Thom Yorke has unleashed a  video for his new single “The Hollow Earth.”  The video, directed by Raymond Salvatore Harmon.  The single is part of the 12″ LP FeelingPulledApartbyHorses, which was released today.

While the video caused me to experience a seizure, the song is pretty kick ass.  Check it out for yourself!

*Edit* It seems the video has been pulled by Thom Yorke for copyright reasons.

Tis a shame

According to CNET, it seems songwriters, composers, and music publishers are working on a plan to target Apple and other online distribution outlets to increase compensation they receive for their downloads.  Adding more fuel to the fire, they even want to be compensated for 30 second previews found on a lot of sites.

Having already been unsuccessful at negotiating increased fees with distributors such as Apple, the groups, which include the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) and Broadcast Music Inc. (BMI) among others, have begun lobbying the U.S. Congress in order to pass legislation to address their claims.

The groups are targeting what is know as a “performance fee”, a type of licensing fee used to compensate composers and publishers when their work is performed in public.  David Renzer, chairman and CEO of Universal Music Publishing Group, said in interview late last month with entertainment-industry publication, Encore. “(On iTunes) you can stream radio, and you can preview (tracks), things that we should be getting paid performance income for.”

To further complicate the matter, artists are seeking performance fees for songs played in movies and TV shows downloaded.  Typically, when a movie or TV show is played on the air a performance fee is paid to a artist for a song played in the show.  However, no such fees are paid when the movie or TV show is downloaded.

So far Congress, and courts, have sided with digital content distributors claiming  anything downloaded should be considered a private performance and should not be counted as a public broadcast.  I, personally, believe this to be true as well.

So what are your thoughts on this matter?

Well just yesterday I was able to snag a really good deal on a Sigma 18-50 2.8 lens for my SLR.  What that means for this site is I’m going to start taking photos of shows I see.

The lens is slated to arrive tomorrow and if I’m lucky I’ll be able to snag tickets to sold out Matt & Kim show tomorrow night.

Some other shows I have my sights on: Pinback, Datarock, Japandroids, and Sunny Day Real Estate.

Let me know if you dying to see photos of other groups.

Sorry for no posts in such a long time, but I’ve been buried neck deep in school work these past few days.  If someone had only informed me grad school would require so much reading I would have taken the easier route and just gotten a job.

Anyways I wanted to write about my favorite band as of late, Giraffes? Giraffes! (To now be refereed to as G?G!) .  They are this amazing band from the west coast (although according to a recent blog article they are now on the east coast) who only consist of one guitarist and one percussionist  However, if you listen to their music without knowing this you’ll be amazed on how full of a sound they can produce.  They achieve this through looping some of their basic riffs and building on top of this.  While this looping may seem like a cheap trick used in the recording studio, the complexity of doing this during a live show allows G?G! to demonstrate their immense tallent.

You’ll also notice that none of their songs have any lyrics, which requires extra interesting music to entertain the listener.  G?G!’s music is considered “math rock” because of their constantly changing measures that allows the songs to evolve as they are played out.  I’ve included a video below to show just how truly amazing they are.   Let me know your thoughts and if you like them check out their site, where you can download their first album for free.  According to their twitter account, a small tour should happen sometime soon – I can only hope!

Adams’ new website includes a link to an order page. On that page, you can spend $1.49 on two new songs, “Lost and Found” and “Go Ahead and Rain”, which will be released this Friday, Sept 11th.

Alan Palomo’s pet project Neon Indian has announced their debut tour for the fall.  Backed with visuals from video artist Alicia Scardetta, this tour should be an audio visual mind trip.  Catch them starting tonight in Texas.

09-09 Denton, TX – Rubber Gloves
09-11 Springfield, MO – The Outland Ballroom
09-13 Morrison, CO – Red Rocks Amphitheater (Monolith Festival)
09-24 Amsterdam, Netherlands – Westergas Factory
09-25 Antwerp, Belgium – Novylon
09-26 London, England – Cargo
09-28 Sheffield, England – Harley
09-29 London, England – Barfly Camden
10-02 Austin, TX – Emo’s (Austin City Limits afterparty)
10-16 Tallahassee, FL – Club Down Under
10-17 Jacksonville, FL – TSI
10-18 Atlanta, GA – The Earl
10-17 Washington, DC – Rock N Roll Hotel
10-20 Philadelphia, PA – The Barbery
10-24 New York, NY – Music Hall of Williamsburg
10-25 Hartford, CT – La Paloma Sabanera
10-27 Chicago, IL – Lincoln Hall
10-28 Detroit, MI – Magic Stick
10-29 Bloomington, IN – The Bishop
10-30 Madison, WI – University of Wisconsin (Der Rathskeller)
10-31 Dallas, TX – Granada Theater
11-07 Austin, TX – Fun Fun Fun Festival
11-08 Lubbock, TX – Bash Riprock’s
11-11 Salt Lake City, UT – Kilby Court
11-12 Boise, ID – Neurolux
11-13 Guadalajara, Mexico – Lemon Beat
11-14 Mexico City, Mexico – Pasaje América
11-15 Seattle, WA – Nectar Lounge
11-16 Vancouver, British Columbia – Shine Nightclub
11-19 San Francisco, CA – Rickshaw Stop
11-20 Los Angeles, CA – Echoplex
11-21 Tuscon, AZ – Club Congress
12-09 Dublin, Ireland – Academy !
12-10 Cork, Ireland – Savoy !
12-11 Madrid, Spain – Primavera Club
12-12 Barcelona, Spain – Primavera Club
01-02 Melbourne, Australia – Corner Hotel #
01-07 Sydney, Australia – Manning Bar #
01-08 Sydney Australia – Empire
01-09 Melbourne Australia – Chillwave Festival

! with White Lies
# with Chairlift

Kid Cudi has announced that the third single “Pursuit of Happiness” from his forthcoming LP, Man on the Moon: The End of Day, will feature chorus lines from both the MGMT and Ratatat.

Kid Cudi has mentioned before that he was interested in working with Band of Horses, the Postal Service and Ratatat for the LP.  The video of “Pursuit of Happiness” is available via youtube and is listed for your viewing pleasure below.  The rest of the album will be available September 15th so stay tuned to find what else is in store!

As an update to the earlier announcement that Trent Reznor was sick, it seems the previously scheduled Saturday the 5th show will be now held next Thursday the 10th.  Details on the NIN website, but they will be honoring all Saturday tickets and will give full refunds to those not able to make the switch.

The new scheduled shows will be as followed:

9/6 Echoplex (unchanged)

9/8 Henry Fonda (rescheduled date)

9/10 The Wiltern (rescheduled date)

Seems NIN and Trent did well given his circumstances.  Kudos to the band for trying to accommodate as many fans as possible.

I’ve gotten this question a dozen of times from friends, relatives and strangers: “What exactly is indie music? What makes it different from what I hear on the radio?”

To begin to answer this question you could look at Wikipedia, which has a utilitarian definition of indie music.  However, to me, indie music expresses the spirit of freedom in an otherwise commercialized industry.  Without record labels or suits informing these musicians on how to speak, act, or think we are left with music that begins to explore the creative realm of ones soul.

Indie often has an internationalist outlook, which stems from a sense of solidarity with other fans, bands and labels in other countries who share one’s particular sensibilities; small indie labels will often distribute records for similar labels from abroad, and indie bands will often go on self-funded tours of other cities and countries, where those in the local indie scenes will invariably help organize gigs and often provide accommodation and other support. In addition, there is also a strong sense of camaraderie that emerges from a selflessness among indie bands and often results in collaborations and joint tours.

Indie artists have always been associated with rebelling against prevailing trends by twisting these trends in some sort of ironic matter (for example, the twee pop movement that started in the 1980s was a reaction against hair metal and other forms of power rock).  Indie artist embrace a more rough and imperfect sound and by deliberately introducing artifacts into their recordings that separate themselves from the more polished commercial music.  In modern times, this line has since become blurred, due to the ease of high-quality recordings made with inexpensive computer-based recording systems.  Also, commercial music will sometimes intentionally add a more rough sound to give their records a more indie feel to them.  Some indie artist have rebelled by making their recordings more “main-stream” like.

There are several subcategories which music from the overall indie scene are often grouped broadly into. Music ranging from alternative rock to punk rock to experimental music has long existed in indie scenes, often independent from one another. Indie rock and indie pop are the most common groupings that conform to an “indie” sound. The difference between these is difficult to pick up from the instrumentation or sound, as both genres include distorted guitar-based music based on pop-song conventions. If anything, the key distinction comes not from instrumentation or structure but from how strictly they follow cultural constructions of rockist “authenticity”.

So with that said what does indie music mean to you?

According to a note on the Nine Inch Nails website, lead singer Trent Reznor is calling in sick and, under doctor’s orders, he has canceled tonight’s show at the Henry Fonda Theater in Los Angeles.

While there is no word on exactly what he has come down with, the website does mention that show attendees will be reimbursed:  “Reimbursement details will be posted as soon as we figure them out; likely within the next 24 hours. We wish this wasn’t necessary and we’re very sorry for the inconvenience. Thank you for your understanding.”

Whose for sending him a get well soon card?