Caught in the Net: Mogwai turn up the volume
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Your support makes all the difference.In a glib summation of Mogwai's music, they tend to start quiet and then get pretty loud. On their new song "Rano Pano", the long-running Scottish post-rockers (pictured) dispense with the quiet side – instead they start loud and stay there.
The track comes as a free download, ahead of a vinyl release in January, find it at their US label Sub Pop, subpop.com, and elsewhere. The rolling five-minute instrumental is the first track to be heard from their new album, which has the inarguable title, Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will.
Arial Pink gets the Lips treatment
Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne has made a video for Arial Pink's Haunted Graffiti track "Round and Round" – one of the songs of the year. Ostensibly it's a performance video, shot on Coyne's iPhone, but it's also odder than that. Flaming Lips' in-house visuals man George Salisbury tweaked the footage to give it an early VHS look, perfectly suiting the sounds – sort of a psychedelic lo-fi stew from a weird reimagining of the late Seventies/early Eighties. The video also features a small pool of milk, which, according to Coyne, is the breast milk of 30 women. Watch it at vimeo.com/16979727.
Stalking the Deerhunter
It's been a while since I checked in on Bradford Cox's blog, deer huntertheband.blogspot.com. I presumed that he might have got a little sidetracked promoting and touring Deerhunter's latest, and great, album Halcyon Digest. I was wrong. He's still making time to put together new music under his Atlas Sound moniker. This week he put up three free collections of new tracks, called 'Bedroom Databank' – volumes 1-3 . They see him cover Bob Dylan and Kurt Vile, in among his own lo-fi folk sketches, mainly made with a harmonica and guitar – and the occasional synthesiser.
Go back in time with Kanye
One from the vaults: Kanye West provided guest vocals on a track from fellow Chicagoan rapper Common's 2005 album Be (a record West also produced). The song "The Food" is somewhat unusual in that it was recorded live as a musical spot on comedian Dave Chappelle's then smash US comedy sketch TV show. I never thought to dig out its TV incarnation, but now, whilst we bask in the glow of Kanye's rapturously received new LP, TheFader.com have added some nostalgia to the mix, posting a link to the video at ind.pn/gFoNrE. West still seemed rather green when Chappelle's Show broadcast the performance in early 2004; a lot of headlines – good and bad – have been generated since. As TheFader remarks: "Kanye with a boxy brown blazer and a backpack. The DJ has a sticker on the record for scratch pinpointing. Six and a half years ago, might as well be a lifetime."
l.ryan@independent.co.uk
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