Archive for the ‘Thurston Moore’ Category

Beck news

Monday, August 29th, 2011

So as I like to do every so often, I’ll try to summarize what Beck’s been up to in case you missed anything. And, yes, despite the lack of official Beck material, he’s actually been pretty busy! (First, check beck.com for some current news, like Autumn DeWilde’s photo book.)

Foremost, Beck has continued with the producer chapter of his career. After the Charlotte Gainsbourg and Jamie Lidell albums last year, this year he has also done albums with Thurston Moore and Stephen Malkmus. Both of those kept Beck in the news, as much of the press around their release was focused somewhat on Beck’s production. (And even some joint interviews with Beck.) Coming up, there are some more Charlotte Gainsbourg tracks (an EP and a sort of compilation album but with new material) that Beck produced, including some songs like “Paradisco” that Beck played live a few years back. Also on the producer-front, Beck is apparently producing Dwight Yoakam’s upcoming album. (!) I’m actually really getting into the idea that Beck is a producer at the moment. It’s a great position for his talents.

Beyond the producer thing, most everything else is on hiatus: Record Clubs, new albums, everything. Beck in a recent interview with Pitchfork sounded like he’s pretty unsure how to proceed, so I guess we’ll have to be patient! (And if you haven’t read that interview, go do it, it’s fairly revelatory.)

However, Beck has started doing the occasional live thing, which after a few years away from the stage is nice to see. He did a charity concert in San Francisco in May. And last night, he was the headliner of a Serge Gainsbourg tribute concert. The show, which was apparently mostly Beck’s idea, featured many singers doing the songs of Serge Gainsbourg. The house band also included Roger Joseph Manning Jr., Joey Waronker, James Gadson, and Justin Meldal-Johnsen. Beck sang 4 songs: “Nefertiti,” “Teenie Weenie Boppie,” “Les Sucettes,” and “Ah! Melody.”

I was there and filmed the first 3 songs: sorry the video quality is poor, I wasn’t close, but it sounds ok:

My video got linked around the web on some of the bigger news sites and blogs, which is great. Hope you all enjoy it! It just goes to show though: Beck, we’re all still here. We’re all still hungry for anything you want to give us, even if it’s a shaky dark clip of you singing “Teenie Weenie Boppie.” Any bit of Beck news is pored over, from recent interviews to 10-seconds of a new song being in a movie trailer (“Curfew”). Your base, Beck, is waiting… :)

Demolished Thoughts and Scott Pilgrim

Friday, March 11th, 2011

demolished thoughts

So, first… the new Thurston Moore album, Demolished Thoughts, will be released on May 24. That’s the cover there. Beck produced it, and I’m quite excited to hear what the two of them did together. (Will it be half as creative and amazing as the Yanni covers?!)

Second, I’m sure you all have seen lately that some of the Scott Pilgrim outtakes hit some websites lately. To me, it shows just how much eager interest there always is for Beck material! A few of the links I’ve seen have stated that Whiskeyclone leaked the songs, and for the record, that is not so. We’ve known about them since they initially leaked 6 months ago or so, when they were played on a web radio show. Some fans grabbed them from that stream, and they’ve been around since then. What caused their recent “discovery” and thrust into the mp3-blog world this week, I have no idea.

The 3 songs that were taken from the web stream are “Disgusting Rainbow,” “No Fun,” and “Gasoline Eyes.” They were outtakes from the sessions where Beck and Brian LeBarton wrote a pile of songs to be used as Sex Bob-Omb’s songs in the Scott Pilgrim film. They did not make the final cut for the film, or the soundtrack.

A fourth song, “Indefatigable,” also leaked. It is not from the web stream. It was included in the film, but was not released on the soundtrack. The track that surfaced there was ripped from the DVD and then looped to make a slightly more complete song.

Yanni Wrap-Up (Rip Off Your Mustache & Save Yr Soul)

Friday, September 17th, 2010

The final track of Record Club #5 went up today, ending an entertaining run through Yanni Live At The Acropolis.

Beck and Thurston Moore played or sang on all the tracks, while the band Tortoise was actually only on two of them (“Keys To Imagination” and “Within Attraction”). The session musicians on the remaining 8 tracks were Abraham Laboriel (bass), Jeff Babko (keys), Russell Ferrante (piano), Toss Panos (drums). On one song, “Nostalgia,” Vinnie Colaiuta drummed instead of Panos.

Perhaps because of the source material, but this album was pretty different than most anything Beck has ever done. Actually it is probably in spite of the source material, because little of this actually sounded like Yanni! In fact, Beck’s sounded more like Yanni on some of his own tracks than this stuff did (like “Acropolis Now” or “Touch Dolphins”).

Anyway, Beck hinted that there were lots of music allusions in their music on this RC beyond Yanni, like references to Stravinsky, Shania Twain, Bobby Brown. If anyone ever recognizes any riffs in the scores, let us know! (The Bobby Brown was on “Santorini” and they did The Doors on a track too.) You could tell the musicians were having fun doing this stuff. I am not sure how often I’ll be inclined to listen to this RC in the future, but I think it was a fun and worthwhile attempt. It really gets to the core of what RC can and should be; it’s not just covering something Beck and the crew likes, it’s taking a piece of music and challenging themselves with it.

No word yet on RC #6. Hopefully we’ll hear soon and it will start up next week!

Also, no more word on that new album Beck told Pitchfork about. Hopefully some news will arrive soon.

New Beck Interview

Monday, August 2nd, 2010

Over at Pitchfork, there’s a new short interview with Beck. Nothing crazy new in it, but I’ll summarize:

Beck enjoys collaborating with other musicians, and working with Charlotte led him to call up people (like Jamie Lidell and Stephen Malkmus) and offer his help.

Despite all those projects, he’s still working on his own album. He did it way back in 2008, and is still kinda figuring out the songs. (And, of course, he doesn’t have a label. It could end up on his website!) He was planning to call the album Rococo but probably not anymore. He also has a group of songs from before Modern Guilt that was never released. Beck was going to get Thurston Moore to add guitar to some songs, but didn’t have time, so they stuck to Yanni.

And Beck gave 3 songs to Twilight, but they picked the one with Bat For Lashes. (And he gave one to the prior Twilight movie that didn’t get used.) THERE IS NO REASON THESE ARE NOT ON BECK.COM, BECK. Post ’em up, say “Twilight didn’t want these, so here you go!”

Acropolis Now

Thursday, July 1st, 2010

The new Record Club project, starring Beck, Thurston Moore, and Tortoise decided to cover Yanni Live At The Acropolis.

ENJOY at beck.com all summer long

UPDATE: As you can see on the .com, Beck wrote “To flesh out the complex arrangements, several studio musicians were brought in to read a heavily doctored score with interpolations of everything from Stravinsky to Bobby Brown (and others).” (Earlier in the day, it said Shania Twain’s name there.) Does this mean that funky riff part in the second half of “Santorini” is an interpolation of something? Does anyone recognize it at all?

Record Club Number Five

Tuesday, June 15th, 2010

Beck, Liars, St. Vincent and Os Mutantes still have two more songs left in their Record Club cover of INXS. But current word is that an upcoming (and presumably next) Record Club was with the band Tortoise and Thurston Moore.

Click here for more

No word yet what album exactly… but if/when I hear, I’ll let you know…

New Details on Beck / Sonic Youth RSD 7″

Wednesday, April 15th, 2009

In a recent Matador blog post, there seems to be a hint that the aformentioned Beck / Sonic Youth split 7″ may be released in several different colors, each being split amongst the 2500 total copies. If this is the case, it may make finding each color very difficult given the highly limited nature of this release. We will continue to bring you details as they emerge.

UPDATE

It has been confirmed via the above Matador blog, that there will be an ultra limited amount of colored 7″s distributed randomly around the nation. The colored versions will be individually numbered (inside the sleeve). So if you can… buy two to increase your chances! ;) Happy hunting

– breathmint

odelay deluxe liner notes

Thursday, January 24th, 2008

according to this one (stupid) review, there will be some expanded liner notes in odeluxe:

Or you can try to enjoy the liner notes by Thurston Moore, or the fact that Dave Eggers uses the booklet to interview a bunch of teenagers about whether they know who Beck is (Hey! Guess what! Not really!)

could be good, but maybe not. we’ll see.