Week of Sept. 18: This week, Baaba Maal and Destroyer set a new bar for weirdness in music videos. Björk leaps over it.
Welcome Back To Björk’s World, As Trippy As Ever
Björk has announced a new album, called Utopia, due in November; for now, she’s released the first song and video from it. The song is “The Gate,” and it makes virtually no concessions to modern pop music: the arrangement is an almost transparent swirl of electronics and reverb effects behind Björk’s singing, which repeats a few short lines until they begin to sound like chant. There is a little electronic percussion at one point, but no groove. Unlike her last album, the dark Vulnicura, which dealt with the heartbreak after her breakup with film maker Matthew Barney, this song is about finding love, although given the song’s floating, weightless affect, it seems to be a more cosmic kind of love. Of course, that’s easy for me to say – I’ve seen the video. Watch it; it’s as hypnotic and psychedelic as the song itself. And people who know way more about fashion than I do have been raving about the dress, which apparently took hundreds of hours to make.
Baaba Maal and Famous Friends Offer A New Take On Lip Synching
The famed Senegalese singer and guitarist Baaba Maal released his album The Traveller last year, and recently did a digital reissue with bonus material. To celebrate, he has just released a video for the song “Lampenda.” It’s one of those videos with a simple but effective conceit – people hold an iPhone in front of their mouths and the allow the mouth on the screen to do the actual lip synching – and with a cast that might have you going “what a minute – I know her! And him!” There are two mouths actually singing the song: one is Baaba Maal himself; the other is Johan Karlberg, who uses the name Radioclit and is half of the UK/Malawi band called The Very Best. But behind the iPhone you’ll see Brittany Howard of the Alabama Shakes, Sam Smith, Baio from Vampire Weekend, Ted Dwayne from Mumford & Sons, and several others.
Destroyer’s New Video Riffs On Old Time Travel Film
For many listeners, Dan Bejar will be best known as the “other” songwriter in the indie rock supergroup The New Pornographers. But that band’s last record was all Carl Newman’s work – Bejar was nowhere to be found. That’s
because he was working at his day job, as the brains behind the band Destroyer. That group’s new record, its 12th, will be called ken, and Bejar has released a single and video to whet our appetites. The song is called “Tinseltown Swimming In Blood.” (A strong mischievous streak often runs through his work.) It has a surprisingly strong flavor of 1980s New Order-style dance-rock, but with the occasional “dropped stitch” drumming and some curious exploding-gong sounds two minutes in. The video, meanwhile, is done entirely in still photos, recalling the classic time-travel movie, or “photo-novel,” by film maker Chris Marker called La Jetée. It even ends in the same way (i.e., badly).
Dan Friel’s New Band Upper Wilds Makes Noisy Fun. Or Fun Noise.
Since leaving the band Parts And Labor (the group went on indefinite hiatus in 2012), Dan Friel has been spending time on the Brooklyn DIY scene, playing distorted but improbably catchy songs that blend noise-rock experimentation with a cheeky pop sensibility. Now he’s formed a new trio, called Upper Wilds, with bassist/vocalist Zach Lehrhoff (Ex Models, Pterodactyl) and drummer Aaron Siegel. Their debut album is called Guitar Module 2017, and comes out on Friday. As the album title suggests, there’s more guitar-based noise here than in Friel’s solo projects, which often revolved around a small keyboard (and a string of Xmas tree lights). The “single” is called “Roy Sullivan.” Friel’s lyrics include a surprising amount of counting, and a recurring line about “rising from the grave.” I couldn’t figure out what it all meant, so I asked Dan for an explanation. He wrote back: “Roy Sullivan is about the man with the world record for surviving lightning strikes: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Sullivan.” I followed the link, and found an unbelievable (and, I’m ashamed to say, kind of hilarious) story. Check it out – maybe after you check out the song.
French Electronic Musician Rone Continues To Be A Serial Collaborator
Born Erwan Castex in France, the producer/composer known as Rone has spent much of this decade collaborating, often with people from outside the usual electronic music circles. He was invited to contribute electronics to The National’s 2013 album Trouble Will Find Me, and worked with the father of French electronica, Jean Michel Jarre. In November, he’ll release his new album Mirapolis, which will include cover art by noted director Michel Gondry and musical contributions from Blonde Redhead’s Kazu Makino, Bryce Dessner of The National, and, on the song “Brest,” the drummer John Stanier of Battles. Rone has proven to be a master of textures, and definitely tends toward the “more is more” school. Here, his already lush electronics are aided and abetted by bowed strings, and, eventually, by Stanier’s propulsive percussion.
