15

Watch the Throne (2011) Deluxe Edition
Jay-Z & Kanye West

01 No Church in the Wild (ft. Frank Ocean)
02 Lift Off (ft. Beyonce)
03 Niggas in Paris
04 Otis (ft. Otis Redding)
05 Gotta Have It
06 New Day
07 That's My Bitch
08 Welcome to the Jungle
09 Who's Gon Stop Me
10 Murder to Excellence
11 Made in America (ft. Frank Ocean)
12 Why I Love You (ft. Mr. Hudson)
13 Illest Motherfucker Alive
14 H.A.M
15 Primetime
16 The Joy (feat. Curtis Mayfield)

Buy it on iTunes now (out physically 8/12/2011)
Download it here

14

Last night I saw Bon Iver play at Mountain Park in Holyoke, MA

Bon Iver have really come into their own as a band, and Justin Vernon put out a truly incredible performance. The live arrangements, particularly from Colin Stetson (sax) and Rob Moose (violin), were nothing short of brilliant. If you haven't heard their new album, Bon Iver, Bon Iver, I suggest you find it today- it happens to be the best album released in 2011 so far

Perth
Minnesota, WI
Towers
Brackett, WI
Holocene
Beach Baby
Hinnom, TX
Wash.
Blood Bank
Flume
Michicant
Re: Stacks
Calgary
For Emma

Skinny Love
Beth/Rest
Wolves

Highlights: "Perth" "Minnesota, WI" "Blood Bank" "Beth/Rest" "Wolves"

13

"Virus" is here a few days early!
I will continue to update the stream link until (and add a download link only when) we have a full quality file

Download it here

The following essay is included in the "Virus" app (pictured above) within Biophilia, written by musicologist Nikki Dibben. Each song has one

In "Virus," Björk captures her relationship with a recurring throat infection —candida, a normal part of the human body system but one which causes infections when it overgrows. Fungi such as candida grow in a close and long-term relationship with plants and animals —what’s known as "symbiosis"—and it’s this bond which Björk describes.
Björk’s lyrics reference well-known symbiotic relationships : mushrooms and trees, viruses and human. Viruses are incredibly abundant and found in every ecosystem on earth, infecting animals, plants, and bacteria. Whereas animal species replicate cell division, viruses need a host cell to make copies of themselves, sometimes lying dormant, but often resulting in the death of the host cell. The virus app takes you through the drama of this life cycle.

Björk’s deadlier inspirations for virus include parasitic symbiosis in which one organism benefits at the expense of another, often by taking over the host, or even changing the host’s behaviour — an alarming analogy for love between humans! For example, a parasitic worm infects the garden snail, making its eye stalks swell and throb with larvae so that the stalks resemble caterpillars, and causing the snail to crawl to the top of foliage at sunrise—something they would never normally do. This lures birds to eat the larvae with reproduce in the gut of the bits who excretes the eggs, and these are then eaten by other snails who themselves become infected.

Another inspiration from nature was the control of ants by a parasitic fungus : the fungus attaches to ants as they cross the forest floor and releases chemicals in the ants’ bodies that cause them to fix to leaves a certain height from the floor where they die. the fungus then sprouts from the head of the dead ant and the spores drop to the ground, starting the cycle again.

Listen to the song’s juxtaposition of its grim subject matter with its romantic-sounding music —an irony you’ll find more often in the music of the sugar cubes, of of Björk’s earlier bands, than in her latest solo work. We get a musical hint that all is not well in the symbiotic relationship just before the fourth verse when there is a sudden shift to a new key, wild modulation, and pitch bends in the choir on the lyrics "you fail to resist".

As in other tracks from Biophilia, Björk uses musical sound and structure to communicate her ideas in "virus". For instance Björk took the idea of a virus multiplying and created its sonic equivalent in the busy gameleste arrangement, using a generative music program —a sequence of rules expressed as an algorithm (a set of mathematical interactions) which operate on musical material put into the program such that the compositional process takes on a life of its own.

Instruments containing copper, like gameleste, cymbals, brass and hang (a bronze flying-saucer-shaped object struck with the fingers) appear throughout Biophilia and it was a happy coincidence when Björk discovered that copper was used to cure candida. The use of generative computer programme highlights the similarity between biological and digital (computer) viruses, linking the themes of music, nature and technology that run through Biophilia.

12

This week, the song in heaviest rotation is "Athol-Brose" by the Cocteau Twins, from their superclassic Blue Bell Knoll LP. It happens to be one of my favorite Cocteau Twins songs

I've been working on a post about the Cocteau Twins and their music, hoping to finish it soon

11

Air France released a new single today, their first release since 2008's fantastic No Way Down EP
It's called "It Feels Good to Be Around You," and you can download it from Sincerely Yours here

10

Bjork's Biophilia track list has been revealed in the credits of the Biophilia iPad/iPhone app, and by the order of the tuning forks displayed in pictures for Biophilia: The Ultimate Edition.

As you may know, Bjork is my very favorite artist. If you're a bit lost with the onslaught of new Biophilia information, please check back here for a large post about the wonders and workings of Biophilia as its release nears (Sepember 26!)

The next single to be released from the album is "Virus," next Tuesday, August 9!


Biophilia

01. Moon
02. Thunderbolt
03. Crystalline
04. Cosmogony
05. Dark Matter
06. Hollow
07. Virus
08. Sacrifice
09. Mutual Core
10. Solstice

www.bjork.com

9

Fantastic performance from the incomparable Merrill Garbus on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon last night