Faux Magazine » Music

Grinderman RMX 2

Mike Coleman — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 20:18:08 +0000

Forthcoming after their recently announced disbanding, Nick Cave’s Grinderman project have returned for one last grizzly hurrah; their posthumously released ‘Grinderman RMX 2′. It is, quelle suprise, a remix album of their critically lauded Grinderman 2 album. For anyone unfamiliar with Grinderman’s sinister ruminations, the band have spent the past five years troubling ears and speaker stacks with their gritty, skewed rock ‘n’ roll, led by the ever charsimatic, manic spectre of Nick Cave. Excitingly, whilst the prospect of a Remix album may suggest ‘Nick Cave dubstep RMX’ surfacing on Youtube, this particular remix album boasts collaborations with a similarly-hued collection of icons including Josh Homme, The National, UNKLE, Cat’s Eyes, Factory Floor and the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s Nick Zinner.

Nick Zinner has taken the album’s wailing ‘Bellringer Blues’ and skewed it into a rattling, fuzz-driven lope, complete with grainy, ‘Zinner-cam’ shot live footage. View the video below and rest assured that ethough they may be no more, at least we’re guaranteed that Cave’s blistering Grinderman project will offer one last tantalising shot of wild-eyed, whiskey soaked rock ‘n’ roll energy.

Grinderman 2 RMX is released on March 26th via Mute Records.

Bombay Bicycle Club – How Can You Swallow So Much Sleep

Mike Coleman — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 20:03:24 +0000

Curious, idiosyncratic and bursting with a child-like – if slightly off-kilter – sense of adventure, the latest video from Bombay Bicycle Club – to accompany the single ‘How Can You Swallow So Much Sleep’, offers visual engagement as fraught with subtle, beguiling charm as the music it accompanies. Envisioned and brought to life by animator Anna Ginsburg, the woozy, curious short took six months to fashion and finish. This meticulous aesthetic to Ginsburg’s animation makes for a pleasing change from the usual boys-in-the-band fare usually wedged in as a quick fix for single releases, whilst it’s personal, home-spun nature is perhaps complimented further by the fact Ginsburg attended school with Bombay Bicycle Club prior to this work.

Taken from Bombay Bicycle Club’s acclaimed ‘A Different Kind of Fix’, the band’s prior acquaintances have seen them chance upon the creation of a brief audio-visual pairing that feels particularly personal; it’s jittery, eccentric stylings sitting comfortably with the quivering vocals and marked personality that have won Bombay Bicycle Club so much attention. There might be a slightly unnerving quality to the protagonists dilated, wide-eyed wonder, but creepy kid and space jellyfish aside, It’s interesting, endearing and… rather nice to look at, basically.

How Can You Swallow So Much Sleep is released on the 2nd April via Island Records, You can check out the video below.

How Can You Swallow So Much Sleep is released on the 2nd April via Island Records

M.I.A – Bad Girls

Martyn Cooling — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 18:33:06 +0000

Brand new video and the return of M.I.A (if you dont count her guest spot on the abysmal Madonna single that dropped last week).

‘Bad Girls’ sees Maya venture team up with previous collaborator Romain Gavras (M.I.A – Born Free, Justice – Stress) and heads to Morroco for some casual street surfing, and car stunts. Talking about the video which was launched a couple of days ago in association with Vice’s Noisey channel, she proclaimed…

‘It was dope to have so many people from so many different backgrounds speaking so many different languages come together to create something that we believed in,” says M.I.A about the video. “I thought I was gonna die on the shoot when I saw the drifting. It was a four day shoot so everyone was on edge the whole time specifically ME when I had to do bluesteel singing to the camera while the cars did doughnuts on the wet road ten feet away. In my mind I was thinking how I was gonna deliver the video to Vice with no legs.”

You can check out the video below and find our more about M.I.A’s latest exploits at MIAUK.com

Feist – The Bad In Each Other

Martyn Cooling — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 17:49:18 +0000

Feist has just unleashed the video for her latest track ‘The Bad In Each Other’ – taken from her 4th studio album ‘Metals’.

The music video (Or more accurately; Short film) directed by Martin De Thurah in Mexico, resembles a scene straight out of No Country For Old Men. The gritty western visuals accompany Feist’s brand of folksy-alt-indie perfectly.

You can view the video below and find out more at listentofeist.com. The single drops March 26th on Cherrytree/Polydor.

Jacques Lu Cont – Church

Martyn Cooling — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 22:57:01 +0000

The many-monikered Grammy-winning producer and DJ Stuart Price is back under his Jacques Lu Cont guise, with his first original production work in nearly a decade.

New track ‘Reload’ dropped on Soundcloud at the end of last year with support from fans and contemporaries alike including Erol Alkan and Pete Tong, and now Lu Cont invites us to worship at his ‘Church’.

Premiering this weekend on Pete Tong Radio 1 show and over on US blog Stereogum, the dancefloor destroying ‘Church’ pits heavy basslines against soaring synths in the battle for supremacy.

You can check out the track below and find out more at jacqueslucont.com

Spector – Chevy Thunder

Martyn Cooling — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 23:44:09 +0000

Following Spectors trilogy of 7″ singles throughout 2011, the boys return with their major label debut – on esteemed Universal imprint, Fiction.

Already a firm live favourite from 2011′s festival appearances and a recent Jools Holland performance, Chevy Thunder is inspired by a star crossed romance derailed by prescription drug abuse and mechanophilia.

The video as just dropped and was shot on location in the wastelands of Southern California by L.A luminaries, Focus Creeps (Arctic Monkeys, Girls).

You can check out the video below and find our more about Spector at spector.co.uk.

Justice – On & On

Martyn Cooling — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 20:58:29 +0000

Acclaimed duo Justice will release their new single ‘On ‘n’ On’ (feat. Morgan Phelan of NYC’s Diamond Nights) on February 27th on Ed Banger. The ‘On ‘N’ On’ EP will include remixes from Brodinski, Erol Alkan, Rick Rubin and Tiga.

Watch the intergalactic video, directed by Alexandre Courtes below and check out the UK tour dates below that.

Justice hit the road in the UK on the following dates:

Feb 8th – Manchester Academy
Feb 9th – Bristol Academy
Feb 10th – Brixton Academy
Feb 11th – Birmingham Academy
Feb 12th – Glasgow Academy

A$AP Rocky – Wassup

Martyn Cooling — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 20:28:41 +0000

After a chance meeting with Vice Magazines global editor Andy Capper at Vice’s head office in Brooklyn, A$AP Rocky pitched an idea for his latest video, taking elements from his favourite films – Scarface, Belly, Enter The Dragon, The Warriors and, of course, Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory.

Taken with the idea, Andy got to work and recruited one of Vice’s DP’s Jacob Burghart and the video was born.

Check out the video below and find out more about A$AP at liveloveasap.com

Dominique Young Unique – She’s Unique

Martyn Cooling — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 19:13:00 +0000

Dominique Young Unique has just released the third video from her ‘Stupid Pretty’ mixtape – ‘She’s Unique’ is a bouncing, synth laden club banger backed by a fierce 808 kick – just as we’ve come to expect from Dominique.

Within a year of releasing her first mixtape ‘Domination’ DYU has gone from rapping in the basketball courts of the Robes Park projects to performing live in front of thousands alongside the likes of N.E.R.D, Big Boi, Die Antwoord and Gucci Mane.

Look out for DYU in 2012, 3 ever evolving mixtapes in, she is showing no signs of slowly down and is hell bent on bringing her long time collaborator David Alexander’s twisted dirty neo electro beats to the masses.

For more info on Dominique visit dominiqueyoungunique.com and you can check out the video for ‘She’s Unique’ below.

The Weeknd – Echoes of Silence

Eugenie.Johnson — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 16:37:49 +0000

Trilogies can be a tricky thing to pull off. If you think about some of the more famous film trilogies – say Star Wars or Lord of the Rings – the first one tends to be okay, the second one is generally the best and the last one is alright but the novelty has worn off somewhat. Musical trilogies are a rare thing, but Canadian R’n'B maestro The Weeknd, aka Abel Tesfaye, has attempted one. In nine months. Opening mixtape House of Balloons had most hipsters salivating at the prospect of an act who was skilful at piecing together synths and drumbeats with a distinct voice that was both self-referential and self-destructive. By Thursday, people were already saying that the novelty was beginning to wear off. So on this, Echoes of Silence, has there been a twist in the tale?

Sadly the answer is no, although there are some major highlights. Unfortunately, these high points on the album all come at the beginning of the mixtape. Echoes of Silence is truly top-heavy in terms of ideas: opener ‘D.D.’ sees Tesfaye straining his voice into a distinct Michael Jackson mould over pounding drums. It’s the indication that The Weeknd might be able to pull off a final flourish, backed up by the beguiling ‘Montreal’. Its apparently smooth and polished sound is subverted by the haunting vocal loops and Tesfaye’s almost unnerving insistence that he’s not to blame for a relationship breakdown, though this is softened by his admittance, albeit in French, that ‘I was crying/ I wasn’t crying.’

‘Outside’ is the first minimal ballad, more notable for its use of gentle, oriental synths than it is for Tesfaye’s voice or wordcraft. It is probably the most beautiful song musically on the mixtape, quickly shattered by the most overtly aggressive track ‘XO / The Host’, which introduces some distinctly disturbing lyrical elements to Echoes of Silence. Here, the loud-quiet-loud structure allows Tesfaye to sing of the tale of making a young woman destitute, sucking her in to a cycle of going back to him and leaving. But it’s ‘Initiation’ which takes the disquiet to the extreme, as the use of voice-distortion allows Tesfaye to take on the role of a Goblin during a drug-fuelled kidnapping.

Though this seems to be some of the best, if unsettling, work The Weeknd has done in terms of narrative lyrics, it’s unfortunately a downward spiral from there. ‘Next’ is almost too mired in R’n'B cliches to be considered an ironic take on the genre, while ‘The Fall’ has an interesting spiralling synth, but it’s too overshadowed by Tesfaye’s voice which by this time becomes grating and somewhat annoying. He doesn’t display an awful lot of vocal range, the limits to which are explored and left dormant after ‘D.D.’ By ‘The Fall,’ no inventive synths can detract from the fact that he sounds more and more like a cross between MJ and the various members of JLS. Pitchfork compared the closing title track with The Knife’s ‘Still Light’ but this is highly unkind to the Swedish band. While ‘Echoes of Silence’ is restrained, relying only on a single, simple piano melody, Tesfaye doesn’t adopt a quieter or even more sentimental tone and can no longer hold an audience’s interest. While ‘Still Light’ examined morbidity and the prospect of death and transcendence with great deft, ‘Echoes of Silence’ doesn’t strayvery far away from the general sexual theme of the mixtape, making what should be a beautiful denouement a seedy end to the trilogy.

It is safe to say that while Echoes of Silence sometimes keeps invention alive, it mostly falls into tried-and-tested R’n'B patterns and Tesfaye’s voice is too limited to add that sense of intrigue that could have been created by guest vocalists or more distortion technology. You have to commend The Weeknd for attempting something so audacious in such a short space of time, but it’s meant a decline in genuine quality and as Tesfaye sings himself, ‘you’re just the same old song.’ The novelty has well and truly worn off.

You can grab all of The Weeknd’s mixtapes from the-weeknd.com and find out more about the band at the same address. For a preview of their material check out below their standout track taken from the ‘House Of Balloons’ Mixtape – ‘The Morning’.