A/VISION 3 Worst AND Best..

Now first of all, in this business partnership (Me and Duncan) I’m not the wire head.  Although I like house music, electronica and Cafe Del Mar style lounge, I have never been one for the more experimental sounds of the sub-genre world of  minimal noise, so take my review with the required grains of salt.

At first, I was confused and was wondering if the opening shows (WOMEN WITH KITCHENS & TRISTAN PERICH) were part of MUTEK’S sort of perma installations in @ the S.A.T?! Nothing to write home about here :/ (no offense to the artists) but this pretentious overly minimal hipster shizit is really not my thing and I honestly didn’t see too many happy faces (many stoned ones) in the crowds of those who truly appreciate this “genre”! I mayhave had had a more meaningful experience, hitting my iphone on the side of my head to traffic lights!

I’m no expert in what I think is called: Glitch, Noise or industrial sound collages, but I do know it was hard to tell the difference between those first 2 acts which is probably a sign that the productions were not very unique..  I have no idea what I was experiencing in terms of mediums but I can tell you how it felt! It felt like I was staring at a broken TV looping between it’s half channels and hearing a screwed up radio signal on a country road.  I would have had to be high out of my tree to enjoy this realistically and even then I may have had a more meaningful time hitting my iphone on the side of my head to the  traffic light tempo outside!

So that’s the bad part of my night. I don’t think my business partner who is VERY into electronic music was happy either.. judging from his immediate solution to go get a drink at the bar within seconds of the show! There, so now that I got that out of the way, let’s get to the good stuff…  In this case, the hard work of enduring the opening acts came with a very fruitful reward called SCULPTURE

Since Amon Tobin was nothing new for me, I wanted to check out a show that was. SCULPTURE was all that MUTEK promises to be. Original, cutting edge, mind warping multi-media. The synchronization of visual medium to audio was nothing short of genius. The technique alone was this, best described below in this MUTEK showcase:

home-made zoetropic discs – slabs of vinyl illustrated with otherworldly patterns that they play at various speeds and film to create simultaneous cycles of analogue sound and looping, mind-melting imagery.

Every single audio piece was a match made in heaven for the multi-screen visual. The most enjoyable example of this, I felt, was when very basic star shapes were slowly appearing on the screens (The ones made with 1 solid line which have very wide points, typical of star tats) as soon as we started seeing these slowly spin into frame, a super pleasant and lullabye-esque chime was being mixed into very hard beats. Almost like Tinkerbelle meets drum & bass. Very cool. VERY. COOL.

What I really liked about this show, was that even though the music was by proper definition probably Experimental, there was method in this madness, some kind of journey in this chaos. If you missed this truly brilliant display of mesmerizing multimedia , I invite you to experience a small taste of it here:

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Friendly Fires

Back on the road in North America, dance-punk band Friendly Fires is hot on the tour circuit promoting their sophomore album Pala.

The band’s self-titled first album was exciting and unique featuring strong vocals on top of upbeat cross-rhythms that quickly changed into commanding beats.   The album went Gold and received praise from people all over the music world.

Three years late with Pala, the boys from St.Albans, England are revisiting and have improved on their signature sound with producer Paul Epworth (Florence & The Machine, Crystal Castles, U2, Bloc Party, Santogold, Muse).

Watch a “rave montage” video for the album’s colorful intro track “Live Those Days Tonight” and listen to new track “Blue Cassette” and “Skeleton Boy” from their first album.

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Friendly Fires – Blue Cassette by UMPG

Friendly Fires – Skeleton Boy by Fanny Mai

Friendly Fires makes their first Canadian stop this Saturday, May 28th at Theatre Corona in Montreal!

YELLE, Je T’aime
Whether you speak French or not, there is something infectious about Parisian-based electropop band YELLE’s songs.  And if you understand French, you  know this sweet sounding girl has a very dirty mouth.

Singer Julie Budet (known now as Yelle) and producer GrandMarnier began making music together back in 2005 under the name “YEL” which stood for “You Enjoy Life”.  The name was soon feminized to YELLE because a Belgian band already went by that name.  That same year, they got lots of buzz on MySpace after they posted a song called ‘Short Dick Cuizi’ (which later became ‘Je Veux Te Voir’).  The following year, YELLE began recording their debut album titled ‘Pop Up’ and brought producer Tepr into the mix.  The French only album was released in 2007 and gained attention throughout the world.

YELLE released the first single of their sophomore album ‘Safari Disco Club’ (titled the same) for free on their website’s blog as a taster of what was to come  two months prior to the release of the album.  Being fans of the first album, this one does not disappoint.

Smack in the middle of YELLE’s North American tour with French Horn Rebellion is a stop in Montreal.  Bandmark is giving away a pair of tickets to the show at Le National on Tuesday, May 3rd.  Interested in going?  Like BandMark’s Facebook page here and write on our wall “I want to see YELLE at Le National!” Good luck!

Check out ‘Safari Disco Club / Que veux-tu (exclusive full length edit)’ below on Vimeo and take a listen to a few more of their tracks below that!

 

 

Yelle – La Musique (Lorenz Rhode Remix) by LorenzRhode
A cause des garcons (Tepr remix) by YELLE

Qui est cette fille ? by YELLE

Splashes from the cool wave!

Well we’re back on another Friday File – with our best 3 vids of the week.  This week was an interesting one…  a lot of variety from our content surfing crew!  A very Twilight Zone week with content that will make you watch twice… We have here:  an odd appetizer of Chicken Busking,  A main course of cubic craziness! and a daring dessert of Massive attack vs the Devil in Miss Jones – yes the 70′s porn! Viewer discretion is advised ;)

Man in a Chicken suit plays “What is Love” on Pianica

 

 Box animation

 

Massive Attack Paradise Circus


web truffles brought to you you by Fresher*
& BandMark :)

Equal opportunities at BandMark!

My business partner thinks we need to hire some new employees this Summer as we are starting to get super busy. When asked what kind of employees he prefers he said, “I don`t really care what gender, color, background  etc.. as long as they can speak English and are very web savvy.“

I placed each of this morning`s candidates on his desk for review! A nice variety of genders colors and backgrounds don`t you think? I feel that the long 80`s snake would make a nice sss-sales manager.

``Greetingsss I am your new Sssales manager``

``Greetingsss I am your new Sssales manager``

At BandMark we work hard, but life is fun so we play hard too! We suggest people decorate their co-workers desks right away with small stuffies as it:

  1. Increases office morale
  2. Breaks the day
  3. Reminds people how funny you are
  4. Makes an annoying mess for the co-worker
  5. Sometimes scares people i.e “what will she do to MY desk…“

BandMark is live!

Hi guys,

This is Lee, (I’m in the little bio section) and this is sort of the first blog test. So far so good. Lovin the WP editor, and in general I find everythng WP much smoother and user friendly than clunky JOOMLA, DRUPAL etc… this by far – has been the necest site to produce under the MRP INC empire!

Welcome to BandMark’s first official website, where finally after selling services via email and personal paypall accounts, we have upgraded ourselves to a real home on the web and multiple check out options that can handle international transactions. We give a warm hello to the bands and music fans who knew us back when we were a purple jpeg designed by MTAF and give a warm HE-LLO to anyone knew who landed on this side of the webisphere.

-Lee