Sufjan Stevens and Angelo De Augustine have announced their new collaborative album A Beginner’s Mind – you can hear two songs from the project below.
The 14-track LP, which is set for release on September 24 via Asthmatic Kitty Records, was written when the two labelmates decamped to a friend’s house in upstate New York for a month-long songwriting session.
“Watching a movie to unwind after each day’s work, they soon found their songs reflecting the films and began investigating this connection in earnest,” a press release explains about the album, which is said to be “(loosely) based on (mostly) popular films – highbrow, lowbrow and everything in between”.
“The results are less a ‘cinematic exegesis’ and more a ‘rambling philosophical inquiry’ that allows the songs to free-associate at will,” the release adds. “Plot-points, scene summaries and leading characters are often displaced by esoteric interpolations that ask the bigger question: what does it mean to be human in a broken world?”
A Beginner’s Mind was previewed yessterday (July 7) with the songs “Reach Out” and “Olympus”, which you can hear below.
The video for “Reach Out” was shot earlier this year by Stevens and De Augustine on VHS-C cameras from their respective coasts, New York and California. The clip stars their beloved dogs Joku (a Jindo) and Charlie (a Havanese), and was edited by Jess Calleiro.
You can see the tracklist for Stevens and De Augustine’s collaborative album A Beginner’s Mind below, and pre-order the record here.
1. Reach Out
2. Lady Macbeth In Chains
3. Back To Oz
4. The Pillar Of Souls
5. You Give Death A Bad Name
6. Beginner’s Mind
7. Olympus
8. Murder And Crime
9. (This Is) The Thing
10. It’s Your Own Body And Mind
11. Lost In The World
12. Fictional California
13. Cimmerian Shade
14. Lacrimae
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Thurston Moore will release his memoir Sonic Life in 2023 after signing a new publishing deal.
Moore first told NME about the planned book in an interview last year, describing it as a retelling of his “history of coming to New York City as a teenager and finding my footing as a musician”.
“It’s not only just ‘Well here’s my life story’, as I wanted to get away from the ego of it and talk about the information – so when you first see a picture of Iggy and the Stooges in 1973 in a magazine, why did it have such an effect on you? Why did that photograph of something that was so subversive in the music scene appeal to somebody from a safe and protected middle-class lifestyle?” he said.
At the time, Moore said he hoped to publish Sonic Life within a year. Now, publishing house Faber has purchased the rights for a 2023 release.
A new synopsis on The Booksellers says the story is “all told via the personal prism of the author’s intensive archives and research”.
Moore released his last solo album By the Fire in 2020. In Uncut’s 8/10 review of the album, we said: ““Like anyone with almost 40 years of adventuring behind them, Moore’s music is now more about the deep, nuanced dig into established territory than striking out to plant a flag someplace new, plus exploring different contexts for his signature sound through continued collaboration.”
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LCD Soundsystem have announced a 10th anniversary repress of their long out-of-print vinyl boxset The Long Goodbye: LCD Soundsystem Live At Madison Square Garden.
The album recording is an unabridged version of the band’s near-four-hour farewell gig, which took place on April 2, 2011, at New York’s famed Madison Square Garden.
The same gig was also documented in the Dylan Southern and Will Lovelace-directed film Shut Up And Play The Hits, which followed frontman James Murphy over a 48-hour period, from the day of gig to the morning after the show.
The album finds LCD Soundsystem joined by a choir, string and horn sections – plus special guest performances from the likes of Win Butler and Regine Chassagne of Arcade Fire, Reggie Watts, the Juan MacLean, Shit Robot, Planningtorock and Shannon Funchess of Light Asylum.
First released in 2014 before going out of print, the five-LP vinyl boxset is being repressed by DFA Records alongside Parlophone and Warner Music; it is also being made available on 3CD for the very first time.
The album is due for release on August 6, 2021. You can pre-order it here.
The Long Goodbye: LCD Soundsystem Live At Madison Square Garden five-LP vinyl tracklisting:
SIDE A
“Dance Yrself Clean”
“Drunk Girls”
“I Can Change”
SIDE B
“Time To Get Away”
“Get Innocuous!”
“Daft Punk Is Playing At My House”
“Too Much Love”
SIDE C
“All My Friends”
“Tired / Heart Of The Sunrise (Excerpt)”
SIDE D
“Sound Of Silver”
“Out In Space”
“Ships Talking”
SIDE E
“Freak Out / Starry Eyes”
“Us v Them”
SIDE F
“North American Scum”
“Bye Bye Bayou”
SIDE G
“You Wanted A Hit”
“Tribulations”
“Movement”
SIDE H
“Yeah (Crass Version)”
“Someone Great”
SIDE I
“Losing My Edge”
“Home”
“All I Want”
SIDE J
“Jump Into The Fire”
“New York, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down”
‘The Long Goodbye: LCD Soundsystem Live At Madison Square Garden three-CD tracklisting:
CD1
“Dance Yrself Clean”
“Drunk Girls”
“I Can Change”
“Time To Get Away”
“Get Innocuous!”
“Daft Punk Is Playing At My House”
“Too Much Love”
“All My Friends”
“Tired / Heart Of The Sunrise”
CD2
“45:33 Intro”
“You Can’t Hide (Shame On You)”
“Sound Of Silver”
“Out In Space”
“Ships Talking”
“Freak Out/Starry Eyes”
“Us V Them”
“North American Scum”
“Bye Bye Bayou”
CD3
“You Wanted A Hit”
“Tribulations”
“Movement”
“Yeah”
“Someone Great”
“Losing My Edge”
“Home”
“All I Want”
“Jump Into The Fire”
“New York, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down”
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Brian Eno and Nicolás Jaar – the latter under his Against All Logic moniker – are among the artists who have contributed tracks to It’s Not Complicated, a new compilation album whose proceeds will go towards humanitarian efforts in Palestine.
The 19-track compilation is the brainchild of online magazine Ma3azef and mastering engineer Heba Kadry. Other artists involved include Sarah Haras, Lee Gamble and SKYLA.
Participating artists were asked to submit their versions of an “audio protest”. “We offer a sonic tale of occupation, colonial violence and resistance in the face of an attempt to erase a land, a people, a history and a future,” the album’s liner notes read. “It’s not complicated, and never has been.”
All proceeds from album sales will benefit Medical Aid for Palestine and Grassroots Al-Quds. It’s Not Complicated can be previewed and purchased via Bandcamp. Listen to it below:
It’s Not Complicated by Various Artists
Last year, Ma3azef released Nisf Madeena, an album which benefited Beirut organisations in the wake of catastrophic blasts in the city. Jaar contributed to that compilation as well, alongside Fatima Al Qadiri and Deena Abdelwahed.
Both Jaar and Eno have been vocal in their support for Palestine amidst its ongoing crisis. In April, Eno performed at a Live for Gaza fundraiser alongside Tom Morello and Roger Waters. Jaar, on the other hand, has been participating in Sonic Liberation Front, an ongoing protest project by online station Radio Alhara.
Eno launched a new Sonos Radio HD station called The Lighthouse in June, in which he shares exclusive unreleased music from his archive.
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The bass guitar that was memorably smashed by The Clash’s Paul Simonon is to go on permanent display at the Museum of London later this year.
Simonon smashed his Fender Precision Bass at New York’s Palladium in September 1979, with photographer Pennie Smith capturing the dramatic moment on her 35mm Pentax camera.
The resulting image, which sees Simonon raising the instrument like an axe, became part of rock folklore after it was chosen by frontman Joe Strummer to appear on the cover of The Clash’s 1979 album London Calling.
As The Guardian reports, Simonon was in a “really bad mood” during the gig and smashed the bass guitar in frustration at the audience, who were sitting in their seats and failing to give the band the desired reaction.
It’s now been confirmed that the guitar will permanently become part of the museum’s world city gallery, which tells the story of London from the 1950s to today.
The bass was previously displayed from 2019-2020 as part of a wider exhibition about The Clash, but it will now take its place among other new exhibits, including Bill and Ben string puppets, a Vespa scooter and the 28in-waist trunks that were worn by Tom Daley at the 2012 London Olympics.
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The Velvet Underground begins with a quote from French poet Charles Baudelaire: “Music fathoms the sky.” It doesn’t explain much about the two hours that follow, but it does make clear that director Todd Haynes is looking at the band from the perspective of a fellow artist rather than an archivist.
The director of I’m Not There is trying to understand what the Velvets achieved rather than laying out the facts of where and when they did it. Which is just as well, because the Velvets story is famously slippery. After all, this is a band whose career weathered numerous twists and challenges that could have killed off less stubborn groups: when John Cale was sacked, when Sterling Morrison absconded, when Lou Reed quit and when Maureen Tucker eventually left Doug Yule to shop the band around in name-only form to British students on a 1973 college tour.
Haynes opens his film on familiar ground. We are given the contrasting back stories of Reed (the troubled Brooklyn teenage rock’n’roller who thought he’d score a Billboard hit with a novelty dance tune called “The Ostrich”) and Cale (the classically trained Welshman whose head was turned by the avant garde movement). Around them, the band of unlikely bedfellows quickly coalesces – Tucker, then Morrison, then Nico, whose introduction by manager Andy Warhol turned out to be a stroke of genius. Just as Warhol polarised pop culture, the Velvets and their entourage seemed to set themselves up in direct contrast to the prevailing late ‘60s vibes. As the Aquarian age reached its peak, the band’s choice of black clothes and shades sent a clear message to the love generation. “Burn your bra?” sneers Mary Woronov, one of Warhol’s Superstars. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
The narrative is provided by eyewitness interviews. Aside from surviving band members Cale, Tucker and Yule (Reed and Morrison’s voices also feature), Haynes rounds up friends, family, fans and fellow travellers, including avant-garde film archivist Jonas Mekas, Reed’s sister Merrill, composer La Monte Young and Jonathan Richman – who says he must have seen the band “60 or 70 times”.
Haynes also has access to some stunning archive material – including Warhol’s studied screentests of the band’s blank, bored faces, rehearsal footage, poetry readings, recordings of conversations. He handles this material like an underground movie from a 1960s art lab, frequently using split screen, lens flare, and sprocket holes – just like the movies of Jack Smith, Kenneth Anger and Bruce Conner, whose work he samples. But there’s a strange paradox here. After claiming solidarity with the outside artists of his time – he namechecks writers Hubert Selby Jr, William Burroughs and John Rechy – Reed seemingly develops issues with his band becoming too out there, firing Warhol first, then Cale and pursuing a softer, more intimate sound. Post-Cale, Reed will try to crack California and – a far worst crime – let the band appear in daylight wearing floral shirts (in some ways, the film could be construed as a Joker-style Lou Reed origins story).
Whatever, the end was clearly in sight. As one interviewee sagely explains, the secret of the band’s music was its simplicity: they never added, only subtracted and wouldn’t record anything they couldn’t perform live. The same, rather sadly, is true of the band themselves – which ended in a series of subtractions until, just like that, there were none. It’s to Haynes’s credit that he doesn’t try to romanticise their failure (Tucker says she thought Verve only signed them “to keep us off the streets”), but instead try to put the viewer into their heads, as if hearing their music for the first time. It’s an audacious move – but, perhaps unsurprisingly for a filmmaker operating on Haynes’ level, it works.
The Velvet Underground screens Out of Competition at this year’s 74th Cannes Film Festival; it will be shown on Apple TV+ later this year
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