Marrying the powerful lyrics – a ‘metaphor of the Dresden bombing and a beautiful relationship ruined’ with strong graphic animation, Robisrob’s promo for OMD takes its lead from classic James Bond title sequences. “The rotoscoped style seemed to fit the illustrated look of OMD’s visual output and the slow-motion movements and fighting narrative were a perfect fit for the aggravation I could hear in Andy’s voice” explains the director. “I replaced the knife and fistfights for a couple fighting and pieced it together to tell the story of a devastating break-up.” [Source]
Finally it’s here: our first proper taste of Boards of Canada’s Tomorrow’s Harvest. After much lead-up, you can now listen to the album’s “Reach for the Dead.” Much like you’d expect, the track takes a sombre route, hitting those BoC touchstones while adding a whole new layer of updated and wicked-eerie atmospherics to the mix. Expand your mind below. As previously reported, Tomorrow’s Harvest will be available on June 11 via Warp. [Source]
Love for Sale is the second album by Boney M. The album includes the hits “Ma Baker” (#96 on the Billboard Hot 100, #31 on the Club Play Singles chart), and “Belfast”. It also includes covers: “Love for Sale” (by Cole Porter), “Have You Ever Seen the Rain?” (by Creedence Clearwater Revival), and “Still I’m Sad” (by The Yardbirds).
In its nearly three decades of existence, Skinny Puppy has established itself as a groundbreaking innovative voice in the world of electronic music. Fearless in both its musical experimentation and voicing a stance on the issues of our times, the new album, Weapon, is no exception.
This stunning new album stands as a commentary on that which it is named after, the Weapon, or more specifically, to the concurrent glorification of the gun culture and simultaneous horror at the devastation the gun can cause. Given this view, the pop undertones of the albums opening “wornin” and the compelling counterpoint of the vocals and lyrics seem to reflect our mass media homogenization of an instrument of death into an entertainment centerpiece. “illisiT” could then be focusing on the authoritarian control applied to us under the guise of protecting us from the criminal element. Though possibly it is from the view of the average citizen, arming themselves against the threat of each other. The more it is analyzed, the more it could be pondered on varying levels. Perhaps the classic Skinny Puppy sounds evident in the song “solvent” are a nod to not only the past, but to a bleak Orwellian future, cycle of the weapon leads only to power in the hands of those who have no fear of using it. Are we facing a 1984 dystopia filtered through a Kafkaesque lens? A world where the illusion of power given to the private citizen afforded ownership of a weapon distracts them from the Big Brother drones that watch overhead?
Parallels could certainly be drawn from our own society to a track like “tsudanama”, where the ever building menace of the mechanized rhythms crashes over the listener in waves as the vocals at times seem to take the tone of the voice of protest, standing against the inevitable tide of the dystopian path of progress. Then does “plasiCage” implore the listener to take up the fight against a gun worship culture and the spiraling towards oligarchy? Or are the mournful tones “terminal” a funeral dirge for our society?
Could the weapon be the gun, or the one who wields it? Is it in creating an arms race among the populace, or does it lie in the resulting authoritarian control given to those who are charged with protecting us from ourselves? Is it the power to profit from the cycle? Is it the singular act of speaking against the conditioning of our thoughts and actions? [Source]
Francis and the Lights is the stage name of American songwriter Francis Farewell Starlite. The term “and the Lights” refers both to the lights on a stage and pixels on a computer screen.
Hearts of Stone has been called “the best album Bruce Springsteen never recorded”, which is not quite accurate. Springsteen did pen the title track and the radio-friendly “Talk To Me”, and is credited along with Southside Johnny Lyon and Steve Van Zandt on “Trapped Again”, but Van Zandt takes solo credit for the remaining six tracks. More to the point, this record pointed the way to the kind of music the reincarnated “Little Steven” would begin making in the early 1980s. Van Zandt tapped photographer Frank Stefanko to shoot the album cover art, after meeting Stefanko when they worked together with Springsteen on Darkness on the Edge of Town.
After the demise of the Dwight Twilley Band, Twilley continued as a solo act, keeping Bill Pitcock IV on lead guitar and adding Susan Cowsill on harmony vocals. This lineup released the album Twilley for Shelter/Arista in 1979, although the album’s most successful song, “Darlin’”, featured backing vocals by Phil Seymour. His next album, Blueprint, co-produced by Jack Nitzsche, was rejected by Arista after the failure of the 1979 single “Somebody to Love” although it was assigned an Arista release number. Blueprint ultimately was never released, keeping Twilley out of circulation until his Shelter contract expired at the end of 1981.
Sincerely is the debut album from the Dwight Twilley Band, released in 1976 on Shelter Records. The band consisted solely of Dwight Twilley (guitar, piano, lead and harmony vocals) and Phil Seymour (drums, bass, percussion, lead and harmony vocals), although touring band member Bill Pitcock IV played lead guitar on every song except for “Sincerely” itself. The album credited production to Oister, which was the original name of the Dwight Twilley Band; later reissues have credited production directly to Twilley and Seymour.
