Tagged: mp3sandmusicreviews

It may not have been as polished as his later works Rushmore or The Royal Tenenbaums , but Wes Anderson's film debut, Bottle Rocket , brimmed with a beautiful brand of naivete not concentrated as strongly in his later films. One reason for this is the film's excellent soundtrack . Anderson's movies tend to feature top-notch tunage, but there's something about those Bottle Rocket songs and Mark Mothersbaugh instrumentals that gives us that "so fresh" feeling. But before Bottle Rocket was a feature-length film, it was [...]

It may not have been as polished as his later works Rushmore or The Royal Tenenbaums , but Wes Anderson's film debut, Bottle Rocket , brimmed with a beautiful brand of naivete not concentrated as strongly in his later films. One reason for this is the film's excellent soundtrack . Anderson's movies tend to feature top-notch tunage, but there's something about those Bottle Rocket songs and Mark Mothersbaugh instrumentals that gives us that "so fresh" feeling. But before Bottle Rocket was a feature-length film, it was [...]

It may not have been as polished as his later works Rushmore or The Royal Tenenbaums , but Wes Anderson's film debut, Bottle Rocket , brimmed with a beautiful brand of naivete not concentrated as strongly in his later films. One reason for this is the film's excellent soundtrack . Anderson's movies tend to feature top-notch tunage, but there's something about those Bottle Rocket songs and Mark Mothersbaugh instrumentals that gives us that "so fresh" feeling. But before Bottle Rocket was a feature-length film, it was [...]

It may not have been as polished as his later works Rushmore or The Royal Tenenbaums , but Wes Anderson's film debut, Bottle Rocket , brimmed with a beautiful brand of naivete not concentrated as strongly in his later films. One reason for this is the film's excellent soundtrack . Anderson's movies tend to feature top-notch tunage, but there's something about those Bottle Rocket songs and Mark Mothersbaugh instrumentals that gives us that "so fresh" feeling. But before Bottle Rocket was a feature-length film, it was a 13-minute [...]

"A lot of people have asked me what I get from writing, besides residuals," Neil Young cracks wise in the early minutes of Sugar Mountain -- Live at Canterbury House 1968 CD/DVD, currently streaming on NPR ahead of its December 2 release. "I didn't know what [a residual] meant until I got it. But I remembered from then on." And on, judging by this niche effort, which should make Young fans feel right at home but leave the rest looking for a better entry point into his seminal work. Recorded shortly after the implosion of [...]

Daniel Barassi, who has run Depeche Mode's official website for around ten years, makes mash-ups on the side under the name Brat Productions. His latest release (video to the right, download below) mashes the vocals from The Cure's "Just Like Heaven" with the instrumental track from The Commodore's "Easy." Some mash-ups just work too well, and this is one of those. A capella versions of The Cure singer Robert Smith's vocals from "Just Like Heaven" have been hard for remixers to come by. Barassi apparently managed to isolate the vocal [...]

We receive a fair amount of promotional music from bands and publicists -- too much to feature all of it here, or we'd have time for little else. To filter things down a bit, here are ten recent tracks that caught our attention. Songs are listed in alphabetical order by artist. Blonde Acid Cult - "Calypso" The Bronx - "Pleasure Seekers": Conor Oberst - "Gentleman's Pact": [...]

Paul McCartney and producer Youth collaborated on 13 songs in as many days to make Electric Arguments , their first collaboration in over a decade, and the first to feature vocals. McCartney and Youth ping-ponged ideas back and forth over the period of about a year through writing, arrangement and production cycles while making this album. Some of this is a continuation of the technique McCartney used on the "mystery" track -- a Beatles picking up an instrument and seeing what happens. But this was a real collaboration, and both creative forces are [...]

Brooklyn four-piece Parts & Labor's new album Receiver has hundreds of little tiny tricks up its sleeve. The band asked its fans to submit sound samples for use on the album and received hundreds of submissions, possibly explaining the name of their album. They used every single one of those samples on the album -- a pretty neat trick. Post-modern troubadour and former Wired.com columnist Momus once did something along these lines by asking his fans to pay in order to have their names memorialized on his Stars Forever album [...]

She's simply murder on the guitar, using a hammer technique that recalls Van Halen as much as it does Marnie Stern. Her band The Happy Hollows excels in amped punk, rock and pop that channels the mischievous vibe of the Pixies and The Breeders. And after watching the hilarious mockumentary, at right, celebrating the release of the Los Angeles-based power trio's recently released EP Imaginary , it's clear she's also an unhinged movie star. But is Sarah Negahdari the strangest woman in rock? You decide. We'll say this: She's one of the coolest. [...]

Revered composer and soundtracking innovator Ennio Morricone turns 80 on Monday, so Listening Post is celebrating his legacy all weekend. Why not start with his latest disciple Spindrift, which has upgraded the master's spaghetti sonics for the new millennium on its imminent full-length debut The West ? If the title didn't give it away, the Los Angeles-based band chose the day after Morricone's birthday as its release date. No wonder, given that Morricone's marriage of Fender guitars and atmospheric orchestration revolutionized film and music, after catapulting Clint Eastwood and his seminal westerns like The Good, [...]

Drag racing aficionados Cole Coonce and Ikky Shivers of Nitronic Research, formerly known as "the thinking man's drag racing site" before it went offline in '03, have returned with an album made of field recordings from the drag racing world and surf music. It wasn't easy. "I loaded up consoles, mics, cables and tape machines into the hatchback of a Japanese car, drove to drag strips here and yon, and ran mic cable up and down the length of the track to get these sounds," explained Coonce via e-mail. "The project was an homage to the [...]

The Man in Black was a badass for sure. But can he withstand sonic recombination from the likes of Snoop Dogg? We'll find out in January 2009, when Johnny Cash Remixed drops. Featuring several Cash classics squeezed through the various filters of Snoop, Pete Rock, Alabama 3, The Heavy and other head-scratching candidates, it's a far cry from its source material's stripped-down country and blues. But it's nevertheless got the stamp of approval from the legend's estate. "My father made his stead by defying the expected and accepted way of things" [...]

Guns N' Roses released the eponymous single from "Chinese Democracy" to radio today and posted the song to its Imeem page, meaning that we can embed it here. Take a listen and then vote on the degree of its rockingness in the poll below. Vote in our poll: Online Surveys & Market Research [...]

Listening Post continues its celebration of the Hallo-weird with Metric. Specifically, the Canadian quartet's creepfest video for the rocking "Monster Hospital," which one-ups Roman Polanski's horror classic Repulsion with hard-charging riffage. Although Metric's recent Live in Metropolis DVD has helped soothe the hunger left over from its criminally underrated 2005 slasher Live It Out , it's been too long since vocalist Emily Haines and her insanely tight rhythm section tore up the joint. Even her poetic, measured 2006 solo effort Knives Don't Have Your Back couldn't [...]

As 2008 crawls to a close, some of the year's best efforts come into finer focus. And when it comes to hybrid hip-hop, against all odds, remote Saskatchewan DJ Factor's early release Chandelier keeps inexorably rising into Listening Post's top ten. Maybe it's the Mercury Rev-like poptronica of "Home Again" or the orchestral raunch of "More Handsome Than Rude," or the stable of well-regarded rappers who make cameos. But whatever it is, it's hard to shake Chandelier once you chill long enough to listen to it all the way through. Factor's multi-faceted [...]

Ridley Scott, Russell Crowe and Leo DiCaprio have star power to spare. But Listening Post would rather bow to Mike Patton and Serj Tankian, who also make an appearance in Scott's latest film Body of Lies . The two former front men of rock legends Faith No More and System of a Down, respectively, Patton and Tankian teamed up to rock the original song "Bird's Eye" for Body of Lies , which you can listen to at right. It's an angular funk nugget with a crunchy coating of rock. In other words, the type of [...]

Some music becomes samples, some incorporates them and others consist of nothing else but samples. Escape Mechanism , the music project of one Jonathan Nelson, falls into the third category. His music, first appearing on a debut album in '98, consists entirely of found sounds with an emphasis on spoken word samples from Hollywood films. His latest album, Emphasis Added -- the first Escape Mechanism full-length studio release in ten years -- is available online . Nelson's online manifesto sums up his approach fairly succinctly: "Using fragments of sound from the film reels, [...]

Swervedriver's auspicious reunion may have been overshadowed by the return of the like-minded My Bloody Valentine, but its leader Adam Franklin is nonetheless soldiering on with a new side project called Magnetic Morning. But it was Interpol's Sam Fogarino who launched the supergroup, after sifting through potential collaborators and finding only prima donnas. "It is hard working with people that have the ability to write their own songs because in the end that is what they want to do," Fogarino said. "I would get started with people and then it would fall apart." That [...]

Nick Thorburn from The Unicorns (left) and LA hip hop producer Daddy Kev (right) ran into each other at the South By Southwest music conference in Texas a few years back and decided to collaborate on a record in an alternate location to the ones to which they are normally accustomed. In the spirit of Ernest Hemingway's exhortation to "always do sober what you said you'd do drunk" (well sort of... apparently the members of Reefer found a different way to get intoxicated while recording the record), the two travelled to the coast of Maui [...]