The Tribeca Film Festival kicked off yesterday with the premiere of the fourth and supposedly final Shrek movie. But you don’t care about that. You want to hear about the films that you’ll actually want to see. With nearly 200 of them screening, there is a dizzying array of choices sure to send any serious movie buff into an existential panic. It would be impossible to catch everything, but we’ve sussed out the five flicks you definitely don’t want to miss. Check them out and watch accompanying trailers after the jump.
Read More »
As you may have heard, Erykah Badu has dropped a buzzy new music video for “Window Seat” from her new album New Amerykah Part Two: Return of the Ankh
. Why the hype? In the five-minute clip — which is an homage to Matt and Kim’s “Lessons Learned” — the soul songstress strips down from a black overcoat into eventual full-frontal nudity.
But as quickly as it surfaced, the video was taken down from YouTube by Universal Music Group, and we were left feeling slightly pervy for craving more naked music videos. We’ve done the dirty work so that you don’t have to, and rounded up 10 of our all-time favorites after the jump. We’ve come a long way since Duran Duran’s “Girls on Film.”
Read More »
This week’s mix features a remix (that “Home” song), reworkings (Metric, Jónsi of Sigur Rós), remixables (Wye Oak, Flight Facilities), and songs so damn catchy they already sound remixed (The Black Keys, Penguin Prison, New Young Pony Club). So if you’re like us, constantly starving for new tunes, digest the next ten piecemeal or all in one sitting after the jump.
Read More »
Musicians are by no means monogamous. Often their loyalty is not to the single entity of a band, but rather to the grander scheme of the things, the music itself. Take Gorillaz (by way of Blur) frontman Damon Albarn, who just announced that he’s going solo again on the side under the guise of Prince Barry. Or Thom Yorke branching out from Radiohead with his once anonymous band who we now know as Atoms for Peace. After the jump, we’ve compiled a playlist of our favorite tracks from some recent indie side projects. As always, leave a comment and let us know who we left out.
Read More »
Combining lush instrumentation and choral flourishes with electro drum beats, Swedish duo Fredrik create a complex sound that continues to unfold itself upon repeat listens.
Their just-released sophomore album, Trilogi, is a haunting meditation on the darkness winter brings. The gloom is balanced with impeccably constructed melodies that recall the early ambition of Air’s Moon Safari, while the rhythmic strumming of “Vinterbarn” (winter children) evokes Sigur Rós. A recent esoteric tweet sums up Fredrik’s modus operandi: “Unreasoning all the way to wintering is bliss.”
Read More »
Ever since opening for Bjork at Housing Works in May, Icelandic singer Ólöf Arnalds has been the talk of the blogosphere. And with good reason: her debut album, Vid og Vid, is an indie-folk gem consisting of ten perfectly crafted songs. Her voice evokes her classical training while hinting at a more modern sound. We sat with Ólöf — who plays at the Whitney Museum tonight and Rockwood Music Hall on Monday — to chat about her work with Sigur Ros’ Kjartan Sveinsson, crazy cars, and her second album. Read all about it after the jump.
Read More »
Keeping up with the ever-changing world of dance music can be exhausting; creative energy burns out as quickly as fresh trends become stale hype. That’s why Tiësto, Dutch DJ and dance-music icon, is such a legend. He has topped DJ charts since he reached stardom in the early ’00s, and continues to max out venues with a 15,000+ capacity. He kicked off another Tiësto “era” on September 24, to launch his highly anticipated album Kaleidoscope, out tomorrow.
“They can definitely expect [the music] to be different,” he says of his tour. The album, appropriately named after its fused-genre theme, is the product of Tiësto’s initiated collaborations with several disparate artists, such as Bloc Party’s Kele Okereke, Sigur Rós’ Jónsi, Tegan and Sara, Nelly Furtado, and electro-pop sensation Sneaky Sound System. Read More »
It’s Yom Kippur, and many of us have the day off from work. You could spend the day atoning. Or you could check out some of best and least-MTV friendly music videos to come out over the last couple years.
Just over a week ago, German shock-industrialists Rammstein — remember their US hit “Du Hast”? — premiered their most recent video, “Pussy,” online. The clip, directed Jonas Åkerlund, plays with typical music video stuff (strippers, S&M), before ending with several graphic sex scenes. MTV-friendly? Absolutely not. But it doesn’t matter.
Earlier Åkerlund videos, like Prodigy’s “Smack My Bitch Up,” were relegated to one or two plays on MTV after midnight. But thanks to streaming online video, bands don’t have to worry about finding an audience for their more adventurous visuals. Check out some of our favorite, wildly not safe for work, music videos after the jump, and link us to what we missed in the comments. Read More »
1. Experts say hobbits — or a new species of tiny humans with large, hairy feet — might have really existed [via Times]
2. Carrie Prejean offered a million dollar porn gig [via Salon]
3. Sigur Rós front man Jon Thor “Jónsi” Birgisson dishes about his new side project with boyfriend Alex Somers and delicious raw food recipes [via Pitchfork]
4. How the gay community “turned” Lady Gaga [via MTV]
5. A design scene grows (even larger) in Brooklyn [via NYT]
I heart NY State: The I LOVE NY logo that has persisted on souvenir T-shirts for 31 years is being updated! NEW YORK STATE TOURISM decided that the original MILTON GLASER logo was too narrow — the three stolid letters and iconic heart represented only the excitement of New York City, not the state as a whole. So in order to lure tourists beyond Times Square, the logo now appears covered in snow or with small animals perched near it. The tourism office hopes the range of designs will make tourists realize that New York is somehow an entire state and not just a city. [TTG]
Terence Koh’s sexy Jesus still rocking Christians across the pond…
Read More »
