Pitchfork

From the time we first heard about Cornelius in the 1990s, we've always known that this wildly creative dude had an interesting visual aesthetic. Now here's an extended argument. Sensurround is the visual component to his album Sensuous, and it finds him collaborating with directors and animators including Tsujikawa Koichiro, Japanese art/design collective Groovisions, and the incomparable Takagi Masakatsu. Watch it all week at Pitchfork.tv, and the DVD is available at the Everloving Store.

Also, if you've never heard the Books' fine remix of "Fit Song", which is included on a bonus CD with the Sensurround DVD, well, you should. A stream appears below the image.

What has Chicago's Andrew Bird been up to? Well, I can tell you that he's got a new album coming out on Fat Possum in January, called Noble Beast. "Oh No" is the album's first track and, speaking here as a casual fan, it certainly sounds like quintessential Bird: whistling, violin, a loose, airy groove that keeps his words and melody front and center, and lyrics about heady subjects like calcified minds, calculator blows to the head, and sociopaths. It's smart as a whip but with its gentle shuffle and warm, tasteful production, it goes down easy. "Oh No"? Oh yes.

[from Noble Beast; due 01/27/09 on Fat Possum]

Almost every day Pitchfork.tv is adding videos to our archives, clips new and old with audio and video quality like you've not seen elsewhere online. If you spend enough time watching videos at Pitchfork.tv, it can be hard to go back to the poorly compressed postage-stamp sized clips with the fidelity of a wire recorder that have become all too common. Hot Chip shouldn't sound like Sic Alps. So we'll take some space here in Forkcast at the end of the week to point out some newly added videos that are worth your time.

Hey, speaking of Hot Chip and Sic Alps, we've just added clips from both. The entertaining video for the former's "Wrestlers" features James Murphy, and the latter is represented with "Bells (With Tremolo and Distortion)". More recent videos from Okkervil River and Fleet Foxes round out the highlights. Dig in.

Hot Chip: "Wrestlers"

Pitchfork.tv page with embed code is here.

Fleet Foxes: "He Don't Know Why"

Pitchfork.tv page with embed code is here.

Okkervil River: "Lost Coastlines"

Pitchfork.tv page with embed code is here.

Sic Alps: "Bells (With Tremolo and Distortion)"

Pitchfork.tv page with embed code is here.

Photo by Andrea Amadasi

Christian Fennesz takes his time. He's been a busy guy all through this decade in terms of collaborations, live records, remixes, and so on, but he's only released a few proper albums under his surname, and each has been brilliant. Just before the new millennium he released the 1999 album Plus Forty Seven Degrees 56' 37" Minus Sixteen Degrees 51' 08". It took the blissed-out sense of surrender that My Bloody Valentine specialized in into a harsh and assaultive realm, and the album can seem downright terrifying if you listen to it in the right mood at the proper volume (loud). 2001's Endless Summer established itself immediately as an experimental electronic music classic, and its unique mixture of melody, song structure, and processing has loomed large over the decade. And the eclectic 2004 release Venice solidified the idea that Fennesz was at the very top of his game, developing his keen compositional sense and ear for texture in parallel.

Well, a new Fennesz album, Black Sea, is on the way (hopefully) next month, and this lead track certainly keeps expectations very high. Beginning with some of Fennesz' trademark neo-industrial gurgles, it folds in bits of guitar and strings rather beautifully, creating a cluster of sound that trembles, seeming to wait for something. And that something moves in gradually in the form of a massive cloud of distortion, a fine white mist of harmonics mixed with a dark undercurrent of rumbling bass. The tension between these elements is so well balanced, each individual element remaining in the mix even as the sound field becomes impossibly dense, that it's no surprise that it takes a while to get it just right. And as it begins to draw down about five minutes in, you can't help but wish that another full Fennesz album was following behind it. Soon.

[from Black Sea; tentatively due 11/24/08 in the UK on Touch]

People have been grooving to various iterations of Gang Gang Dance's "House Jam" for a while now. The original (mp3 here) is terrific, and XXXchange of Spank Rock did a fantastic update that we premiered a while back. And here's how it sounds live, Gang Gang Dance performing the song a week ago at the O NEST club in downtown Tokyo.

Pitchfork.tv page with embed code is here.

Cut Copy made their U.S. TV debut last night on "Last Call With Carson Daly". It shouldn't be a surprise that they gave a confident performance of "Lights & Music", a dancey synth-pop single from latest album In Ghost Colours. No surprise, either, to see the audience dancing and clapping along.

[from In Ghost Colours; out now on Modular]

I think the word you are looking for here is "bonanza." Dean Spunt of No Age has curated a DVD called Post-Present Medium: New Video Works (issued on his Post Present Medium label) that collects a boatload of interesting videos from all sorts of bands that have been bubbling up in the last couple of years. Some have been around a bit and some are new to this collection. A few highlights are below, but really, so many of these are worth a look. Pitchfork.tv has the whole set in high resolution, looking and sounding as good as can be.

Head on over and check it out.

No Age: "Goat Hurt" (director: Jennifer Clavin)

Pitchfork.tv page with embed code is here.

Abe Vigoda: "All Night and All Day" (director: John Freschette)

Pitchfork.tv page with embed code is here.

Deerhunter: "Spring Hall Convert" (director: Julian Gross)

Pitchfork.tv page with embed code is here.

High Places: "Greeting the Light" (director: David Horvitz)

Pitchfork.tv page with embed code is here.

Barr: "The Song is the Single" (director: Endless Friends)

Pitchfork.tv page with embed code is here.

When a band gets compared to the Black Lips, there's reason to be a little skeptical of their claims. You know, when they say they're putting out a "live album," make sure to keep the phrase in quotes-- stuff like that. So sure, the Lips-like garage-rock en español of San Juan's Davila 666 might have made these guys "one of the biggest rock 'n' roll attractions" in Puerto Rico, as their press release claims, but it's hard to tell when there are only 2,480 Spanish-language pages about them on Google. Either way, their scruffy "Dimelo Ya" introduces the group as sonic cousins to the Nuggets-studying likes of the Lips, the King Khan and BBQ Show, and the Dirtbombs. The lead singer, who calls himself Sir Charles Davila, shouts in Spanish about wanting to know already (or something) on this track from the band's self-titled U.S. debut.

MP3:> Davila 666: "Dimelo Ya"
[from Davila; out now on In the Red]

There are probably plenty of wannabes in L.A. but this song by Jesse Hughes and Queens of the Stone Age frontman Josh Homme is also about wanting to be in L.A., so it's one of those fancy double meanings. The video for the track from the cleverly-titled Heart On shows some go-go dancing fantasies as might be experienced on one of those pinscreen deals. Not exactly "House of Cards" but we'll take it.

[from Heart On; due 10/28/08 from Downtown]

Department of Eagles were on Conan last night, doing a version of the recently-Forkcasted "No One Does It Like You". Members of Grizzly Bear and Dirty Projectors joined Daniel Rossen and Fred Nicolaus to flesh out the band. Sound could be a hell of a lot better but what else is new. (via I Guess I'm Floating)

[original version from In Ear Park; due 10/07/08 on 4AD]