Yesterday I recorded vocals for the final version of WE WILL BE BACK SOMEDAY and, as is usually the case with me, I got a thousand new ideas and just had to try them out. The song is now 5 minutes long, has a kazoo duet (with “wah” filters on the tracks) in the middle and a mantra of random words at the end, spoken by 10 tracked-over voices. I don’t know what comes over me. I wonder if I am just trying to remake Beck’s MIDNIGHT VULTURES… which came out ten years ago. (If you haven’t check this record out, it’s the best party record ever made.)

At any rate, I am very excited about it… it’s going to rock in the weirdest and most fun way. Laura says it sounds like the soundscape from a sci-fi B movie from the 60s. Am thinking about releasing that and MURDERER’S HOLIDAY as a single on Itunes. Stay tuned!

-BDW

-Bradley

memories came flooding in when i finally got about to digitizing my old beck cds. i remember listening to brian’s copy of odelay over and over again (i think i hogged it for quite a while before i got my own), and trying to perfect my “sissyneck” whistle. i remember disliking sea change immensely, denouncing it as bland and boring, a view i held until someone told me to give it another shot. it’s one of my favorites now, and exists as a reminder for me to never dismiss anything. in terms of expectation, however, i remember most eagerly awaiting the release of midnight vultures in 1999, for the chance to finally listen to the studio version of “debra”, a song he had been playing regularly at his shows for some years already. up to today, i still love this song to bits, from the soppy horns to the pathetically whining bassline and of course beck’s prince falsetto. it definitely doesn’t compare to the improvised genius of the live versions, but it does still force us to take seriously the limits of absurdity that beck often pushes in his music. classic! - dan.

mp3: beck – debra

This is one of my favorite albums, ever.

Seriously.

I’ll feed you fruit that don’t exist / I’ll leave graffiti where you’ve never been kissed

Jocking my Mercedes / Probably have my baby

And my all-time favorite:

From September to December 2007, sound students who chose the scenography optional course worked together on two sound installations.

K-Hole is an interactive installation the visitor of which discovers a strange and ironic world.
People walk about a house where objects resound without having being excited, where noises are trapped in the curtains, where space controls time.

Split is an installation in which the different members of a rock band ( the Midnight Vultures) play together though they are physically separated from each other, each one finding himself  in a different room of a house : the singer is screaming alone in the bathroom, the drummer is rehearsing in his garage. After walking about the place, the public  can listen to the mix on a stereo in the living room of the house.

K-Hole

Verre Interactif/Interactive Glass

I worked on the sonic glass that you saw in the video and that you may see on the picture below. In this part of the installation we made believe that objects do not need to be hit to resonate. Using granular synthesis, we fabricated sounds out of the noises a glass makes when it is manipulated.

A glass stands on a table. It is manipulated by the visitors.

A digital camera is used to track the motions of the glass.

Max/MSP analyzes the images so as to allow for sounds to be generated  when the glass is moving.

The sound the glass makes is spatialized through the room on 4 speakers depending on its position on the table.

Lit Interactif/Interactive bed

In K-Hole, sounds are turned into masses submitted to the gravity and viscosity of the environment.When the visitor shakes the bed sheets, he frees the breathings and the snorings that entrapped in the bed clothes during the night

Light sensors are hidden in the mattress.

A Max/MSP patch plays different snoring and animal sounds depending on which set of sensors is exposed to the light.

Le Jardin/The Garden

The visitors walk in the garden. Their movements control the unwinding of the video and the sounds associated with it.

10×4 meters screen

8 speakers

Infrared sensors

SPLIT

A small microphone is hidden in the singer’s hair.
She can hear all her musicians through headphones.
Her voice is sent into a mixing console so as to be combined with the other musicians’ instruments
The resulting concert can be heard in the living room.

K-Hole and Split by Dorian Blanc

Beck, c’est le Nicolas Cage de la musique.

J’ai déjà vu une entrevue avec Cage où il expliquait qu’il aimait bien alterner entre gros films d’actions bourrés d’effets spéciaux (national treasure, ghost rider, con air) et films plus deep (adaptation, bringing out the dead, matchstick men). Quelqu’un m’a fait remarqué aujourdhui que Beck applique le même principe en musique. Un album folk relax, un album groovy flamboyant.

Et quand j’ai vu que le réalisateur de l’album est Danger Mouse, jai cru qu’on était rendu au film à effets spéciaux. Je m’attendait à un beck plutôt groovy et upbeat mais je me suis vite rendu compte que c’était beaucoup plus sombre comme ambiance. C’est probablement pour ça que j’ai pas accroché… Ca reste bien fait mais je me garderai cet album pour les jours plus tristes de cet automne, ca fit vraiment pas avec ma sélection musicale d’été.

[Interscope - 08/07/08]