i-eclectica.org

This is an example for what I absolutely love about today’s music. Click on the image to go to Montreal’s A-Track MySpace site and listen to his 2007 remix of Kayne Wests’ 2007 “Stronger” - which itself was a remix of Daft Punk’s 2001 famous “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” - which in turn was a remix of the 1970s’ “Cola Bottle Baby” by Edwin Birdsong (mp3 clip). What a musical lineage! Such re-creations of course have happened in the past with artists reinterpreting previous artist’s compositions, but with today’s sampling and mixing methods the originals are actually preserved in consequent versions; in this case, Birdsong’s original recording can still be heard in this fourth incarnation, albeit just as tiny little specs. This is postmodernism in action - a constant flow of deconstruction and construction. Fabulous!

In Rainbows, as a title, implies a sense of comfort and delightfulness. Symbolically, rainbows are more likely to be associated with kittens and warm blankets than the grim and glum circumstances Radiohead is known for soundtracking. There’s a slight, if expected, twist at play. The band is more than familiar with the unpleasant moods associated with colors like red, green, and blue — all of which, of course, are colors within a rainbow — all of which are present, and even mentioned, during the album. On a couple levels, then, In Rainbows is not any less fitting as a Radiohead album title than “Myxomatosis” as a Radiohead song title. Despite references to “going off the rails,” hitting “the bottom,” getting “picked over by the worms,” being “dead from the neck up,” and feeling “trapped” (twice), along with Radiohead Wordplay Deluxe Home Edition pieces like “comatose” and “nightmare” — in the same song! double score! — the one aspect of the album that becomes increasingly perceptible with each listen is how romantic it feels, albeit in the way that one might find the bioport scenes in David Cronenberg’s eXistenZ to be extremely hot and somewhat unsettling. Surprisingly, some of the album’s lyrics are even more personal/universal and straightforward than anything on The Eraser, the album made by Thom Yorke and Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich. “I’m an animal trapped in your hot car,” from “All I Need,” has to be one of the saddest, most open-hearted metaphors used to express unrequited love. “House of Cards” begins with “I don’t want to be your friend/I just want to be your lover/No matter how it ends/No matter how it starts,” and the one with the worms includes “I’d be crazy not to follow/Follow where you lead/Your eyes/They turn me.” This effective weaving of disparate elements — lyrical expressions commonly associated with the band, mixed in with ones suited for everyday love ballads — goes for the music as well. The album is very song-oriented, with each track constantly moving forward and developing, yet there are abstract electronic layers and studio-as-instrument elements to prevent it from sounding like a regression. In Rainbows will hopefully be remembered as Radiohead’s most stimulating synthesis of accessible songs and abstract sounds, rather than their first pick-your-price download.

[via Allmusic]

This is a beautiful clip based on Alex Produkt’s and Kathleen Weldon’s animation of Patrick Watson’s “The Great Escape” (from his enchanting 2006 album “Close to Paradise”).

(Alex Produkt and Kathleen Weldon launched this year THE LOST YEARS VOL.II, a 52 pages, colour/black & white limited edition comic with few words detailing a day in the life of a young boy and his teddy bear. Weaving between reality and the dark dream-time of the imagination, his teddy bear serves as a sort of shaman guide on his journey from home, to school, to the edge of nowhere.)

[via Wooster Collective]

This is quite a bizarre little clip, striking me as the playfulness in which cruelty and childhood innocence can come together; it certainly brings up such memories in myself. Weirdness in those days was a concept that was foreign until you started to be inducted into the world of ‘growing up’. The song sprung from the creative brains of Múm, an Icelandic experimental indie electronica group; it can be found on their brand new album “Go Go Smear the Poison Ivy“.

‘The Awakening’ featuring Ursula Rucker, taken from the 4hero album ‘Play With The Changes’ released 2007. Nice video, great lyrics (of course: it’s Rucker, after all).