The five minutes I spent seeing the band below play on the L train platform at Union Square were way better than the hour and a half I spent in the theater watching “Bruno” immediately afterwards.
But this isn’t a film review here – this is exactly why I live in New York. I just spent a little time in Missoula, and while there were plenty of dirty dreadlocks and bongos out in the street out there, there wasn’t NOTHIN’ like this. This was like The Flaming Lips meets Soul Jazz with just a touch of the bear-and-a-BJ clip from the Shining.
I accidentally covered the mike on my phone with my thumb there for about 30 seconds or so. The sound’ll come back, don’t worry:
Musically, our culture has achieved singularity. Every song ever recorded is dripping off the tip of the Internet’s long tail and into the ears of anyone with headphones and an iTunes account. Bands like the Black Lips and Interpol do solid service to sounds past, and Girl Talk mashes old songs together to make something new. While New York’s Francis and the Lights has one foot rooted solidly in Prince’s synth-heavy ’80s output, the other foot is rhythmically shimmying its way straight into the future.
I’ve mentioned them here before, several times, with good reason. They’re one of the best live bands I’ve ever seen, in New York or anywhere else.
This video for “The Top,” from the new mini-album “A Modern Promise” just made me scream. It’s shot on 35mm, pops in a giant new Quicktime window. Compared to Youtube videos, this is Batman in IMAX, except funky. Click the dancing Francis after the jump to see for yourself: Read the rest of this entry »
It starts with a simple, relentless drumbeat, punctuated with a catchy, almost tribal woodblock sound. Then the pulsing synth starts and you just feel the whole rollercoaster lurch away from your feet and you drop into a throat-hitching freefall, esophagus rippling while your heart screams with ecstasy.
It samples a bunch of the awesomest movies ever like Blade Runner, A Clockwork Orange, Scarface.
Maybe it sounds like steam rising off a jungle or a low, purple-red sun rising in a time-lapse movie of a highway jammed with traffic, fog burning away. It sounds like aerobics, but the cool kind. Like the aerobics in a montage from a very inspirational Hollywood movie about training to whip somebody’s ass in a dystopian future. There’s one thing that’s very clear about the hidden message in this song, though: there’s a great big busy productive world happening out there, and just for this one day, you want no part of it.
Brooklyn’s Francis and the Lights (free EP here) will be rocking their nervous relaxing jams at the Mercury Lounge this Saturday, January 26th with The Giraffes, Baby Dayliner and others.
They’re hands-down my favorite New York band of late — as mentioned on an earlier post:
They’re the musical equivalent of doing coke and drinking Fresca on the back of a yacht while wearing a white linen jacket.
The rhythm section is tight like the L train on a Monday morning, both drummers locked into each other perfectly with no room for error and every beat in the exact right place. Spare dual keyboards flow over and through the silky rhythms like robot bees flying over plastic flowers, and the singer’s high voice and ostentatious dance moves — delivered with occasional popped collar or shirtlessness — perfectly interact with the music to create something that is both self-consciously retro and very, very heartfelt.
It’s true, too. Their live show’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before, a jittery and confident mashup of James Brown and something from beyond the Phantom Zone. I saw the show in the video below, and it was way better than it seems here on Youtube … go on out Saturday and see ‘em for yourself if you can.
Here’s a little treat for you, folks – a Japanese man wearing only a horse mask and several different thongs (including one that goes over his freaking shoulders) picks, cooks, and eats wild mushrooms. There are title cards in Japanese that may explain what’s going on. I can’t read Japanese, so I could be wrong here, but I highly doubt the words on the screen can adequately explain what’s going on here.
This may be NSFW — his “riding crop” is thoughtfully pixellated, but the whole thing is just too nuts to be safe. Stick around for a little part at about 6:05 that really makes the whole thing:
Eating mushrooms is freaking redundant for this guy. (Tip of the hat to Ectomo)
I got on the wrong subway last night and it turned out so right — while navigating through the Times Square catacombs I heard this incredible clanking funk like a groovy factory or Tom Waits in the late ’90s. Turns out it was a spectacular pots-and-buckets drummer, the godfather of all buskers knocking out rhythms simultaneously organic and industrial.
I broke out my camera to take some video and the drumemr stopped the beat to point at me with a stick and shout “Five dollars for the video!” at the top of his lungs. I didn’t get it at first, and he had to shout a number of times, to the terrific enjoyment of the crowd. Then I got it and gave the guy ten bucks. He was that good by himself, but his dancer was amazing.
You can see the drummer and dancer in my video, below. The dancer is cold stole by the rhythm at first and it is giving him a sickness that is gonna turn real good. Like how a flu shot wears you out a little but toughens you right up — this man goes from a twitching rhythmic allergy into an incredible, fluid poet.
Again, I can only shoot 30 seconds at a time, so this is cut together from a number of smaller pieces.
