Et justice pour... bowling?

Okay, yeah, I grew up in Jersey -- which means that going to visit my folks involves catching a bus out of the ever-so-lovely Port Authority. Those of you familiar with this great wonder of architectural ugliness and terrible lighting which serves as NYC's main bus station (and also, apparently, a temporary residence for about 10% of the city's weirdoes at any given moment) are also probably familiar with the bowling alley on the second floor. Those of you who aren't have probably been to a dirty bus station or a dirty bowling alley at least once in your life, and can still understand why it's unfortunate that the bus I usually take leaves from a gate right next to it. I'm used to running past it, eyes averted in snobbish horror, because I'm an asshole. Which is what I was doing yesterday, when I stopped dead in my tracks. Because the song emanating from the entrance, along with a faint stench of feet and beer, was Justice's D.A.N.C.E.


I don't think I can think of a better barometer of what is not cool than a bowling alley. In a bus station. Ed Banger's poster child, the ultimate in disaffected French hipster elite, is now in the same genre of music as EEEVERYBODY DAAANCE NOW; what was, eighteen months ago, the hottest dance track at the coolest of the cool kid parties has devolved into a soundtrack for the garishly carpeted space where drunks from Jersey kill an hour before taking public trans back to the 'burbs. Was the Port Authority taken over by slightly out-of-touch hipsters, or does the zeitgeist cycle move so quickly these days that bands go from most-blogged-about-electro-outfit-ever to bowling alley background noise in less than a year? (Note that D.A.N.C.E. was only officially released in May 2007.) What the hell is going on?

Google VP of Engineering joins EMI as President of digital

I dismissed yesterday's "big news" that a CIO at Google had been hired as a president at (my former employer) EMI as about as likely to be true as Techcrunch suing Facebook and Gmail warping the space-time continuum -- but apparently, both the LA Times and a press release from EMI confirm that it's true. It's definitely a gutsy move, and a big symbolic step in the right direction for a company that recently fired half its staff worldwide due to, well, more or less, the implications of the internet, but how much change can one high-ranking guy actually enact? What? Marrying music and technology? Getting people who understand technology and the internet to work in music? It's a great idea, EMI -- only thing is, you're about a decade too late.

Need something to do tonight?

Check out Low Level Flight at Arlene's Grocery TONIGHT if you're in NYC!

Neon Neon's "Stainless Style"

Neon Neon -- I Lust U (featuring Cate Le Bon)

Neon Neon, the collaboration between Boom Bip (who I've had a soft spot for ever since he released that amazing track with folk favourite Nina Nastasia) and Gruff Rhys (of Super Furry Animals), have finally released their first album Stainless Style. You might remember Boom Bip's Neon Neon "Stainless Style" mixtape from November, which featured a few tracks from the album, as well as Prince, Janet Jackson, Neil Young, and that crazy catchy funereal Goblin track which you probably know better from Justice's "Phantom" (which, unlike "D.A.N.C.E.", doesn't make me want to claw my eyes out every time I hear it.) The album, after a long delay, came out this tuesday on Lex Records, and is basically concept album about... John DeLorean (yeah, that's right, DeLorean, as in the car in Back to the Future. Gary, are you reading this?)

Pitchfork described Stainless as a culmination of recent hipster zeitgeist (actually... pretty accurate) and my friend John brushed it off as a weaker Sebastién Tellier ripping off Kavinsky(whose alter ego died in a car crash in 1986 and apparently is making music from beyond the grave -- check out the video for Testarossa Autodrive, which is so cool it hurts, if you haven't seen it.) But, er, it's a really well done culmination of hipster zeitgeist, and I mean, I really like Sebastién Tellier, and Kavinsky, and also The Knife and Ladytron, which "I Lust U" in particular also recalls -- though Boom Bip's other influences, from hip hop to mechanical car clinking noises, plus a heavy dose of 80's pop and Italo disco, surface throughout the album. And, uh, I kind of can't stop listening to the album.

Download an older mix of "I Lust U" from XLR8R or stream the whole album on imeem. Tracks to note besides "I Lust You": "Trick for Treat", which features Spank Rock and Sean Tillman, the synthy "Belfast," and the "Neon Theme," which just sounds like a badass 80's movie soundtrack.

dressed in the dark?

In fourth grade someone's zitty older brother weeded the banks of the polluted stream next to my school and called it a nature trail, and my scribbles with Crayola magic markers won the competition to make a logo for the trail. The school got teeshirts with the logo printed, and just around the time when I would have actually started wearing it, my mother threw it away. This isn't a good story, but it's sort of almost relevant to the fact that Hot Chip and Threadless have teamed up for a Made in the Dark teeshirt competition. Basically, design a teeshirt around the theme of "made in the dark" (the name of their latest album), and the winners can get all kinds o' cool sheeit, like Hot Chip's full discography, a $500 Threadless gift card,  or a MicroKorg keyboard, not to mention getting to snicker at some douchebag on the L train wearing the shirt you designed. Maybe the winning design will be almost as cool as the Packanack Elementary Nature Trail teeshirt whose loss I'm still bemoaning.

In other news, as if you didn't know, Frontside favourites Chromeo open for Justice at the most ambitiously booked show of 2008 tonight at MSG -- oh, wait, I mean the WaMu Theatre, while most of the music-relevant world is waiting in security lines at LaGuardia for their flights to Austin for SXSW.  And Myspace FINALLY gets it together and is talking about launching a music service, possibly by the end of this year -- and actually with the support of EMI, Warner, and Sony BMG. (More on that at Daily Swarm).

Beatles to be available on iTunes; REM to be available on iLike

I don't care too much for money 'cause money won't buy me love -- but now it'll get me Abbey Road on my computer. Finally, The Beatles are going to be available on iTunes -- and it only cost Apple four hundred million dollars.

Meanwhile, R.E.M. are planning to pre-release their album Accelerate exclusively on iLike one week before its official release on April 1. iLike has been one of the fastest-growing music sites of late and is pretty much the single thing holding Facebook's attempt to encroach on Myspace's hold over music social networking -- seriously, if this were a band posting an album for streaming on Myspace before the release date, it would hardly be news-worthy. A few months ago, though, iLike was another glitchy Last.FM rip off which was awkwardly linked up with garageband.com, but not so anymore -- and this certainly gives the site a lot more cred. Says REM lead singer Michael Stipe: "We wanted to do something super fast and superreal." Read the whole story at the Wired blog.

what i'm listening to lately 1.0

Manchester's Working For a Nuclear Free City played their first shows ever in NYC this week. I tagged along to one of them as a friend's +1 because of the "free" thing, you know, but ended up actually... really digging the band and sort of can't stop listening to them since.


Working For a Nuclear Free City -- Rocket

WFaNFC play layered guitar-driven synth-y dream pop (?) that's somehow both shoegazey and dancey and incorporates influences from more weird shit than I can comprehend. Mysteriously, most of their songs seem to work as the soundtrack to the entirety of my Friday night, from the getting-ready-drinking-vodka-red-bull part, to the dark-bar-bright-lights-dancing part, to the mopey subway ride home alone, to the part where i drink half a Brita filter of water and lay on my floor with my huge DJ headphones staring up at the ceiling which is still kind of spinning while bemoaning my existence but secretly being pretty content about how awesome my headphones are and how awesome whatever I'm listening to sounds right then (you do it too, shut up.) (Also, for those of you that know the weird crap I listen to, Pitchfork gave them a 7.8/10, so it's not like I'm alone in loving their sound, either.)

If you missed WFaNFC at Music Hall of Williamsburg yesterday, they're playing a handful of showcases at SXSW, so try to catch them there. Or just check them out (and stream a lot more of their songs) at Myspace.

Canadian Blast BBQ at SXSW

Are you going to be at SXSW?  Not so keen on Rachael Ray?  You should probably come to the Canadian Blast BBQ.  Even if you're not Canadian you're welcome, as long as you have a SXSW badge, 'sall good.  Canadians are nice people, and also, the bands playing are pretty damn awesome:

United Steel Workers of Montreal

The Pack AD

City and Colour (which is the surprisingly cool acoustic side project of Dallas Green, lead singer of Ontario hardcore outfit Alexisonfire)

Hot Springs (who we at Frontside here are particularly fond of, despite the fact that they have the least google-able band name ever)

Dragonette (the Midnight Juggernauts' remix of their song "I Get Around" -- listen to it here at hypem-- was probably one of my favourite songs of 2007)

and a bunch of awesome hip-hop, featuring Cadence Weapon, Skratch Bastid, Grand Analog, etc....

Wednesday 3/12 from 3 to 7 PM, under the big top at Brush Square (across from the Austin convention center.)  Be there. Or else. K. Cool. 

Canadianblast.com

or be friends with Canadian Blast @ Myspace and Facebook

Pitchfork claims launch of Pitchfork.tv and licensing will not affect criticism

Daily Swarm just posted some quotes (and then predicted that assholes like me would blog about it) from a great interview that music critic Jim DeRogatis did with Pitchfork Media head honcho Ryan Schreiber regarding the upcoming launch of Pitchfork.tv and (oh, god) Pitchfork licensing -- and what that means for the ever-so-strict journalistic and critical standards of the site.

 

There are some who regard Pitchfork as the ultimate in current tastemaking; others think it's devolved from such to a bunch of narrow-minded old-school Pavement fans trying far too hard to write snarky, literary reviews bound entirely to the fast-changing hipster notions of what's cool in the totally passe genre of good old "indie rock." Regardless, its influence and audience remain wide, and this obviously has the potential to become a BFD pretty quickly (case in point: my first reaction was along the lines of "Well, better get to know one of their content editors, ASAP.")  But can a company licensing songs to video games be taken seriously as a source of unbiased criticism?  Will the user rating system (think stars on YouTube, or a section of most-viewed or most-favourited) influence the site's reviews and choice of news to publish?

DeRogatis: Fair enough, and that’s a valid point: Everybody is talking about what the models of the new media universe will be, but what you’re talking about is one of the oldest ideals that have existed from the start of print journalism: The advertising people don’t talk to the editorial people. There’s a firewall between them.

Schreiber: Right! Exactly. Exactly! And I mean, that’s the way that it’s always been set up, and that’s the way that we’re setting up Pitchfork.tv as well. And Pitchfork.tv is not even in the same city as Pitchfork editorial! They are independent things; it’s not the same people writing who are shooting.

DeRogatis: Sure. But at the end of the day, you’re the owner of all of those businesses.

 

Schreiber claims that nothing will change and that Pitchfork is still based on loyalty to fans and not, well, royalty, but DeRogatis definitely ruffled a few feathers with comparisons to the MTV empire and Jann Wenner of Rolling Stone.  Seems to me proof of Pitchfork's widespread media influence and position in pop culture, and an interest comment on the power of more personal internet-based media over print and television  -- but the final death knell of the site as a trustworthy source of unbiased indie journalism and quality criticism.  The whole interview, though lengthy, is a worthy read -- check out the whole thing at the Sun Times here.

Holy f*ck, Rachael Ray likes the Foo Fighters

BrookylnVegan and Stereogum readers couldn't control their joyful disdain when obnoxiously perky Food Network queen Rachael Ray announced that she was hosting a SXSW party, slated to feature her husband's band, The Cringe, along with Holy Fuck, The Raveonettes, Scissors For Lefty, and more. Ms. Ray doesn't care that you indie snobs criticized her, though. In fact, she cares so little that she announced it on MTV News and says she doesn't understand why you all think she's some kind of "food robot." She really DOES like indie rock, especially the Foo Fighters.

"With a band like [Holy F---], I have to say that it was the name that got us listening. But we're glad we did. They're pretty good," Ray told MTV. "And I don't understand why that's so surprising. I find it weird that they find it weird.... I'm a huge fan of rock music in general — all kinds. I like indie stuff, my favorite band is the Foo Fighters."

I don't even know where to start. Indie rock is, like, almost as fantabulous as Dunkin Donuts coffee! Dave Grohl is so totally yum-o!

Sum 41 - "With Me" (as heard on Gossip Girl)

I feel like I'm the only person on the planet who hasn't fallen on to the Gossip Girl bandwagon yet, but the really lame part of me is resisting it.  I was a fat junior high schooler during prime Dawson's Creek era and still have yet to see a single episode of it...  And I mean, I'm not fat and wearing Airwalk sneakers and Jnco's (admit it, you did too) and smearing on the black eyeliner anymore (okay, I'm still smearing on the black eyeliner), but it's sort of the same deal.  Either way, though I haven't seen the show, their website (particularly the music section, where they list every song featured in the show along with purchase links) definitely deserves a compliment. Sum 41's song "With Me" was featured a while back and promptly sold close to 100,000 copies of the single immediately after.  And, oh, hey, guess what?  The official video for the song just debuted on MTV yesterday -- and Frontside just posted it on our YouTube account.  Check it:

in-browser photoshop?

I just got my invite for A.viary's browser-based image editor Phoenix, the first of a number of programs they're planning on launching, and from just two minutes of messing around with it right now, it's pretty amazing.  Between this and Google docs... I don't really see myself using Word or (my totally illegal, horribly glitchy copy of) Photoshop much in the future.  

Mostly I'm just using this as an excuse to post a video of a Hilary-Obama love child created using Phoenix, though.  

Staerk's GenArt show

In the madness that was New York during fashion week last week, I must admit that I was actually really painfully bored (florals? flowy sheer fabrics? frumpy greys and beiges? seriously? yaaaawwn) by most things on the runways, and thus had been a bit apprehensive about attending the GenArt show, featuring Staerk (the latest line from Danish designer Camila Staerk) -- but was really pleasantly surprised by the whole thing. (The Belevedere-vodka-sponsored open bar afterwards didn't hurt thing, either. I mean, hell, I'm linking back to them in my blog, I guess those retardedly strong vodka-sodas that had me in bed by 9 PM were actually a good marketing move on their part, though drinking three of them was a rather mediocre decision on my behalf.)

Staerk's aesthetic is structural and tough-but-feminine, featuring silky blouses and feminine cuts mixed up with interesting leather skirts, fringed pieces mixed up with menswear-inspired tailoured cuts, and heavy black eyeliner -- more or less right up my alley.

   

"THE BLOGS WERE GOING CRAZY!"

Seriously, Hilary? Seriously? This is your attempt to win back the vote of the tech-savvy hip youth?

No dice, Mrs. C. Nooooooooo dice.

Roz Bell -- Used to Love Her

So we set Roz Bell, one of our management clients, lose with a video camera, to make a little video of his tour footage, and this is the result, set to his soon-to-be-third single, "Used to Love Her." Roz has made some funny videos for us in the past, including ones featuring his 70's alter ego.

Like it? He's playing a show in New York in March.

Roz Bell (solo acoustic)
Thursday March 13, 2008 - 6pm
Rockwood Music Hall
196 Allen Street, New York City
(between E. Houston and Stanton -- FV subway to 2nd ave)
21+. ID is required.
Tix: $5

So last week, the internet in the office was down. Here's a fact: I am "online marketing director."  This means that my working environment requires one thing only: oh, you know, internet access??  (Okay, and maybe caffeine.) I was seriously writhing in pain.  But now it's back, and I'm halfway through a venti sugar-free cinnamon dolce Americano (skim milk, no extra sugar) and it's freakishly warm for February in New York, so life, I suppose, is good again.  And I'm looking at the statistics for that Colin Munroe track and video I posted a little while ago, and it's definitely also good.  We're up to 227,000 views of the video on Youtube, and Technorati pulling up around 400 hits, and Colin getting radio airplay and coming to New York but being so busy with meetings that we couldn't .  It's so satisfying to see stuff like this happen --  you start from scratch and then suddenly the video's on Kanye's blog, on Perez Hilton, and you're watching YouTube hits explode every hour -- and somehow you were part of it.  (Also, there's nothing I love more than reading the YouTube comments.)

Anyhoo. I went to see The Teenagers at Studio B this past weekend -- they played and then afterwards Hot Chip had a DJ set.  I've been way into The Teenagers since I first heard that Au Revoir Simone remix they did for that Kitsune comp a while back (listen at Kitsune's myspace), and I definitely wasn't disappointed.  I heard that their free show at Cake Shop earlier in the day was mediocre, but I mean, really, why would you go see the Teenagers at Cake Shop at four in the afternoon?  Regardless, despite some shenanigans with Studio B (The bar doesn't take credit cards?  The ATM broke? All exits are final? Wait, so we can't drink, we can't get cash to drink, and we cant go outside to go to another ATM or even for a cigarette? There were a lot of angry hipsters, and a pretty long line at the coat check -- sucks when a venue's issues interfere with fans enjoying a band's set.) it was pretty great, especially when the band had random girls from the crowd come up on stage to speak the girls' parts in "Homecoming."  Which, by the way, if you haven't seen the video, you should -- here, though if you're at work and dirty language bothers your coworkers, put headphones on.

we want those flashing lights

So that Colin Munroe track I posted a few days ago?  Here's the video for it which I've been posting around the internet....  Pretty cool, no?  Guess who else thinks so?  Mr K. West himself.  No joke -- he just posted it in his blog! OOOOOOOOH YEAAAAAAAAA.

And in case you missed it last time around, you can DOWNLOAD THE TRACK FOR FREE HERE:  Colin Munroe -- (I Want Those) Flashing Lights

you learn something new every day

Did you know that the G train has a schedule?!!?!?!?

Neither did I. Too bad it actually doesn't ever, you know, run, let alone on time.

great weekend, really.

Yeah, yeah, I know. Too sick to blog, Meg? Really? Really. I think my body wanted to make up for all the sleep I've denied it in the past year all at once so it smacked me with a stupidly high fever and knocked me unconscious for 36 hours or something. Anyhow, enough disclaimers. The one productive thing I did do in the past five days (other than infect the internet with Colin Munroe's video -- check it out at the Frontside youtube!) was watch "The Lives of Others (Das Leben der Anderen)", which was actually probably the best film I've seen in at least six months, and if you haven't seen it, you should probably Netflix it. Like, right now.

I guess I should be pretty excited about this giant summer festival on the East coast this summer, All Points West Festival, to be held at Liberty State Park, no? From August 8th-10th this summer, Lady Liberty is going to be looking down on a different type of huddled mass yearning to be free -- the sweaty, beer-soaked, raucous rock show crowd. And though nothing's actually been said but everybody keeps mumbling *cough*Radiohead*cough* as the most likely headliners, as they declined Coachella because the lack of public trans makes it uber eco-unfriendly, and the metro area certainly has tons of public trans. But, to be honest, I'm not as psyched as I ought to be -- I've never really been much of a fan of the giant sweaty field festivals. I can tolerate sweat and beer spills and crowds in dark sketchy basements when the band is four feet away and the sound is great, but somehow straining my ears above to hear a few notes of my favourite songs wafting above the sweaty masses has never really appealed to me. Sun stroke and the inevitable dust bowl or mud pit that results from the whole thing -- nooooo dice, my friends. No dice.

In other general news, this morning I talked another new-New-Yorker into buying these seriously amazing little credit-card sized maps of lower manhattan and the MTA subway system from this store called Tiny Living over on 7th between 1st and A. You can get them of basically any neighborhood or public trans in the city, and they're seriously the most useful thing ever. I want to personally buy a drink for whoever invented these things. You know how you think you're all slick and you know the city like the back of your hand because you've been living here for years, and then suddenly for some reason you realise you've actually never walked down this random street in the West Village because since you graduated from NYU you've spent the past three years between the Bedford and Lorimer stops on the L and forgot that it went further west than Union Square? This makes that not so embarassing, because you don't have to, you know, ask someone and thereby reveal that you're lost, or even worse, pull out some huge tourist map, just discreetly glance at a little card in your wallet. I picked a bunch of these up for the Frontside guys when they flew out here for CMJ (some of them had never been to NY before!) and I mean, they all got back to Vancouver in one piece, so I guess it helped them out.

Apple kills off those little plastic discs we used to spend our allowance on in junior high school

So the entire computer-using world has been freaking out all day over Mac's Keynote Live presentation, including the new MacBook Air -- the smallest/lightest notebook ever, yada yada yada (check out the advertisment for it at here at Valleywag.)  Gary and I were sitting here reading about it as it all leaked, and this whole no-CD/DVD drive thing is probably the gutsiest move ever. Our first reaction -- whaaaaaaaaaaat? OH MY GOD, THAT WAY YOU HAVE TO BUY FROM iTUNES AND HAVE NO REASON TO BUY CDS IF YOU WANT MUSIC ON YOUR COMPUTER. And then they announced iTunes movie rentals, and when you think of this in conjunction with Netflix's recent announcement about movies being available online... Is the average consumer ready, at this point, to entirely forget about those little plastic discs? Maybe not yet, but it's definitely a huge slap in the face to tangible media.  Apple's basically saying that the age of CDs and DVDs is over or will soon be over -- and they're doing what they can to hasten the transition.  

And have you read all this stuff about the new iPhone? It's like Facebook plus Radiohead, seriously. Basically, if you're savvy with that kind of thing and want to write an app or widget for the iPhone, you can submit it to Apple, and then users pay-as-they-wish for them, and you go home with 70% of whatever profit you make (and I'm assuming obviously Apple takes the other 30%). So programmers get to feel that they're freelance developers for Apple, potentially get thrown a few bucks for their work, and meanwhile Apple probably gets some rights to all this new software and is automatically in on the loop for whatever new innovative stuff is being developed for their hardware... It's pretty crazy to think of your phone as now being full of user-generated content.

Cupcakes and Kanye remixes

So apparently I am way behind on jumping on this bandwagon, but somehow I had managed to never visit Magnolia Bakery on Bleecker Street until this weekend.  Oh.  My.  God.  I really think that might be the best street corner in all of New York -- cupcakes and Marc by Marc Jacobs?  Yes, please.  Either way, if you haven't been there either, I seriously recommend.  You can only get a dozen cupcakes at a time, but they're only $2 each and you basically go in there and fill up your own little box, and then probably just walk across the street to the park to eat them there.  The red velvet ones were my personal favourite.  

 

ANYHOW.  Enough about cupcakes, even though I'm definitely sitting here in the office looking out the window at the Empire State Building dreaming about them...  This week it seems like we're all about Colin Munroe here.  He's worked in the past as a producer for a lot of hip-hop acts and is actually kind of a big deal there, but his solo stuff is much more what you'd expect from a lanky white guy, which is to say much more indie pop-rock.  A few months ago he made a pretty rad stop-motion video for his song "World of Pain"  (check that out here at the Frontside YouTube) and his solo album "Don't Think Less of Me" comes out this spring, but he hasn't abandoned his love of hip-hop.  In fact, he just came out with his own version of Kanye West's "Flashing Lights" -- pretty cool, if you ask me, and his indie-boy vocals work suprisingly well with Kanye's beats and orchestration.   Download it for free below.... and the video soon to come!

DOWNLOAD: Colin Munroe -- (I Want Those) Flashing Lights 

or check out Colin @ Myspace

YouTube killed the television star?

So I knew YouTube was actually a really, really big deal when my mother (who has been known to call me for assistance in checking her email) mentioned it at the Thanksgiving dinner table, and today, TechCrunch reports that YouTube has seen an EIGHTEEN PERCENT increase in viewers in the past TWO MONTHS alone, and other sites such as Crackle have seen traffic double in the past months.  Is the writer's strike to blame?  Sure, I doubt anyone's sitting around consciously thinking "Well, hey, my TV machine is lacking creative and amusing content these days, and I really don't want to watch reruns of Law and Order: SVU for the 8491th time, therefore I am going to use the internet machine to access video sites to suck up these lazy afternoon hours today," but the timing does seem awfully coincidential.

This of course, is pretty exciting to those of us here at Frontside's online department -- aside from wasting all our time on YouTube anyhow, a lot of our artists have some pretty awesome videos online and, hey, if you're not watching A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila on that channel that was supposed to be about music videos or something back in the 80's, maybe you'll want to check out our YouTube channel instead.