David Emery Online

We’ve just launched this simple site for The Horrors – we’ve put a web cam in their studio and it makes for strangely compulsive viewing:

“to: half machine records
subject: new wave hippies ep

dude, got the ep’s today, what the fuck is with the spaces in between the tracks. they were strung together with care. THERE ARE GUITAR AND DRUM PARTS CHOPPED IN HALF. i am beyond pissed off. this is why bands are supposed to get test pressings. this thing is a piece of junk now, completely worthless, and all copies must be burned or otherwise destroyed. i am deadly serious about this. if this gets out i will personally make it my job to see to it that every copy is retreived and destroyed. starting at yr offices.

-matt horseshit”

They’re going to burn all the copies; I love music industry stories like this…

Further to my previous post, we are at work currently extremely busy. Large projects are doing the things that large projects do (taking a long time being the primary thing) and the small projects are puffing up their chests to try and look large as well.

The natural conclusion to this is that we’re hiring.

We’re after someone to come in and work for about 6 weeks or so (although it could be a little longer) in our London office doing html/css/design type things. You should know what standards based semantic markup is, what things in CSS3 work in IE 7 (and all that jazz) and have half an eye for design (it will mostly be front end coding but that always helps).

You’ll be working for the largest group of independent record labels on bands like Radiohead, Beck, TV On The Radio, British Sea Power and many more – it’s the perfect gig for someone that loves music looking for some really great experience.

Drop me a line if you’re interested.

I would encourage everyone to go to this – looks like it’s going to be good fun.

One of the many, many things I’ve been working on recently. The album is amazing, by the way, and the BBC are going to use some of the music and animations as part of their Beijing Olympics coverage so you’re bound to come across some of it soon.

Featuring a certain Miss Natalie Portman:

Some thoughts:

• I am, as ever, extremely busy. This is undoubtedly a good thing, as their is nothing worse then boredom, although I’m not sure if I can really comprehend the concept right now.

• Some of the things you won’t get to see, sadly (or at least most of you, anyway); some of the things you might and one of the things is yet another redesign for this site that works better for the content I seem to be producing right now (link posts will look nicer, as will photos).

• There seems to be a distinct lack of things going on right now – nothing surprising, big or interesting; both in the online/tech and music fields. This (coupled with point 1) is why I haven’t been writing much – if I have things to write about, I will, but if not coming up with something more original takes more time then I’ve got right now.

• Season 4 of The Wire is not helping; it’s stunningly good and I need to watch another 5 episodes by tomorrow evening when Season 5 starts.

• Similarly, Wall-e is amazing. You could make a serious argument for the performance of that little robot to be the best piece of acting this year.

• I still haven’t used the iPhone app store, having realised that no app on it comes close to the usefulness of MobileScrobbler. Until I can get that for iPhone OS 2.0 I’m not upgrading (hey Apple – I know you can’t allow background apps on the iPhone, so how about building in scrobbling into the iPod app?).

• On the iPhone topic, I still haven’t got a 3G one yet – I haven’t found an O2 store with one in stock yet. I’m not that fussed though, it is just a phone (some people seem to have forgotten that).

• The forthcoming Friendly Fires album is very, very good – if you sign up to their mailing list you get a free MP3 which is well worth the effort.

• More soon.

I think the new version of Last.fm looks and feels a lot better then the outdated, slightly haphazard old one. The comments on this post are massively revealing, however – people really (really) don’t like change.

I couldn’t agree more. I am sick and tired of the continual ridiculous posts about music appearing on TechCrunch; I appreciate that Michael Arrington has a certain point of view on the topic, but he obviously has absolutely no idea what he’s talking about.

The (gradual) return of Tom Vek and other such stories

Tom Vek is one of those odd artists that seems to have almost completely disappeared. His debut album – We Have Sound – came out way back in 2005 and was quite extraordinary; you don’t get such confident and imaginative records every day, and you certainly don’t expect such a tour de force from a debut.

It’s an album that is without filler, so choosing tracks to highlight is difficult, but Nothing But Green Lights – the last single off the album – is as good a place to start as any:

And then; nothing.

3 years down the line and hardly a peep – a solitary ‘Tom continues to work on the follow up to 2005 debut “We Have Sound”’ message on his website and vague rumours that a new album is done but facing record company problems is all we have to go on. The only ray of hope (quickly extinguished) was the appearance of a track on the GTA IV soundtrack. It was the traditional “hey, I wonder what this is – it sounds a bit like Tom Vek” moment, which led to a quick google search that confirmed that it was.

Sadly, I say “quickly extinguished” hope as it turns out that as opposed to a new track, ‘One Horse Race’ is actually a b-side from the old album, so we’re still no closer to something new. However, it’s a brilliant track that is better then most bands a-sides, so shall we just pretend it’s a new single and enjoy it anyway?

Tom Vek – One Horse Race (mp3)

Luckily we don’t have the same situation with LCD Soundsystem – I don’t think I could really cope with a 3 year break from them – but I have got a similarly obscure track to share with you. Before Sound of Silver – their stunning second album that came out last year (and was the 2nd best album of the year) – they released a 45 minute long track on iTunes (called 45:33, although actually 45:58 long) which while ostensibly for running to (as part of the whole Nike+iPod stuff) was really more an extended mix tape introducing parts of the album. It’s really exceptionally good, unsurprisingly.

Just over a year later the track was released on CD and vinyl, and contained some remixes and b-sides including one track ‘Freak Out/Starry Eyes’ that I wanted to feature here. It’s very much in the same vein as 45:33, in that it’s a long track (which is really two tracks) that meanders and explores the beats and musical phrases it starts out with – it’s essentially dance music, but played and performed in a more traditional, alternative music way.

LCD Soundsystem – Freak Out/Starry Eyes (mp3)

Pretty nicely sums up why I don’t like going in indie record stores. They should be some form of capitalist urban mecca to me, full of interest and discovery, but instead they’re intimidating and impenetrable.

Nonesuch Records have just launched a new site, and very good it is too – really love the clarity of information (that is so often missed on record label sites). While I’m at it, take a look at the new Domino Records site – the design is maybe not quite as nice, but the use of colour is lovely and I particularly like the user controlled ‘status’ at the top.

Yesterday I popped down to DPMHI in Soho to check out The Cool Kids ‘Bake Sale’ – think an in-store, but with cookies and beer (what event isn’t better with the addition of cookies and beer?). It was – of course – great fun, and was all in aid of promoting The Cool Kids’ album ‘The Bake Sale’ (hence the cookies…) which is out in August.

The Cool Kids aren’t the normal indie-shmindie that normally graces these pages; they’re hip hop, and good hip hop at that. It’s not a genre that I normally frequent in quite frankly, but ‘The Bake Sale’ is one of my most listened to albums of the last couple of months. It’s got groove – if you’re not normally a hip hop listener I heartily recommend it.

Here’s the video for ‘Black Mags’ as a little sampler – for more check out their MySpace:

Of course, I took a few photos while I was there – need to get a wide angle lens though…

“Err, hi guys. You seem to be screwing up our business model (even though consumers obviously like it) – could you stop please? Pretty please?”

I also particularly like the phrase “…we are opening the door for chaos in the marketplace”.

While we’re on the topic of long-form music writing, have a read of this great piece charting the (eventual) rise of The National. It’s an interesting read, and brings up some interesting thoughts about the consumption of digital music and the subsequent consequences in the comments.

Incidentally, The National for me are the very definition of a ‘grower’ band; every album they’ve done so far on first listen has sounded slightly dull – it’s only a month (or two or three) later that I realise just how brilliant it is. For reference, that is very fucking brilliant.