A beautifully treated video for one of my favourite tracks and albums of this year. The video was shot on location in Iceland. Directed by Nabil Elderkin. ‘Holocene’ comes off Bon Iver‘s latest self-titled album.

Bon Iver – Calgary (320)

Anyway, this track has been the centre of my repeat attacks. ‘Land Of The Bloody Unknown’ is the second single from The Middle East‘s debut album I Want That You Are Always Happy.

Oh the ironing!

Repeated 14 times straight. I think I like this song slightly… Video is directed by Ian Pons Jewell. The track ‘Follow’ is off Crystal Fighters‘ debut album Star Of Love.

Jump for joy because it’s the end of week and you’ve earned the right cut loose. This week see’s a me indulging a bit on my love of emotional shoegazing psychedelic tribal synth pop house music. yes, as you may have gathered, that isn’t really genre… Anyway, this week’s faves and download links are after the jump.

Gypsy & The Cat – Jona Vark

“Her name is Jona. Jona Vark…”

Ah, some more indie synth pop goodness! After listening to this track I can definitely feel a bit of Empire Of The Sun (the guitar riff = a little bit of ‘We Are The People’), M83, anything from a John Hughes movie, but a lot more Fleetwood Mac. Yes, I like Fleetwood Mac. Not just like, probably love. There I said it… There are definitely elements of ‘Little Lies’ and ‘Dreams’ in this track, especially in the chorus.

While most of the major blogs, Mark Ronson on his East Village radio show and even the late DJ AM were all over the local duo from the middle of last year, they’ve only now started to get a little more radio airplay and more importantly, gotten themselves ingrained into me! Head over to their MySpace and give the rest of their stuff a listen. Hanging out big time for this LP release…

Caribou – Odessa

Now this is an interesting bit of music, quirky and haunting at the same time. It’s fairly heavily layered, so you’re ears will have fun deciphering all the sounds here.  I swear when I first heard the vocals in this track I thought that perhaps Erlend Øye of Kings of Convenience and the Whitest Boy Alive fame had contributed. So if you like that kind of minimal-esque type of chill-house you’ll probably like this latest offering from Caribou.

Breakbot – Baby I’m Yours (Featuring IRFANE)

Unadulterated disco pop funk fun! When you hear this track you can’t help but bounce and boogey. If you’re a fan of the works of Shazam, Cassian, The Twelves etc., I think you’ll did this track.

The Jezabels – Hurt Me

“C’mon evil hurt me, hurt me, hurt me…”

Wow. What a track. Powerful and achingly beautiful at the same time. The track sucks you in with Hayley’s haunting vocals/lyrics, complemented by the frenetic drumming and strumming from band members Sam and Nik respectively, intertwined with Heather’s graceful piano work. Don’t forget to add a bit of reverb and swooping strings for effect during the bridge and chorus.

Throw all of this together and you get a rolling wall of big sound that builds and builds till it smacks you right in the face and just like that, disappears as quickly as it arrives. I’m not surprised to see that the Arcade Fire are listed as an influence to the Jezabels on their MySpace page.

Might as well add the music video here since it was just released last month:

Unfortunately there appears to be no Victorian shows lined up in the near future but if you are in Queensland or NSW you can catch them this month at the Playground Weekend festival February 21st or at the Enmore Theatre on the 24th supporting Placebo.

Yeasayer – Ambling Alp

A nice pysch-alt-electro-pop ditty here from NY group Yeasayer. Like any good song (or at least the ones that I like anyway…), it’s instantly catchy and just downright fun. The little synth solo breakdown at the end is just freakin’ awesome!

Douster – King Of Africa

Yes, this track has been floating around the interwebz for a while now, and yes, Douster is no n00b to the scene. These “weekly” posts however are purely an avenue for me to write about the songs that I like at a moment in time and why they got me hooked that first time.

So pretentious rant aside (hehe!), this track features some great sampling from the Lion King’s opening, the powerful ‘Circle of Life’. What you’re left in store for is five minutes of catchy, fun afro-funk-house. I could see this being a nifty opener to a set or bridge/tone shift for all you wheels of steel traders… Speaking of which, Douster is playing at the Espy on February 20th for us local kids wanting to catch him in the act.

So that’s it! Another week done and only one more away till Classixx are in town… Did I mention that I CAN’T FUCKIN’ WAIT TO SEE CLASSIXX?!?!

Have a good weekend folks and we’ll see ya next week where I guess I could try and make it a lovers themed tunage… Or a happy new year to all the chinky readers out there haha! Peace out!

While it doesn’t officially get announced till tomorrow, here’s a short list of the artists I heard Vijay rattle off earlier on Triple J:

• Vampire Weekend
• Tegan & Sara
• Spoon
• Silverchair
• Grinspoon
• Empire Of The Sun
• British India
• Lisa Mitchell
• Kisschasy
• Miami Horror
• Bag Raiders
• Kid Koala presents The Slew (live)
• Muph & Plutonic
• Killaqueenz
• Funkoars
• Illy
• Jonathan Boulet
• Ajax
• Yacht Club DJs

I’ll add to this as more names come to light, or you could wait for tomorrow’s announcement… So onto the dates:

Saturday 1st May – GTM Bendigo, Bendigo’s Prince of Wales Showground
Sunday 2nd May – GTM Townsville, Murray Sports Complex – Townsville Cricket Grounds
Saturday 8th May – GTM Maitland, Maitland Showground
Sunday 9th May – GTM Canberra, The Meadows, University of Canberra
Saturday 15th May – GTM Bunbury, Pat Usher Foreshore Reserve

If it was good enough for Yeezy to blog about, I guess I can too… Video is directed by Special Problems who have done videos for the likes of Midnight Juggernauts, Cut Off Your Hands, Wolfmother and Tame Impala.

Jonathan Boulet‘s self-titled debut LP is also the feature album on Triple J this week and demonstrates how much of a wunderkind he is having wrote, recorded, produced and played every note of the album’s uplifting folk pop sound. Did I mention Modular have snapped him up as well? Not too bad for a bright-eyed 21 year old from Sydney’s northwest.

So the first line-up for what many thought would be the last St Jerome’s Laneway festival has been announced and I’ve gotta say it does look pretty good:

• Echo & The Bunnymen
• Florence & The Machine
• Black Lips
• The xx
• Daniel Johnston
• Sarah Blasko
• N.A.S.A.
• Eddy Current Suppression Ring
• Hockey
• Dappled Cities
• Mumford & Sons
• Radioclit
• The Very Best
• Wild Beasts
• Whitley
• The Middle East
• Kid Sam
• The Dirty Three

Mumford & Sons leaked earlier this week in a Tripe J interview that they’d be in the country for a “laneway” festival so that pretty much confirmed for me that the festival was still one… Definitely pretty keen to see Florence & The Machine, The xx, Radioclit, The Very Best (makes sense since Radioclit is there…), Hockey and of course N.A.S.A. So where has it moved to you may ask?

Farewell to the stinky lanes and hello to the banks of the Maribyrnong River...

Why the Footscray Community Arts Centre… No laneways in sight at all but at least we’ve been told the debacle of lockouts this year’s festival will no longer be an issue… I might as well list the dates and venues for the rest of country also:

Brisbane – Friday 29th January @ Alexandria St off St Paul’s Terrace, Fortitude Valley
Melbourne – Saturday 30th January @ Footscray Community Arts Centre
Sydney – Sunday 31st January @ Sydney College of the Arts
Auckland, New Zealand – Monday 1st February @ Britomart Station
Adelaide – Friday 5th February @ Fowler’s Live, North Terrace
Perth – Saturday 6th February @ Cultural Centre, Northbridge

Looks like the festival will make an appearance over in NZ also. Tickets go on sale next Friday 30th October at 9am from the Green Tix website.

Video to the single off their upcoming album “Declaration Of Dependence”, due out October 20th, the first in over 5 years. As you can see, Erlend Øye and Eirik Glambek Bøe are still the masters of calm, soothing guitar pop melodies. Can’t wait for this gem to come out.

*sigh* If only life was as carefree and the only stresses you had was trying to figure out how may cute hitchhikers you could fit in your car…

Exhibit A: Oren Lavie – Her Morning Elegance
Directed/Created by: Oren Lavie, Yuval & Merav Nathan

Shot earlier this year (January to be precise), Lavie’s stop-motion music video proved to be quite popular on the interweb. The track is from the album The Other Side Of The Sea. The general gist of the clip is involves a young lass acting out what would be a rather busy day in a sleepwalking state on her bed.

Exhibit B: Coldplay – Strawberry Swing
Directed/Created by: Shynola

I confess, I like Coldplay in all their sappy pop/rock goodness. Shynola however, I love even more. Do yourself a favour and check out the wiki entry on this collective and move on to YouTube to see some of their work. Amazing stuff. Anyway, this track for me is probably the stand-out track on their latest album Viva La Vida. A fucking brilliant video.

Exhibit C: Target Australia – “Colour” 2009 TV Campaign
Directed/Created by: Dael Oates for The Campaign Palace

Perhaps lining itself up to be an EPIC FAIL or a stroke of creative genius that’ll see every company under the sun jumping on board the stop-motion bandwagon… Saw this the other day on good old late night TV and the first thing that came to mind was, “Shit, I can think of two things this ad is ripping off…”. Maybe it’s the cynic in me, but you be the judge:

So, what do you think? Creative coincidence or creative convenience?

In another twist, the music video to “Her Morning Elegance” does remind me another music video but I can’t remember the name or artist of… The only things I do remember are that it’s has a female vocalist and the narrative to the video involves a guy and a girl dancing but on the ground and rolling and a stuff. Something involving a bike accident springs to mind also… Anyone out there know which video I’m talking about?

Another week and another batch of music. Pretty short entry this week with a focus on a few melancholic tracks that have been out for quite some time now but continue to get some regular airplay from myself. Anyway, onto the music…

Midlake – Roscoe

Midlake is not Uncle Sam's answer to Radiohead...

Often compared to Radiohead because of their similar take on sound and influences, Midlake tend to use more use of synths combined with a song writing style emphasising on evokative imagery. Yes I know Tim Smith sounds like Thom Yorke but then you could compare Interpol’s Paul Banks to Joy Division’s Ian Curtis, Muse’s Matt Bellamy  to Jeff Buckley etc. Let’s face it, whatever the comparison it sounds great.

Anyway, while I absolutely love this version off the album “The Trials of Van Occupanther” I do suggest you give the  Beyond The Wizard’s Sleeve (BTWS) remix of the track a whirl also. Rather than butchering the original, they’ve stripped away the hopeless angst and built on the wispy, dream-like sounds to create something that is even more soothing on the soul. Love the reverse guitar sampling embedded in the track. In case you’re wondering, BTWS is a side-project comprising of electronic producers Erol Alkan (here for Parklife yeah!) and Richard Norris. So enough ranting from me, you can judge the remix yourself by getting it HERE.

Scott Matthews – Elusive

Scott Matthews looking a little more cheery here

This one is a bit of an oldie now, well I guess 2006 is considered old now right? So yeah, “Elusive” was the lead single off Scott Matthews debut album “Passing Stranger” and hearing it today it still gives me the same beautiful yet, haunting feel it did back then. I suppose I could rant on about the lyrics and what they mean to me and shit but  a) that’d be too emo me (is that still in these days?) and b) I’d hate to sway your opinion before you’ve actually had a chance to listen to the track… If you do dig this track, have a dig around for the entire album and maybe look into his new one “Elsewhere” which was released earlier this year.

Bon Iver – Blood Bank

Bon Iver now back from the wilderness...

So Bon Iver is the last on my list of woe and melancholy for this week. “Blood Bank” comes off the EP of the same name and features tracks that didn’t make the cut on Justin Vernon’s debut release “For Emma, Forever Ago”. Anyway, while this track has the trademarks of the debut album it’s a little more upbeat and warm.

Righty-O! That should wrap up this week’s depressing selection of tunes.  As always, if you dig the artist/music the go buy it whether physical/digital and go see them live. Your conscience and the artists will love you more for it!