I’m posting the video to this, rather than the song, because it’s a beautiful thing to watch. It’s a visually arresting look at the Indian city of Varanasi and its people. The video was directed by Daniel Wirtberg & Jonas Rudström. The song itself is by Miike Snow who, when not busily remixing everyone elses songs, are getting their heads down and making sweet little tunes like this… And I mean sweet in the actual way, not the surfer-douche way!
Okay, firstly, this is a retarded name for a genre. I fucking despise the idea of prefixing anything with “nu” – it was never cool. Not when Limp Bizkit arrived, and not since then. Whoever’s pulling this shit and playing the name game needs to take some of their beer money, buy a thesaurus, and do us all a fucking favour.
Now, I’m not going to pretend to know the first thing about the history and context behind nu-gaze music. I didn’t write a stupid-long book about how much it changed my life or where the leader singer from the band that pioneered the genre dropped a dookie for the very first time, that shit ain’t me. If you want that then Amazon probably have your back. I’m just here to give you some of my favourite acts, the whats and whys, and a nice download or two.
Nu-Gaze is, fundamentally, a continuation of shoegaze. Shoegaze is great, but there’s only one band I consider truly shoegaze, and that’s My Bloody Valentine. To me, MBV are shoegaze in its purest form. Anything before them, and anything beyond them, just don’t match-up. Their album Loveless basically defines the shoegaze sound as it should be heard; wailing, distorted, and lucid. But not so overdriven and noisy that it becomes derivative. It evokes the feeling of crashing to Earth whilst sleeping, and it’s fucking marvelous.
Now, in much the same vein, shoegaze’s bastard step-son, nu-gaze, is looking to inherit a few of daddy’s attributes: overdrive kicked up to 11, and lots of melodic, jangly lead guitars. Only this time it’s bringing other elements to the mix, for instance, electronica has fucked one of shoegaze’s teenage daughters behind the town hall and refused to raise its child, creating bands such as The Radio Dept. and M83 as a result. Of course, there are then bands such as Deerhunter and The Pains of Being Pure at Heart who embody a far less overdriven sound; far more poppy, but still suitably dream-like and droning. These could be described as the distant, youngest cousins of shoe-gaze. The ones that grew up in boarding school and never quite “got it” but still ended up making pretty special fucking tunes in their own right.
Other notable siblings and or hangers-on are…
On the back of that awesome M83 remix I posted a few days ago I’ve been getting into its mixer, Udachi, and his vast array of bitchslap your face off-bass tunes. He’s a master of that dirty, rumbling, staggered bass sound, and his music wont hesitate to make you feel 57 varieties of badass.
LINKZ!!11
Some songs just personify the glory of noise. That dirty rumble that will fuck your speakers in every crevice, and leave them feeling like they just paid their dues. I’m an M83 fan anyway, but this remix takes what’s already a stellar track to another level. Bass lines don’t get much better.
Source: The Music Ninja (direct download)
When I heard this initially I thought perhaps Wavves had tightened up their style, but it’s actually by a band called The Wicked Awesomes! I love it, anywho. A deliciously lo-fi punk song that drones in all the right places, and has elements of Sonic Youth-riffage thrown in for good measure.
via weird canada [direct download]
I love these pictures with a passion. I don’t want to try and begin to decipher the meaning behind them, though, as I will end up spouting off a load of cliched bullshit about love being blind, e.t.c., and that ain’t my game. I love just about everything attached to the Surrealist movement in art, because of that intangible, unexplainable quality it has. And the way it distorts and changes opinions from one person to another. There’s something mind-blowing about these pictures that I don’t want to try and explain…
I found this girl on Flickr and found a lot of her work pretty incredible. Like, from the perspective of someone who’s worked with image manipulation and such for a long time, I can pretty confidently say that she’s going an amazing job; there never seems to be a texture or blend out of place, it all comes together very seamlessly.
So rather than barrage you all with a billion tracks a day, I figured I’d just compile everything I’ve enjoyed from the day into one post, then I can give your RSS or twitter feeds a rest and you wont hate me with a passion.
Yo La Tengo – Sudden Organ
Source: The Opening Acts, [Direct Download]
Lykke Li – Knocked Up (Kings of Leon cover)
Source: Et Musique Pourtous, [Direct Download]