Duck Goes Moo!

I simply love this video. I wonder if this is what “The Sims 3″ will be like?

This is a leaked video for Bjork’s song “Earth Intruders” which is off of her recently released “Volta” album. It is being sold as Bjork’s best album ever since Debut and Post, the main difference being that Bjork has supposedly decided to stop being so serious about her music and start having fun again.

I used to be very into Bjork, perhaps to an unhealthy degree when I was younger, but after her Homegenic album I lost interest in her music. It really didn’t strike interest in me. Personally I thought it was her relationship with artist Matthew Barney that made the work uninteresting.

Matthew Barney is big on believing the best art and expressions comes through when one’s abilities are restrained or hampered in some way. He was known to do things like try to paint while his limbs were being pulled towards a wall by elastic bands, reducing his ability to paint like he wanted to. I figured Bjork was doing something similar, purposely sabotaging her work or her ability to create expressive music for some pointless creative ideal.

There is a definite difference in Volta from her more recent releases. It is much like her first two albums, Debut and Post, but still seems to suffer a little bit of whatever it is that I don’t like about her more recent albums. Still, Volta has some really top notch songs on it that I’ve now got stuck in my head.

BTW, the YouTube video above can’t be viewed here. You can follow this link: Earth Intruders Video

I posted earlier about DEVO 2.0, the Disney/Devo hybrid, and I just found an actual video of the peppy new band on YouTube:

I still don’t know what to make of all this. From what I’ve read Disney approached DEVO for approval for the whole project and they were pretty like, “Eh, Why not?”.

In one of the more bizarre and unexpected media match-ups in recent history, it seems that DEVO and Disney have fallen into a web of love and had an unusual offspring known as DEVO 2.0.

It’s a group of kids, several of them girls (lead singer Nicole), that sing slightly modified versions of the original DEVO songs, and by altered I mean many of the deep, philosophical and sexual references removed with a more “feel good” lilt. For example:

The song “Beautiful World” remains mostly unchanged until the end, where the words, “It’s a beautiful world for you/It’s not for me” have been changed to, “It’s a beautiful world for you/I guess me too”.

from Wikipedia entry on DEVO 2.0

I’ve listed to some of the songs and I have to say the end result is actually cooler and rocks harder than I thought it was going to. Having a young girl as the lead singer is interesting, though it might be more interesting without the altered lyrics. Apparently the kids don’t actually play the instruments; the original DEVO guys still do that, but the kids do indeed provide the vocals.

I think it’s especially interesting they are wearing the iconic “red flower pot” hats that DEVO used to wear back in their earlier days… which DEVO allegedly were quoted with saying the funky hats were worn to focus their sexual energies into their vocals.

I remember watching a documentary about Weird Al one time and it had Mark Mothersbaugh talking about how the song and video “Dare to be Stupid”, which was meant to be a tribute/mocking of DEVO, did such a superior job of capturing what he was trying to express with his own music that he would forever hate Weird Al for it. Not sure if he was joking or not… it’s hard to tell with the DEVO guys.

I found this on YouTube. It’s not an official DEVO video, but a talented puppeteer(s) decided to make one and post it.

Remind me never to bug David Bowie:

One of the more morbid or Johnny Cash’s songs, but still one of my favorites.

Last year I got to rock out with a band called Karmella’s Game in STL. I was extremely enamored with their rockitude, synchronized moves, and catholic school uniforms. I recently found some clips of them on YouTube. They’re not wearing the catholic school gear but they still rock the house. These clips don’t do them justice, but enjoy anyway:

ROCK!!!

I use MusicMatch as my digital jukebox on my machine and today it suggested a new artist to me: Slow Runner. I usually don’t bother with the suggestions the service throws at me, but the title of their album was “No Disassemble”, which was the lovable robot Number Johnny Five exclaimed when he discovered his will to live in the 1986 movie Short Circuit.

The first title track is a nice bit of blip-pop ambient, but the rest of the album took me by surprise. As I am listening to the album I am frustrated with trying to classify what type of music it is, but I am really enjoying the music in itself.

At first I wanted to say that Slow Runner reminds me of a cross between The Postal Service and Blind Melon, but as I listened on that evolved to a cross between Grandaddy and Gomez. Now as I have listened to about half the album I am somehow reminded of the Beatles and The Decemberists.

Michael Flynn’s voice is very expressive with a nice vocal and expressive range, switching between apethetic crooning and enraged shouting easily as the music jumps between calm and frantic. When the full-synth keyboard isn’t the piano and ocassional banjo are, adding an additional layer of complexity as the music travels between electronic and acoustic and back again. This would all seem to collapse except for the well placed percussion and excellent bass playing.

I think overall it’s a great debut album and I think Slow Runner has a great future ahead of them. Give them a listen sometime.

What do you get when you combine sixties-style inspirational pop, eighties hip-hop beats, 90′s grunge, and a cheerleading squad? Something suprisingly catchy and fun to listen to.

They’re called The Go! Team, and they are based in Manchester… I think. Visit their site and go to the “Music” section to have a listen.