January 4th, 2015
Top Albums of 2014
Late to the party as I’m posting this in 2015 – but I’ve been trying to do some form of this since 2004, so I figured I’d do my best to make a decent list for my own records.
Unfortunately, this year I didn’t do a fantastic job of keeping up with the newest music so I don’t quite have enough albums to actually fill out a full top 10. I also spent away too much time listening to one album. I definitely have a favorite album of the year, but the ranking after that isn’t as clear to me, so I’ll just kind of mix them all in no particular order.
Favorite album of the year:
- The Antlers – Familiars
This album definitely didn’t pique my interest on the first few listens, but as I continued to listen, more and more details began to reveal themselves. 35 full play-throughs later, and this is one of those rare albums where I don’t skip a track, and every few weeks I’d find a new track was my new favorite. There are a lot of subtle details to be found and picked apart, and the emotional space of the album is ambiguous but very engaging. It also feels very consistent and complete, almost like a concept album, but where each song can easily stand on it’s own without sounding repetitious.
Favorite tracks: Revisited (that guitar at the very end…), Hotel, Palace
Other great 2014 albums:
- Phantogram – Voices
Phantogram’s long awaited second LP Voices had a bunch of new tracks, and some older ones I had been hearing for a little while, some of which came out on their 2013 LP. The album has a lot of standout tracks, but some of the sleepers are quite good as well. They still manage to have a sound that is totally unique to them, but still very crowd pleasing. I’m also honored to have been able to play live visuals with them on several occasions, including a show this year that promoted this album.
Favorite tracks: Fall in Love, Bad Dreams, I Don’t Blame You
- Conor Oberst – Upside Down Mountain
I may never get another Bright Eyes album, but this felt very close to one of those. Not every track managed to get me, but there were some great moments in there, especially lyrically, and the backing band is fantastic.
Favorite tracks: Time Forgot, Artifact #1, Night at Lake Unknown
- First Aid Kit – Stay Gold
Swedish alt-country with a pair of lovely voices. What else could you ask for?
Favorite tracks: My Silver Lining, Stay Gold
- Hundred Waters – The Moon Rang like a Bell
I discovered this one pretty late in 2014, but it’s been growing on me. Out Alee is easily one of my favorite tracks of the year with it’s unusual rhythms and dreamy melodic line.
Favorite Tracks: Out Alee, Murmurs
- Paul Thomas Saunders – Beautiful Desolation
Random find from hearing a track on a TV show. Really lovely stuff from a UK artist with a great voice and really spacey but detailed and structured instrumentation.
Favorite tracks: A Lunar Veteran’s Guide to Re-Entry, Good Women
- Todd Terje – It’s Album Time
Honestly I don’t listen to this album on my own time that much, but this is hilarious and epic background music for any situation.
- The War On Drugs – Lost in the Dream
Also discovered this very late in 2014, so it’s still growing on me. Has the feel of 1980’s Americana/rock with an extra subtle psychedelic layer
- Lucius – Wildewoman
This album actually came out in 2013, but I didn’t discover it until mid-2014. Great album, great range of songs, and the vocal talent is mesmerizing. I got to see them live recently, and their live show is miles above most bands of their size/age/popularity…so definitely one to keep an eye on.
Most anticipated album of 2015: The Velvet Teen’s new, currently untitled album. First album since 2006’s Cum Laude
March 22nd, 2014
3DFFT Sonic Prints new samples
(Video and Physical prints of project here)
I’ve continued to play with my 3DFFT software that takes incoming audio and generates a 3D mesh from the FFT information. I’ve been playing with some different types of music and gotten some really nice varying results. Some slow ambient songs are like dragging a paintbrush in a circle (Hammock), while more rhythmic songs have more of a stippling pattern (Haim and Animal Collective). These results were normalized but with a little too much of a hard cutoff, I’m trying to get a look for these that keeps them from exploding too much, but still keeping a little more texture. Doing selective coloring really makes a difference as well. I’m hoping to make some more physical renders of these in the near future with a CNC instead of a 3D printer so that the larger size can enhance some of the details. I also hope to work out the kinks soon so that I can release the code for other to use for making their own sound prints.
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- Haim – Falling
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- Haim – Falling
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- Hammock
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- Hammock
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- Lorder – Buzzcut Season
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- Amiina – Fjarkanistan
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- Lorde – Buzzcut Season
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- Hammock
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- Animal Collective – My Girls
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- Hammock
December 31st, 2013
Top Albums and Songs of 2013
Been doing this yearly tradition since 2005! Unfortunately I believe I only listened to about 20 full brand new albums this year, so my full list is going to be a bit biased towards that small sampling of albums. Anyway – let’s get to it! The list isn’t really in a particular order…but if I were forced at gunpoint to choose my top 10 albums of 2013, it might look something like this:
1. Haim – Days are Gone
I can’t fully explain what it is about this album that makes it my favorite of the year. I enjoy every song that comes on, the song structures are unique, the musicianship is tight and wonderful, the girls voices are really great…etc etc. It’s a fantastic pop album with a lot of little nooks to explore as you continue to listen.
Top Songs: Falling, Days are Gone, Don’t Save Me
2. Annuals – Time Stamp
Fantastic 3rd and possibly final album from North Carolina based Annuals. I was a massive fan of their first album Be He Me in 2006. Their second one Such Fun was also a good listen, but not quite as solid. I feel like Time Stamp was a little bit of a return to form in terms of odd instrumentation, and song topics.
Top Songs: Omnicide, I Don’t Care, Whippoorwill
3. Son Lux – Lanterns
A true follow up to his debut At War with Walls and Mazes (my #1 album of 2007), Son Lux’s Lanterns was another fantastic journey into a musical world created a master composer who happens to write little short gems. 2011’s sophomore album, We Are Rising is great too, but written, recorded and composed in only 28 days. On Lanterns it’s clear to me that a little more time is definitely helpful for wrangling these complex ideas. When that pedal steel fades in on the opener Alternate World, it’s beautiful and heartbreaking at the same time. There is a massive amount of care and planning that goes into every facet of these compositions, and it really comes through on Lanterns. The important thing is that no one else sounds quite like this…
Top Songs: Alternate World, Lost it to Trying, Plan the Escape
4. Chvrches – The Bones of What you Believe
This is one of those bands that I really liked in the year, but I’m curious to see how they hold up. It was one of those situations where it was like “This band really sounds like what a band would sound like in 2013” with odd old influences and a touch of new stuff. The singer’s voice is also pretty irresistible. Unfortunately, this is also an album that got burned out super quickly for me, so it’ll be a while before I revisit. Top Songs: Gun, Night Sky, Recover
5. Camera Obscura – Desire Lines
Another solid showing from Camera Obscura. Not really a band that re-invents themselves from album to album, but there was still a lot of really gorgeous stuff going on here, and some songs I found myself returning to over and over.
Top Songs: This is Love (Feels Alright), William’s Heart, New Year’s Resolution
6. Braids – Flourish//Perish
This album was a bit of a different beast from their debut Native Speaker, with some tighter song structures and some shuffling on instrumentation and vocals as a result of a band member leaving. I’m really drawn to the unusual song structures and the personal/ethereal lyrics and singing.
Top Songs: December, Fruend, Victoria
7. Lorde – Pure Heroine
Top Songs: Buzzcut Season, 400 Lux
8. Atoms for Peace – Amok
Top Songs: Default, Ingenue
9. Sigur Ros – Kveikur
Top Songs: Brennenstein, Kviekur
10. Blue Hawaii – Untogether
Top Songs: Sierra Lift, Try to be
11. Hammock – Oblivion Hymns
Top Songs: Then the Quiet Explosion
Top anticipated albums for 2014: Phantogram, The Velvet Teen, and Hooray for Earth
Previous lists:
June 12th, 2013
Sonic Prints
Using openFrameworks and ofxFFT to generate 3D Meshes of sound data for use in 3D printing.
This is very much a work in progress, but just wanted to share some initial results while I work on the final visual output. I have done some initial prints (see below) but have found that I’d like to make some much larger prints to be able to really get the detail out of the generated models. This project is interesting for me because it allows me to look at the structure of a song in a different way than a musical score or just a volume intensity graph like we’re used to. I can also play with the idea of making physical objects out of songs in a different way than burning a CD, pressing a vinyl or etching a wax cylinder.
We will be releasing the source after I get rid of a few bugs and clean a few things up, just need time to make those adjustments. Then you’ll be able to tweak it and make your own 3D meshes for your own real-time music and sound input.
The meshes are set up like this: left is generally the bass/low end, right is high end. Red or orange marks are the loudest frequency band at that particular time. White to black shows the relative volume intensity of the particular time. I can adjust the number of frequency bands it is looking at and make it more coarse or fine.
If you would like one of the 3D mesh files to look at for yourself, I can send you a sample. The individual files are about 20mb so I don’t want to host them here yet.
You can see some images of sample prints below, they are about the size of a bangle or bracelet.
Sample prints now available on Thingiverse
I have been doing this as a personal project and a side project where I work: www.fakelove.tv
3DFFT Sonic Prints – Work in Progress from blair neal on Vimeo.
3DFFT _Sonic prints example – Son Lux – “Easy” from blair neal on Vimeo.
December 17th, 2012
The Ethereal Geometric Volume in music videos
I wanted to write something about a very specific genre of music videos that seems to pop up every few years and has only continued to increase in popularity as special effects costs get lower and the techniques get more accessible. This music video type can be found in genres ranging from electronica to rock and beyond. The trope common to all the music videos I’m discussing is the use of the ethereal geometric volume
An ethereal geometric volume is a plot device similar to something like Hitchcock’s MacGuffin where it can simply exist as a polygonal device to move the plot along without it really being explained what this volume really is.
These devices can be the main characters, a representation of an omnipotent force, a terror, an alien invasion. They can be Cubes, Pyramids, and Spheres or broken polygonal shapes. They can be shattered to bits and oh..good lord, they float and hover like nobody’s business.
Let’s start at n=4..the PYRAMID
Pyramid Example #1: M83 – “Wait” – 2012
Pyramid as Spaceship
M83 ‘Wait’ Official video from The Creators Project on Vimeo.
Pyramid Example #2: Frank Ocean – “Pyramids” – 2012
Pyramid as Structure and 2d John Mayer guitar solo background
frank ocean [pyramids] from christopher francis ocean on Vimeo.
Now let’s step forward into n=6…the CUBE
Cube example #1: Phantogram – Don’t Move – 2012
Cube as ethereal looming terror (with shatter!)
Phantogram ‘Don’t Move’ from 10lb Pictures on Vimeo.
Cube example #2: Battles – Atlas – 2007
Cube as floating spaceship stage (low-rez…anyone have an HD link for this vid?)
Cube example #3: Mew – Introducing Palace Players – 2009
Cubes as alien lifeforms
Cube Example #4: M83 – We Own the Sky – 2009
Cubes as alien life forms (with shatter!)
Cube Example #5: Kid606 – Sometimes – 2006
Cubes as alien life forms (also with shatter…)
And then finally n= infinity…the SPHERE
Sphere example #1: The Antlers – Bear – 2010
Sphere as relationship burden/unborn child
(Hemi)Sphere Example #2: Denali – Hold your breath – 2003
Sphere as strange alien invasion of a river jam session
December 16th, 2012
Top Albums/songs/etc. of 2012
I’ve been doing a top 10 albums list since at least 2004 (see below for previous years lists). This year was another weird one for me in terms of discovering new music. The desire to purchase physical CD’s is at an all time low, so it was a big digital year for me. I started using Spotify a lot more than MP3s and my iTunes library even. That caused me to listen a little less on the go since I didn’t always have the mp3’s with me in subways and things like that…I think certain albums didn’t quite get the full time they deserved, but it was still an amazing year. Let me know if you have any suggestions for stuff to check out in the comments.
This year wasn’t as exciting for me for music videos but I’m sure I’m forgetting a few gems…I will post a follow up eventually.
Many of these albums are on a spotify playlist where I’m keeping albums I’m interested in. If you’d like to check them out in an easy to digest format, please check out or subscribe to my Ambient Signal~ spotify playlist: AmbientSignal~
Here is my list of favorites and notables in a slightly particular order at the top and less particular towards the bottom.
Top Albums (Bottom ones don’t mean they are bad albums, just that I liked them a little less in relativity to the others):
~~~~~Dirty Projectors – Swing Lo Magellan
Favorite tracks: Just from Chevron, Socialites, Swing Lo Magellan
I have not been a huge fan of Dirty Projectors in the past, but I think this album toned them down enough to make them within reach for me. Shows some fantastic, varied musicianship the whole way through without feeling like it is all over the place.
~~~~~Freelance Whales – Diluvia
Favorite tracks: Dig into Waves, Red Star, Follow Through
The content of the album is a little hard to grasp or relate to because it’s mostly about space travel and ethereal BIG universal things, but the music has a lot of really fun things to let your musical mind play with and I found myself returning very often. Their album in 2010 was my top album that year so it was great to see them return so strongly in their sophomore effort.
~~~~~Why? – Mumps, etc.
Favorite tracks: Sod in the Seed, White English, Strawberries
This album actually manages to beat out Alopecia for my favorite Why? album so far which is a rare feat…especially when I originally considered Alopecia to be such a fantastic piece.
~~~~~Helio Sequence – Negotiations
Favorite tracks: October, One More Time, The Measure
Hadn’t heard from these guys in years but was very pleased to get this amazing follow up from their 2008 Keep Your Eyes Ahead
~~~~Alt-J( ∆ ) – An Awesome Wave
Favorite tracks: Tesselate, Matilda, Breezeblocks
This was one of those random finds that came out of a tumble through random music blogs and I was very intrigued right off the bat. His unusual voice isn’t for everyone, but there are some really interesting musical moments hidden in there. The most interesting thing about this album for me: drums are prominently featured but there is very little use of cymbals and no use of crash at all.
~~~Sun Airway – Soft Fall
Favorite tracks: Black Noise, Close
Had the pleasure of listening to this one early on and pitching a music video for Close. The album has a nice flow all the way through and some great repeating motifs that only come through on multiple listens.
~~~Beach House – Bloom
Favorite tracks: Myths, Lazuli
~~Lymbyc Systym – Symbolyst
Favorite tracks: Prairie School, Nightfall, Falling Together
~~Purity Ring – Shrines
Favorite track: Fine Shrines
~~Grizzly Bear – Shields
Favorite tracks: Yet Again, Simple Answer
Notable as well:
~Hammock – Departure Songs
~Album Leaf – Forward/Return
~Sigur Ros – Valtari
~Balmorhea – Strangers
~Cat Power – Sun
~Menomena – Moms
~Dntel – Aimlessness
~Ramona Falls – Prophet
Most anticipated albums of 2013: The Velvet Teen (recorded), Son Lux (not sure), Hooray For Earth (recording), Braids (recording I think), Blue Hawaii (releases in january), Annuals (touring..that’s something), Phantogram (recording/recorded I think)
Previous lists:
October 10th, 2012
Music video process – “Prairie School” by Lymbyc Systym
“Prairie School” by Lymbyc Systym from Western Vinyl on Vimeo.
An awesome contact at Terrorbird asked if I was interested in coming up with a music video for one of Lymbyc Systym‘s songs on their new album Symbolyst (on Western Vinyl).
Kyle McDonald and I had been wanting to work together on a music video for a long time and I knew he was a big fan of the band as well so I asked him to join forces with me to come up with something for “Prairie School”, the first track on the new album.
I had been playing a little bit with a lens I pulled off a PS3eye camera and found that it fit perfectly over the lens on my iPhone camera and gave me ridiculous magnification. When the option to pitch on the video came around I really wanted to put this microscopic world to good use, and Prairie School was a perfect option for that. The song had a rapid energy, a brightness but also a sense of smallness without bounds (if that makes any sense). We got a really strong kind of retro-futuristic science video vibe from the song at first and offered up something that would be a mix of filming and software to provide a sort of abstract journey from big to small, as a sort of homage to the amazing 1977 Eames short film “Powers of 10”
We also worked through a way of breaking up the song into some kind of narrative that would match the variations in the song. The song had some very clear sections that we wanted to hit with big changes in visual mood. When working on videos I like to make a chart of the song that helps me understand and visualize the entire structure and the spacing between big moments. Here is the diagram that Kyle and I worked off of when coming up with the structure for the video (click the image for big version).
The majority of the time spent making the video was just a lot of exploration. I shot a ton of stuff up close and it was never really easy to tell if something was going to be boring or gorgeous underneath the tiny lens. In all I shot about 40gb of footage and about 300 individual clips for the video. In all, i would say i shot about 80% of the video on my iPhone, about 15% on my DSLR and 5% on a 500x USB microscope. In all the time spent exploring this microscopic world we realized that staying small made more sense and offered some compelling options on it’s own. Some of our original ideas for expanding to larger worlds ended up being a little time-prohibitive, even though they seemed like they might work out at first. We were initially going to zoom out of grass in a park which would then somehow expand to some high resolution 3D maps of NYC. Here is a demo version from Kyle of what that would have looked like:
https://secure.flickr.com/photos/kylemcdonald/8061492247/in/photostream
Also to cover up what might have been some odd production value in the expansion, we played around with the idea of making the video something like what an 8th grader of 2082 might make as a video for his futuristic science class. Things would have had different graphical or textual overlays attached to them, giving bogus explanations and distance scales for what you were seeing in this abstract microscopic world. This idea got pulled in favor of a more organic direction. Here are some mockups of what we were thinking the eventually scrapped overlays might look like.
The footage also didn’t have the necessary internal movement to really match the energy of the song, so we experimented with overlaying different content on top of the footage I was getting. I had a lot of old stuff I had been recording for a couple years, but I had some footage I got in 2011 at an optical illusion museum in Edinburgh. They had some awesome stuff there, but I got a ton of nice 60fps footage of the electrical arcs of a tesla ball.
We also really liked the look of screen pixels when they were blown up to be really big. They were great punctuation marks for the drum heavy parts of the song. Kyle wrote a couple Processing sketches that gave me some great RGB line microscopic motion to film off my own screen. Here are links to the source code for the sketches I filmed for the video:
http://www.openprocessing.org/sketch/74603
http://www.openprocessing.org/sketch/74602
As I worked with the footage, I realized I was getting sucked into the visuals of this familiar but alien world. Also all of this material exploration had given me a really personal connection with all of the footage which I feel shaped the story a little bit. Each time I filmed was this new experience with a previously familiar object, but I was experiencing it all through a screen even though it was right in front of me. The same screen I use to experience or learn about many other things I’ve never actually physically been present for, but it was still here as a barrier or a gateway. The experience of rubbing dirt in your fingers versus seeing blown up footage of the dirt getting into your nails and skin folds, just witnessing the same action on a different scales.
When working with such abstract footage it can be a challenge to shape it into something that flows together, especially when you’re not sure where you’re going (not always necessary). I didn’t want it to just be a bunch of gorgeous footage clumped together, I wanted it to have some kind of thrust or direction to it. A continuous progression like in “Powers of 10” started to not make as much sense because the middle section of the song really held a different world than the bookending sections.
If I had to give a description about the video’s story, it would be something like “a loose narrative about an experience learning about real physical things versus learning about them on a screen.” The video starts with this really unfamiliar but engaging materials (literally just shots of my laptop and touching the speaker grill on the laptop), and these flashes of light give an extra burst of energy to the drums and other sections. This first area still has energy, but it doesn’t have a lot of color to it. In the middle section of the song, you see a lot more interaction with the recognizable natural world and there is more color and texture there. The flashes of light are still there in full force. In the end section, the de-saturated and more organic worlds start to mix with more shots of pixellated things on a screen, and finally you see the hand from earlier touching things on a screen instead of real life. In the end I wanted there to be just a little bit of ambiguity about where the world of the video just occurred, real life or on a screen. I don’t know if I really pulled that message off the right way, but it was hard to dance around it without getting too heavy handed.
The editing process for the video was really intense. This was one of those videos where I started to figure out that I have an editing “style” by now, but now I’ll have to see if I can change that around for whatever my next video is. I’ve been a fan of doing meticulous editing with music ever since I started with Final Cut (now in Premiere), and I can get into a pretty good groove with the material. It’s still a very different feeling than working with the material live, but it can be really nice to get in there and bring out certain parts of the song you really want to highlight.
Below is a super large image of my entire Premiere timeline for the video (click for full readable size to get an idea of the types of materials I was actually filming. Image size: 400px x 26000px).
I ended up shooting, dropping things in and seeing what worked and then going back and shooting more. I probably had 6-8 different established shooting periods where I collected the majority of the footage, and sometimes I just had my lens on me and would shoot stuff if it looked like it might be really unusual looking close up. It was a very different process than having to set up established shooting schedules…just being able to shoot on the fly for the video was an unusual experience. It definitely made the editing process a little more arduous. The whole video probably went through about 2 or 3 different versions before it settled into its final form. All in all, a really fun and tiring process, but I’m really happy with the result.
December 20th, 2011
Top Music Videos of 2011
(no particular order)
Bon Iver – Calgary (really awesome environment..love the reveal at the end)
Battles – My Machines (amazingly done single shot video)
Hooray For Earth – True Loves (this needs to be made into a movie)
No Age – Fever Dreaming (another good single shot video)
Battles – Ice Cream (all over the place, but the styling is pretty great)
Adele – Rolling in the Deep (some of the shots are really incredible)
Swedish House Mafia – Save the world (what a simple idea..but brilliant)
Oh what the hell:
Katy Perry – TGIF
December 20th, 2011
Top Albums/songs/etc. of 2011
Hm..haven’t gotten to post here very recently unfortunately, but this is a special tradition of mine. Despite that fact that only a few people read these, it’s kind of fun to have these for my own reference..just to ground my future self and be like ‘whoa..you liked that album that much in 2006??’
I try and keep criteria similar each year, but nothing really beats out those gut feeling albums…the ones where you are like ‘Ok..that’s in the top 3 for sure..no matter what happens.’ Other criteria are things like how much I listened to the album, and perceived originality.
This was also the first full year where I didn’t have access to WRPI and it’s constant stream of new music, so I was much more reliant on word of mouth and what I could glean from popular websites. That said, I didn’t get to listen to as much new music over the last year as I had in the past few years, but I think my list still has some really strong pieces in it.
Let’s get to it!
TOP ALBUMS
12. Starfucker – Reptilian
Not a bad return for this Portland band. Their debut was really great, and this delivered a few good hits. These guys know how to handle a really simple pop melody.
Key Track: Julius
11. Feist – Metals
A certain special someone really enjoys this album and would have it as her #1. It feels a little less colorful to me than The Reminder did, but that doesn’t make it any less enjoyable…just a different experience.
Key Tracks: The Bad in Eachother, How come you never go there?
10. The Dodos – No Color
I haven’t been into their previous work that much, but this one slowly worked its way into my listening cycle in February and March and I found myself becoming interested in more and more of the songs on the album. The album felt much more cohesive to me and was a good one to digest all at once.
Key Tracks: Black Night, Good, Don’t Try and Hide It.
9. Phantogram – Nightlife EP
Of course I’m just a little bit biased on this one if you know me well… Phantogram returns with some of their newest material is almost 3 years. I have been doing visuals for them since 2008 so I am quite familiar with their first set of songs by now. These new songs gave me a fresh perspective on a band that I hope continues to do amazing work…now I just need to hold out for another full length.
Key Tracks: Don’t Move (really one of their greatest songs since…ever), 16 Years
8. Talkdemonic – The Ruins
The Pacific-Northwesterners, Talkdemonic, return with a really solid offering. It’s perfect music to sit and analyze, or to have in the background while you get some work done. In this album they offer an even more refined sound of viola, drums and synth from their other albums (still all instrumental). Ruins even sees them toying with slightly longer song structures (one track cracks the 5 minute mark, which is impressive for a band that averages about 2 minutes per track). This album sees a return to some of their amazingly inventive drumbeats that we saw a lot of in Beat Romantic. Overall, the album have a cohesiveness, but it carries some of the dark melancholy of Eyes at Half Mast, but with a more determined/powerful undercurrent.
Key Tracks: Ruins, Slumber Verses, City Sleep.
7. Son Lux – We Are Rising
As part of a challenge issued from NPR, Son Lux wrote and recorded an entire album in 28 days during the month of February. He documented the whole process, and it was really great to be able to follow along with the creative flow of an artist I really admire. It doesn’t have the cohesive/overarching structure/polish feeling I got out of his incredible 2008 album At War with Walls and Mazes, but it has a lot of really interesting moments strewn throughout that make it a great piece…and I’m not looking for the same kind of meticulous detail in an album made in only 28 days anyway, hah. If only I could communicate how much anticipation I had to finally hear the entire version of “All the Right Things” after hearing an early small sample of the giant drop from the NPR blog..it’s still an amazing sonic moment to hear. The insane polyrhythms going on in “Let Go” are another example of an artist that is really in control of his sonic world.
Key Tracks: All the Right Things, Let Go, Flickers, Rising
6. The Antlers – Burst Apart
The Antler’s previous album, Hospice, seemed like it was all over the place for a while. I felt like there was much less buzz around this album, but that it was still well received. This one felt much less like a concept album, and more like they were writing to make songs that would be a little more stage appropriate. Hospice was a brilliant album, but didn’t necessarily translate to live performances in the same way. I kept returning to the album, and every time a new song would stick out to me or I would find another stuck in my head at certain points.
Key Tracks: Parentheses, No Widow, Every Night My Teeth Are Falling Out.
5. Bright Eyes – The People’s Key
I always have a soft spot for Bright Eyes. It usually takes me a while to adjust to the new albums, but I just keep giving them a try until they really click with me. This album had some similarities to the previous, Cassadaga, but had some more electric/rock tracks mixed in than usual and with an unusual almost alt-country sci-fi theme to it. The album didn’t give me a “Lover I Don’t Have to Love,” or a “Lime Tree,” or a “Lua”, but what was important for me is that it still ended up being an album that only a band like Bright Eyes could make.
Key Tracks: Beginner’s Mind, Ladder Song, Approximate Sunlight
4. Battles-Gloss Drop
Oh goodness this was an album I was waiting for. Mirrored was definitely a great album, but it seemed very far from their EP C/B EP days that originally drew me to them. They lost one of their core members, but still managed to crank out some really amazing pieces. I wasn’t sure how I felt about the single, Ice Cream, at first but that has easily become one of my favorites from the album. The real standout for me is “Futura,” a song that has a really great texture and shape to it…not to mention one of the best drum solos I’ve ever heard. Do yourself a favor and check out their video for My Machines as well.
Key Tracks: Futura, Ice Cream, My Machines
3. Braids – Native Speaker
This is a strange album for me because technically I was listening to it in 2010 because I was hard at work on my first commissioned music video. Braids is one of the few bands that has really successfully won me over with a live show before hearing their recorded tracks. After seeing them for the first time I went up to them and told them I really wanted to work with them for visuals or whatever they wanted. This album will always have a special place for me because of how all of that worked out. It’s definitely a bizarre album in retrospect, but it has a lot of really unique soundscape moments and I’m already really looking forward to their next effort. Oh yeah, I think this album wins best album art for me, too.
Key Tracks: Lemonade, Plath Heart, Glass Deers
2. Hooray For Earth – True Loves
Another album I have a really personal connection to. Someone had offered me the chance to throw together a ton of visuals in a week for this album, and I took it without knowing a whole lot about them. I had heard Hooray for Earth’s debut EP, Momo, but it didn’t stick with me too much. After many repeated listens while working on their visuals I started to notice “Hey..these songs are amazing!” The whole album has a great cohesiveness to it. It has a great heavy and dimensional sound to it with a very interesting color palette. It’s strange how accurate album covers start to feel to me when listening to an album over and over.
Key Tracks: Realize It’s Not the Sun, True Loves, Black Trees
1. Bon Iver – Bon Iver
I was very late to the party on the previous Bon Iver album, but I have been following a lot of his other projects (Volcano Choir, Gayngs) so I was really curious about what he would be returning with this time. On the first listen-through’s on albums I’m sort of subconsciously searching for that one song that is like “Ok, this is going to be my favorite track” but this album made that really difficult. I had to give each song sort of it’s own few days in the spotlight. The only knock I really had for it was that it seemed much more like a winter album so it was strange to see it come out mid-spring..so it should be interesting to see how it is in the dead of winter. There isn’t a whole lot more I can say about this album that hasn’t already been raved about all over the internets, but it definitely deserves a listen.
Key Tracks: Calgary, Michicant, Holocene
Top Tracks:
No particular order this year, but these are some of my favorites I’ve heard this year:
Phantogram – Don’t Move
Bon Iver – Michicant
M83 – Midnight City
Bright Eyes – Beginner’s Mind
The Antlers – Parentheses
Battles – Futura
Son Lux – Let Go
Feist – The bad in eachother
Starfucker – Julius
Braids – Lemonade
April 23rd, 2011
Banjo or Freakout – Idiot Rain
This video came out about a week ago on NME.com but I wanted to make sure I put it up here as well.
After seeing my video for Braids, Banjo or Freakoutt approached me about doing a video for his upcoming single “Idiot Rain.” My process for this video was much easier than it was for the Braids video. Since the song had a more straightforward structure it was fitting to transcribe more of a narrative to it. The entire video only took 6 days to make, from shooting to completion. I had done some test shots and such beforehand, but it was amazing to me that everything fell into place so quickly…especially when I did camera, editing and post production/effects. It was just nice to have a cohesive idea right off the bat. Also nice to have a super helpful set of friends to blow a saturday walking around Red Hook with a suitcase and a dog.
Like most of my videos I’m not sure if I could explain any deeper meaning behind this video…but I think it offers some interesting interpretations.
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