This has been a pretty crazy year. Here are the albums that kept me company – they weren’t necessarily released this year. In alphabetical order:

• Andy Dixon – The Mice of Mt. Career
• Apparat – Walls
• Architects – Hollow Crown
• Arc Lab – The Goodbye Radio
• As Cities Burn – Hell Or High Water
• Ashes Divide – Keep Telling Myself It’s Alright
• August Burns Red – Constellations
• Ben Frost – Theory Of Machines
• Ben Frost – By The Throat
• Closure In Moscow – Silent Temple
• Converge – Axe To Fall
• Damiera – Quiet Mouth, Loud Hands
• Devil Sold His Soul – A Fragile Hope
• DJ Shadow – Entroducing
• Enter Shikari – Common Dreads
• Fink – Distance & Time
• Foals – Antitodes
• Hammock – Maybe They Will Sing For Us Today
• Helios – Eingya
• Jesu/Envy Split
• Lights Out Asia – Tanks & Recognizers
• Low – Drums & Guns
• Memory Tapes – Seek Magic
• Mew – No More Stories Are Told Today, I’m Sorry, They Washed Away
• Milosh – III
• Minus The Bear – Planet Of Ice
• Near The Parenthesis – L’Eixample
• Norma Jean – Versus The Anti-Mother
• Polar Bear Club – Sometimes Things Just Disappear
• Radiohead – In Rainbows
• Saosin – In Search Of Solid Ground
• Secondsmile – Years
• Telefon Tel Aviv – Immolate Yourself
• Telefon Tel Aviv – Map Of What Is Effortless
• The xx – s/t
• This Will Destroy You – s/t
• Thrice – Beggars
• Uzi & Ari – It’s Freezing Out
• Van-She – V
• Vessels – White Fields & Open Devices
• We Were Promised Jetpacks – s/t

This isn’t a “music video” per se, but an inspiring video/performance nonetheless. It’s Aussie experimental noise/ambient musician, Ben Frost, performing the then differently titled “Leo Needs A New Pair Of Shoes” off his brand new album (unreleased at the time), “By The Throat”. So beautiful…

When was the last time you’ve heard of a new musical instrument? I just stumbled upon an amazing new electronic instrument called the Eigenharp (through Tim’s Encosion blog). It’s made by Eigenlabs in the UK and comes in 2 versions, the Alpha and the Pico (the smaller version of the Apha).

It took a bit of research to figure out exactly what the Eigenharp does, but it turned out more along the lines of “What does it not do?”. From their website: “A professional level instrument which allows the musician to play and improvise using a limitless range of sounds with virtuoso skill. The unique design of the keys makes this the most expressive electronic musical instrument ever made. The Alpha can play and record loops, change scale and key, transpose, alter tempo, program beats, create arrangements, switch and layer multiple sounds, all while the musician is performing live on stage”.

For more details, I’d recommend that you visit the Eigenlabs website to read up a bit more, or watch this informative demo video:

]]> http://paulvanderwalt.wordpress.com/2009/11/25/the-eigenharp/feed/ 1 paulvanderwalt http://paulvanderwalt.wordpress.com/2009/11/23/erased-tapes-collection-ii/ http://paulvanderwalt.wordpress.com/2009/11/23/erased-tapes-collection-ii/#comments Mon, 23 Nov 2009 11:13:12 +0000 paulvanderwalt http://paulvanderwalt.wordpress.com/?p=437 ]]>

One of my favourite little indie labels, Erased Tapes Records (based in London), just released their second free label sampler download. They have some amazing artists, all focusing on a cinematic sound ranging from post-rock to IDM to classical. Do yourself a favour and download it here, using this code: MY-FREE-ERATP020.

I love this band so much. This is Mew’s latest video off their new album, “No More Stories Are Told Today, I’m Sorry, They Washed Away”. It’s for one of my favourite songs off the album, “Repeaterbeater”.

I’m still trying to figure out if they were really hypnotised or not. I found a behind the scenes clip about this video, but it’s all in Danish, so it didn’t really help. Either way, this is such a clever and beautifully shot music video…

So here are two of my latest videos. They’re both connected to my band, The Watermark High’s new album, “Loneliness As An Art Form”, which is currently available as a FREE download, for a limited time only.

The first is a medley video of sorts. I wanted to show that each song on the album had a unique image designed for it (by my friend Jacques at Zoology Design), but I also wanted to play a bit of each song while that image was on screen.

Just having a still image for like 30 seconds would have sucked, so I decided to use some random footage I shot on a Sunday afternoon, in my old hood (Pretoria North) while driving around with my sister. I wanted to create a video wallpaper of sorts. I layered the footage, changed the speed and played around with composite modes to come up with this:

Then, we also did a music video. It’s for a song called “Love Made Code” which is the closest we came to a “pop song” on the album. It’s one of my least favourite songs on the album but the video came about quite impulsively.

We (The Now Museum) had our hands on a HD camera and lights over a weekend, for a corporate shoot we were doing that Monday. We also had a green sheet (read “bed linen”) for the occasional cheap, quick green screen shoot that we do. I knew that Jacques (Zoology Design) was busy with the album artwork and that there were a lot of Photoshop elements we could animate and use for the motion graphics of the video, as he was to create an album cover plus 11 images (an image for each of the 11 songs on the album).

So, we decided to book a practice room, hang up the sheets and shoot a green screen video that Sunday night. How exactly we were going to incorporate the design into motion graphics was something we’d worry about later. We did the shoot, got the psd’s from Jacques and made things move ☺ Apart from wishing I could shoot the performances at a higher frame rate (to have smooth, slowed down footage) and feeling like a douche for having to sing into camera, I think it came out pretty cool:

It’s been a weird couple of months for Dance, You’re On Fire. Long story, but we have a new set, a new look and finally managed to get a new song uploaded today. Give “Wolves” a listen here. We’re debuting our new songs at the Black Dahlia in Boksburg tonight and at Tings ‘n Times in Pretoria tomorrow night. Hope to see you there!

Dance, You're On Fire

Found this really rad little short film recently, “War School” by Ben Newman. Love the message. It won a competition on Vimeo. I’m dying to make a short film…

Wow, I haven’t posted anything in ages. I’ve been really busy in all departments, which at this stage comprises work and music Anyway, just a little note to let you all know about the new Watermark High album, “Loneliness As An Art Form”.

I’ve been missioning with this for months and there’s finally a new song online now, it’s called “I Wish Upon You, Great Misfortune”. There’s more to the title than you think Another new song will be uploaded next week. I’ll also be posting more details about the album and its release on here soon. Oh, and here’s one of the many amazing images created by Zoology for the release:

The Watermark High - "Loneliness As An Art Form" Album Cover (2009)

This strays a bit from what I usually post, but I’m really excited. I use Propellerhead’s Reason a lot, I’m a HUGE fan of the program. Record is their new upcoming recording interface (out, 9 September). This video got me stoked, especially seeing that I’m getting a big discount on Record as I own a legal copy of Reason. Sweet.