Re: Asobi S Alaska Film Download
Towanda Tuning
Will Butler is probably best known as little brother of Win Butler, lead singer for Arcade Fire, and fellow band member, but recently he's done quite a good job of breaking free of that moniker. In 2014 Butler was nominated for an academy award for his work on the music for the Joaquin Phoenix film Her, and then in May of this year he dropped his debut solo album Policy on Merge records.
I think that at this point, we can get over the whole actor turned musician stigma that has followed Donald Glover around. Bringing it up now seems needless seeing as how he has left his most prominent acting presence, Community, for his Childish Gambino persona. But when you look at what he's doing now, the stigma has become an asset. It has been helping him mold this new venture. Even after his early releases proclaimed that he is just a rapper, this is not the case. A 72 page script, a short film that loosely follows said script, and a release of a "bootleg" vinyl of Because the Internet barely begin to describe the experience that he is attempting to create. Childish Gambino succeeded with an incredible show at the Riviera this past Wednesday.
During a nearly 2-hour performance, Wainwright's tenor voice was in top-notch condition and his band sounded very strong. A dazzling "April Fools" came up early, followed by "Song of You" that prompted him to note that it was a "good point of the show to find out how the rest of the set will go." Based on the crowd's reaction, the answer would have to be "quite well." Even though Wainwright's latest album, the Mark Ronson-produced Out of the Game, is a step back to pop music after a few years dabbling in other interests, old songs didn't necessarily take on new arrangements. And new ones didn't exactly have the Ronson touch either. The ones that'd work in a lounge still sounded swanky and those with some muscle didn't lose a beat. The band shuffled between each genre effortlessly and their leader's showmanship led the way. However, after a rocking "The One You Love", the set unfortunately hit a snag when Wainwright turned things over for a few songs from the upcoming Sing Me The Songs That Say I Love You film featuring his mother's music. Now, Teddy Thompson and Krystle Warren are both nice talents (and Kate McGarrigle's music is a treat), but it was a Rufus Wainwright show and his departure from the stage was a cue for everyone to use phones for five minutes.
It may not have been the actual Talking Heads on stage last night but it was hard to tell the difference. This Must Be the Band burned down the house (so to speak) Friday night with their recreation of the live concert film (and album) Stop Making Sense at the Vic. The recreation was so on point it was hard to tell the difference between the film and concert. As he mentioned after the show, it was obvious Charlie Otto watched the movie everyday for a month.
The crowd was full of Talking Heads fans young and old, toddlers to grandmothers (yes, I saw a grandmother and a toddler at the show). No matter how old they were, everyone enjoyed themselves dancing and singing at the top of their lungs. Just like the film, the show began slowly with "David Byrne" (aka Charlie Otto) singing "Psycho Killer" with his acoustic guitar and a boombox. The rest of the band was slowly brought in through the remainder of the show and soon the entire house was rocking to "This Must Be The Place."
Once the band finished their recreation of the film they came right back on stage to continue playing until they were "kicked out" of the Vic. Ad-libbing the entire rest of the show by taking requests from the audience couldn't have made a better ending to the night. It was clear the real Talking Heads fans appreciated This Must Be The Band's dedication to bringing to life a band everyone enjoys.
Despite the wishes of their most ardent fans and even the band themselves, no discussion of Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark is complete without mentioning "If You Leave". Although OMD had a string of brilliant, and far superior, songs prior to appearing on the soundtrack to John Hughes' 1986 film "Pretty in Pink", "If You Leave" catapulted them into Stateside stardom. Success can be a double-edged sword, however, and as the song became an icon in its own right, it quickly eclipsed much of their other work. It came as little surprise then that Andy McCluskey introduced it on Saturday night at the Park West as the song that nearly ended their career. The earnestness with which they performed it, however, proved that the best way to face the parts of the past you like least is by embracing them.
The Synchronator DVD displays the process via ten short films ranging from a minute-and-a-half to six. The audio that drives these pieces is almost uniformly low-end and buzzy, sounding as much like a badly-grounded speaker cable as anything you'd associate with music, the multiple streams of sound nonetheless combine in the synchronator box, spitting out rhythmic, slightly hallucinatory patterns and effects onto the TV. Although 90% of the DVD is black and white, the Synchronator is also wired for color, as each of the three inputs controls the Red, Green, and Blue on the screen.
Is the Synchronator for you? First of all, be aware that the DVD, while being a region 0 DVD is also shown in PAL, so you will need some sort of all-region player to play or (or a laptop, possibly). If that's no impediment, then this disc is recommend to fans of The Flicker, the films of Viking Eggeling, the Paper Rad collective of Providence, RI, and the 2003 video by LoVid, who will also be playing Lampo in about a month.
Featuring 41 bands in 5 venues for 6 days, Noise Pop Festival introduced film into its line up and created the Noise Pop Film Festival, a series of film screenings related to music: documentaries, rockumentaries, music mockumentaries, etc.
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