Hear Entire New Album By The Knife

The Knife (in collaboration with Mt. Sims and Planningtorock) have announced that their new record, ‘Tomorrow, In A Year’, is now available buy directly from the Rabid Records store as a download or pre-order a CD copy and receive the download instantly.

The album features songs Olof and Karin wrote for the Danish performance group Hotel Pro Forma’s opera based on Charles Darwin’s ‘On the Origin of the Species.’and will be available worldwide on iTunes and Amazon beginning Febuary 1st and the CD will be in stores on March 1st.

You can pre-order the CD or FLAC and stream every track here.

Fever Ray on Amazon US Daily Deal for $2.99

If you don’t already own Fever Ray’s magnificent debut album, your music collective has serious credibility issues. Fortunately, Amazon US Daily Deal is offering an MP3 download of the album for $2.99 (today only). You can order Fishpork’s second favorite album of 2009 here.

MP3: New Track From The Knife: “Colouring Of Pigeons”

The Knife announced plans to release the studio version of the music they scored for the opera ‘Tomorrow, In A Year’, on the 1st March 2010 in collaboration with Mt. Sims and Planningtorock.  Olof and Karin wrote the music for the Danish performance group Hotel Pro Forma’s opera based on Charles Darwin and his book ‘On the Origin of the Species.’

They have released their first track free for mailing list subscribers and can be  downloaded here: “Colouring Of Pigeons”

Read the full details from their press release including track list below.

Commissioned by Danish performance group Hotel Pro Forma to write the music for their opera based on Charles Darwin and his book ‘On the Origin of the Species’, The Knife decided to make this a collaborative process, working with artists Mt. Sims and Planningtorock for the first time, to capture the huge width of the Darwin and evolution theme. They extensively researched Darwin related literature and articles, with Olof attending a field recording workshop in the Amazon to find inspiration and to record sounds.

‘Tomorrow, In A Year’ is a unique musical project. Richard Dawkins’s gene trees have formed the basis of some of the musical composition, artificial sounds have been mixed with field recordings, with the music inspired by everything from the different stages of a bird learning its melody, to a song based on Darwin’s loving letters about his daughter Anne. These are compositions that challenge the conventional conception of opera music.

Pushing the experimental process further still, composer, choreographer, costume designer and set designer worked separately, only coming together 3 and a half months before the first performance of ‘Tomorrow, In A Year’ in Copenhagen on the 2nd September 2009. Described as “shifting the position of operartic art in a single leap”, further performances of ‘Tomorrow, In A Year’ are confirmed to take place in Athens (8-9 Jan), Stockholm (29 Jan-1 Feb), and Munster (5 June), with further dates to be announced.

Olof Dreijer says: “At first it was very difficult as we really didn’t know anything about opera. We’d never been to one. I didn’t even know what the word libretto meant. But after some studying, and just getting used to opera’s essence of pretentious and dramatic gestures, I found that there is a lot to learn and play with. In fact, our ignorance gave us a positive respectless approach to making opera. It took me about a year to become emotionally moved by an opera singer and now I really do. I really like the basic theatrical values of opera and the easy way it brings forward a narrative. We’ve approached this before in The Knife but never in such a clear way.”

Tracklist:
CD 1
01. Intro
02. Epochs
03. Geology
04. Upheaved
05. Minerals
06. Ebb Tide Explorer
07. Variation of Birds
08. Letter to Henslow
09. Schoal Swarm Orchestra

CD 2
01. Annie’s Box
02. Tumult
03. Colouring of Pigeons
04. Seeds
05. Tomorrow in a Year
06. The Height of Summer

Bonus track
07. Annie’s Box (alt. vocal)

Deacon from Animal Collective Plays First Solo Show

Josh Dibb better known as Deacon (formerly Deakin) from Animal Collective played his first solo show on January 1st in Baltimore.  The website bmoremusic.net  has posted some pics and links to MP3s of his set.   The songs definitely have  an Animal Collective feel but highlights what Deacon contributes to the Pre-MPP records.  See the links below for MP3s and more:

Read original post here: Bmore Muscially Informed

Direct link to MP3s: Deacon live at The Ottobar

 

 

RIP: Vic Chesnutt Dead at 45

Although reports have gone back and forth overnight it seems that several sources has confirmed that Singer/ songwriter Vic Chesnutt has been pronounced dead following a short time in a coma following a suicide attempt Christmas Eve.  According to twitter posts from his close friend and former Throwing Muses singer Kristen Hersh, “this time, it’s real scary: *this* time, he left a note, *this* time, he asked them to call me.”

Several sources have reported that most recently Chesnutt has battled depression, and financial issues including a large unpaid hospital bill.

Anyone who witnessed one of his live performances will be sure to tell you that you are left with the chills of a pained yet brilliant songwriter that pours every ounce of his energy into every word he sang. We saw him on his tour with Elf Power earlier this year and it was a awe inspiring evening.

Chesnutt has been in a wheelchair and partially paralyzed since he was 18. He was 45.

****Update: While many news reports announced that he was pronounced dead, according to a twitter post  at 1pm today from Hersh”you people are so full of love-thank you for sending it vic and tina’s way-the situation is complex and sad, but there’s still a little hope” followed up by “the biggest mistake anybody could make about Vic is to assume he’s weak…he’s the strongest person i know.”  While the news was grim with talk of brain damage even if he survived, there seems to be a glimmer of hope.

His record company co-owner Don Wilkie said in the statement that “Vic is in the middle of a serious medical situation, he is in a coma, and his family and friends are with him.”

*****Update Dec 25th 6:30 EST

Sadly what was erroneously reported has come to be at Athens at 2:59pm.  The official announcement came from a family spokesman and his record label Constellation Records:

Surrounded by family and friends, Vic Chesnutt died in Athens Georgia this afternoon, Friday 25 December at 14:59.

In the few short years that we knew him personally, Vic transformed our sense of what true character, grace and determination are all about. Our grief is inexpressible and Vic’s absence unfathomable.

We will make more information available according to the wishes of Vic’s family and friends.

Don and Ian

VIC CHESNUTT 1964 - 2009

Video: More Unreleased Jeff Mangum

As the week started with the digital release of a new Jeff Mangum track on the Chris Knox tribute record, why not end the week with more unreleased video of Jeff playing in April 1998. This time he treats the audience to one of my favorite bootleg tracks “Sailing Through” from the cassette tape dubbed Beauty that is still available on most of the bittorrent sites that are still up and running.

Like the other videos that have been popping up, Jeff hold back no emotion on this live version of “Sailing Though” that then goes directly into “Two-Headed Boy Part 2″ in this 9+ minutes of musical ecstasy.  This might be one of the only videos of him performing rarely-played song at Bottom of the Hill in San Francisco, CA.  Thanks goes out to defgav for the post.  Its been a good week.

New Jeff Mangum on Tribute Compilation!

A few months ago it was announced that Neutral Milk Hotel mastermind and current recluse Jeff Mangum would perform a cover song for the upcoming CD for recent stroke victim, Chris Knox. Knox is known for bringing the punk and alternative music scenes to New Zealand. The compilation is a double-CD release, and Mangum is featured on disc 2. Stroke: Songs For Chris Knox will be released in various formats on February 23.

The even better news is that you can hear a 30-second clip of the song here!

Video: Fuck Buttons Live in San Francisco

Yours Truly has posted a beautifully shot video of Fuck Buttons performing “Rough Steez” from their brilliant record Tarot Sport.  It was shot in San Francisco from earlier last month at the Bottom of the Hill venue.  

Watch and learn the true meaning of electronic performance:

MP3s: “Good Ol’ Boredom” and “Life’s A Dream” by Built to Spill

2009 started off strong with a handful of epic releases. However, the last six months have seen a saturation of forgettable albums. Built To Spill quickly changes the mundane musical landscape of the summer with their seventh album, There Is No Enemy. “Hindsight” was the first song from the album to see daylight. The track was a standard BTS song that didn’t excite or disappoint. Next, Stereogum premiered “Things Fall Apart,” a devastatingly perfect track that instantly jumps near the top of the BTS catalog. Two more songs have made their way into cyberspace and confirm the anticipation for one of the year’s best releases. There Is No Enemy comes out 10/6. You can download “Good Ol’ Boredom” and “Life’s A Dream” or stream them below:

“Good Ol’ Boredom”

“Life’s A Dream”

MP3: “Round Again (featuring Jeff Mangum)” by Circulatory System

The Earth stops spinning when news of new music by Jeff Mangum hits the indie music blogosphere. As promised by Circulatory System frontman Will Cullen Hart, their new album features contributions from the Neutral Milk Hotel mastermind. He plays drums on this. No, we don’t get to hear his voice, but this does hint that he’s putting his reclusive past behind him and digging in with his creative heals. And let me say that the new track is repeat-worthy. You can download “Round Again (featuring Jeff Mangum)” by Circulatory System here or stream it below:

Did you know you can stream Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, in its entirely, on LaLa?

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