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anything about music. can be reviews, news, tour updates, just music in nature.
View these photos at my flickr page. Aaaaand… I’m on Stereogum!
http://stereogum.com/archives/photo/no-age-abe-vigoda-mika-miko-wavves-friends-the-sme_048871.html
Who puts out a live CD/DVD combo when they’ve only released one LP and a couple EPs? I mean, it’s not like a headlining electronic act could build an entire show off of one album… Unless of course, it’s Justice we’re talking about.
Instead of going over the history of Justice, which you probably already know, let’s jump right into the track-by-track (I’ve combined some tracks that are split into two on the CD).
Overall, I think I’d give the album a 4/5. That last point is lost to the fact that Gaspard and Xavier don’t frequent dance floors. Only in Phantom Part II does the live show give the audience a groove to dance to. In other places it tries, but the songs are cut short by breakdowns or transitions that leave the beat out. To bring up the Daft Punk comparison, I feel that this was something that Daft Punk did flawlessly. They know how an audience reacts to certain songs. They understand that fatigue sets in when you leave the energy too high too long. I hope that Justice can learn these things over time and improve their sets accordingly.
It seems that ragging on Kanye West for anything other than his oversized ego and inappropriate public outbursts was off limits. Rightfully so, in my opinion. He was a producer-to-the-stars before The College Dropout, and he has gone nowhere but up since that first album came out in 2004. Unfortunately, rap’s megastar has decidedly turned his back on the genre in some misguided attempt to save pop music.
In all honesty, I wanted this album to blow me away. I enjoyed Kanye’s previous albums, and while I found it odd that everyone of his songs relied so heavily on sampled material, he is without a doubt mastered the skill. Just as I hadn’t really listened to a TON of Radiohead before In Rainbows, I wanted 808s & Heartbreak to make me fall in love with Kanye, to look past the asshole persona and see some genius inside.
This album has 2 (maybe 3) songs that are single material and the rest are filler. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t need 12 singles to think an album is good; I wouldn’t even say that one is necessary (ie. BT’s This Binary Universe). But an album of filler does not cut it for me.
The first single Love Lockdown, which Kanye premiered live at the MTV 2008 VMAs deserves some credit for delivering on what was promised. It’s a well-intentioned crack at a minimal pop song (but the hip hop still lurks somewhere in the background). As far as the Auto Tune goes, I think it’s used appropriately here as an instrument and not as a coverup for poor vocals.
The same applies for the album’s second single Heartless. I love the breathy flute/woodwind stabs featured throughout the song. On top of that, I constantly find myself singing the chorus to this song. And I don’t really try to ever get it out of my head, it’s just catchy. Solid song (but let’s not get into the music video).
And that’s as far as the complements go. From Paranoid (featuring someone with a very average voice) on, this album was torturous for me to listen to. The formula of using Auto Tune over every vocal paired with simplistic beats constructed on a Roland TR-808 makes a couple interesting experiments, not an album. Taken as a whole, it seems that Kanye wanted to break molds, so for some reason he picked the effect that has framed T-Pain as a one-trick-pony and the drum machine that everyone in electronic music has used at one time or another to make beats. Maybe it’s me, but this combo does not scream experimental or pop in any way/shape/form.
Picking out the biggest offender, I especially loath the song RoboCop. I cannot figure this song out for the life of me. The majority of the lyrics don’t make sense, and those that do are just ridiculous. Again, let me clarify that every song in my library isn’t a deep, introspective on human emotions. But when Spank Rock raps about Backyard Betty, it’s tongue-in-cheek. If Kanye is just having fun with his lyrics and don’t mean anything by the references to Misery, the joke was lost on me. Aside from the lyrics, I also can’t stand the music to the song. The strings and glittery bells belong in a Christmas compilation album, and at some point in the song, Kanye ditches the Auto Tune. He needed to keep it on (so I flip flop about the Auto Tune… maybe he just shouldn’t sing).
In conclusion, this album will sell tons. The first two singles were carefully picked, and they are doing their job. This doesn’t really bother me, because tons of crap gets passed as quality on top 40 radio stations everyday, but I did expect more from Kanye. If you have the biggest ego in the world, you better have some quality material to back it up.
fyi: I do not have a standard rating system. I know I’ve done ratings out of 10 in the past, but I figured it would be easier to list what I have rated each song in my iTunes library.
ps: Would it kill Lil’ Wayne to speak in a normal tone of voice for once?
The New York Times has become my go-to source for US news of any kind. I find their writers to be intelligent and able to convey their ideas through words with little apparent effort. I also love the fact that the outlet hasn’t held back in any way/shape/form to adopt the internet as a perfect vehicle to communicate information with speed and creativity.
Moving away from the New York Times… Andrew Kuo is an artist who (to the best of my knowledge) is best known for the info-graphics that he creates for the New York Times. The illustrations each have some theme relating to music and his quantification of various quasi-quantifiable data. I love them all, and here are 5 of my favorites.
My admiration for Bjork will always go understated simply because I don’t have enough words to summarize her genius. The experimentation and exploration that she accomplished through her albums is reflected in her live shows. If you ever have the chance (and a full bank account), make sure to see her when she comes you way.
As I started going to concerts and music festivals about 5 years ago, I unfortunately missed the Lallapalooza of 1992. Look at that lineup! Chili Peppers, Ministry, JAMC, Rage, STP. Damn. I mean, Coachella is amazing too, but Lolla ’92 looks like it was a “best-of” compilation of the past few Coachellas.
While most of Kuo’s info-graphics have a level of comedy, I find this tops them all. I think that the humor of his pieces comes from the viewers ability completely/partially agree/disagree with the data that is represented. Opinionated data…
Two best “variables”:
Insanely lazy… a song with a half-cooked hook and Auto-Tune!? C’mon Kanye- it’s 2008. (T-Pain is rolling over in his grave.)
This is curiously catchy and at least is doesn’t have a Daft Punk or M.I.A. sample in it… bye, hater!
After having seen Hot Chip 5 times (yes, five), I believe that it’s safe to say that I love their live show. I think I included this graphic in my top 5 just because it’s about Hot Chip. Who cares if that makes me biased? That’s what all of these illustrations are about!
Note: This is the second half of my Nine Inch Nails – Lights In The Sky 2008 Tour. The first half (from Seattle) can be found here.
I love Nine Inch Nails. I love Nine Inch Nails so much that when their Lights Over North America Tour was announced, I went twice. Seattle was amazing because I had no idea what to expect save for a great light show; LA was amazing because I knew exactly what to expect. Maybe that makes some sense, just read on if it doesn’t (and if it does…)
+10 points for being LA when Deerhunter came around. Crystal Castles sort of bombed in Seattle because no one knew who they were. Admittedly, while they are getting pretty big in the indie world, I can’t really expect a bunch of metal-heads to be too interested with the 8-bit/electro/indie scene. I love both Crystal Castles and Deerhunter, and so do people in LA.
Bradford Cox is one freaking looking dude. The rest of Deerhunter looks fairly normal for an indie noise/ambient/rock group, but Cox stands out like a sore thumb. Luckily for us all, the music that roars out of the speaker towers makes you quickly forget any oddity that Deerhunter embodies. Their set was about 30 minutes long, just long enough for them to find a nice balance between their noise material and their more rocky/beat-driven songs. It went smoothly, and I think everyone enjoyed the set.
When I say that I fully knew what to expect the night of the concert, I honestly mean it. I wasn’t expecting anything new to come up. Maybe they’d tightened things up on the corners (not to say that the Seattle show was sloppy), but the show is so massive that it seems nearly impossible to change anything at all. Turns out I was fairly wrong.
Aside from the different set list (which I’ll discuss later), the light show had changed, and the performances were out of this world. In the Seattle post, I mention that this lineup is the best that NIN has ever had, but I said that because of how good they sounded. At the LA show, I realized that every member of the band brings something unique to the table besides their musical expertise. Whether being menacing, aggressive, staid, precise, or one of the many other things that each are on stage, NIN has captured what an over-the-top live show is.
One change to the light show from Seattle was the inclusion of a face morphing graphic during The Hand That Feeds. I don’t recall what was going on at that time in Seattle, but there certainly wasn’t a massive George W. Bush being shown. That night in Inglewood, the only graphic shown was Bush who seemed to be getting progressively older as the song went on. I thought it was weird, until I realized that Bush wasn’t getting older. He was morphing into John McCain. I say this with all honesty, I really thought he was just getting older at first…
The songs that were played throughout the night (+2 from the Seattle show) differed slightly from other tour dates. Unfortunately for me, The Great Destroyer was left out, so the insane spastic strobes and static that the song encompasses was greatly missed. God Given was played however, which almost makes up for the missed Destroyer. That song has a solid tech/glitch beat to it that makes me smile every time I hear it. The best part of the song though wasn’t the music at all, it was Finck. When the chourus dies, this creepy whispered line some in
i would never tell you anything that wasn’t absolutely true that hadn’t come right from his mouth and he wants me to tell you
and the song starts right up when the whisper ends. Finck was the guy who did the whispering live. Talk about something that comes straight from your nightmares. They had the light shining on his face like he was telling a horror story (and he might as well have been). Of course, they closed with Hurt & In This Twilight. It was a night that, when paired with Seattle’s date, makes up one of the best live shows I’ve ever seen.
Now I just have to seen them in a festival setting…
Set List
Last night at the Key Arena in Seattle, WA, I witnessed a legendary rock band at it’s finest. While I haven’t been listening to Nine Inch Nails (NIN) from its Pretty Hate Machine days (come on, I was 3 months old), I have been listening for quite some time now. After I went through my industrial phase a few years ago, NIN was one of the few bands I kept with me. Trent Reznor has been one of the outspoken artists when it comes to digital rights management, and to still be relevant twenty years after releasing a 5-star album is incredible.
This is the first of a two part post/review on NIN’s starting and ending dates (Seattle & L.A.) on their Lights In The Sky Over North America 2008 tour.
I’ll admit that I’m into indie music, but not THAT into indie music. I still enjoy some pop music, hip hop isn’t all bad, and I can appreciate classical and jazz music. That being said, Seattle’s NIN fans made me look like the most hipster of all hipsters when Crystal Castles came on stage. How does no one in this city know who the biggest name in rising indie/electro/8-bit/screaming music is?
As you might be able to tell, I love Crystal Castles. I saw them for the first time about a year ago at the Neighborhood Festival, and I loved what they brought to the table. Since then, they have released their self-titled LP and have been touring around like crazy.
Obviously, I loved them at this show. Though their set was pretty short at about 25 minutes, they are just an opening band, and they fit in all the greats. For me, the standout song was Crimewave. I know it’s not an entirely original song and that Alice sings the same chorus over and over, but when the opening synths start up, nothing else really matters. Of course, I also loved Courtship Dating, but I wish that she had actually sung the song instead of screaming and whispering it all (it kind of goes back and forth).
I’ll admit that I looked at the setlist from the NIN show the night before the Seattle show, but it was just so that I could prepare myself for the amazingness that I knew I’d be in front of. I didn’t watch any videos, and didn’t try to find any bootlegs. I don’t think that knowing the setlist beforehand is cheating, and I didn’t really want to spoil what I knew would be come insane visual effects.
To say that I wasn’t let down would be a grave understatement.
This show was what I consider to be the epitome of what a electronically infused rock show should be. First you have the music. NIN has been around for almost twenty years and has seven LPs worth of music to pick and choose from as a result. This set is nothing short of a best hits compilation fused with the key parts of NIN’s more recent releases; songs from each and every album were present. But while the songs played are important, they are nothing if they don’t sound good.
Trent Reznor has consistently written songs that fit his voice. He doesn’t stretch it in the studio to hit those high notes that everyone know could only be hit once. As a result, his live vocals are always on point. In addition, this NIN lineup is arguably the best in history. It consists of Trent Reznor, Alessandro Cortini, Robin Finck, Josh Freese, and Justin Meldal-Johnsen. Aside from Trent, the standout here is Robin Finck, who has been playing with Guns ‘n Roses as Slash’s sporadic replacement for the past twelve years. It’s great to have him back, and his dred-hawk is pretty damn sick. Every musician is spot on, and the only hiccups all night where technical ones, not musical mistakes.
So the music was great, what about these visuals that everyone has been buzzing about? I read an interview with Reznor from the New York Times that reads:
“What I’m trying to do is use the stage as an interactive instrument,” Mr. Reznor said. “I’m in the world of science fiction now.”
Trust me, NIN delivers, and here’s what I gathered from the Seattle show. There are three massive dot screens (the ones made up of tons of tiny round lights that work like a TV screen). They are all at different depths of the stage, so they can all be layered on top of one another. There is one wall of 112 lights that rotate around and change color. There are a ton of hanging fluorescent lights that flash on and off during a portion of the show. Finally, the massive dot screens have some sort of light/heat sensor to tell when the musicians step up to them and dynamically change what they show depending on where the musician is. So how is this an instrument? For the Echoplex encore, one screen is used as a drum machine. Yes, a drum machine. It is one of those scream-out-loud-because-this-is-so-amazing moments. This is why I payed for presale tickets to get on the floor.
So if you can’t tell, I loved this concert. NIN was able to combine stunning musicianship with brand new high-tech visuals to create one of the best rock shows I’ve ever been to. Remember, this is only part one of two. Don’t expect part two to be this long, but I’ll be back to mention if the show gets any better on the last North American tour date (L.A.).
Here’s a rundown of the 28 (!!!) song setlist:
Also, that sick picture of Trent is from laura musselman‘s flickr account.
This whole “give music away for free” distribution method is really catching on! Next up: Girl Talk’s Feed the Animals. After mentioning the album multiple times in recent interviews, Gregg Gillis has finally released the latest Girl Talk album, and it definitely carries on right where Night Rippers left off.
For those who are new to Girl Talk, the music is best described as a mashup of many other songs that combine to create entirely new songs. Essentially Gillis takes 10-20 samples from old and new songs, arranges and layers them ontop of one another, and spits out some genius concoction that is Girl Talk. His ability to take music from nearly every genre and weave them together so flawlessly is amazing.
Getting back to Feed the Animals, please take a look at the album’s Wikipedia page. Scroll down to the tracklist and be blown away at how many songs were sampled from to make this record. In a single song, Gillis takes from Kraftwerk, Genesis, Michael Jackson, The Velvet Underground, and Justin Timberlake.
One thing that I’ve noticed from Night Rippers and Feed the Animals (not so much with Secret Diary or Unstoppable) is that the songs blend into each other, and each song isn’t extremely separate from the songs adjacent to it. I think this is due to the massive number of samples used and the quick twists and turns taken in each song. Don’t get me wrong, I still love both of the two latest albums, but they play as an hour long mashup instead of individual song arranged to fit together.
Many of the songs are constructed through trios of samples layering one songs beats, another’s instruments, and yet another’s vocals. Here are a few of my favorite trios from the album:
So all-in-all, I love this album. It’s a great piece to put on with headphones and just test your music knowledge skills to see exactly how many songs you can recognize (more points for beats than vocals). While I know that most music that is good takes some time to create, I really am blown away at how well all of these samples mix together.
Heading back to the polo fields after an exhausting Friday, we knew that we’d be in for a treat on Saturday. From my standpoint (and that of many others) it was the strongest day by far. After the peanut butter sandwiches and water-bottles were loaded into the backpacks and the sunscreen amply applied, we trekked back to the pat-down lines and started Coachella Day 2. Here are the links to the different shows we saw on Saturday: Institubes, the Teenagers, Uffie feat. DJ Mehdi, Dredg, Boys Noize, Erol Alkan, Hot Chip, Portishead, Prince.
Institubes (Para One, Orgasmic, Surkin)
A record label full of electro DJs is always a nice way to start a chock-full Coachella day. One nice thing about getting to Coachella near to opening (aside from the short lines) is that you have the ability to lay down in the tents and just listen to music. No more worrying about keeping your spot. Para One, Orgasmic, and Surkin served up the Institubes flavored electro for about an hour and a half, but I didn’t stay for the whole time, I had other stuff to get to.
I’d say that I was pretty excited to see The Teenagers. The new album is interesting. It’s not really full of songs, but I can’t think of a good noun to apply to what they make. Too bad this sounded like crap. Maybe it was because I was sitting at the back of the tent, but the boring backing tunes with the annoying/incomprehensible voice didn’t make for pleasent listening. But this is Coachella where music is everywhere all the time, so I left.
Leaving The Teenagers for Uffie & DJ Mehdi was a bad idea, but it was my only choice. Uffie really is the odd girl out on Ed Rec, and she sounds like crap live. She isn’t much of a rapper, and there isn’t any stage presence. One thing that was interesting was the guys running around the stage with Uffie and rapping along with her. Don’t know who they were, but I hope that they don’t try to ride up with her, they won’t get anywhere.
Talk about a stark change in pace. Dredg was the fresh gust of wind that I needed, and their show was one of my favorites for the weekend. I was introduced to Dredg about a year ago, and I’ve been hooked on their progressive rock style ever since. The lead singer of the band has an amazing voice, but I was worried that it would be a studio voice and he’d be all over the place live. Not so. I couldn’t have asked for a more solid performance.
Unfortunately, there wasn’t too many people watching the show at the Outdoor Stage. This is Dredg’s first year at Coachella (performing at least) even though they have 4 LPs already out. They really do deserve more attention than they get; they just don’t have a marketable edge even though their music is amazing. I hope that their upcoming album stays true to their honest sound, they’ve been at it for a long time and I hope they get a break soon.
Beginning my last 2008 Sahara Tent run was Boys Noize, and I was fully prepared to have my face melted off. After the best DJ set of the weekend, it sufficiently was. I find it really interesting how France has such a firm grip on electro right now with Ed Banger and Institubes throwing out DJ after DJ, and here we have this single German guy who’s killing all of their efforts. I don’t mean to make it sound like a war of sorts, but Boys Noize is the dictator of all things electro right now.
His set consisted heavily of material from his album Oi Oi Oi, but he threw in some Bloc Party and Daft Punk for size. I must say that his remix of Feist’s My Moon My Man is one of the best remixes (more like a re-interpretation) that I’ve ever heard, and I was so glad that he played it during his set. He did his trademark move where he puts the headphone-strap over his eyes and continues DJing a few times. All in all, it was just a electro set to rule all electro sets.
I don’t know too much about Erol Alkan other than he doesn’t tour in the US too much, so it was pretty cool to see him here. Following up Boys Noize is no easy task, and considering Alkan didn’t really play any recognizable songs, I think of his set as a way to wind down from Boys Noize. It was a pretty high energy show, but you can’t really top the best. I enjoyed the show, but I was really waiting around for Hot Chip.
I saw Hot Chip last year at Coachella for the first time, and they blew my socks off. They have such a high energy show that it’s impossible not to love every moment that they are on stage. Lets consider a few things that changed this year from last: 1) Sahara Tent baby! 2) New album out 3) Later set time. All of these things contributed to an great performance that (by my standards) topped last year.
I think the biggest component of their live show that made it so incredible at Coachella is that they have a ton of material to play and a very short time to play it in. This means that they forego all of their slow-mid tempo songs for the raving mad ones. All of Made In The Dark translates perfectly to a live performance, and the seamless flow from song to song doesn’t let the energy drop at all. It was pretty clear that they’ve worked on tidying up the loose ends over the past year. So much damn fun.
Admittedly, Kraftwerk isn’t really my favorite band/group. I completely understand the massive impact that they have had on every genre of music that uses any kind of electrical instruments (they formed back in the 70s), but their music hasn’t aged well in my opinion. While I’m sure some people were blown away, I guess it was cool. It was exactly what every YouTube video makes it out to be any nothing more. The screen behind them was nice, but again, exactly what’s happened at every single one of their tour dates for the past 5+ years. I will concede that their music translates amazingly to a setting like Coachella. Their sound is so big that it just fills the fields with the electronic bleeps and pops of the past. Good, I guess, didn’t wow me.
This is where my night turns golden. Portishead hasn’t done much of anything (as a group) for the past 10/11 years, and I’ve listened to Dummy countless times since discovering the group as my interest in Massive Attack grew. Some music is awesome because of the great show that goes along with it (Daft Punk), some music is great because of its intensity (Rage Against the Machine), and some music is great because of the emotions that pour out of it (Portishead).
Portishead was by far my favorite act at Coachella 2008. Regardless of the fact that I probably won’t ever see them again and any other factor other than the music that makes the existence of their performance at Coachella great, it really was the music that got me. Beth has said in interviews that lyrics are her way of communicating to people, and it really shows. In between songs, you could hear her faintly saying to Adrian and Geoff, “Say something… just say something into the microphone…”
Their twelve-song set consisted of the best songs from Dummy, Portishead, and Third. It really was a hauntingly moving experience. As a fan, it’s nice to know when artists acknowledge some sort of connection with you, and as Geoff was walking off stage, he shot out, “Thanks for waiting so long.” As anyone who’s listened to Third all the way through, it was well worth the 10 years.
The surprise headliner for Saturday night was Prince, as everyone knows. Following Portishead isn’t an easy thing to do, but really, this is Prince we are talking about. I wish that I had more to say about his show other than it was what a perfect funk/soul/R&B show is. He played about 20 songs in total over 2 hours (he ended at 1am, not midnight). The set was made up of 80s songs, plenty of covers, and some of his more recent singles.
Here are some of the highlights from the performance: Morris Day and Sheila E. opened with a few songs with Prince on guitar, Prince covered Radiohead’s Creep (perfect choice for the Coachella crowd), he also covered the Beatles’ Come Together, and the encore was a double dose of Purple Rain and Let’s Go Crazy.
Seriously people, Portishead brought the melancholy, and Prince brought the party. It was one of the best nights of music I’ve been to.
These incredible pictures of the Coachella weekend are from Mick 0, Caesar Sebastian, and Jevon Feinblatt.
On May 5th Trent Reznor announced the immediate release of the Nine Inch Nails album titled The Slip. Along with the release new came word that the album was available for free download in MP3, M4A, FLAC, and WAV formats and comes with a PDF booklet. Unlike the release of the recent Ghosts I-IV, Reznor did not give fans the option to pay for The Slip. In the NIN.com blog post, Reznor gave fans this note:
(thank you for your continued and loyal support over the years – this one’s on me)
As a long time fan of NIN, I headed right over to the download page, got my copy of The Slip in FLAC, threw it into iTunes, admired the album art (though I still don’t understand what it means), and played through the new material.
The first thing I noted about the album was its relatively short length. At 43:45 it’s well under an hour, which is fine by me. If there’s one thing that I’ve recently noticed it’s that I don’t really have the patience or time to sit still through a full album if it lasts longer than an hour. Whether an hour genuinely is a good marker for an album or if I’m just abnormally impatient isn’t too important, I’m just glad that The Slip can be taking in from start to finish is one sitting.
On to the actual musical contents of The Slip. The album opens with the intro track “999,999”, which leads into “1,000,000”. “999,999” is a fairly generic building of an ambient industrial sound-scape that Reznor seems to be enjoying more and more these days. 1,000,000 is a more traditional NIN song with a distorted guitar, a simple drum line, and Reznor’s vocals all layered on each other once for verses and reverbed back on each other for choruses. The rest of the album follows in similar fashion with a few more “single-quality” songs, a piano ballad, and a 7 and a half minute sound-scape arriving near the end of the album.
One feeling that I got from The Slip is that Reznor isn’t so much interested in straightforward industrial music anymore. I guess the feeling has been building since With Teeth, but The Slip is the first full NIN album that I could almost categorize as alternative metal. I don’t think I like this feeling, but I loved Year Zero, and I sorta like The Slip. Hopefully this feeling is only coming on because The Slip feels like a promo for the upcoming tour that NIN will be embarking on (which I already have tickets for).
The main reason why I don’t have the hots for The Slip like I did for Year Zero is because it’s relatively predictable. Year Zero was so varied and unexpected, yet it flowed perfectly. To me, The Slip seems like an extension of some Year Zero songs where fresh material should be instead.
I started to get into this in the review section, but The Slip doesn’t feel like a full NIN album to me. Maybe it’s because of the fact that I didn’t have to (or even get to) pay for it, but the album seems like a promo for the upcoming tour. Getting away from the fact that The Slip isn’t my cup of tea, Reznor is truly putting his money where his mouth is when it comes to his views on the record industry.
The models (or experiments) that he has been going through are fairly unprecedented. Please don’t give me any crap about Radiohead, because I don’t think that the release of In Rainbows holds any weight against the release of Ghosts I-IV and The Slip. In Rainbows was amazing, don’t get me wrong, but if Radiohead was serious about trying out new models of selling and marketing their music, they wouldn’t stop after one go around.
My best guess right now is that Reznor is playing mind games with his fans, and that we are all too willing to play along. Not only is he building loyalty through producing good music, he is now giving us gifts for participating in his experiments. Reznor made well over a million dollars of pure profit with Ghosts I-IV, so in return he’s giving us a full NIN album for free. With the antics that surrounded the release of Year Zero and the distribution methods being used now, Trent Reznor, who is already one of history’s greatest musicians, is soon to be one of the great marketers and business men of the music industry.
Here’s a few random notes about the upcoming NIN US tour. I have my tickets for the Seattle date because I’ll be up in Redmond this summer interning for Microsoft. A friend and I are hoping to snag tickets for the LA date when the presale goes up. The supporting acts this go around include Crystal Castles, Does It Offend You Yeah?, Deerhunter, A Place To Bury Strangers, and White Williams. I’ll be seeing Crystal Castles up in Seattle and Deerhunter in LA! Two amazing openers if you ask me. So exited!
Photos below are from the nineinchnails flickr feed.
If you think seeing Hot Chip twice in three days sounds like fun, let me tell you, it definitely is. I speak from experience. Coachella Saturday = Hot Chip & the Mayan Monday = Hot Chip. Both great, but very different.
I believe that this whole ordeal earned a bit of back-story, so here goes. Back way before February, I bought tickets to a tiny Hot Chip show at the El Rey. It was one of two shows that they were going to be doing in the states, and the other was out in New York. I was so pumped, but the day of the show, it was cancelled due to an illness in the band. After a few weeks, the Goldenvoice email went out announcing a makeup date at the Mayan in APRIL. Talk about a long wait.
So the end of April rolled around, Coachella happened, and I was ready for another dose of Hot Chip (my first dose away from a festival setting). Opening the night was a New York duo called Free Blood. I’d never heard of them before, but I really enjoyed their set. Their sound consisted of pre-recorded tribal/heavy/electronic beats with the guy playing bass and singing along with the girl. While it was a high energy show for a lesser-known opener, one thing that I was impressed by was the fact that they timed their set perfectly. It’s always nice when openers have figured out the right time where you’re enjoying what you’re hearing and you’re not tired of it yet, but you will be in about two songs. They stopped before the two songs. Good set all around.
I guess I should start the Hot Chip portion of this by saying that seeing Hot Chip in a hot, sweaty, packed Coachella tent is a far different experience from seeing them at a nice LA venue. To be completely honest, I prefer the Coachella environment. It’s something about everyone being packed together and completely in love with what they are experiencing at Coachella that makes it that much better. Then again, seeing Hot Chip at the Mayan was great because of the much longer set time, and it’s just a more intimate setting.
Look down at the set list, it pretty much sums up the fact that their latest album Made In The Dark is amazing live. So many of the songs translate perfectly to Hot Chip’s live performance which is pretty far removed from the sound of their records. The live show is so high energy that it’s hard to recognize that the live songs are the same ones on the albums.
My personal favorites when performed live are “Boy From School”, “Out at the Pictures”, “Shake a Fist”, and (of course) “Over & Over”. There’s something to be said about a band that can recreate the sound of their songs so that they flow together but stay distinct when played live. Hot Chip has perfected this art.
As I said before, this show was the replacement show for what should have been their first stop in the US back in February, and they acknowledged the fact by saying that they would play their asses off. Honestly, I think they put more effort into the Coachella show. Maybe the shorter set time puts pressure on bands to filer out any sort of filler, but it just had more energy in the air than the Mayan show.
The three photos below are from riotphotography on flickr.
