find the guy I had assumed to be some sort of roadie, was actually Dan Deacon. Flatly put, Dan is a balding geek who’s just a little bit fat. But rather than setting up on stage, Dan set up on a small table on the floor and gathered the audience around him. All around him. Even behind him, where I took a position. I’m not going to go into every detail of his set here, that would take to long. It was a set, however, which was tragically cut short by Dan blowing most of the transformers in his equipment thanks to his massive array of effects peddles,knobs and switches and his amazing light show. Someone should tell Daft Punk that all you need are a few lightbulbs sticking out of your stuff and a green flashing strobe-skull.
Being grouped around Dan gave the entire gig a completely different feeling than before. This wasn’t a gig in the normal sense, not in the way most of us were used to. This was something far more communal. We were gathered around this bizarre looking man, making bizarre noises and bizarre music. And we were dancing. The mp3’s don’t capture the energy of this guy’s music live – it’s so infectious. This photos might convey what I am saying.
We’re so used to watching bands on a stage. We stand in front of them, they play. They might interact. They might not. We forget how boring this can actually be until we something that breaks the mold. Even when it comes to an amazing stage show, with huge visuals and megatons of energy, at the end of the day, we still feel like spectators. Not so with Dan Deacon. Sure you’re still watching, but gathered around the mad professor and his equipment, it feels more like sharing an experience, presiding over an wild experiment rather than simply viewing a show. I am converted Dan, thank you.
This is just some stuff that I stumbled across by a band called Brand New. Many of you might not have heard of them, and some other day I may write at length about how good they are, but for now I provide a few b-sides and demos that I’ve found for the consumption of certain friends of mine, who I think will enjoy them.
For info on the band, this is a pretty good run-down of their history.
Brand New – Flying At Tree Level
Brand New – Untitled 02 from New Album Demos (presumably for The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me)
