Randoms

Just a few tracks that slipped fresh into my ears in recent days, along with some pathetic links between each:

The Knife in collaboration with Mt. Sims and Planningtorock - Colouring of Pigeons

Splashed all over bloggers this week like snow and swine flu dregs over the British public is this preview into the imminent project involving The Knife (Andersson's Fever Ray project still mustily wafting in 2009's wake, it being almost universally agreed upon as integral to the year's sonic zeitgeist). Basically, this track is one of many that will comprise a Danish opera based on Darwin's On the Origin of the Species. And yeah, it's about as weird as it sounds, though completely accessible. Expect this to be not only the first but the last post I ever make about opera. You can find out more on the group's website, and there's a free download of the track available to anyone who joins their mailing list. It's only about two clicks away, I'm not giving a direct link fool!


Collections of Colonies of Bees - Flocks III

From pigeons to birds in general. Not new this time, but equal in length (yeahp, both tracks are 11 minutes long, what you gonna do?) The group make up several parts of Volcano Choir, who I've blogged about already and released their album Unmap this year (listen for anyone too lazy to scroll down) in collaboration with Bon Iver's Justin Vernon. They're all chums basically, and you can hear the distinctive emphatic swells in instrumentation throughout that both Jagjaguwar-signed artists share. It's essentially a very long and drawn-out lovely mess of traditional instruments sampled in a pseudo-ambient (it's not exactly sleepy) fashion, lots of guitars and repetitive cymbal rushes pieced together like electronica. It's either fantastically profound and complex or victim to a bit too much artistic license, but it sits well on the ears in any case. Try the whole album (Birds), this track was chosen just because it was the only one readily available for download, Flocks IV is actually superior.


Easy Star All-Stars - Airbag

Okay, the best I can do for some kind of link between this and the previous track is as follows: the last track had a lot of cymbal rushes, Thom Yorke released a track called Cymbal Rush (his live version alongside Flea was pretty special), Thom Yorke leads nicely on to Radiohead! Anyway, a massive drop in profundity there, it's the opening track to the dub reggae rework/cover of Radiohead's OK Computer, which seems to equally offend and impress previous fans (I think it's the fanboys who feel insulted. Get over yourselves). Does exactly what it says on the tin, it's the same track, pretty similar arrangement only with accentuated offbeat, horns, rasta vocals and dub-style delays. What I like about these dub reworks of classic albums (see Dub Side of the Moon, Easy Star's Lonely Hearts Dub Band) which overly-rigid radioheads don't seem to grasp is that the covers are respectful and playful. They know there's nothing serious about a reggae cover (although the musicianship and arrangements are pretty meticulous) and are only messing about with music they fully respect, leaving the melodies fairly well alone. All these do is provide a bit of a giggle and remind you what you loved about the albums in the first place. To me, Airbag is the definitive Radiohead track of all time (in what other track does each member's input shine through so strongly?) but I don't like this cover any less. The rework of Let Down on this album (Radiodread) is definitely the best - featuring Toots & The Maytals - but I've had that knocking about for ages. Even Thom Yorke himself heartily agreed that the Toots cover of the track was superior. Nuff said.


Future Prophecies - Dreadlock

And we've definitely hit rock bottom in the profundity pot here. It's some pretty old DnB, and it's definitely not the intelligent type. It just reappeared in my iTunes recently after I enjoyed it far too much (causing some temporarily dangerous driving, I'm not gonna lie) in an old Fabriclive mix. Plus, the title has a semantic link to the last track :) Expect a repetitive and coarse synth line. Shut up and take it like a man.