Lady Gaga, Victorian, Burtonesque.

Obviously whenever someone goes totally Burton on us, we become weak. Add some Victorian style to the mix and we are lost.
Yes, I wished I were at the the concert at the Royal Albert Hall to see this one song with a 20ft high piano. Screw the 20ft trail to the dress but look at the feet of the piano.

The video is best watched without sound.

In late 1998, I was commissioned to compile and produce the soundtrack for a sequel to the film “Tron”. A draft of the story had already been written and early filming had begun (as reported by ZDNet on July 27, 1999). As I understand it, the film was kept in great confidence with the producers as Pixar was still in negotiations with Disney about the responsibilities of the production teams.

“Rise Of The Virals” was a fantastic, but much darker storyline from the original — different from the “Into The Machine” pitch made to Disney by another party. It involved updating the ENCOM universe to a networked system (thanks to the Internet), but also created a darker world — full of programs abandoned as buggy systems (or “mutants”) and abused by corrupt users as viral systems. Furthermore, the story included the death of Flynn and presented questions about the digital life of programs lasting beyond the mortality of their creators — the users.”

Another great music video released last week was DJ Tiesto’s ‘I Will Be Here’. Although I am no big fan of what Tiesto has done over the last 8-9 years and still wished he had stayed this awesome DJ who took you on a 2- to 4 hours long musical journey, like he did in 1999 at Innercity (Rai, Amsterdam, NL), the new video is cool, especially the robotic dancing. Feel free to turn off the sound for this one though.

Add a festival finale to it, one of the top 4 festivals in Europe Rock Werchter, with its huge history, and this is what you get.

I am no fan of popular language and hype words, but I think this one certainly qualifies as EPIC.

Tracks

1. Besser so, Jenny-Joe
2. Kleine Rosemarie
3. In Virginia
4. Wo ist Zuhause, Mama?
5. Wer kennt den Weg? (Walk the line)

If you are an unknown / lesser-known artist trying to get noticed / established:

* Establish your goals. What are you trying to do / accomplish? If you are looking for mainstream super-success (think Lady GaGa, Coldplay, U2, Justin Timberlake) – your best bet in my opinion is to look at major labels and prepare to share all revenue streams / creative control / music ownership. To reach that kind of critical mass these days your need old-school marketing muscle and that only comes from major labels. Good luck with that one.

If you’re forging your own path, read on.

* Forget thinking you are going to make any real money from record sales. Make your record cheaply (but great) and GIVE IT AWAY. As an artist you want as many people as possible to hear your work. Word of mouth is the only true marketing that matters.

“None of us want to go into that creative hoo-ha of a long-play record again,” he said. “Not straight off … It worked with In Rainbows because we had a real fixed idea about where we were going. But we’ve all said that we can’t possibly dive into that again. It’ll kill us.”

Keeping in mind the awesome but very flat and rather monotonous living-room sound of “In Rainbows” this can only be an improvement and makes me look forward to the next Radiohead release.

Drowned In Sound editor Sean Adams was on scene and reported: “Just when you thought the soul-fucking audio-visual skulldigging duggery couldn’t get any better, a fascimilie of Trent wanders on stage, in the uniform of black jeans, black boots, black hair and a slighty faded black tee clinging to masculine curves. Trent looks up from his piano, grins like a four year old munching a mud pie and introduces ‘GARY NUMAN, everybody!’ They played ‘Metal’ ending with a lush synth duel before dropping a ‘Car(s)’-bomb on the 02 and the crowd, predictably, go frugging apeshit. Beer flies, sweat is flung and front to back people dumm-noo-noo-new-num along like they’re at Guilty Pleasures.”

Source: Quietus.

Performed at the Troubadour Club, West Hollywood, CA – June 25, 2009. [via @amandapalmer].

Noteworthy mixes:

• Adam Freeland, 1997 – Part 1
• Adam Freeland, 1997 – Part 2
• Adam Freeland, 2003
• Basement Jaxx, 2001
• Chemical Brothers, 1995
• Dimitri from Paris, 1995
• John Digweed, 1995
• Norman Cook, 1996
• Paul Van Dyk, April 2000
• Paul Van Dyk, May 2000
• Portishead, 1995

Rapidshare list.

More downloads available here.