After Vancouver beats Boston for the Stanley Cup on Wednesday, head down to the Rickshaw for the afterparty! Black Lips are playing, tickets are a still available, and I have a feeling this show is going to be insane!
We're back with another episode of the best music videos we've found around the world this week! Check it, we found some really unique ones on this round. 5 We start things off with Tom Vek , a multi-instrumentalist from the UK who dabbles in freakish experimental rock. Apparently he has a massive underground following over there. I should point out that Tom Vek is the presenter at the beginning, not the pulpishly sweet transvestite lip-syncing his vocals. 4 Oh look! An "in the club" hip-hop video [...]
Brendan Perry of Dead Can Dance Robin Guthrie of Cocteau Twins had just taken the stage when I arrived at the Venue nightclub for an ethereal night with some 80s icons. I have to be honest here. Robin's solo work is good, and I enjoy ambient music when I'm in the right mood, even when it lacks vocals, but it was utterly lifeless to see on a stage. There was nothing interesting about watching three old men standing motionless on a stage, playing downtempo, ambient new age music for a crowd of misfits [...]
5 Finnish duo LCMDF brings a cool retro-styled video for their synthy pop tune "Future Me". No plot, just a seaside Polaroid adventure. 4 Alex Winston braves a haunted cathouse in this video that starts off a little odd but quickly turns to freakishly bread-flying-out-of-a-toilet weird. 3 The Sound of Arrows have earned themselves a reputation for melodramatic synthpop tunes and videos to match, but somehow they continuously straddle the line between campy and just awesome. [...]
Foster the People plays to a sold-out crowd tonight at the Vancouver's much-too-small Venue Nightclub, but to warm things up, they just played a secret acoustic warm-up set this afternoon! The Peak announced the location this morning, so I rounded up some friends and we converged upon the closed-off street in front of The Peak's own headquarters at 8th and Helmock. Foster the People was hanging out at the station, poking their heads out a few times from the third-floor balcony, while getting ready for a chilled acoustic session. We had almost two hours [...]
Lykke Li Grimes started the show with her solo act, a beautiful mess of raw synthesizers over crushing drum tracks. She has only been making music for a few short years, and has no training in musical theory or even reading music, so the way she expresses herself in her music sounds unnatural, and yet she's quite a natural at it. She began her set with "Crystal Ball", feeling out the crowd; her nervousness showing with a few missteps in the timing of the tracks she was mixing together. By the time she got through the second [...]
5 The Gift shows us their take on the classic let's-run-away-together-and-fu ck-shit-up storyline. I really like this one, but I would have done the same thing he did at the end of the video, if she kept insisting on wearing that black wig. 4 Afrobeta can pick up the slack that Frankmusik has left in the electroclash scene. Peaches' leotards, glamourized Hyper Crush-style, with a tinge of that glitchy electro sound from Eastern Europe that we stumble upon occasionally (see Bedük ), and the girl is [...]
Sleigh Bells Vancouver's Vogue Theatre last night was host to a night of noise . The double-bill of Sleigh Bells and Neon Indian, along with opening act Oberhofer, all had a noisy lo-fi sound, whether it was filtered guitars or pounding electro drum beats. Each band came from a different branch on the tree of noise, and all three are fairly new, each with no more than one LP under their belts. Oberhofer kicked things off with a summer vibe, their set decorated with tropical plants and the four-piece band rocking shiny shelltoes. These [...]
Well, I got distracted by all the pandemonium of last weekend's official worldwide Judgement Day Rapture (which was postponed, btw), and I posted a quick Rapture Video Mix on Friday, before running off to find out God's favourite ice cream flavour. So, since there wasn't really an official Friday Five, here is the replacement Monday version. Volume 3 will be back on Friday, later this week, unless the world is again stricken by another false catastrophe, in which case I'll be eating Heavenly Hash and listening to Blondie and Britney Spears all weekend, again. Oh, [...]
Judgment Day is now upon us! Let's put on some celebratory tunes while we await the big moment! Post a comment if you think of any songs I missed!
Photo by Kyle Kruchok Silence Killer is proud to present a brand-new feature series, SK & Friends , where we round up a themed selection of music recommendations from our friends and our favourite bloggers, artists and DJs. This round we asked each participant to recommend an interesting song they would like to hear on a late summer afternoon at a beach party . Summer is only weeks away, so sit back and relax while we cure your spring fever! Get the [...]
French Horn Rebellion started the night with smoke rolling over The Commodore's empty stage, while their dramatic intro played. When the two brothers from Milwaukee, Robert and David, took the stage, they made a few waves, gestures, taps on the decks and keyboards, and a fever began to spread through the quickly growing crowd on the dancefloor. They aren't entirely a band, or entirely a DJ duo either, but whatever they are, they are the type to give the audience a banging first impression. There's an odd thing about synthpop music: on record, it usually sounds chilled and relaxed, [...]
Presenting, our first-ever weekly feature! Five new music videos every Friday! This week we've got a sweet selection of weird and creative videos we've discovered lately. NewVillager - Lighthouse Experimental freak-pop madness. Love it. Amanda Palmer - Map of Tasmania If you're old enough to know what a map of Tasmania is, you probably won't like this video. Chilly Gonzales - You Can Dance It's like a classy version of Benny Benassi's infamous "Satisfaction" video. [...]
Bachelorette started the sold-out night at Vancouver's Venue nightclub with some minimal homemade electro folk, which sounded like it would have been almost relaxing to listen to on record. Her stage setup, however, was poorly calculated. Either I'm getting old, or it was just too LOUD. Everything—beats and vocals—were overdriven and overcompressed, far beyond the "we're too loud because we think people like hearing damage" level. It sounded like it was intended to give the audience a mass aneurysm. I didn't set up the sound equipment at Venue tonight, so I can't direct blame, but it wasn't the soundman. [...]
The last time The Kills headlined in Vancouver was in 2008 at Richards, so their newfound fame brought a lot of curious new fans to their sold-out show at The Commodore last night. I think people were expecting a regular rock gig, so they were only mildly excited by the jarring noise of openers The Entrance Band and Cold Cave. The Entrance Band are a three-piece psychedelic rock band with a lot of credibility in the alternative scene, having toured with many oddball-but-now-famous artists like Devendra Banhart, Cat Power even Sonic Youth. I [...]
Silence Killer needs more dubstep, am I right? It's a narrow genre, so it doesn't impress me if it sounds like every other dubstep track, but I've been finding some really great tracks lately. Jamiroquai - Blue Skies (Flux Pavilion Remix) (YSI) More to come...
I'll begin with a bold statement: Mother Mother and Brasstronaut are two of the most original bands in the history of Canadian music. Brasstronaut, the surprise opening act for Mother Mother at the Vogue tonight and a staple of Vancouver's indie music scene, is an ever-changing collective of jazz and rock musicians centred around pianist/vocalist Edo Van Breemen and trumpet player Bryan Davies. Tonight was my fourth time watching Brasstronaut perform, and they never fail to impress. When musicians reach the peak of their musical ability and instrumental skill, often one of two things will happen: [...]
I was just writing a concert preview for Mogwai's show at the Commodore this Friday, when I stumbled upon the unfortunate announcement on their website. Apparently they had some visa problems. The band says they hope to be back in Vancouver as soon as they can. The instrumental rock band holds legendary status in their scene, as one of the most influential post-rock bands of the 2000s. The band rejects the label post-rock though, which I have to agree, is an overanalytical name for such a broad genre. In many cases, I might rather just call [...]
Architecture in Helsinki is back! In late 2008, just over a year after their last album, they released "That Beep"; it caught my attention as I kept hearing it in clothing stores everywhere (??) and I hoped it was the sign of a new album on the horizon. But, time went by and I thought maybe they did make a new album and it got lost in some record label's internal warfare or something, like I've seen happen to many a good album. I still have no idea what happened, but here's "Contact High", the lead single (technically the second [...]
Silence Killer
![PLAY HOUSE - Afrobeta [official]](http://cdn.elbo.ws/youtube/zWmzDLr6ev8_130.jpg)
The Shins: “September” (b-side of “Simple Song” 7”)
St. Vincent - 'Cheerleader'
Jay-Z & Kanye West - Ni**as In Paris (Explicit)
OK Go - Needing/Getting - Official Video
M.I.A. - Bad Girls (Official Video)
Miike Snow – Paddling Out (Jacques Lu Cont Remix)
Lana Del Rey covers Lovecat magazine!
