Category: Rock ‘n’ Roll Photog

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Video: Silicon Ballet, Sunglasses

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Silicon Ballet, I thought. Hmm. Perhaps there will be dancing robots! In tutus!

So I clicked on the link.

There were no dancing robots or tutus on the other end. Instead I was rewarded with some charming dreamy pop, plus adorable children in sunglasses and multiple varieties of super-hero costumes. Check it:

 

 

Silicon Ballet is Anne-Claude Dejasse (Violin), Aurélie Potty (Cello), Katia Raffay (Violin), Didier Soufnenguel (Electronics), Christophe Danthinne (Lead vocals), Antoni Severino (Bass guitar, vocals), David Diederen (Guitars, vocals) and Didier Dauvrin (Drums), they are from Belgium, and Sunglasses is from their debut EP Utopia, released in February 2012.

There is new music on the way; their second EP, to be called Slowly Slowly, is expected in early November.

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Seamus O’Muineachain, Away With The Fairies

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This is Away With the Fairies, the first song from Seamus O’Muineachain‘s new self-titled record.

O’Muineachain’s tunes are music for the life’s liminal spaces, like the glimmer of tiny lights on trees brightening the place where the grey buildings meet the grey skies or moments spent walking slowly through swirls already-falling copper leaves while enjoying the rising wind of an oncoming late summer storm.

And if there were sidhe wandering the streets of Manhattan, this is what they would listen to as they walked between worlds.
 

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August Video Challenge: Dan Keyes, Untitled

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While we’re on the subject of unGoogleable songs, here’s one more. The video doesn’t give a title, but I’d name it Find You Lost, Leave You Found essentially to distinguish it from all of the other songs that are called Who’s Going to Walk You Home?

The person singing is Dan Keyes, formerly of Young Love (dance-pop) and Recover (post-hardcore), now a songwriter/producer, and the performance is part 2 of a two part interview he did with Alexi Wasser from I’m Boy Crazy. I have watched both parts and all I’m going to say he is both extraordinarily patient and a very good sport about approximately everything.

I picked this video because I initially watched it out of morbid curiosity and then spent the half second between him hitting the last note and Wasser’s final comment feeling kind of stunned and lost. I don’t know what I was expecting but this song – this bright beautiful stiletto of a tune – was not it.

So I watched it again. And again. Every time I watch the video I have to watch it four times in a row. I am hoping someday it is actually released properly, just as it is, acoustic-style, because I think adding anything to it would ruin it.

I want to be able to take it to all of my favorite quiet, lonely places and spaces and times, like Coney Island when the air is cold and the beach is empty and the High Line in the snow.
 

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August Video Challenge: Oh Ginger, And So It Goes

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Oh Ginger is Lindsay Holler (Charleston SC) and Michael Hanf (New York NY), and together they sing sweet delicate beautiful songs. They have two EPs out so far, Oh! Ginger and [oh ginger] and a third one coming soon.

Here they are with And So It Goes, from Oh! Ginger:

 

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August Video Challenge: Didier Wampas, Eternellement

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Here is Didier Wampas singing Eternellement, one of my favorites from Taisez Moi, while dressed as a vampire and playing a very special guitar.
 

 

PS/ETA: If you listen very carefully to the chorus, you can also hear Ryan Ross (The Young Veins, Panic[!] at the Disco] singing back-up!!

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Icon of Coil: PerfectSex

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Hey y’all, guess who’s back?

ICON OF COIL.

They’ve come out of a nine-year hibernation with new music and a tour. There’s a sample track on bandcamp called PerfectSex. Check it:
 

 

Tour starts Washington, DC in early September! Be sure to check their listings and get out and see them if you can. It will definitely be a good show.

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August Video Challenge: Melody Gardot, Baby I’m A Fool

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Another one I found while looking for something else: Melody Gardot, with Baby I’m a Fool from My One and Only Thrill (2009).

While I am not usually into jazz, Gardot has a stunning voice and I always love handsome men dancing in top hats and tails. The internet informs me she has just put a new record out, so if you listen to this and like it, be sure to follow up on that news.

 

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Time for a Game of: Name That Tune!

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The back-story: I recently found a labeled but track-list-less mix-tape in my tape box. I’ve listened to it, and I’ve been able to identify all of the songs on it except for one. I’ve dutifully Googled several of the more unusual lyrics, and found nothing relevant or useful. So now I’m bringing it here, in hopes we have a late ’90s Christian rock expert in the crowd who can help me identify this tune.

Clues, or, Things I Know For Sure:

1. The mix-tape was made in the Fall of 1996, probably in late September, so the song had to have been released by then.

2. The song is an up-tempo rock number with a mostly-folky flavor; there are two male voices. They also deploy a harmonica at key junctures. I made the assumption it is Christian rock because of both style and lyrical content.

3. That said, the lyrics also reflects that somebody was really into Moby Dick.

The lyrics of the first verse and chorus, transcribed by me, as best I could:

(spoken) Eagerly peering towards the horizon
you would have thought he was a prophet or a seer,
beholding, beholding, behold

(singing) Look up with a silent graceful movement whispers
Tonight on film I saw him there he was so big
Tonight I [something] myself from the hands of Jesus
Tonight the drank the deepest from the [something] spring
Tonight I took your rainbow by the tail, by the tail
You said my friend it’s the simple things
What a child trim the sails
Tonight it’s gone (tonight it’s gone)
The book of whales
Tonight it’s gone (tonight it’s gone)
To trim the sails
God is [dead?] to the mighty ones
God is [dead?] to the strong
those of us who have seen the book
search the sea the whole night long

So. Anyone recognize it?

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August Video Challenge: Mykki Blanco & the Mutant Angels, Head is a Stone

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A little something to get your blood moving on Monday morning: Head is a Stone by Mykki Blanco & the Mutant Angels, the creation/alter ego of poet and multi-media peformance artist Michael David Quattlebaum Jr. In addition to his musical endeavors he’s also just put out a book of poetry: From The Silence of Duchamp to the Noise of Boys.

I like this video / song because: those drums are relentless and there’s some excellent use of the rooftops of New York.

 

 
Director: Nick Hooker
Director of Photography: H. Spencer Young
Editor: Sloane Klevin
Additional Photography: Nelson Hancock