>>NINJATRONICS

The Villagers are on tour right now with a few stateside shows before they run off to the UK, being from Dublin, Ireland. The good news is that they will be playing in a select few cities in the US starting mid-October. Haven’t felt awesome about music for a while, but this restores much hope.

There’s also a homemade video of song “The Meaning of the Ritual” by Conor J. O’Brien (singer), which is worth a viewing. I like it when musicians happen to be artists. The Villagers songs are a series of poems in which their “A-HA” moment revealed sweet melodic emotionally driven music.

Joao Orecchia

Joao Orecchia, having a last name that derives from the Italian root ear, approaches his music from the experimental principles of ‘happy accidents’ with pre-composed samples and melodies. Based in Johannesburg, South Africa, Orecchia uses a collection of looping devices and effect pedals to create sounds with a variety of acoustic and electronic instruments including guitar, banjo, voice, bass, melodica, toy instruments, theremin and more, he combines layer upon layer of sound, constantly reprocessing and chopping up the sounds he records in real time, building dense soundscapes, while pulling it all together into an abstract song structure.

Prior to Johannesburg, João spent several years in Berlin, Germany, where he composed music for theatre, film and dance performance. João’s music has been released on several albums and compilations in Germany and New Zealand. His newest album, Hands and Feet was released by Other Electricities in 2009 and features contributions from members of BLK JKS (Secretly Canadian),Serengeti (Anticon, Audio 8),Spoek Mathambo of Sweat.X and Playdoe,Carlo Mombelli, and artist Mario Marchisella.

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

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In the summer of 2008, Orange Twin Records artist Madeline toured the Pacific Northwest with friends Clyde Peterson (Yr Heart Breaks) and Karl Blau (solo artist, Mt. Eerie, Little Wings, D+). While hanging out in Anacordes, Washington they dropped by a local artist collective called The Department of Safety to play around in Kevin Erickson’s studio.

Friends like Phil Elverum (Mt. Eerie) and Gus Franklin (Architecture in Helsinki) dropped in and out of the studio all night to play along on drums, guitars, horns and casio keys. The resulting Tour EP has all the low-fi charm you would expect from a k-records style production, which works as an amazing juxtaposition to Madeline’s bell-voiced love songs.

Check out the Myspace.

Email us at ninjatronics@gmail.com with your band/project and if it fits our blog, we’ll throw up a post ‘from the inbox’.

My good friend AP from Jacksonville, FL has been following Dark Dark Dark for some time now and with much reason. The Minneapolis-based group (via New Orleans) creates melancholy lullabies, using their sinister-sweet lyrics like with “Junk Bones”, silencing our fears and worries, whispering woes into the darkness. Perhaps a groups of pirates and banshees? The accordion-banjo-piano combo brings out the ominous gypsy-esc soul driving the minor tones with these storytellers.

The band has already been smashing up the summer touring about the US and will be hitting the road again in October to support the new LP release (then off to Europe! in Nov.). The new album WILD GO by DARK DARK DARK will be released October 5th on the Supply and Demand label. Head over to http://brightbrightbright.com for more info.

Saturday, October 2nd – Minneapolis, MN – First Avenue (CD Release Show)
Sunday, October 3rd – Madison, WI – Project Lodge
Monday, October 4th – St. Louis, MO – Off Broadway
Tuesday, October 5th – Louisville, KY – Skull Alley
Wednesday, October 6th – Huntsville, AL – Flying Monkey Arts
Thursday, October 7th – New Orleans, LA – All Ways Lounge
Friday, October 8th – Tallahassee, FL – Charles Mansion
Saturday, October 9th – Atlanta, GA – The Five Spot
Sunday, October 10th – Charleston, SC – Eye Level Art
Monday, October 11th – Swannanoa, NC – Warren Wilson College
Tuesday, October 12th – Asheville, NC – The Grey Eagle
Thursday, October 14th – Baltimore, MD – TBA
Friday, October 15th – Philadelphia, PA – TBA (YVYNYL presents)
Saturday, October 16th – Brooklyn, NY – Glasslands
Monday, October 18th – Portland, ME – SPACE
Tuesday, October 19th – Boston, MA – The Temple
Wednesday, October 20th – CMJ – Cake Shop (Terrorbird CMJ Day Party)
Thursday, October 21st – CMJ – Coco66 (Supply & Demand/InDigest CMJ
Official Showcase)
Friday, October 22nd – CMJ
Saturday, October 23rd – CMJ – Fontana’s (Flea Marketing CMJ Day Party)
Sunday, October 24th – Providence, RI – AS220
Wednesday, October 27th – Detroit, MI – The Bakery
Thursday, October 28th – Chicago, IL – The Hideout

To listen to the first single “Daydreaming” download here.

This “mind melting” music video was directimated by Anthony Francisco Schepperd for Blockhead’s “The Music Scene” (out on the Ninjatune label).

Schepperd works almost entirely in Flash, yet believes it’s important to hold on to the traditional values of animation making sure to push the medium as far he can. From the traditional point of view, this style is combination of ‘limited animation’ and ‘full animation’. Limited animation involves the use of less detailed and/or more stylized drawings and methods of movement, which could be found in The Yellow Submarine (1968). While full animation refers to process of producing high-quality traditionally animated films, which regularly use detailed drawings and plausible movement, like Disney films such as The Lion King (1994).

I think that’s what struck my fascination with the Flash execution. The overall presentation of psychedelic colors/images reminded me of Alan Parker’s Pink Floyd’s The Wall (1982). There was a hint of nightmare in the air, transcending Blockhead’s message about today’s music scene.

I remember grooving to euro-dance hit ”Sing it Back” by Moloko, before the YK2 madness of the new millennium. Europe didn’t care and disco house was hot with UK darlings Sophie Ellis Baxtor (“Murder on the Dancefloor”) and Kylie Minogue singing suave hits in the midst of a 70s revival mixed with 90s dance beats. “Moloko” was a Anglo-Irish trip-hop / electro-pop duo consisting of Róisín Murphy from Arklow, Ireland and Mark Brydon, from Sunderland, England. The band’s name originates from the novel “A Clockwork Orange” by Anthony Burgess, in which it means either “milk” (the name of a milk drink Alex and his ‘droogs’ consume, and the Russian word for milk, молоко ) or “method of narcotic ingestion”.

Moloko was a part of the electronic pop success bringing us several hits “The Time Is Now” and “Fun for Me”. After Moloko’s fourth album Statues, they completed their last tour in 2002… having collaborated in writing and producing for 11 years, but apparently have performed on special occasions such as in 2004 at PinkPop.

Róisín began work on a solo project with electronica producer Matthew Herbert and ’Ruby Blue’ was completed/released in Summer 2005 on the Echo label reaching the States in 2006 following appearances on the ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ and ‘So You Think You Can Dance’ soundtracks. Róisín released a second album with EMI Records ‘Overpowered’.

The video above “Sow Into You” shows the quirky glittery glamworld that Róisín lived in…with a super production team. Credits listed below.

Ruby Blue (2005)
Record Co: Echo Labels
Artist Management: Graham Peacock Management
Production Co: Exposure Films
Executive Producer: Nicola Doring
Director: Simon Henwood
Producer: Sam Hope / Jon Adams
Director Of Photography: Richard Mott
Wardrobe: Nicola Goldie
Hair: Chris Sweeney
Makeup: Fay Leith
Special effects (model-making, etc): 3d Animation: Adam Lucas
Other notables: Photoshop Artist: Chris Webb
Location: Triangle Studios
Offline Editor/Suite: Nikki at Final Cut
Telecine Artist/Suite: George at Red
Online Artists/Suite: Mark in Flame at Triangle

Other cool videos to check out :

If We’re In Love - Roisin Murphy
Let Me Know - Roisin Murphy
Overpowered - Roisin Murphy
Bring It Back In Your Eyes (Kylie Minoque vs. Moloko)

Puppeteer extraordinaire Liam Hurley (drummer of The Royal City Band) conceived, directed and produced this mesmerizing vision set to Josh Ritter’s song “The Curse.”

Videography and editing by Marie Le Claire. Puppeteering by Liam Hurley and Kevin White. Production Assistant was MacKenzie Pause. Read more about the making of this video NPR.org, here:http://www.npr.org/blogs/allsongs/201…

Josh Ritter released his latest album, “So Runs the World Away,” on May 4, 2010. Click here for a free download of the June 27, 2010 Seattle live show featuring Josh Ritter and The Royal City Band. Visit Ritter’s blog “Book of Jubilations” and follow up on his progress, interests and upcoming tour starting off in Spain, Sept 7th with a stateside tour from late Sept. - mid Nov. More dates/locations here.

Josh Ritter - Change Of Time

Josh Ritter - Myspace

“Words” is a visually crisp take on word association through imagery of nature, human interaction, onomatopoeias and literal meanings of words. Watch it twice or thrice to get the full effect. Directed by Will Hoffman and Daniel Mercadante. Music by Keith Keniff.

Everynone is a three-man production company based out of New York City/Los Angeles working with organizations such as NPR, Radiolab, WNYC, Media.com and others.

Will Hoffman (Everyone Anything)

Daniel Mercadante (Flowship) and Routines

Julius Metoyer III (MJR)

For more info/inspiration:

We’ve all heard of ‘short shorts’, but 5 seconds?

5secondfilms.com churns out clever, humorous and “to the point” 5-second sketches with a variety of themes from politics, random-nonsense to pop culture. This collective of thinkers and filmmakers post a new video every weekday. 5secondfilms was originally created by Brian Firenzi in the Spring of 2005 “after being disappointed by so many 5,400-second films.”

The format is as follows:

2 seconds of beginning titles
5 seconds of film
1 second of ending title
Yeah, if you wanna knit-pick it’s 8 seconds, get over it.
This probably will contribute to your already disarrayed attention span.

Some of our favorites…out of the many :

Still want to know more about this “selling the joke art form” ? Check out Mimozine’s Profile of 5SF and Interview from Hitachi to find out how they work together as a team to get the videos out there.

Check out this music video for “Wanderland” by Hermanos Inglesos (feat. MeMe). A cute ‘journey’ animation seen from a ‘bird’s eye view’.

Directed by Kristof Luyckx & Michèle Vanparys
Design: Kristof Luyckx & Michèle Vanparys
Art Direction: Kristof Luyckx
Editing: Stijn Deconinck & Kristof Luyckx
Animation: Michèle Vanparys, Michélé De Feudis, Dries Bastiaensen & Kristof Luyckx.

More music from Hermanos Inglesos…