In this edition: keeping it simple with music and videos today, as we endure Hurricane Sandy’s westward storm front. So far, we’re good here. Sounds from The Dead Heads, Faunts, Ginger & Drum, Solomon Grey, Nite Fields, The Ocean Floor, and Stop Light Observations. Sights from Django Django, M83, Moones, The Ocean Floor, and Wild Nothing.

Consider These

Big Tree – “Time”
from Little EP
out 6 November on Tricycle Records
Twee alert! Sweet harmonies, golden sounds from guitars, and an infectious back beat will draw you in like a bee seeking the delicious nectar of a beautiful lily. The Bay area quintet make great use of their diverse talents.

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The Dead Heads – “When I’m Dead“ [mp3]
from Go Ape Shit
out now on The A&R Department
Grunge-ladened shoegazer rock from this Sydney-based quintet. This track is a perfect candidate for your Halloween mix. They cite the Jesus and Mary Chain and The Brian Jonestown Massacre as influences, and they are true to that combination.

Faunts – “What I’d Love To Hear You Say”
from Left Here Alone (EP)
out 20 November on Friendly Fire Recordings
The new Faunts track is a beautiful slow-burner fueled by clever samples, soft harmonies and one sweet, crawling guitar lick.

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Ginger & Drum – “Backstreets“
from upcoming EP
out soon on The A&R Department
The Sydney-based duo spent time sharpening their chops in Sweden and San Diego before returning back to Australia to work on their debut EP. “Backstreets”  is lush pop music with bright synth tones, big beats and Ginger’s warm vocals.

Solomon Grey – “Firechild”
from Solomon Grey
out soon!
This is a hypnotic electro-dance track for fans of TV on the Radio and Twin Shadow. Tom Kingston and Joe Wilson form Solomon Grey. The pair met in Wilson’s home town of Oxford where Kingston performed his university studies. Over a three year period with stops in Ireland and Australia the pair worked to construct, record and release their eponymous debut.

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Nite Fields – “Vacation“
from Vacation 7″ (limited release)
out 17 November on Lost Race Records
Jesus and Mary Chain! This is dark, dense and lovely. Has a snare drum ever sounded so gloomy? Check out more from the Nite Fields on SoundCloud.

The Ocean Floor – “My Shelf”
from Falling Star Castle
out 27 November on SGMG Records
Another reason to love Portland, a city where quirky folk and pop music thrive. It’s like they all push themselves to see who can top who. This track is full of layers of violin, glockenspiel, and oddly timed and then on-time backing vocals. Watch the video below with a full description of the song’s story.

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Stop Light Observations – “Search Into Your Soul”
from The Zoo, self-release
And now for a true indie band… Out of Charleston, SC, Stop Light Observations takes the traditional sounds found in gospel, soul, blues and roots rock to develop their brand of indie rock. They recently won Charleston’s Last Band Standing, and now expand beyond that with a SoundCloud stream of their debut, The Zoo. Purchase it here.

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Videos, videos, videos…

Django Django – “Hail Bop”
from Django Django
out now on Because Music
If you haven’t picked up their self-titled debut LP, you should. Guitar-driven new wave that we have not seen since DEVO packed it in decades ago. Follow them on Facebook or Twitter for great music picks.

M83 – “Steve McQueen”
from Hurry Up We’re Dreaming
out now on Mute
With the release of this video, M83 celebrates the year anniversary of the impressive, Hurry Up We’re Dreaming.

Moones – “Better Energy”
this video totally kicks ass…The song is damn good too! Love the breakneck beat, it’s like Madness on hyperdrive. For this video, Moones was nominated in two categories for this year’s UK Music Video Awards.

The Ocean Floor – “My Shelf”
Beautiful origami! As promised, the story from the source: “My Shelf is the product of a year of Thursdays of folding, cutting, gluing, and laughing. The video portrays the song’s narrative interpreted by “Dolores” the Loris and “Arthur” the Orangutan. This tale of poorly timed feelings and unspoken longing sets the stage for the rest of Falling Star Castle’s journey into imagination and dreamings of perfection. It was directed by Kurtis Hough (Six Organs of Admittance, Colin Stetson, Rachel Grimes).”–Lane from the Ocean Floor

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Wild Nothing – “Paradise”
from Nocturne
out now on Captured Tracks
Not that they needed her, but Wild Nothing get Michelle Williams to star in this video. Love that she uses a Sanyo personal cassette player on her flight. The TWA sign at the end contributes to the synth pop nostalgia.

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Cheers…

Although I have to warn you I did bump into one of my cooler (ok as a writer/director of ads and music videos he’s probably the coolest of the group) friends after the event and I don’t think he shared my views on all of these.

First up is a video for NY band Here We Go Magic called How Do I Know. Its not only a great video featuring a really sweet man/robot relationship but its a great track as well. Enjoy

Second is a really nice video which unfolds in reverse, not a new trick I’ll admit but I really like the way in which scenes fit with the sentiment of the song in places. This is Breezeblocks by British band Alt – J

Finally is a video from another British band Moones, their video for Better Energy is directed by a man named Peter Sluszka who has worked with Michel Gondry in the past and there is a Gondry type vibe to this one. Check out the number of different animation techniques used here, incredible.

And finally finally, I mentioned my music director friend earlier so it wouldnt be fair to finish this post without showing some of his work, this wasn’t part of last nights BUG and has been around a bit longer but check out this one-take video he’s pulled together…very cool indeed

If you thought that the UK was cold at the moment then this will make you feel warmer with icebergs, electric eels, frozen sailors and more.

Turn up the volume and enjoy.

This morning, Lags from Gallows gave us a heads-up on his new project Moones, and we sorta kinda maybe love their electro-indie-synth-pop product. It’s got a Fenech-Soler vibe, but with a more impressive beard and a kick of whiskey behind the eyes, too.

They dropped this tonnes-of-rad video for song Better Energy two weeks back but it’s already had some real enviable feedback, including a nod from smalltime pop band Coldplay on Twitter. It’s started our lazy Sunday very nicely, thank you.

Follow Moones on Twitter HERE and visit their site here.

for their latest video, Better Energy, British band Moones turned to director Peter Sluszka.

what he produced can almost be described as a a mashup of The Mighty Boosh and the film Bunny and Bull.

more on Moones here.

This all started with back and forth messages with the client to come up with a design he was happy with, finalising dimensions and the gold colour he was looking for.

To make the gold bars I made five master gold bars out of MDF, which were then sanded, sprayed and polished til they were as smooth as glass. These were then used to make two moulds of 5 bars. The moulds were silicone in a fibreglass jacket.

My first chocie of casting material was expanding foam, since this would make the letters very light and easy to move and transport. The pictures above show the first batches of bars that I cast. The issue that become apparent very quickly was that the expanding foam began to shrink and wrinkle. After a few more days some of the bars had shrunken to a thin curled up shape. I tried to find a solution to this problem but everyone I talked to including my university tutors couldn’t explain why it was doing this or how to fix it. No one had even heard of expanding foam shrinking. The most likely possibility was that  it must of been a bad batch of expanding foam.

With the expanding foam not seeming to be an option to make these bars, I had to look for an alternative material that would be cheap enough to fit into the budget I was working to and also something I was able to do at home since that was were I was doing all this work. My next choice of material was plaster.

These were the testers I made to make sure that plaster could be an option for making the bars, I tested them for strength, cast quality and how well they took the paint.

Once I had finalised that plaster was the material I would go with I could get into full production of casting all 470 gold bars over 5 days, using up 30 x 25kg bags of plaster. The picture on the left is the area that I set up in my lounge to do this and the right is one of the rooms I filled with the bars whilst they dried out.

The pictures above are paint testers of two different gold colours that I had filtered down to. The left picture is the gold colours in naturla light, and the right is under artifical lighting. In the end the client went with the light colour gold.

After the bars were cast and had spent a few weeks fully drying out I was then able to get on with the painting. The gold colour came out really well in the end after three coats to make sure that it gave a good coverage. when the light hit them they had a nice shine to them like what is seen in the picture on the right.

With the bars painted I then had the challenge of finding a way to fixed them together to create parts that would be easy to transport and put built up together to spell our the letters in the bands name. The thing that bought difficulties with this was that each bar weighted just under 2kg. So that was alot of weight to hold up and too much strain for most glues to hold. After some experimenting I found the solution of fixing the bricks together with a short piece of wooden dowl going down through the bricks and each joint glued with sikaflex. Sikaflex was the only glue that I could that worked for this job. For the letters such as the letter M and S, I used clear acrylic rods as supports. The images below are the almost finished letters, all that was then needed to be done was to wipe the plaster dust off the paint and patch up any areas where drill holes were showing.

You may be wondering about the unusual spelling of the word Moons in the title. This is because a month after I had finished this and set it off to the client, I got a email to say that they had to change their name to “Moones”. I didn’t make the E in the end but it was decided that it would be quicker and easier for it to be photoshopped into the band photos post production using the S that was already there. The bands photo shoot has been done but I am unable to include the final image for now but it should be uploaded later this year once I get the ok from the band.

If your interested in this band and would like to find out more follow them on twitter – http://www.twitter.com/flymoones