‘Voyage Amoureux’ by Le Couleur

Montréal’s Le Couleur embark on a sensual disco odyssey on the title track to their latest EP—one that seems indebted to ’70s Montréal compatriots Zig Zag and their own yacht-disco ode to the “Voyage Voyage” (Later revived for 21st century discotheques to great fanfare by Brisbane synth-poppers Mitzi). Curious midsong digression into piano-prog theatrics aside, “Voyage Amoureux” keenly navigates that Daft Punkian, French-House-meets-vintage-funk territory, forging something undeniably of the moment without forsaking the ritzy glamour and instrumental origins of disco’s past.

The rest of the EP is just as wonderful and is currently streamable on Soundcloud.

‘World’ by Julia Holter

No sooner were we waving goodbye to the ill-fated Phaedra in Julia’s epic conclusion to Tragedy, that we’re bestowed upon with yet another new video—this time for a brand new track—along with the somewhat surprising news that a new album is already headed our way, tentatively due for release this August. I guess her attitude towards putting out music fits the unassuming nature of the music itself; Julia isn’t one to make big splashes.

Loud City Song opens with another one of these quiet entrances. The album is said to be influenced in part by her relationship to her hometown of Los Angeles, and that habitual rapport is what largely stirs at the heart of “World”. A minimal mood piece buoyed by Julia’s softened, half-awake voice, “World” finds her yearning for a connection to a city that “cannot see [her] eyes”; the tone solemn and searching, like a private prayer made to a God she isn’t sure is listening.

While her work usually comes refracted through prisms of obscure reference points —her 2011 album Tragedy was based on, and often lifted lyrics from, Euripides’ Greek play Hippolytus, and Loud City Song counts Frank O’Hara and the 1944 novella Gigi among its inspirations— the poetry and composition of “World” feels stripped to its bare core, and deep in the marrow Julia is left with two lingering mysteries: “What am I looking for in you? How can I escape you?” Without coming to any neat resolution, Julia, with the track, silently and sorrowfully slips away — a quiet exit for a soul that’s only ever felt half there.

‘I Could’ve Been Your Girl’ by She & Him

Hey Zooey herself directed this one!

(via hellogiggles)

‘Pendulum’ by Pure Bathing Culture

When it comes to Vetiver offshoot Pure Bathing Culture, it’s all in the name. There wasn’t a speck of dirt on their pristine and restorative 2012 EP, and that holistic tradition continues on “Pendulum”, the immaculate first single from their upcoming full-length debut, Moon Tides. With cymbals crashing like waves and hooks stretching out into distant horizons, “Pendulum“‘s foamy pop functions best as music to sink into, inviting the listener to set aside the weight of the world and simply float awhile. Even the rhythmic swing of the title suggests swaying hammocks, or the gentle rock of time slowed to a crawl.

‘Casino Lisboa’ by Dirty Beaches

Possibly the dirtiest Dirty Beaches joint to date (and therefore my favourite), “Casino Lisboa” is Alex Zhang Hungtai in full-on Funk mode — though filtered through his water-clogged amps and particularly lurid worldview, it’s more the type you’d expect to hear emanating from the dankest of windowless basements.

Alex sings of walking in dreams down “neon streets”, but his sleepytime destination sounds more like a debauched nightmare. That may be why this new video places him in amidst Bangkok’s infamous nightlife; a perverse paradise for any dreamtime tourist looking for a little cheap exoticism and sleaze.

Director LyingBoss matches the track’s thrashing, muscle-coiled tautness with passing shots of Muay Thai kickboxers and sepak takraw players, while glimpses of diamond-legged strippers and prostitutes convey some of the sex. Thailand already had its devil’s playground, but in the four minutes that make up the sweat-covered and exhilarating “Casino Lisboa”, we now have the soundtrack.

Catherine: Episode 1 — Jenny Slate & Dean Fleischer-Camp

While I’m still trying to wrap my head around what JASH and BUH actually is (like, a brand? it’s like a brand isn’t it), husband and wife duo Jenny Slate and Dean Fleischer-Camp of Marcel The Shell With Shoes On fame have quietly snuck out a new web series under the banner of the latter, and it’s so sublimely weird that you really have to experience it for yourself.

The tellingly nondescript “story in twelve parts,” unfolds in a mysteriously anti-dramatic and anti-comedic manner: characters act stiff, flubbing lines and hitting marks a beat or two off; everyone’s about as (in)expressive as those faceless cartoon drawings on an airplane safety leaflet. It’s all so suspiciously mundane and stiltedly mannered, in fact, that it could almost take place within the same nightmarish-in-broad-daylight reality that bookends Blue Velvet.

That’s not where the Lynchian hallmarks end: Spliced in at near inaudible levels are undercurrents of glowering, ambient noise (from the Mullholland Drive soundtrack?) which casts the surface banality in a more ominous light. Slate and Fleischer-Camp have the mise-en-scene down too. The set dressing —typically a Lynchian character all its own— reveals more puzzling details the closer one looks. Like, why is that phone so dirty? Why is that woman typing at a switched off computer terminal? Why is there the inexplicable sound of church bells? And why do those post-it notes stuck all over the walls have NOTHING ON THEM WHAT IS HAPPENING? p.s. This post is about ten times longer than the actual video. Sorry.

(via buhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh)

NOWNESS presents: A Clip from “Everybody Street”. Directed by Cheryl Dunn.

From sidewalk antics in Harlem with Bruce Davidson to people-watching with Magnum veteran Elliot Erwitt, a new feature-length documentary by Cheryl Dunn chronicles the pioneering photographers making their mark on the streets of New York. For three years the photographer and filmmaker—whose work has shown at the The Hole, MoCA and OHWOW—trawled archives, visited old haunts and relived the heyday of Studio 54 to trace the history of NYC photography. “I wanted to meet my idols so I went to the streets and followed their footsteps,” says Dunn of the Kickstarter-funded feature. “You stand there for five minutes, you’re going to see something funny.” Having been shown at the Tate Modern in London, and also featuring Bruce Gilden, Joel Meyerowitz, Rebecca Lepkoff and Mary Ellen Mark, the film premieres this week at Hot Docs Film Festival in Toronto. “It’s a meter for culture and what’s happening in the world,” adds the filmmaker. “You never finish the mission; the street is constantly evolving.”

Guerilla reportage on the streets of New York! All of this!

First trailer to Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Cannes entry La Danza de la Realidad (2013), his first return to filmmaking after 23 long years (a bit longer if you discount The Rainbow Thief, which he has since disowned).

It’s being billed as an account of Jodorowsky’s own formative childhood in Chile, but as you can expect from this notoriously outré director, that’s presumably just a jumping-off point for more surreal poetry and symbolic grandiosity. It’s nice to see his visual grammar still fully intact despite the transition to digital. The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw loved it. I’ve heard it being described as Jodorowsky’s Amarcord. You can’t lose.

(via The Playlist)

‘Surrender’ by Lockets

Along with Toronto group DIANA and L.A.’s Kisses, Philadelphian duo Lockets form part of a burgeoning groundswell of young new synthpop acts who seem to be hazily reclaiming the moods and motions of the New Romantics for a new generation. I’m assuming they’re all like me, anyway — wistful Gen Y 20-somethings whose familiarity with 80s-era Yazoo and Thompson Twins is residual at best; a shadow in the memory not quite vivid enough to reference without some extra help from YouTube or Last.fm. These bands aren’t directly riffing on any specific 80s pop group or style; they’re almost recreating what it felt like to grow up around such swoonsome sounds.

There may be decades of influences between “Surrender” and something like “Only You”, but its balladry shares that longingly nostalgic sheen: Drum machines thump to heart-palpitating mid-tempos, beckoning ears and bodies alike to surrender to the sway; synthesizers occupy atmosphere like clouds of fog at a school dance. Whether you’re looking to soundtrack your next John Hughes moment, setting the scene for your first romantic waltz, or simply aching to give Lloyd Dobler something fresh to plug into his boombox, “Surrender” makes a good case for itself.

Pharmakon Live at Red Light District (2-26-2011) (via mathgrind)

I don’t think I’ve ever wanted anything as much as I’ve wanted to see Pharmakon live.

‘Confidence’ by The Dodos

In approaching what would become Carrier, the fifth Dodos LP in eight years, Meric Long seems to have rebuilt his songwriting process from the ground up. For the first time, Long wrote lyrics before music, allowing concrete language to shape the songs long before any harmonic abstraction could get in the way.

In that sense, “Confidence,” our first true taste from the record but regrettably not the opener, feels like an apt reintroduction to a band that’s sought to re-establish its voice. Long softly jogs out the gate with a renewed lightness to his step, singing “My mind is empty, my body still” over an acoustic patter that feels less cluttered and erratic than the Dodos of old. It’s upon this base that the track finds its footing, and on which Long and drummer Logan Kroeber ultimately find a restored sense of clarity.

Undoubtedly influenced by the death of former bandmember Christopher Reimer, the arc of “Confidence” could also be read as an ode to rebuilding oneself in the aftermath of tragedy. Not long after the sombre salvo, Long rallies all in his wake with a galvanising mantra — “Don’t slow down” — and soon the track is erupting with crashing cymbals and invigorated guitars that bolt in from the blue. It all leads him to a rather Buddhist epiphany: “He who has it all has nothing.” Only in loss can one truly appreciate the abundance.

‘Pale Horse Phantasm’ by Arborea

Despite building up a casually spellbinding body of work since their 2006 debut, Wayfaring Summer, Arborea have lamentably remained on the undercurrents of the new media radar. No entry on Pitchfork, for instance, although the old guards have paid their dues (their previous effort, Red Planet, showed up on Rolling Stone’s The Best Under-the-Radar Albums of 2011 list). I guess I shouldn’t be surprised — Arborea sound like a complete anachronism. And especially on days like today, when everyone is foaming at the mouth in frustration over a couple of robots’ decision to play actual instruments for once, their appeal feels all the more out of step.

Purveyors of mid-century folk minimalism, husband and wife duo Buck and Shanti Curran create solace-seeking music that stretches and sways as patiently as grass. They were sometimes associated with the folk-revival movement that bubbled up in the late-aughts and appeared on a couple of compilations alongside artists like Larkin Grimm, Marissa Nadler, Mariee Sioux, Alela Diane and Meg Baird. But what really made them stand out was their mystical lean; a gothic/pagan inflection to their scales and lyrics that’s very much indebted to Pentangle, Jack Rose, Mazzy Star and the alchemical cross-section between.

Even if you weren’t able to physically hear the music within this mysterious and heavily symbolic new video for “Pale Horse Phantasm,” you’d instinctively know the sound. I mean, it is called “Pale Horse Phantasm,” for one. Also, Buck is actually a trained luthier (someone who makes or repairs lutes and lute-derived instruments), a profession that sounds as opaque and archaic to me as blacksmith or apothecary.

Listen to their new album, Fortress Of The Sun, on Soundcloud. It’ll be available digitally on May 20th.

‘Some Time Alone, Alone’ by Melody’s Echo Chamber

Freshly jailbroken from the fractious relationship portrayed in last February’s video for Crystallized, we now find Melody wandering through an amusement park by night, free to enjoy life’s carnival though still burdened by an ‘empty heart.’ Through tight-knit close-ups and a heavy reliance on shallow depth-of-field, director Grant Singer isolates us from the noise of the park until we’re fully drawn into the insularity of Melody’s world. And hey, whaddya know, she makes French malaise look actually quite fun.

‘Berceuse Pour un Bébé Robot’ by Jean Jacques Perrey

This muddle of Oskar Schlemmer’s avant-garde, 1922 Triadisches Ballett and early electronic music pioneer Perrey is just as elegantly put together. You’d think the two were made for each other. GOOD MUDDLE, Wonder Muddle.