Charlotte Gainsbourg: "Songs That We Sing" Video
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Best New Music: Blondes, redheads, and Rihanna's 'Umbrella'
Rihanna, Blonde Redhead, and Charlotte Gainsbourg are the Download Music crew's picks this week.
Pocket Symphony is their fourth studio album proper and the follow up to 2004?s Talkie Walkie (although if you include their Allessandro Baricco City Reading collaboration, the Virgin Suicides soundtrack and their recent Charlotte Gainsbourg production 5:55 they could claim seven). It?s also the fourth album they have done in conjunction with English producer Nigel Godrich (?he?s so cool, he could be French,? quips Air?s Nicolas).
Jarvis Cocker: "Don't Let Him Waste Your Time"
Three years in the gestation and 13 days in the making, Jarvis Cocker stops writing songs for other people to deliver the first solo album of his 25 year career.
Nightmares On Wax: "Aftermath"
The low-fi video is a dark and spooky trip, directed by Jarvis Cocker.
Download Music picks of the week: Episode 6
Bjork, Jarvis Cocker, Phat Kat, and Bonde Do Role are included in the Download Crew's picks of the week.
With this early Aphex Twin video, director Jarvis Cocker uses entrancing stop-action footage to create a surreal day at the beach.
Herbert: "Moving Like A Train"
Restless innovator, sampling wizard, classically trained pianist and superstar collaborator, MATTHEW HERBERT is one of electronic music's most versatile and prolific figureheads. Recording under his own name as well as Doctor Rockit, Wishmountain, Radio Boy and others, Herbert has also produced and remixed artists as diverse as Bjork, REM, John Cale, Roisin Murphy, Yoko Ono and Serge Gainsbourg. An alchemist of avant-garde sound in the tradition stretching from Stockhausen to the Aphex Twin, Herbert combines playful pop sensibility with a strictly imposed experimental agenda. In his increasingly conceptual and political albums he has emerged as a unique figure in modern music: a kind of one-man Radiohead, or a Brian Eno for the 21st century. It was in January 1995 that Herbert gave his first large public performance. His instruments: a sampler and a bag of crisps. But long before he discovered the revolutionary possibilities of sampling, he began playing violin and piano at the age of four. When he was seven he sang in the school choir and played with orchestras. At school, he had the good fortune to have a music teacher who considered Reich, Xenakis and Jazz standards to be the equal of Beethoven. During his time as a theatre student at Exeter University, Herbert, the son of a BBC sound technician, continued to invest in his own home studio. Herbert's studies helped to germinate his interest in "musique concrete". Rummaging around his bag of crisps was only the beginning. His 1998 masterwork 'Around the House' (re-released on !K7 in 2002) collected sounds from the house and home: washing machines, toasters and toothbrushes were sampled and processed into swinging grooves and absorbing sound scapes. All the project needed was the silken voice of Dani Siciliano, Herbert's long-term collaborator, to humanise the album into a left-field classic. In 2000, Herbert wrote a manifesto, the "Personal Contract for the Composition Of Music (PCCOM) (Incorporating the Manifesto of Mistakes)", rules which have defined the compositional methods ever since. The manifesto, not unlike Dogme 95's filmic principles, prohibits the use of any pre-recorded musical sources, as well as any synthetic sounds that imitate acoustic instruments. Furthermore, accidental sounds or errors should influence the process of his production. Herbert considers mistakes in programming or recording as the welcome intervention of random humanity in a sterile world. This is a man, after all, who runs a record label called Accidental. Deriving much of its musical content from human skin, hair, bones and the random contents of Dani Siciliano's handbag, Herbert's 2001 album 'Bodily Functions' was the audible result of putting this theory to practice. But far from being limited by these self-imposed rules, the record unlocked rich new vaults of unique sound and fascinating rhythm from the most unlikely everyday objects. In 2003 Herbert redefined his musical agenda yet again with his big-band album 'Goodbye Swingtime', which was recorded at Abbey Road studios with 16 jazz and session musicians. Despite its self-consciously traditional elements, the album was composed under strict PCCOM rules, and again featured Siciliano on vocals. The subsequent live shows, including Sonar in Barcelona, the Montreux jazz festival, and Roskilde festival in Denmark, were rapturously received by large crowds. From bedroom samplers to concert halls, Herbert continues to expand the horizons of electro-organic music. The political content of Herbert's music has become increasingly overt in recent years. His 2004 album 'Plat Du Jour' was his most rigorously experimental to date, featuring sounds entirely derived from food and its packaging. Unified in concept and content, it used witty culinary metaphors to attack not just giant food companies but also the death penalty, body fascism and war in Iraq. In Britain, 'The Guardian' called the consequent live shows, complete with a chef making live smells "a wild stimulation of senses, feet and intellect". In 2005, Herbert produced 'Ruby Blue', the debut solo album by Moloko singer Roisin Murphy. A fertile garden of flamboyant dance-pop and artfully textured jazz-funk. Herbert's latest album, 'Scale', is probably his most pleasingly pop-friendly mellifluous so far. But beneath its deceptively glossy surface sheen of jazz, disco and sensual house rhythms lie quietly anguished meditations on mortality, global suffering and the end of the oil age. Among the 723 objects sampled on these lush tracks are coffins, petrol pumps, meteorites, an RAF Tornado bomber, and somebody being sick outside a banquet for a notorious London arms fair. More than any previous Herbert album, 'Scale' combines immaculately groomed dance music with subversive subject matter. Herbert is as solid as a rock in these times of "borderless digital arbitrariness," as the German newspaper 'Die Zeit' once described his work. Between programming mistakes and the conceptual stringency of his PCCOM manifest, between divine accident and strict intent, whether he scores films or theatre shows or paints the musical backdrop for fashion shows - Herbert's endless innovation and transgression of genres is never just art for its own sake. His music is always engaged in lively dialogue with the wider world, with the past and future of experimental music, with its own political and economic origins.
Download.com guide to Jet Audio
During installation, you have to be careful if you don't want to set JetAudio Basic as the default application for audio and video files. However, the freeware application gives you plenty of reasons to make it your only player. The interface has a modern design that looks like an equalizer. You can customize each section of the program, from CD ripping to format conversion, to your heart's content. The program can convert files among some 10 formats, as well as read and edit MP3 tags. The built-in Cross-fader, Reverb, and Wide-sound modes provide a nice touch not found in most MP3 players. The program becomes truly unique with its clock, however, which features a timer and an alarm. We also appreciate the inclusion of a tool for seeking out song lyrics. Our only quibble is it treats a playlist as an album but uses the artist as its primary key field, making it difficult to locate mixes. JetAudio Basic's appealing product set should attract audiophiles.
From the animated b-boy dancing to the mad flow, Boba Fett shows off his lesser-known skills in this amazing fan film. The author writes: "Boba Fett sings a song about Star Wars from his perspective. I've been working on this for 2 months. If it does well, I may make a version 2 with the whole song. The song is by MC Chris. You might recognize his voice as MC Pee Pants from Aqua Teen Hunger Force."
"Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man" trailer
Songwriter. Poet. Counter-culture icon. Consummate ladies' man. Since bursting onto the scene in 1967, Leonard Cohen has inspired generations with his unique personality and haunting music, becoming one of the most original and enduring artists to emerge from the 1960s. Now, Lions Gate is proud to celebrate Cohen's legacy with director Lian Lunson's "Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man," an intimate look at the songs, poetry, and life of one of music's most celebrated and influential troubadours. In January, 2005, Lunson traveled to Sydney to film the historic "Came So Far For Beauty" show, a tribute to Leonard Cohen at the Sydney Opera House organized by famed music producer Hal Willner. "Leonard Cohen I'm Your Man" includes behind-the-scenes interviews and live performances from this event by Nick Cave, Rufus Wainwright, Kate & Anna McGarrigle, Martha Wainwright, Beth Orton, Linda Thompson, Teddy Thompson, Jarvis Cocker, The Handsome Family, Julie Christensen and Perla Battala, as well as a special performance of "Tower of Song" by Cohen and U2. And in a series of candid interviews, Cohen himself reveals his trademark wry humor and soulful intensity, using his own artwork, poetry and personal collection of photographs to reflect upon his colorful past and his creative process.
