SEE: Tupac’s holographic ghost perform alongside Snoop Dogg
Generally, it’s considered bad form to reanimate the corpse of your deceased friend for the entertainment of thousands of sweaty, incredibly wasted festival goers. It’s just something you don’t see often see. Thankfully, that kind of pointed social stigma is something Snoop saw no problem in and ploughed right on ahead with this, the shameless and relentlessly creepy resurrection of deceased rapper Tupac during his Coachella 2012 show. So how was it done? Well, the video was composed by a New York based special effects company called MPC using a mixture of live footage, wire framing and CGI and was then projected onto foil designed to the principals of the “Peppers Ghost” trick. Which is equal measures impressive, gaudy and offensive. Meanwhile, on the other hand, they played Ganster fucking Party! See the performance below, ghost fans.
Alec
GREAT NEWS: Coachella is live on YouTube right now
What could be better than being at Coachella? The people, the sound, the atmosphere. Boy, is it tops. You’re not there though, it’s probably due to you not living in America or simply not having the cash to go stink alongside a sea of ironic facial hair. I’m sorry about that, but as luck has it, I know something even better, oh yes. Youtube are once again streaming the entire of Coachella direct to your face at THIS LOCATION HIGHLIGHTED IN BLUE. It’s a wonderful time to be alive, isn’t it?
Alec
HEAR: Yuck – Chew
Yuck are back! Are you happy? I bet you are. You never tire of that shamelessly 90′s, helplessly emotive, defiantly lo-fi shtick, do you? Well, you might do, it’s been used so many times recently it makes [notorious whore from your area] seem less like the venereal disease carrying human sob story that they probably are. Still, Yuck deserve a minimum of 4 points and for sticking to their guns with “Chew” a song so drenched in the 90′s it’d likely exclusively wear flannel shirts and ill fitting faded blue jeans, if it weren’t a song and therefore impossible to dress. It’s also typically pretty excellent (even if I hoped it wouldn’t be), if not a shade too similar to The Pain Of Being Pure At Heart’s 10/10 single Belong. Or maybe it isn’t that similar, I just wanted an excuse to talk about Belong again, what a choon.
You can digest it above, if you like. (HAHAHA! See! I was clever, because the song is called Chew? Hahahahahahaha please love me)
Alec
STREAM: Blithe Field’s “Warm Blood” LP
Blithe Field, slightly better known to his family as Spencer Radcliffe, is now on his third record and there’s a good chance you haven’t yet clasped your ears around the first two. Which is a shame, because they’re both entirely lovely slices of slightly glitchy sampletronica, a sample of which can be heard here. This is that aforementioned third LP, it’s called Warm Blood and is astonishingly excellent in so many ways my disgustingly mortal writing can’t even keep up. As you might well have guessed, it’s required listening in 2012 and yes, there will be a test about it.
Stream it above, courtesy of Portals or buy it HERE (if you’re in Europe) or HERE (if you’re in the USA). I hope you like it.
Alec
HEAR: An unreleased and “fun” Perfume Genius track
What’s your definition of fun? I know, don’t tell me; it’s an evening spent making passionate self-love in the splendid company of all 288 episodes of ITV’s seminal game-show Golden Balls, isn’t it? That’s fine, lord knows I’ve spent many a happy evening in much the same way, but our Mike Hadreas, he’s an entirely different kind of monster. He recently released his penetratingly beautiful sophomore LP Put Your Back N 2 It to all sorts of acclaim (go buy it), though it’s not exactly what you’d describe as a great time. Understandably, not every song made it onto the final track listing, although one of those abandoned sad-bombs, entitled “Katie” has now washed ashore during a NPR session. Mike had this to say about it
”It’s fun to play for me… Well, it’s not fun at all, actually. It’s one of the heaviest songs that I’ve written. It’s not fun. But sometimes ‘fun’ for me is feeling like I threw up afterwards.”
CELEBRATE GOOD TIMES, C’MON! You can hear it, alongside Hood, 17 & Take Me Home as part of PG-Tips session over here.
Alec
SEE: Pulp perform “Common People” & “Like A Friend” on Fallon
Boy, do I love Pulp. If they were a foodstuff, I would smear them over myself and post pictures all over the internet on specialist fetish websites, it’s just that kind of pay-per-view love. Their brand of hyper-literate pop halted back in 2002, with nothing to satiate my endless Cocker based thirst but one insane appearance in Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire and a couple of solo albums which I didn’t like as much as I should do (I’m so, so sorry). This was my daily torment, until one fateful, far too exciting day back in late 2010 they announced they’d be dancing their way back into my life and onto stages across the whole planet. Since then I’ve failed quite effortlessly to see them in their fleshy glory. Still, there are some voyeuristic pleasures to be taken from the act of watching clips of Pulp performing live on your internetbox, which is what I bring to you today. Below these words can be found two typically brilliant performances of both Common People & Like A Friend, because you’re worth it.
Alec
JOIN: MISC.MUSIC LAST.FM GROUP #RARE
About eighteen years ago, my parents gave birth to a child. About eighteen months ago, me and Alec created a last.fm group. My parents, at first, were kind to this child, feeding it and giving it everything it needed to grow. Alec and I, at first, were kind to the last.fm group too, connecting artists and trying to come up with witty things for the description. Somewhere along the line, however, my parents gave up, simply dragging the child behind them. Much like my parents, we forgot about the last.fm, neglecting to advertise it as we should. It only has five members, three of whom are MM’s writing staff. I have only ever made five friends, three of whom are my parents. That child is me, and my child is here. Goodnight.
Liam
READ: My Bloody Attempt at writing up a My Bloody Valentine interview
Eternal cock-tease and occasional Primal Scream (read: not-very-good-band) collaborator Kevin Shields once belonged to a group called My Bloody Valentine. Sounds pretty emo, right? They released a bunch of EPs nobody really cares about, an underrated master piece called ‘Isn’t Anything’ and an overrated album of fridge field recordings named ‘Loveless’ (Sounds pretty emo, right?) Anyway – to cut a long story short – MBV gave up when they released that Slowdive were consistently releasing superior albums and went their separate ways. Shields went off to make pretentious Afrobeat and work with the aforementioned Primal Scream and the lesbian one drove taxies.
Psuedo-intellectual noise fans would later rejoice as they reformed in the 00s, playing many shows (one of which gave me tinnitus which I still retain to this day, fuck you guys seriously) but recording nothing, despite tales of an Aphex Twin-rivalling number of unreleased, almost finished recordings. Another out of date institution, Pitchfork, offered some light on the situation with an effortless interview R Kev gave to someone who was probably wearing tortoise-shell glasses and wearing an anchor print wife beater – the Irish in me tells me that K-Dog was probably just using the pretence of an interview to sneak into the interviewer’s garage and steal his ladders though.
ANYWAY, Kevin says that he’s going to release a new album soon or some shit. Why am I even saying this? You’re only going to read it. GO HERE AND DO MY JOB FOR ME #METAJOURNALISM
Liam
LISTEN: Jherek Bischoff – “Young and Lovely”
I love Parenthetical Girls. LOVE THEM. That’s why I brought their entire discography on vinyl the other day (if you’re reading this, Gabe, then send me that fucking Safe As Houses LP, jesus, I sent the invoice on Thursday). This isn’t them though. Nuh-uh. Definitely not Entanglements-era P. Grrrls. It just sounds like it! And… and it has Zac Pennington singing.
Well, this is Jherek Bischoff, and the comparison is very unfair. Known for his work with The Dead Science, good old Jherek has also been personally involved with a number of Misc.Music staples, including our beloved Xiu Xiu and Parenthetical Girls. As such, the direction of his solo debut should already be obvious – damaged pop music with an abundance of interesting instrumentation.
Swooning strings lay down an appropriate backing for Pennington’s ever-refined vocals, with enormous-sounding brass erupting every now and again to keep the song firmly rooted on the ground. Soko’s vocals strike a pleasant balance with Pennington’s, only coming into the forefront during the funeral march waltz which occurs half way through the track, during which the wall of sound is stripped away to the track’s barest bones, before strings are gradually reintroduced, before the song explodes once more.
But seriously Gabe, send me my fucking record.
EDIT: As SoundCloud is refusing to work for me to just pop over to the lovely Guardian’s website and give the left-leaning media a little boost
Liam
UNEXPECTED: Xiu Xiu cover Erasure’s “Always”
Xiu Xiu are on fire. Not literally, that would cause almost unbearable agony, thus preventing them from being as frightfully prolific as they are. Plus, by now somebody would have noticed and made aware somebody who could capably handle the situation. They are metaphorically on fire, though, what with their quiet history of producing some of the finest covers available. A tradition that recently saw them turn Rihanna’s mildly turgid pop hit “Only Girl In The World” into a glorious celebration of seemingly disposable pop (you can hear it here, and you really should) and now has seen them transform Erasure’s enduring 1994 cheese-a-thon “Always” into what you’d imagine would be playing as somebody actually rode a horse into a giant star shaped rock. It’s beautifully silly, you can listen to it over at Polyvinyl’s SoundCloud, for lack of a better option.
If you’re down for some dystopian Robot Unicorn Attack, their cover is but one half of a forthcoming split single with Dirty Beaches (who covered Francoise Hardy’s “Tu Ne Dis Rien”, which you can catch here) for Record Store Day 2012.
Alec
