Two different artists, two different styles of music.

First, from Ladytron’s newest album, Velocifero, is the song “Runaway”, which sounds much better through a real stereo than on YouTube (the synth and bass really make the song and it gets lost with YouTube’s low quality). This video is pretty tame compared to some of their others (such as the indecipherable Destroy Everything You Touch which is making a comeback as background music to the trailer of the Anna Wintour/Vogue doco The September Issue). Anyways, here’s “Runaway”:

Next up is a song meant more for a relaxing sun-drenched Sunday afternoon. I can’t recall which late night show I saw her on but the artist’s name is Diane Birch and I made sure to write it down and check her out. From her album Bible Belt, the two most outstanding songs are “Nothing But A Miracle” and “Fools” and the others are pretty solid as well. Her voice is rather quirky and she uses it to good effect to channel Carole King and a little bit of Fleetwood as well, especially with the instrumentation from the backing band (which fills out the songs much better than her piano-only pieces). You can listen to the full album and solo versions of her songs on her website. Here’s the video for “Nothing But A Miracle”:

Directed by the amazing Neil Krug, this is the latest single off of Ladytron’s Velocifero, which I can’t believe I have yet to purchase.

It was filmed on Montserrat in Catalonia, which is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been. I miss it.

Buy tickets for Ladytron… Performing at the HiFi Bar Brisbane…

Made up of DJs Reuben Wu and Daniel Hunt, Glaswegian Helen Marnie and Bulgarian born Mira Aroyo, this electronica/indie outfit has been performing together since 1999.

Catch them live at HiFi Bar Brisbane where they will be play such hits as “Playgirl”, “Seventeen”, “Evil”, and “Blue Jeans” as well as tracks from their last album Velocifero…

When: Sunday 7 June 2009 8:00 PM – 18+. 
Where: HiFi Bar, Boundary Street, West End
Cost: Tickets $49.50 + b/f. 
PURCHASE ONLINE.

Check out their MYSPACE.

LADYTRON
Tomorrow (Great Northern Remix)

Just as they kick off their North American tour, Ladytron is releasing a 7-track EP of remixed versions of ‘Tomorrow’ off of last years killer album, Velocifero. It features some pretty diverse mixmasters doin’ the knob-twiddling…Jim Abbiss, Dirty Vegas, The Vector Lovers…and this one by Los Angelenos, Great Northern. They’ll be on the road April & May (including two nights here in NYC at Webster Hall) and for more info, head over to their MySpace page.

How nice! Ladytron and the Faint touring together! This should be as massive as last year’s Cut Copy/Presets spectacle! Ladytron comes back to promote their epic Velocifero and the Faint…try to state their case why we shouldn’t leave them for dead following the release of their second straight subpar effort in Fascination. In any event, this has the makings of being a very cool tour and a wonderful example of how bands twiddling with machines can pack a solid punch in the live arena! Dig it!

Ladytron have recently annoucned that they will be Co-heading a tour with ‘The Faint’ this Spring. The foursome have also revealed that they have been hitting the studio with well known hit selling artist Christina Aguilera. The band will be supporting their latest album ‘Velocifero’ on the tour, which should be a triumph as both bands have many groupies as well as hundreds of fans. The tour will go underway in April before finishing in the early stages of May; so a bit of trek for the youngstes eh? Ladytron will play:

• Milwaukee, WI Tuner (April 1)
• Minneapolis, MN First Avenue (2)
• Chicago, IL Metro (3, 4)
• Toronto, ON Phoenix (6)
• Montreal, QB Theatre Telus (7)
• Boston, MA House of Blues (8 )
• New York, NY Webster Hall (10, 11)
• New York, NY Webster Hall (13)
• Philadelphia, PA Trocadero (13)
• Washington, DC 9:30 Club (14)
• Baltimore, MD Sonar (15)
• Asheville, NC Orang Peel (17)
• Atlanta, GA Variety Playhouse (18 )
• Houston, TX Warehouse Live (20)
• Austin, TX Stubb’s (21)
• Dallas, TX Granada (22)
• Tucson, AZ Rialto Theatre (24)
• Anaheim, CA The Grove (25)
• Los Angeles, CA Henry Fonda (26)
• San Francisco, CA Fillmore (29, 30)
• Portland, OR Roseland (May 1)
• Seattle, WA Showbox SODO (2)
• Vancouver, BC Commodore (3)
• Denver, CO Ogden (5)

Good morning, Mr. President.  I have two small gems for you today.  The first comes from Sesame Street, believe it or not.  For some reason, the following spin on a Billy Idol classic always comes to my mind when I think about the letter L.  I don’t exactly know when this song aired or how old I was when I saw it, but I do know that it makes me laugh:

Anybody know if Sesame Street still does song parodies like this?  They should.  Clearly the good ones make an impression.  Anyway, moving on.  Next up is a tune I heard probably ten times or so this summer while driving to and from work everyday in Los Angeles on Indie 103.1 – which, holy crap, I’ve just read stopped broadcasting last Thursday and are now online only.  Well, damn.  That’s depressing.  Seriously, how bad can traditional radio possibly get if a station like Indie 103.1 can’t make it in a market as big and diverse as Los Angeles???  This is ridiculous!  Do we honestly need twenty-seven stations that play the exact same crap? Wow.  That sucks.  This is a station that gave Steve Jones of the Sex Pistols his own show.  They had David Lynch read the weather.  They even had a show entirely dedicated to metal and it wasn’t even hosted by a man.  Well, damn.  If you want to check it out online you can go here and listen live.  Most importantly, Indie 103 played good music that other stations just simply wouldn’t touch, like this song from Ladytron.  It’s “Ghosts” from their 2008 album Velocifero:

I like the tune and I will miss hearing it on the radio when I’m in Los Angeles.  Enjoy the day’s politics if you’re so inclined.  I’ll just be over here pouting about the death of choice.  More tomorrow…

Se appartieni alla categoria “electropop” o “indietronica”, non è facile mettere in piedi un concerto che sia fedele agli album registrati in studio. Premessa di fondamentale importanza, visto che spesso si cerca una quasi perfetta corrispondenza fra palco e studio di registrazione.
I Ladytron sono riusciti a rispettarla aprendo il loro live bolognese all’Estragon con “Runaway” (secondo brano in scaletta), singolo estratto dall’ultimo disco “Velocifero” (2008, Nettwerk). Il Depeche Mode style è evidente ma il motivetto entra immediatamente nelle orecchie e nel cervello. Facile canticchiarlo già al primo ascolto. Dal cd fresco di uscita anche le immancabili “Black Cat” (in bulgaro) e “Ghosts”. Passando per “Play Girl” e “Seventeen”, la band di Liverpool ha poi salutato il pubblico con “Destroy Everything You Touch”, di grande impatto e molto ben eseguita. Forse il miglior brano di tutta la serata. L’impressione finale è che i Ladytron si richiamino non soltanto a Dave Gahan e soci ma pure ai New Order. Ma tant’è, questione di impressioni personali.
Nel complesso band un po’ ferma sul palco, che certo non aspira a scatenare i presenti con gesti e movenze. Della serie basta la nostra musica. Il più infervorato è il chitarrista, anche se Helena Marnie e Mira Aroyo, che si alternano alla voce, hanno gradualmente trovato energia e verve rispetto all’inizio del concerto.
Finita la serata, parte della band si è spostata al Covo Club per mettere mano alla consolle.

Ladytron’s latest: Velocifero

Ladytron’s latest: Velocifero

nicht unbedingt das spannendste oder aufwändigste video aller zeiten, das lied geht aber ins ohr und ins herz – mit folgendem refrain:

there’s a ghost in me
who wants to say ‘i’m sorry’
..doesn’t mean i’m sorry

aus dem letzten album der electropop-band ladytron velocifero

ps. sorry fürs reposting an alle, die bereits meinen tweet verfolgt haben

Hola con algunos problemas tenicos he vuelto para no dejar de escribir mi nota diaria. Me he encontrado con el nuevo video de Ladytron.

Para checar el estilo de la banda que le quiso impregnar al video con su estilo. 

Ustedes que les parece? 

Once upon a time, electronic acts were routinely dismissed for fetishising sounds at the expense of musical substance. It’s ironic, then, that Ladytron have written some of the best songs of the 00s while the 21st century rock’n'roll brigade, largely concerned with approaching various sonic blueprints from yesteryear, have rarely managed to pen anything memorable, let alone lasting.

Ladytron’s latest strike Velocifero is their best so far: 53 minutes and not one weak track. The opening ‘Black Cat’ appears to merge three distinct Dario Argento soundtracks into one: a gothic keyboard motif reminiscent of Profondo Rosso, the mechanic 80s beat of Tenebrae, and the stomach-punching synth drum accents of Suspiria. Wow.

‘Ghosts’ is essentially an electro glam rock shuffle. That concept isn’t new, but where Goldfrapp were trying, Ladytron do it effortlessly and emerge with a much more natural sense of melody.

‘I’m Not Scared’, the album’s standout track, features more of Helen Marnie’s typically ethereal vocal lines, so idiosyncratic they leave you under the impression the band have patented their own scales.

While on earlier efforts Mira Aroyo’s harshly spoken vocals exuded the charm of a communist border guard from a 1980s Stallone movie, she utilizes her native Bulgarian in a way that makes the language sound genuinely sexy on the sublime ‘Kletva’. Oddly enough, the song is an old Bulgarian children’s TV tune.

From 2001’s innocent 604 through the soft-focus lensed Light and Magic (2002) and the rock-tinted Witching Hour (2005), Ladytron’s journey has been one from self-consciously naive quirkiness and melancholy-lite towards more intensely bleak scenarios. Velocifero peaks as their darkest album so far, a quality further carved out by a harsher and harder production. Parallels could be drawn to Depeche Mode’s gradual transformation from new wave synth popsters to industrial rock flavoured gloom merchants in the 80s – a band whose outlook was not a million light years away from Ladytron’s.

At the beginning of the decade, the NME granted Ladytron their 15 minutes of exposure. Maybe that was the problem. Ladytron’s slick, detached image seemed to signify style over content, especially in contrast to the simultaneously bourgeoning ‘new rock revolution’ – a random selection of garage punk Johnny-come-latelies and “scruffy” indie rock combos hailed as the real thing. While Miss Kittenesque ditties such as ‘Seventeen’ found some resonance with the electroclash crowd, it went largely unnoticed that Ladytron were capable of writing classic songs such as ‘Blue Jeans‘, an understated tune that would have made The Velvet Underground and Nico proud. To this day, Ladytron has not achieved more than a very solid cult following.

Given the quality of their subsequent efforts, however, and especially with Velocifero upping the ante in the songwriting department once more, there really is no reason why Ladytron shouldn’t be one of the biggest acts in the world.

Zuri Zurowski

Electronic with a fist

Ladytron is doing a show here (Washington DC) next weekend with TV On the Radio and Thievery Corporation. If everything goes according to plan, I’ll be able to take some pictures and grab a few bootleg MP3s. But first, I think we’d better examine Velocifero.

Velocifero is darker than Ladytron’s previous studio albums. They spent part of last year touring with Nine Inch Nails after Trent Reznor personally invited Ladytron to open for them. Perhaps some of NIN’s industrial vibes rubbed off on the band. Their keyboardist, Alessandro Cortini, collaborates with the group on Velocifero as well as Justice’s Vicarious Bliss. I enjoyed their progression into a darker sound- almost goth-pop, without going over the edge into the goth-emo movement a la Panic, MCR, and the like. Velocifero is colder than the lighter, strongly sythpop Witching Hour and overall not as refreshing. Still, there’s nothing wrong with being second best.

Ghosts MP3

It’s like Christmas! All this plus Moo Cards in the mail, and hopefully a PRE CD later this week…

Ladytron – Velocifero

Black Cat is probably the coolest opener I’ve heard this week, if not longer. The whole album is full of banging beats, dirty synths, geek chic and geek chicks. Predict The Day is a million different types of awesome too. Sounds a lot like Nine Inch Nails. That’s a good thing, by the way.

I was told to expect Eurovision when I got this. Maybe. I can see the comparisons, but no. This is better than transvestites and Romanians.

Also, good cover art. Not bad for a freebie. If anyone reads this, send more! I just bought a car so I can’t afford to buy $62 000 worth of CD’s each week.

77/100

A Place To Bury Strangers – Fix The Gash In Your Head

From the fucking awesome eponymous album from last year comes the single for what I thought was the best track on it: The noisy-as-fuck-electro-smash Fix The Gash In your Head.

I don’t normally buy singles unless there’s something special about it. I read on Pitchfork (fucking shoot me if you have to) that APTBS had destroyed the living crap out of the record plant and had the single reprinted as a limited edition 12” in superfly yellow vinyl (remixes only) and a CD with the original 10″ on it (FTGIYH, Ocean, and remixes of both), and it was all limited 100 copies.

Well, as soon as I saw that, I hit up Rough Trade and manged to snag #63/100. Happy days!

The remixes? The Lillica Libertine remix of Gash is pretty different to the album, which is good, but then again, I would have liked to have heard something that mangled the main beat, because that was way beyond rad to begin with. Nevertheless, it sounds pretty awesome. $10 from the UK? Buy the 10″ if you can, or the ltd ed if you can

89/100 purely on collectability.

If there’s any grammatical errors above, you’ll live. I’m too busy eating/watching Big Cat Diary and thinking “I want one of these…”

Wampirzyce electropopu powracają. Ok, może „wampirzyce” to lekkie nadużycie skoro w tym zespole jest jeszcze dwóch facetów, ale wiadomo – to panie grają w ataku Ladytron. Poza tym, kto by się nimi przejmował skoro jest tam Mira Aroyo. Mira człowieku (druga od lewej)! Prywata wcale bezwstydnie załatwiona, przejdźmy więc do meritum.

„Velocifero” to czwarte dziecko tego angielsko – bułgarsko – szkockiego konglomeratu. Kwartet słynący z arktycznej muzyki i takiego też wizerunku/zachowania na scenie ma w naszym kraju oddaną grupę fanów, co samo w sobie mogłoby się wydawać zaprzeczeniem (casus Kraftwerka wydaję się tu znamienny). Czy wyczekujący „Velocifero” będą ukontentowani? Na pewno. Co z resztą słuchaczy, którym nazwa „Ladytron” mówi tyle, co „savoir-vivre” popularnej blondynie reklamującej lody „K-oral”?

Reszta dostanie zwarty, trzymający dobry poziom album. Na „Velocifero” nie ma killerów, ale też brak… Fillerów. Gdyby jednak spróbować wskazać najjaśniejsze punkty, to pierwszy w kolejności byłby singiel „Ghosts”. Fajny, bujający podkład, chwytliwy refren i te chłodne, ladytronowe „coś”. Ciekawie, poprzez dołączanie się kolejnych ścieżek budowane jest napięcie w openerze „Black Car” zaśpiewanym nota bene po bułgarsku (ten patent powraca jeszcze w „Kletvie”). Wyróżnia się struktura ostatniej piosenki na LP, czyli „Versus” – wersy zbudowane na wzorze „something versus something”, które wyśpiewuje najpierw sam kobiecy głos, potem wraz z męskim wokalem, by w końcu pozostał tylko ten drugi. W warstwie muzycznej – dość gęsto, epicko wręcz (pamiętajmy, że to ciągle electropop, a nie post-rock), kozacki motyw klawiszy. „They Gave You a Heart, They Gave You a Name”, to kolejny numer w historii muzyki zbudowany na motoryce „Blue Monday”, także nie może nie chwycić. Powala tłustość „Burning Up”, osacza mrok „Predict The Day”, ujmuje melodia „Tommorow”.

„Velocifero” wydaje się być bardziej wyrównaną, ciekawszą i przez to lepszą płytą, niż poprzednia „Witching Hour”. Z drugiej jednak strony tamta miała „Destroy Everything You Touch”. Tu nie ma takiej surowej, pierwotnej energii, która powodowałaby gęsią skórkę. Co kto lubi.

Posłuchaj

I can pretty much tell you what it’s going to be already: Velocifero by Ladytron (link to Amazon).

It’s really awful, isn’t it? The inner art is better and the spine is OK at least, so it’s not a dead loss. HMV and Virgin “zavvi” are hiding the album deep in the racks and only Fopp appears brave enough to show the thing in its front-facing new albums section, so it does look like it’s not going to sell very much offline. What’s worse is that it’s a pretty good album and deserves a whole lot better.

Still, might sell a bit on iTunes.

(The mainstream exception in the title is for stuff where by definition the covers are appalling: garage bands and a whole lot of punk and metal. Ladytron, however, are on Nettwerk, who should know better.)

Click below the pic for the first single off  Ladytron’s latest album, Velocifero. Boston-based? See them live on June 30, 2008 at The Paradise.

Ladytron street mural, Bogota

Listen to Ghosts: here.

Ladytron video – “Runaway”, off the Velocifero Album