they say they always visualise their flights at dawn

What I find so interesting about the video for "Heavy Feet" is that they made a conscious decision to overlay the words of the visually-impaired men in text. They made a conscious decision to use their words in a way that the men themselves would never be able to see. Would they do that because they feel that the men already own the words, and so do not need to see them as they are sent out into the world? I do not feel that there is anything sinister, but it is an interesting creative choice.

Everyone - everyone - looks up towards the planes when they take flight. We cannot help it. We want to see that which is leaving us, that which has transcended.
I won't give away the ending.

it's like being inside a dream or something

THOM YORKE DANCING. *drops mic, walks away*

I was tempted to leave it there, but I won't. The video to this (Ingenue - Atoms for Peace) is fascinating. To quote one of my favourite movies, there's truth but no logic. I seriously feel like it all means something, but I am inadequate to discern what. Is  he dancing with the ingenue? Is the ingenue a part of him? Is the other dancer a part of him? Are we all just atoms dancing? I really don't know. I feel inept. It doesn't seem chaotic but it leaves me feeling ungrounded. 

What stands out about this video and this song, to me, is how comfortable Yorke seems with it. He seems to have really assumed a place. I don't feel like it sounds unlike Radiohead, but it is distinctly different.

I am very much looking forward to seeing what else happens with Atoms for Peace.

we are magnificent machineries of joy

My boyfriend told me that, when you google British Sea Power, the first result is the band, not anything to do with Her Majesty's Royal Navy. Quite proud of the little "indie rock band based in Brighton, England". 
They have a new song posted on their website, and it is wondrous. It is beautiful like pain and like life and like love. It welcomes. It embraces. It is a fireplace on a frigid day. It aches. 
I can't stop listening to it.

keep conversations away from your mouth cause they're selling you out

I must be procrastinating an anthropology paper, because all I wanna do is read poetry* and write about music. 

So, Ghost Beach has a song called Been There Before. All over the internet (and currently touring the west coast) from New York City, they describe themselves as "tropical grit pop". I can go with that.
Anyways, back to Been There Before. It is a stellar song. It's gritty and poppy, as they promise, and it's also just interesting, which I honestly haven't heard a lot of lately because I've been listening to dubstep (but we'll get to that in a separate post). Oh So Fresh! Music linked to a remix done by Shook, with the promise that it had "plenty of dance vibes and catchy grooves to help you transition into weekend mode". I'm in. Right?
No.
It was just...bad. It was boring. That is unforgivable in electronic/dance (or even just dance-y) music. You can't take a good song, make it boring, and expect people to dance to it. I understand the point of dance music, but Been There Before and most of Ghost Beach's discography makes you kind of want to flail!dance excitedly because you feel good, and wouldn't you honestly rather do that than be a douchebag to electronic?
Go back to listening to their EP and Modern Tongues, both of which are on their website and on iTunes and all the regulars.
A little bit on Ghost Beach: they do a good job of listing their influences on their Facebook, and there's nothing earth-shattering that I would add - yes, you can hear Daft Punk, Depeche Mode, The Police, and Tears For Fears. I can't offhand think of a good comparison - maybe Beach House on glitter with glowsticks with a bit of that cover The Horrors did of Best Thing I Never Had. You could maybe draw comparisons to MGMT, but they wouldn't be good ones. (But HEY HEY HEY new MGMT album this year.)

Did you know that Ghost Beach was the twenty-second book in the Goosebumps series?


*The Music Lover's Poetry Anthology, ed. Helen Handley Houghton and Maureen McCarthy Draper, with love from my boyfriend for Christmas.

you can fight

 Down, don't don't bring me d-d-down

Dubstep* and I have kind of a weird relationship. I do not fully understand what it is, and I do not understand why I like it.
We'll start with the easier question first: why I like it. Allmusic, according to Wikipedia, describes it as having "tightly coiled productions with overwhelming bass lines and reverberant drum patterns, clipped samples, and occasional vocals". Here we go: I can appreciate tightly coiled productions. I enjoy a good bass line, and I certainly love a good go on the drums. Sampling is great, if done appropriately, and of course I like vocals. Straightforward enough. But...okay, that really doesn't seem adequate. Not for what dubstep is, and not for how weird my boyfriend gets about my appreciation for it.
I need to know more about what it is.
Okay! An early supporter was John Peel. I like John Peel well enough. This bodes well. A gentleman called Plastician was an early practitioner...I was talking about neuroplasticity earlier tonight! It is often dissonant and dark...that's kind of like my soul, amirite?
This is actually a super-interesting quote (and I am so sorry that this is from Wikipedia) by Kode9: the "track is so empty it makes [the listener] nervous, and you almost fill in the double time yourself, physically, to compensate". You know, I think he might be right, and I think I like it when my music makes me feel nervous. I think I just want my my music to make me feel. Huh. Maybe dubstep is deeper than I gave it credit for being?
And honestly, I enjoy the drop.

Now, I don't like brostep. I thought all dubstep was brostep, and it's not. DAMN YOU, SKRILLEX!
Then I found The Glitch Mob's remix of The White Stripe's Seven Nation Army, and I started to wonder. Eventually, I stumbled across Adventure Club's remix of Brand New's Daisy, and thought HMMMMM, and I looked into this so-called "Adventure Club", and decided to join their little club.
I'm not even gonna lie, it's partly because they're based in Montréal and I do love Montréal, and rock on, Canada!

HERE IS A YOUTUBE PLAYLIST!

First up, we have Adventure Club's remix of Foxes' Youth. The beginning to this is kind of heartachy - don't tell me our youth is running out / it's only just begun - and then the build to the drop feels like heartbeats, and the drop underscores the theme - don't tell me our youth is running out - and we've only just begun. This isn't a plea don't bring me down; this is a statement that the music will not permit you to bring us down.
The Bassnectar remix of Ellie Goulding's Lights builds to an illuminated crescendo before the drop.  The remix has a strobe light feeling to it, almost more than it has a dubstep feeling, at least until the drops, but it works for the lyrics and the style of the song. I think this has echoes of the brand of dubstep to which you can slam and twirl around on the dancefloor.
We have another visit from Adventure Club - their remix of Lips' Everything to Me.  This is a weird and kind of weirdly awesome official(?) video. You can fight but you won't always win followed by the drop...yes, yes that is good. You can fight but you won't always win.
Moving on, we have the first of two remixes of Meg and Dia's Monster - the Kicks n Licks remix. This one is quite electric, and I feel like it would be getting closer to brostep if it wasn't sampling a Meg and Dia song.
I have selected for your auditory pleasure Dexcell's remix of The xx's Angels. They keep the breathiness of the original, and really dance it up more than they dubstep it up, really. But they do dance it up well.
Metric! Collect Call by Metric! Adventure Club's remix of Collect Call by Metric! Canadians remixing Canadians.  Emily Haines has such a pretty voice, and our lovely Adventure Club remixed to complement it. They let her have her epic parts, and they do the drop (there are good drops in this song) during her quieter parts. This is a well-played, well-shared remix.
There is actually another remix of Meg and Dia's Monster on this list - the DotEXE remix. I think this gets into slightly more hardcore dubstep territory than anything else I've linked, and it sounds a lot more mechanical, but the sweet vocals make that all okay.
Adventure Club makes one last appearance, remixing Brand New's Daisy. I might be biased because I love Daisy to begin with,  but the melancholic vocals remixed against - and it is against - the dubstep background creates a cognitive dissonance that sounds intense. It must be something about humanity versus the machine...
Finally, we have my introduction to dubstep, Seven Nation Army by The White Stripes, remixed by The Glitch Mob. You might know it from the GI Joe trailer. It's epic. I have nothing else to say.


*Cue, if this was the type of blog on which people actually commented, a thousand people telling me that the songs I have referenced are not actually dubstep.

pinch myself 'cause too much is not enough

Tonight, we will look at a few new videos.

We'll start with Suede's It Starts And Ends With You. This starts off really Suede-y, and then gets weirdly...boy band. They get it back by the end, but it's a weird few minutes.
I like the video. It's kind of stripped down, but with funky lighting, and it works.  I'm not entirely sure that this is a return to Britpop, but they sound pretty damn good and, while I'm sure they have disappointed numerous fans, I doubt they hate themselves for this one.
So that's good.

The internet would like you to know that this video is "seedy". 
I've got a foetus on a leash. There are no foetuses in the music video for Nick Cave & The Bad Seed's Jubilee Street, but don't worry! It is classic, classic Nick Cave. The song and the video both, and you will love every minute of it. There's a bit at the end where the lightning starts and I think I may have purred. IT FITS SO WELL. The video gets 10/10, but I think I mostly adore the song. I am so excited for this album.
I feel like this should go without saying, but do not watch this video at work or anywhere that it would be inappropriate for someone to notice that you are looking at nude women.

I can't grab the video, so here's the link.

Hey Marseilles released Bright Stars Burning just recently. Is it just me, or does it sound like old-school Death Cab? I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing (although probably not a good thing), it's just...a thing. As far as lyric videos go, I suppose this one is above-average in terms of both creativity and quality. There are bits - "you can go back home / but I'll never let go / you can just walk away / I won't leave you  alone" - that are very well done, and others (all the cycling backwards) that just are tired indie cliches.

This isn't a video, it's a link to the Summer Heart remix of Ghost Beach's Faded.

Oh, man, I love this remix. I think it makes me nostalgic for the good bits of summer when I was a teenager. Ghost Beach is one of my current favourites, and this remix does them justice.

just a quickie

Tonight by Theme Park: for when you want a disco-esque, upbeat song accompanied by a video of people pretending to have a better time than you will tonight.

~come on baby let's fly tonight~

richey

I didn't have the heart to post this yesterday, but yesterday marked eighteen years, although only nine for me.
I still hope - maybe even assume - every year that this this year will be the one that he decides that enough is enough and it's time to come home. Maybe not home home, but just to say hello, I am alive, carry on, as you were.
It never happens, of course. His family thinks it so unlikely that it will that they have had him declared legally dead - but the band still puts aside his share of the earnings, just in case. We can't afford to have hope, but we do anyways.
I like to think that he would, at the least, appreciate the conflicting and complicated feelings he generates in us.

I knew that someday I was gonna die
And I knew before I died
Two things would happen to me
That number one: I would regret my entire life
And number two: I would want to live my life over again