New albums!

Hurrah! There is nothing quite like listening to a new album by one of your favourite bands and it not being a huge disappointment. Having been fairly hard up for cash over the last few months I have held off from buying Sigur Ros' new album Með Suð Í Eyrum Við Spilum Endalaust. I had watched the excellent video for Gobbledigook a few times and decided to at least download that one track. Upon searching iTunes I found that the album was going for £5.99 (iTunes Plus, hence no DRM), an offer I couldn't pass up. 

My tube journey to work takes around an hour so I decided that it was the perfect opportunity to give it a good listen from beginning to end. I cant be bothered to go into a track by track review or anything but I have to say that overall, the album is definitely a candidate for my favourite album... that's right... even better than Takk... and ( ).

If you are one of those people that only download single songs (I couldn't do it. I'm too anal about my iTunes library - single tracks piss me off) I would highly recommend Goggledigook - even if you had previously written off Sigur Ros as pretentious bollocks. There are several more 'catchy' songs, i.e. not 10 minutes long, throughout the album but they do not in any way sound dumbed down or unlike Sigur Ros. There are a couple of epics on there too so lets not get too scared that we'll see Jonsi playing his guitar with a violin bow on T4 just yet... although they like to be all edgy and underground nowadays so we just might...

Now the reason for the plural in the title of this post is because I also wanted to quickly write about The Cure's new album 4:13 Dream. I've deliberately waited a while to voice my opinions because they have a habit of changing over a short period of time as was the case with 2004's The Cure. At the time I listened to it non stop but now I only ever really listen to Lost, Going Nowhere and, if we are talking about the vinyl, This Morning. A similar thing happened with 4:13 Dream. I listened to it once through and made up an opinion which after several more plays had completely reversed. 

I hated it.

Well... maybe hate is too strong. I couldn't really hate an album that included Underneath the Stars and The Perfect Boy but the rest seemed a bit of a disappointment. At least The Cure (the album) flipped between upbeat songs and more dreary ones. 4:13 Dream is practically musical Prozac in comparison. I know Robert has promised that we'll see the darker songs on another album released next year but rarely can we trust our mate Bob. After listening through a good few times (as of this time, the play count is at around 20) I've realised that it doesn't really matter that there are no Disintegrations, Bloodflowers or Colds. It is still a great collection of more energetic, punchier Cure songs that will be remembered alongside Just Like Heaven and Inbetween Days rather that the aforementioned epics. 

You can decide for yourselves over at the album's Last.fm page where every track is available in full. I'll just sit and wait in hope that we do actually see this dark album next year and I finally get to hear a non live version of the almost legendary song 'A Boy I Never Knew' - a song recorded for the 2004 album but scraped because it was so sad the recording had Robert crying for the last minute. It was lost for about four years until they played it on this year's 4Tour. Now that's The Cure that everyone really wants. Not all this happy lark.

Sound

It's been weeks since my last post and I'm afraid this one isn't really going to make up for the lack of attention being paid to this blog at the moment.

Lying in bed this morning I was flicking through the channels and ended up settling on Sound which is a trendy music show presented by Radio 1 DJ Annie Mac and generic, indie funny-man Nick Grimshaw. This usually isn't my thing but I do sometimes like to see what music is popular nowadays. 

There was a band... no wait, that's the wrong word... I'm not quite sure how to describe them. Think of Blazin Squad with only three members and one of those members being female... got it? They are called N Dubs if you want to look them up or maybe listen to a 30 second preview on iTunes.  You know, just for fun.

Well, (the?) N Dubs were being interviewed by the aforementioned Annie and Nick and were discussing how they feel that they have worked really hard to get where they are and, even though they respect other artists who don't write their own songs, they see themselves as more credible because they do everything. 

It then cut to their performance of a song called Ouch. Now bear in mind that they have just 'bigged up' their song writing skills in the interview section. The chorus consists of the line 'I loved you so much but you cheated on me' and 'You need to recognise that she was just a whore.' 

Top notch lyrics if you ask me.

Hypnagogic States

Every month from May to August The Cure released a new single on the 13th. The Singles were The Only One, Freak Show, Sleep When I'm Dead and The Perfect Boy. Now I wrote my thoughts on The Only One  back in May when it was released but I didn't get round to writing anything about the other songs. All were a good listen but it was The Perfect Boy that made me wish it was the 29th of October so I could hear the new album (Dream 4:13).

In September they released an E.P., Hypnagogic States which includes remixes of all four singles and one mash up, as it were, by 65DaysofStatic - a band who have already reserved £8 of my first pay packet to buy an album. 

I'm not usually a big fan of remix albums as remixes seldom live up to the original. Hynagogic States is like that in a way. A little of their Cure-ness is lost in the translation but overall they are all still great songs. The Perfect Boy would still be amazing if Robert Smith sang it over the sound of tortured kittens.

The final mash up track, Exploding Head Syndrome, is slightly different. At 21 minutes long it almost feels like Godspeed You Black Emperor if they went a bit disco. As it bears so little resemblance to the original material, Exploding Head Syndrome holds up as its own piece. I would expect little else from one of my future favourite bands.

Not bad for £3.99.

Last.fm

Now I know I'm late again on this one but I've just started using Last.fm. For anyone who hasn't heard of it, it's a music recommendation site where you type in (or import from iTunes) a list of your favourite bands and it recommends music to you based on this information. You can also just search for music like (insert band name) and it'll play you a seemingly never ending playlist of songs from bands in the same genre. You are also given the option to add songs as they play to your 'love this' list or banned list.

At the moment I'm listening to music like Mogwai and I've already made a list of bands I need to buy albums from. Some highlights are Mono and This Will Destroy You. I wasn't aware of the fact that there are so many good instrumental post rock bands around. I'm very picky about vocalists in bands and I often finding myself liking the music and hating the voice - these bands do away with that problem which is probably why I pretty much like them all. 

Finished promo

Here is the finished promo that I have been working on. 

I was supposed to have an interview today for a runners job at a post production company but the northern line was broken. I've managed to reschedule it for tomorrow but I'm a little worried that I may have blown it... I'll have to give myself two hours to get in rather than just one...

Editing

In my post from last week I wrote about how I had managed to get some unpaid work editing a band promotional video. Well sadly hat project fell through due to my camera being unable to transfer HD footage into Final Cut Pro. 

This week, however, I was given some SD footage to use for a different band. I spent a day or so playing with the footage and sent it off to my contact who is organising these promotions. Apparently it was the best he's seen so far. I've sent it over to the visual effect guy who will add a few touches here and there and hopefully I will have the final piece by Monday or so.

In the mean time, here is my edit of the footage. In classic Youtube fashion the quality is terrible but you get the idea. I will upload the final version when I have it. The band is called Kojo (there is no link because apparently they are revamping their Myspace at the moment).

Louis the freelance editor

I've just arrived home from a meeting with Media Circus. They are an advertising agency based in Leicester Square and they want to move into creating band promos. For this they need editors and that is what I hope to be. 

I have been given a couple of tapes of live footage from a band called Cats and Criminals. I'm having a listen now and they aren't exactly my thing but I'm sure I'll be able to fling something exciting together. They have a cool logo that I'm thinking of taking advantage of.

This is (of course) unpaid for the moment but it could lead to a permanent position and I can at least add it to my show reel and put it on my CV.

The Cure - The Only One

Apologies for the lack of updates recently. I'm moving house in two weeks and going on holiday in three so I have been completely rushed off my feet. I am therefore a few days late with my opinions on the new Cure single. 

First off, I must say that I was a little annoyed that I preordered the single a week before it's tuesday release date and it didn't reach me until thursday.  That's two days that I had to resist spending £1.5o on iTunes or going the morally dubious route of bittorrent. I resisted in the end as I wanted my first listen to be the CD through my pretty decent stereo. 

I have now had the opportunity to give the single and it's B-side, NY Trip, a few listens and have formed a few initial opinions. Firstly, The Only One is definitely closer to The Cure's later efforts such as High from the Wish album. It's an uplifting love song with (surprisingly due to the recent line up change) a dreamy, Cure-esque keyboard track underlying the chorus. Robert Smith wails over a more rocky guitar sound and the tempo keeps up throughout the entire track. It's a song that grows on you, although it never really started out bad.

Of course, this is all coming from a deeply devoted Cure fan who dislikes very few songs in their back catalogue, so I wouldn't take too much notice of this little review. 

This week I have also been listening Nine Inch Nail's new album that they released free of change. It seems to be following their recent trend of moving into more guitar driven music which I'm a little disappointed about. The earlier albums that consisted mainly of programmed loops sounded a great deal more original than the more generic rock/metal albums released over the last few years. Oh well, at least it was free.