Showing posts with label lali puna. Show all posts
Showing posts with label lali puna. Show all posts
29.9.14
Late Night Confidential #8
In which I reminisce about Kate Bush one final time (because I think everyone is sick of it) and move on to other artists, such as I Speak Machine, Cuts, Weezer, The New Pornographers, La Sera, Jessica Lea Mayfield, Fleeting Joys, Lali Puna and Mogwai.
25.2.10
You're just a small light
I'm really enjoying the new Lali Puna album, Our Inventions. There's something about Valerie Trebeljahr's voice that's very soothing and comforting. Their electronic pop music is warm and inviting. I often feel like I can sink into a Lali Puna song and land softly. Or maybe like the song is a cloud and it floats me to someplace where the skies may be grey, with hopeful glimpses of blue. Their songs are like a heaven made up of 1s and 0s. Or something.
Lali Puna > Move On
15.1.09
We'll always be together, however far it seems
So this came up elsewhere on the interweb a week or two ago. Basically, someone compared the Lali Puna version of Together In Electric Dreams to the original Human League version. Personally, I like them both but I prefer the Lali Puna take. Another person said that the LP track fails to recreate the euphoria of the original track. Maybe I could kinda see that, but to me they are two different songs. To me, the Human League version is meant to be sung by church choirs on the tops of mountains or buildings, or maybe in a stadium full of people. It's a pretty cool song, even in its 80s Giorgio Moroder inspired cheesiness. I feel like the Lali Puna version is like a whispered promise between two lovers who are wrapped up in darkness. It's the same song, yeah, but I feel like LP twisted it and went in the opposite direction. But, that's just my take on it.The Human League > Together in Electric Dreams
Lali Puna > Together in Electric Dreams
12.7.08
Is it one too many times?
Recently, I've been playing around with this movie making software that came with this laptop and realized I could make my own music videos, or fan videos; whatever you like to call them.
The Lali Puna track, Past Machine, is one of my favorites on their I Thought I Was Over That album. The way it builds, I always thought it would make a cool musical companion to a movie chase scene, even though most chase scenes are a dime a dozen. The song begins, I don't know, blandly? Generically? Something like that. After a few bars, it starts to get frantic and there's an underlying sense of dread. The notes and textures create those feelings. The drums, especially the hi-hat and cymbal. The electronic flourishes, ticks and glitches. The way she sings, kinda robotic and emotionless but still melodic. It completely lends itself to cinema.
I'll go on record by saying Seven (or Se7en) is one of my all-time favorite movies. Utter perfection, in every way, including the chase scene. By the way, I'm going to talk about this assuming peeps have seen it, so beware of spoilers if you haven't and are planning to see it. The way it starts is innocent enough. Following a paper-thin lead, our two heroes, Mills and Somerset, knocking on John Doe's apartment door. The chase begins when John Doe walks up while carrying a bag of groceries and fires shots at Somerset and Mills, quickly turning the table on them. The whole thing ranges through the apartment building, veers through another resident's apartment, on a rooftop between buildings, back into the building, down a fire escape onto a busy street and comes to a climax in a back alley across the street.
There is a sequence within the whole chase that is just amazing to me. It starts when Mills climbs onto the fire escape ladder and slips. For a moment he is hanging by his fingertips, the camera looking down, the rain pouring down. Just that split second alone, is totally worth it, but there's more. The camera tracks John Doe, who is frantically trying to get across the street without the aid of a crosswalk. It's out of focus and bouncing around. Everything is dark and grey. It completely appeals to me and I love it.
The scene slows for a bit as both John Doe and Mills get across the street and into an alley. Mills, of course, is looking for Doe but Doe appears to be gone. The next bit is sort of vital to the movie. Doe actually stuck around in the alley, ambushes Mills and has a chance to kill him. He clocks Mills with a tire iron and holds a gun to Mills' head...and lets him live. And the film goes on.
For what I was doing, I wanted it to be ambiguous. Where you didn't know (if you had not seen the movie) whether Mills was gonna live or not. So I just had it fade at the scene where Mills is lying in the alley next to a garbage truck in the rain, and Doe is holding the gun to his head. You can see Mills mouth the word, "No", and then that's it. That's the kind of stuff I love, something that leaves you wondering what happened. Then, you fill in the blanks with your imagination.
Now, I'm not trying to say I did all this work and blah blah blah. I mean, really, all I did was cut up a few scenes from a movie and lay a song over it. Also, the edits are kinda lame. Some of them kinda jump a little, not smooth at all. So I'm not trying to take any kind of artistic credit at all. That all goes to director David Fincher and the band Lali Puna. This isn't me being a pretentious jackass (even if I usually am); I'm just a guy who loves music and movies, playing around with a laptop. That said, here it is. And there will be more videos in the future. This is kinda fun, even if I'm not good at it.
The Lali Puna track, Past Machine, is one of my favorites on their I Thought I Was Over That album. The way it builds, I always thought it would make a cool musical companion to a movie chase scene, even though most chase scenes are a dime a dozen. The song begins, I don't know, blandly? Generically? Something like that. After a few bars, it starts to get frantic and there's an underlying sense of dread. The notes and textures create those feelings. The drums, especially the hi-hat and cymbal. The electronic flourishes, ticks and glitches. The way she sings, kinda robotic and emotionless but still melodic. It completely lends itself to cinema.
I'll go on record by saying Seven (or Se7en) is one of my all-time favorite movies. Utter perfection, in every way, including the chase scene. By the way, I'm going to talk about this assuming peeps have seen it, so beware of spoilers if you haven't and are planning to see it. The way it starts is innocent enough. Following a paper-thin lead, our two heroes, Mills and Somerset, knocking on John Doe's apartment door. The chase begins when John Doe walks up while carrying a bag of groceries and fires shots at Somerset and Mills, quickly turning the table on them. The whole thing ranges through the apartment building, veers through another resident's apartment, on a rooftop between buildings, back into the building, down a fire escape onto a busy street and comes to a climax in a back alley across the street.
There is a sequence within the whole chase that is just amazing to me. It starts when Mills climbs onto the fire escape ladder and slips. For a moment he is hanging by his fingertips, the camera looking down, the rain pouring down. Just that split second alone, is totally worth it, but there's more. The camera tracks John Doe, who is frantically trying to get across the street without the aid of a crosswalk. It's out of focus and bouncing around. Everything is dark and grey. It completely appeals to me and I love it.
The scene slows for a bit as both John Doe and Mills get across the street and into an alley. Mills, of course, is looking for Doe but Doe appears to be gone. The next bit is sort of vital to the movie. Doe actually stuck around in the alley, ambushes Mills and has a chance to kill him. He clocks Mills with a tire iron and holds a gun to Mills' head...and lets him live. And the film goes on.
For what I was doing, I wanted it to be ambiguous. Where you didn't know (if you had not seen the movie) whether Mills was gonna live or not. So I just had it fade at the scene where Mills is lying in the alley next to a garbage truck in the rain, and Doe is holding the gun to his head. You can see Mills mouth the word, "No", and then that's it. That's the kind of stuff I love, something that leaves you wondering what happened. Then, you fill in the blanks with your imagination.
Now, I'm not trying to say I did all this work and blah blah blah. I mean, really, all I did was cut up a few scenes from a movie and lay a song over it. Also, the edits are kinda lame. Some of them kinda jump a little, not smooth at all. So I'm not trying to take any kind of artistic credit at all. That all goes to director David Fincher and the band Lali Puna. This isn't me being a pretentious jackass (even if I usually am); I'm just a guy who loves music and movies, playing around with a laptop. That said, here it is. And there will be more videos in the future. This is kinda fun, even if I'm not good at it.
26.12.07
Sometimes, love comes as a surprise
Well, after being unsure of whether I would post again in 2007, I have returned. I have all this time off, don't have to go back to work until the 2nd, and I've been contemplating a road trip, even if only for a couple days. You know, just to go somewhere, anywhere...get outta town. However, I am still here for the time being, and I've wanted to post this video. It consists of clips from Wong Kar Wai's 2046, set to Lali Puna's cover of Together In Electric Dreams, which was originally done by the Human League, I believe.
I think the song really fits with the movie. A line from the song seems to sum up everything the movie is about; we'll always be together/however far it seems/we'll always be together/together in electric dreams. I must admit that I am not familiar with the original HL version of the song (I should probably remedy that), but I really love the LP version. It's not cluttered up, her voice is barely above a whisper, the little electronic flourishes; it's a four-and-a-half minute slice of perfect.
I think the song really fits with the movie. A line from the song seems to sum up everything the movie is about; we'll always be together/however far it seems/we'll always be together/together in electric dreams. I must admit that I am not familiar with the original HL version of the song (I should probably remedy that), but I really love the LP version. It's not cluttered up, her voice is barely above a whisper, the little electronic flourishes; it's a four-and-a-half minute slice of perfect.
5.8.07
There was no reason to complain
This song sounds and feels so serene (it just played on random), it's kinda nice to hear it late at night. It's sounding especially good right now at 10pm on a Sunday night. The canned drums sound cool against her voice in the beginning, and the melody kind of soars. It's just...really pleasant, for lack of a better adjective. I also dig the little siren sounds that sound like they're about to get all distorted, but then they end just as quickly as they start up. I ended up buying this album, Scary World Theory, because of the articles that said Radiohead's Kid A was a ripoff of this band called Lali Puna. I think I'd like to check out more of them, as I have only this album. It didn't stun me or anything, but it's really quite good.Lali Puna > Nin-Com-Pop
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