Video: Bat For Lashes, "What's A Girl To Do?"

It's a bit like if Lily Allen and Portishead collaborated on the soundtrack for a David Lynch film, and then had him direct the video. This album is pretty impressive, sometimes veering a bit too far into Tori-Amos territory; but songs like this one have company.

Edward Burtynsky

There's a New York Times article up about photographer Edward Burtynsky, who is probably my favorite photographer working today. Burtynsky makes enormous photographs of industrial incursions into landscapes - places where quarries make mountain ranges suddenly stop, or where massive oil tankers are being disassembled. The trick of Burtynsky's is that he makes these images fascinating and beautiful rather than morbid and foreboding. Nonetheless, the images are derived from horrific environmental destruction, and you don't lose sight of that in the images themselves.

There's a movie about him called "Manufactured Landscapes," and what's below is an excerpt.

Vinyl Record Albums = New Media

Turns out that Vinyl Video - the anachronistic late-90's media for low-fidelity, black and white video art (check out the amazing infomercial) - was lagging behind a small number of UK Pop Acts who built software into their 12" records.

"Most of these programs were written for the Sinclair Spectrum home computer series. The Sinclair Spectrum was a relatively cheap home computer system that used a television set as a monitor and loaded programs from tapes."

This article has an amazing recap of computer games built into records by the Thompson Twins, Information Society and The Freshies, and even has a few available for download.

The Spectrum's cassette medium also allowed for pirate radio stations in Eastern Europe to file-share simple programs by broadcasting the tones, which could be recorded by the software pirates of the communist era.

Also, since we're on a Vinyl Kick, 8-bit Game Hacker and Musician Cory Arcangel passes along a zine called "The Journal of Popular Noise," which puts out "issues" consisting of 7" records. I haven't heard them yet, but it's a cool idea.

MP3: The Cave Singers

Matador has just announced that they're signing a little band called The Cave Singers, formed by post-Pretty Girls Make Graves bassist Derek Fudesco. One of their songs from their upcoming album has been pleasantly mounted in my head for a few days, so I'm posting it here:

::The Cave Singers - Seeds of Night ::

If you like them, check out more over at the band's Myspace page.

It's Slow Motion Sunday!

Here's two videos that use slow motion in really beautiful ways. The first one is Menomena's new video for "Rotten Hell" which is on Barsuk Records (Ben Gibbard's label). It seems to evoke 70's board of education film stock with slow motion cafeteria food slinging. It's melancholic and ecstatic at the same time, somehow.



The second is older and has been around the block a few times, it's the promotional video for Sony's blah blah blah series TV's and is essentially a music video for Jose Gonzalez's cover of the Knife song, "Heartbeats."

Sony dropped 250,000 superballs onto the streets of San Francisco and played the results back in slow motion, which you can see in better-than-youtube-definition here. Low res isn't worth it, you'll just see a mess on your screen.

I know three videos is super intense, guys, but here's the exact opposite of slow motion: The video for Dan Deacon's "Crystal Cat." Check out how awesome that crystal cat's dancin is at the 1:30 mark!

It's "Oil Made From Dead Bodies" Saturday, too!

After noting that current energy policies will likely lead to "huge global calamities" and disrupt oil supplies, Wolff told the audience "that in the worst case scenario, the oil industry could "keep fuel flowing" by transforming the billions of people who die into oil," said a Yes Men press release.

"Corporate Tricksters" the Yes Men infiltrate the Gas and Oil Exposition in Alberta to pose as representatives from Exxon to pitch "Vivoleum," a fuel source made from the bodies of people killed by global warming. Wired has the whole story here.

The presentation ended when the "representatives" had attendees light candles in remembrance of a dead Exxon worker. As ridiculous tribute video played out on-screen, a shot of the worker talking about how he wishes his body could be turned into oil when he died led attendees to revolt.

It's "$150,000 Pac Man Saturday!"

Early 80's Atari video game paraphernalia is on the auction block, and may earn its owner - who paid $80.00 for 20 file cabinets back in the mid-80's as Atari was going out of business - upwards of $150,000 - $200,000.

The auction of materials is part of Sotheby's "Fine Arts and Manuscripts" auction, and includes the early pixel sketches for Dig Dug, Donkey Kong and Mario Brothers.

The Best Political Advertisement Ever Made

Mike Gravel is a Republican* candidate for President. This is the best political advertisement ever made.

* = Nah, he's Democrat. There's crazy on both sides. And he ended the Vietnam draft!