Riding Alone For Thousands Of Miles...With Gaspar Claus

And its taken a week, but I have gotten through all the bands on Bad Panda Records that I deemed good enough to unearth! And again Ive got two here for you, and finishing with a couple of instrumental/post-rock acts seems pretty fair I reckon!

First up is Gaspar Claus. A French music classicist, Claus has studied music for most of his life, in particular the usage of the common cello. He has extrapolated such knowledge to expand upon and stretch the boundaries of cello playing, and indeed what the instrument is capable of achieving. He has worked with various artists from wide ranging global creative fields - from flamenco and actors to pop musicians such as Scout Niblett and Sufjan Stevens (two artists who eschew the conventions of the pop song for their own ends as it is). He is involved in projects all over the world, with Tokyo and Berlin unsurprisingly two of his main destinations on this life journey. Vincent Moon, who most recently filmed Mogwai's Burning film, has followed him around on this quest. Below is a track from his solo recordings, as well as one of the songs recorded by Moon. Amazing stuff, and his musical mission statement and constant drive to go further means I want to indulge in everything he has to offer.

Gaspar Claus - An Inexhaustible Feeling


Cello in the desert

Gaspar Claus MySpace Music Videos

A very different beast be Riding Alone For Thousands Of Miles, a New Jersey post rock outfit, although their elegaic moniker (from the title of a lesser known and yet great film by Yimou Zhang). Its a sprawling outfit all right - 11 regular members that includes five guitars, bass, drums, violin, cello, piano, bells and a harp - you wont see these guys play Old Blue Last! Post Rock bloggers The Siren Sound are avid fans of these guys, as they evoke a spooky mindscape that is fully immersive. And dont want to paint them into a corner so I wont mention names, but a couple tracks did mirror a certain Canadian band that have reformed this year... A Boldogság Minden Reményét Elragadták (from Hungarian, “All The Hope Of Happiness Has Been Stolen”) is a behemoth of an album that they released not long after forming in 2008, and it is all done on 8 track - AND ITS AMAZING. Hunt this fucker down, STAT! But they are so hard to hunt down - they have no Facebook/Myspace page, interviews are almost non existent... So hunt down the album, hunt them down on Last.fm, and listen to the track below, which is hugely exciting as its a newie! There should be a new album just around the corner...

Riding Alone For Thousands Of Miles - Brick City Love Song

So there it is - Bad Panda has turned out to be very good after all! Enjoy the rest of your weekend, we'll speak again tomorrow...

More National gibber gabber

I know Ive been strong on the National front in the past few weeks, but with their January 2008 gig at the Zoo, Brisbane, still firmly entrenched in my mind, the release of their newie in a few weeks is palpable. So when I come across any kind of info about the guys I must impart, pront!

First up is that on Friday the band are streaming High Violet in its entirety via The New York Times to counter a poor quality leak of the album thats floating out in the internet ether. Fair enough too - its better to give your fans a taste of the real deal than let them suckle on the teat of a tinny blowback of a reproduction - that is the way of today though, so good on the lads for taking it on the chin and being proactive.

Also of interest is that long time National collaborator (and celebrate Illinoisemaker in his own right) Sufjan Stevens has brought an experimental short film entitled Destroy! Those Irritating Memories. The soundtrack (and to most reports, the most interesting part of the whole endeavour) is by the Dessner bros, Aaron and Bryce. See the clip below to get the gist - the first 4 minutes or so is boring otherness from Stevens, but it gets interesting after that.


Destroy Those Irritating Memories
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Stop with the wolf monikers! Oh, its your actual last name? My bad...

Tonight over at Heaven Californian hard-to-categorise-ers WHY? are playing their - well, hardto categorise - brand of indie folk hip hop ness, and will be a gig that I for one am very lucky to attend. I have no real idea what to expect. However Im equally looking forward to the supporting cast. WHY?'s frontmanYoni Wolf is 'letting' WHY? drummer and his older brother Josiah let loose with cuts off his own album, Jet Lag. Josiah's brand of understated quirky folk pop is endearing and a perfect precurssor of what is likely to be an eclectic gig tonight. The album itself is nice and soft, not taking too many risks, evoking simplistic notions of Mercury Rev or Sufjan Stevens lite grooves and amusements. Check out the tracks below - The Trailer and the Truck being the best cut off the album, The Apart Meant more indicative of the album's tone - and buy a ticket for the gig tonight!

Josiah Wolf - The Trailer and the Truck
Josiah Wolf - The Apart Meant