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Return to Spiral Stairs
Pavement cohort Scott Kannberg is re-booting his Spiral Stairs persona - and releasing a 'debut' album in October on Matador and Domino. Much like Batmans 3 and 4, he's decided to overlook the overlooked Preston School of Industry releases.
6th Jul 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
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Trailer Park: The Box / Couples Retreat / The Informant!
Steven Soderbergh has another movie in the can - The Informant! stars Matt Damon and former time-traveller Scott Bakula - and plays like a comedy Insider.
And then ....coming to the back of an airline seat near you, Vince Vaughn, Jason Bateman and Jon Favreau star in the comedy Couples Retreat about a bunch of couples who head out to a retreat to work on their marriages.
Plus, Donnie Darko's R-Kelly (Richard, that is) has a third attempt to fulfill his potential - The Box.
3rd Jul 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
Michael Mann: Public Enemy No. 1
Michael Mann interview up at Aint It Cool. Not catching Public Enemies until next week, but looking forward to it.
3rd Jul 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
The Big Picture: Glastonbury
Excellent Glastonbury round up posted over at The Big Picture.
#CSF
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3rd Jul 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
Yim Yames
Looks like Jim James Yim Yames might be outgrowing the traditional roots of his old band. Maybe they just aren't wacky enough.
In addition to the previously announced Monsters of Folk album, the newly re-christened front man has a solo EP of George Harrison covers on the way, entitled 'Tribute Too'. Recorded on 8 track in 2001, they are now being dusted off and are available to buy from 7th July - although you can sign up and download Behind That Locked Door now.
Yimyames.com also mentions that a 'full length solo record' is 'coming soon'.
The craziness continues.
3rd Jul 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
Out of this world movies
Indie moviemaker site Shooting People don't seem impressed by the contents of the video shelf on the International Space Station - which is disclosed here. Regarding classics such as Beverly Hills Cop (an easy 5 stars IMHO) as inferior, they are running a poll to select more suitable 'highbrow' titles to suggest.
3rd Jul 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
Promo Promo: Dirty Projectors
Nicely shot promo up for the new Dirty Projectors single - Stillness Is The Move.
Directed by Matthew Lessner, the video was shot on location out in Vermont and 'features siberian huskies and rare llamas'.
2nd Jul 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
The Boys Are Back In Town - Again
Entourage kicks off season six this Sunday - in the US at least. Sure, it's as mindless as they say - buy what's wrong with a little lifestyle envy? SUIT!
2nd Jul 2009 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
Pirate Treasure
Looks like the Pirate Bay are making out like ...bandits.
With a £2.4m fine to pay, they have sold the Pirate Bay to a Swedish investor - for £4.7m. Not sure where that leaves the recently launched Video Bay.
More info on Wired and BBC News.
2nd Jul 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
Pixies Do Doolittle
With the 20th Anniversary of it's release upon us, the Pixies are touring pre-grunge indie-classic Doolittle in it's entirety - plus b-sides.
Tickets on sale Friday.
OCTOBER
Thursday 1st - Olympia, Dublin, IRE TICKETS
Friday 2nd - Olympia, Dublin, IRE TICKETS
Sunday 4th - SECC, Glasgow, UK TICKETS
Tuesday 6th - Brixton Academy, London, UK TICKETS
Wednesday 7th - Brixton Academy, London, UK TICKETS
Thursday 8th - Brixton Academy, London, UK TICKETS
Friday 9th - Brixton Academy, London, UK TICKETS
Sunday 11th - Jahrhunderhalle, Frankfurt, DE TICKETS
Tuesday 13th - Heineken Music Hall, Amsterdam, NED TICKETS
Wednesday 14th - Forest National, Brussels, BE TICKETS
Thursday 15th - Zenith, Paris, FR TICKETS
1st Jul 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
Obey: Behind the mask
Nice little video up to promote the Shepherd Fairey-centric edition of Arkitip magazine, with the Obey mastermind knocking up an artwork in his studio.
1st Jul 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
Wilco
Wilco (The Album)
Nonesuch
I've got a problem with Wilco.
After being drawn in by their alt country charm through the two Woody Guthrie / Billy Bragg collaborations, my love of the band expanded rapidly. Having missed all the hoo-hah surrounding Yankee Hotel Foxtrot's release, A Ghost Is Born was the first album I was truly anticipating - and with the mid-season signing of Jim O'Rourke it was this album that lifted them into another league for me, blending electronics, beats and guitars into a thrilling rock album of OK Computer-esque proportions.
Problem is, a lot of hardcore Wilco fans seem to see A Ghost Is Born as Wilco's 'Kid A moment' (for better or for worse) and as such the consensus seems to be to consider the band 'back on track' with the seemingly less far-out vibe of their more recent work. Wilco seem like they might agree and appear very comfortable back in their soft shoes, crafting detailed, refined, quality guitar rock.
Their are still touches of mayhem of course and after the well-crafted crowd-pleaser of Wilco (The Song), the album dips into the darkness with Deeper Down, before continuing the path trodden by the best of 2007's Sky Blue Sky - as swirling guitars cram an eight minute epic into the three and a half minutes of One Wing.
Bull Back Nova borrows in part from the pounding keyboards of Kidsmoke to decent effect, before the album begins to sag in the middle - with the saccharine Feist collaboration You And I and the plodding You Never Know. Things pick up with pounding backbone of (the possibly Bueller-inspired) I'll Fight and before you've registered it, the album is over.
Of course, the bottom line is that this is still an excellent album. Now that the pressure of grading it is over, I'm sure it will settle into my most-played list (18 times so far) - and probably surface in my end of year best-ofs, just as Sky Blue Sky. That album was lifted up a major notch following the live tour that supported the album, with many of the songs beefed up and stretched out when re-created by this immensly engaging band and I expect a similar story following August's London show.
Of course, it is entirely possible that it's me with the problem.
1st Jul 2009 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
Read more 4 star reviewsLast Day Dream: Life in 42 Seconds
Lovely short film up at Vimeo from promo/ad director Chris Milk. Submitted to the Beijing 42 Second Film Festival, it covers life flashing before someone's eyes.
30th Jun 2009 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
Power-less
The freaky-deaky world of wireless power is moving forward, with the new Palm Pre including a 'touchstone' power-pad - and now Wildcharge is offering a solution for the iPhone, which combines a desktop pad with a special case for the phone that includes the necessary black magic. That also has the possible advantage of letting all your devices charge of the one matt.
Wired has more details.
30th Jun 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
Trailer Park: The Time Traveller's Wife
Trailer up for The Time Traveller's Wife. Doesn't look likely to break the excellent Eric Bana's long run of turkeys.
26th Jun 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
The Collapse of Oxford Collapse
Bad news from Sub Pop: Oxford Collapse are calling it quits.
After hitting the highs with a couple of great albums (1, 2) and live shows (1, 2), the chimp-favourite party punkers are moving on to other things - which may involve getting real jobs.
24th Jun 2009 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
Googlemaps Paris
The resort formally know as Euro Disney have let the Google cars in for a quick drive around - and now Disneyland Paris is mapped up.
24th Jun 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
The Beasties' 5-Point Plan
New data in from Beastieboys.com
1. The reissue of "Ill Communication" is imminent.
2. A reissue of "Hello Nasty" is released on the 25th of August.
3. A club show occurs in Chicago on the 6th of August.
4. The new Beastie Boys feature length LP entitled "HOT SAUCE COMMITTEE PART 1" is unleashed on the 15th of September. (See below for track listing*)
5. The music industry is saved.
++++
1. Tadlock's Glasses
2. B-Boys In The Cut
3. Make Some Noise
4. Nonstop Disco Powerpack
5. OK
6. Too Many Rappers (featuring NAS)
7. Say It
8. The Bill Harper Collection
9. Don't Play No Game That I Can't Win (featuring Santigold)
10. Long Burn The Fire
11. Bundt Cake
12. Funky Donkey
13. Lee Majors Come Again
14. Multilateral Nuclear Disarmament
15. Pop Your Balloon
16. Crazy Ass Shit
17. Here's A Little Something For Ya
23rd Jun 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
Band of Brothers 2: The Pacific
Promo up for the new Spielberg/Hanks/HBO mini-series The Pacific, which will begin in 2010. It's a Pacific-set companion to the WWII Band of Brothers mini-series - and looks pretty spectacular. The Thinner Red Line.
22nd Jun 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
Even More Highly Suspicious
All the remixing in the world is not going to help My Morning Jacket's Highly Suspicious.
22nd Jun 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
Promo Promo: We Have Band
Nice promo up for hotly tipped/unsigned disco poppers We Have Band. Shot and animated entirely from stills - and if you so wish you can get the stills here and assemble your own version.
19th Jun 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
Trailer Park: 2012
If you need someone to dump an aircraft carrier on the White House, via a tsunami - Roland Emmerich is your man. Looks like 2012 will be meeting my long-haul flight needs shortly.
19th Jun 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
Trailer Park: New York's Got Talent
The relentless remake-a-thon continues, with Fame now getting a reboot.
19th Jun 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
CHAD
A recent travel-op led to some discussion about the origins of the famous Chad and the results are interesting. Turns out that there are several intertwining stories going into the mix.
Chad
The 'Wot no...' tag line originates from the shortages experienced by rationed Britishers during World War II. Where 'Wot no eggs?' or 'Wot no tea bags' were literal complaints. Not too much detail on the nose-over-the-wall cartoon though.
Kilroy
The viral message of the Chad was most likely popularised by the American usage of cartoon alongside 'the Kilroy'. The tagline 'Kilroy was here' written in further and further flung fields, allegedly even written on the dust on the moon. The Kilroy plausibly originates back to World War II warship inspector James J. Kilroy, who would write 'Kilroy was here' once he had finished his inspection.
Speculation even takes the story even further, to the point where the omni-presence of the slogan - which appeared wherever US servicemen had been - led Hitler to believe Kilroy to be a super-spy.
Lose The Game
An interesting modern spin on the phenomenon comes in the form of Lose The Game. A game supposedly devised by a couple of chaps stranded at a train station over night. The aim of the game is simple - don't think about the game. By the way, you lose.
18th Jun 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
Death of a Blogger
A 2008 survey counted 133 million active blogs, but a 2009 follow-up notes that only 7.4 million of them have been updated in the last 120 days. That's a 95% failure rate.
18th Jun 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
Promo Promo: Jason Lytle
Nicely shot slow-mo promo from The General Assembly for Jason Lytle's track I Am Lost (And The Moment Cannot Last). Watch a hi-res version here.
17th Jun 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
Badass Obama
Looks like Barack Obama trained in the Mr Miyagi school of fly control.
17th Jun 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
Who Wants To Be A Millionaire
A serious case of throwing out the baby with the bath water.
17th Jun 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
Hidden Pixies
Now here's a gig I would have liked to be at: the Pixies turned up to their own box set launch to play a surprise set to the 300 strong crowd.
Picture nabbed from David Emery via Flickr.
17th Jun 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
Phil Spector: Unplugged
I don't know how, but I was surprised to see that Phill Spector's hair is actually a wig - as noted in his recent mug shot (see The Smoking Gun for full details).
The confusion may have arisen from previous hairdos. Hiding in plain sight apparently.
17th Jun 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
Skate or Dinosaur vs Promo Promo
It's Skate or Die vs Promo Promo this week, for this cleverly put together video for Dinosaur Jr's new single Over It. Keep an eye out for Mike Watt too.
#CSF
#Music
#PromoPromo
#Skateboarding
16th Jun 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
BYO CD
Interesting developments on the way from Amazon, with a partnership with distribution start-up Tunecore allowing artists to get physical CDs onto Amazon's books, through a new short-run system.
Only problem is, does anyone still buy CDs? Tunecore are on top of that too as we already reported, allowing full distribution through Amazon's MP3 store - with Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor paying the company a mere $38 to get his 4-disc album into the store, then receiving a 40% share of the Amazon retail price.
Wired has the story.
16th Jun 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
Mr. Woodcock
(dir. Craig Gillespie)
New Line Cinema
After an over-weight childhood of bullying and lack-lustre sporting achievement, John Farley (Seann William Scott) has made a name for himself as a self-help author - thanks to his best-seller about "Letting Go". On returning to his hometown to pick up an achievement award, he discovers to his horror that his widowed mother (Susan Sarandon) is dating the sadistic gym teacher (Billy Bob Thornton) responsible for much of his childhood horror. Much hilarity ensues.
Billy Bob Thornton continues to water down the comedy highs of Bad Santa and Bad News Bears with this pedestrian comedy. Unfortunately this seems like it's made up of out-takes from the already lame School For Scoundrels remake, with Thornton's bullying gym teacher Mr Woodcock sharing the unflinching nasty streak of Dr. P, with a script that shows none of the sympathy of Bad Santa.
Seann William Scott has never showed any promise beyond his cameo as the donkey wrangler in Old School - and his performance here does nothing to upgrade his status. Susan Sarandon, you should know better.
At 87 minutes you'd expect things to whizz by, but with a plot this thin it drags and drags before finishing ungracefully and being immediately erased from my memory.
16th Jun 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
Read more 1.5 star reviewsGoodfeathers
Checked out some of the Free Range graduate art shows in Brick Lane at the weekend and the easy highlight was Tim Knight's set of owl portraits.
Coming off like a wildlife Usual Suspects, we decided the movie should probably star Owl Pacino.
As Paul Simon once said, "You can call me owl".
15th Jun 2009 - 5 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
The Monsters of Folk
Following on from Evil Urges, 'Monsters of Funk' might be a better name for a Jim James/Bright Eyes/M. Ward supergroup - and at the moment it's hard to decide who provides the most potential for disappointment from these three....
Cynicism aside, there's plenty of potential for retribution as the Monsters of Folk reform for a newly announced, self-titled album, out in September on Rough Trade. Bootleg from their 2004 tour online here.
15th Jun 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
Infinite Lightning Dust
Looks like Amber Webber has a good excuse for missing the recent Pink Mountaintops tour - the Black Mountain vocalist has a new album out under the Lightning Dust formation, with fellow Vancouverian Black Mountaineer Joshua Wells.
"I Knew" is available for download now (mp3) - and it suggest that Infinite Light seems set to expand the band's sound from the minimalist magic of 2007's self-titled debut.
Out August 3rd on Jagjaguwar.
15th Jun 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
Promo Promo: Animal Collective
Psychedelic promo up for Animal Collective's Summertime Clothes.
12th Jun 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
Earth In Motion
If you thought yesterday's time lapse movies were good, then don't miss Wired's article featuring NASA sattelite time-lapse movies, that have taken literally years to shoot. Urbanisation of Dubai above, Amazon deforestation below.
#CSF
#Film
#Photography
#Space
#Tech
12th Jun 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
Bike Club
The current craze for pimped-out, fixed gear bicycles seems to have re-invented cycling - and art students on bikes make a good combination. Check out these clips from LA's Taco Tuesday club and the Midnight Ridazz. And head on over to Rapha's Vimeo page for a ton of great stuff. Although they are using more gears.
Those dayglo wheels are all a bit Ocean Pacific if you ask me.
12th Jun 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
Monsanto's House of the Future
Interesting piece up at Wired about Monsanto's 'House of the Future' - which was on put on display at Disneyland in 1957.
12th Jun 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
Go Pearl Jam
Good news for Pearl Jam's upcoming European tour - old favourites Gomez will be supporting.
12th Jun 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
Wot no hover-cars?
At the 1964 World's Fair in New York, a model city titled Futurama promised jet-packs, paperless offices and traffic-free highways. 40 years later and we're still waiting.
11th Jun 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
Double Twist
I've been trying out Double Twist this week - the new project from notorious former hacker DVD Jon.
The program has a simple premise: bring management of all your phones/devices, photos and music into one place. You can plug in your smartphone, sync up photos, upload them to Facebook and Flickr, share files with friends - and also decode your protected purchases from the iTunes store.
It's a great concept and for certain phone users in particular (Blackberry/Windows Mobile) it'll solve a lot of problems. As a dedicated iPhone user however, it doesn't offer much that isn't already covered elsewhere.
11th Jun 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
Trailer Park: Shutter Island
Trailer up for Scorcese's latest picture - Shutter Island, starring Leonardo DiCaprio as usual, plus the excellent Mark Ruffalo. Based on the book by Dennis Lehane, who also wrote Mystic River and Gone Baby Gone.
11th Jun 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
Google Chrome
With Google Chrome now available as a beta for the Mac, I'm already on the fence about jumping ship from the previously trusty Safari.
Safari is getting more and more features - especially with the upcoming 4.0 - but it's also getting more and more bloated. Chrome on the other hand keeps things incredibly simple and is lightning fast to load sites and the program itself it up and running in the blink of an eye. That might change as I bog it down with the extensive bookmarks collection, but for now - it's the speed king.
11th Jun 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
The Plan Comes Together - Again
Looks like John Singleton and Bruce Willis are out, but Joe Carnahan and Liam Neeson may be in - for the ever cast/director rotating A-Team movie, which supposedly shoots in August for a 2010 release.
10th Jun 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
Paaarliament
While they're not directly connected to those cheeky chaps from The Pirate Bay, Sweden's Pirate Party stand for many of the same 'principles' - and now they have a seat in the European Parliament.
9th Jun 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet
Better than cable
The crew of the International Space Station jumped the queue to get a home copy of the new Star Trek movie - they were beamed up a copy direct from NASA.
9th Jun 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet