The Flaming Lips - The Soft Bulletin Documentary

Pitchfork TV have uploaded a series of videos that fantastically document The Flaming Lips's seminal record, The Soft Bulletin. The series has been produced in association with Vans and provides a really great insight in to the band's history and recording antics, with interviews with band members, producers and record label execs. Pitchfork describe the videos as an "oral history of The Soft Bulletin", which is a pretty apt description.
I've embedded all of the videos in this post for your browsing pleasure. Enjoy!

Andrew Bird reveals information on forthcoming album

I'm hear to tell you that today's most exciting music news may not be the reformation of At The Drive In. Although I suppose it may be. The website Beats Per Minute posted this afternoon a sneaky sneak-peak in to the new Andrew Bird record, Break It Yourself, which is due out on March 6th.

Saito Koji - Guide

Hello residents of Blogland and welcome to another year on planet Earth! (The last year in fact according to most well respected scientists I've chatted to). I take it everyone had a fabulous Festivus and if your recent consumption habits have been anything like mine, you'll be foregoing lunch for the next eleven months in an attempt to shed the Christmas stuffing. And I've been royally stuffed; I don't think I've done potty properly for about a fortnight.

Anyway that's enough of my ablutions - let's crack on with the hard-backed-two-thousand-and-twelve music annual (collector's edition) that is Skies Are Rare. And what better way to set us off than with some stunningly beautiful ambient music, which helpfully comes in a double-dip recession whacking finance and guilt free package.

Lilacs & Champagne

We recently proclaimed Grails's 2011 record Deep Politics as one of our favourite records of the year. I was therefore really excited to learn that Alex John Hall and Emil Amos from the band have been working diligently on a side project called Lilacs & Champagne, with an album apparently ready for distribution on Mexican Summer as early as next month. So; possible contender for album of the year 2012? Possibly getting ahead of myself.

Needless to say the one track they have previewed on Soundcloud sounds mightily impressive. It retains the dark, mysterious tones of Grails but is certainly something new. It's psychedelic western meets trip-hop. I dig!

Lilacs & Champagne - Everywhere, Everyone by Mexican Summer

Tim Hecker - Dropped Pianos

2011 has been a fantastic year for Montreal based electronic artist Tim Hecker, with acclaimed album Ravedeath, 1972 released in February and a follow up EP, Dropped Pianos following in October. In fact, to call the latter a follow up is slightly incorrect, as the series of 9 short “sketches” which comprise the record were actually recorded by Hecker back in 2010. These tracks all form the core of what became Ravedeath later in the year.

Skies Are Rare's top 25 albums of 2011

Here are our top 25 albums from a great year of music. Please do comment or vote on our Facebook poll for your favourite. I beg forgiveness for any glaring omissions - they may or may not be intentional.

We look forward to doing it all again next year!

Oval - Systemisch

Earlier this year BBC 6 Music’s Stuart Maconie featured Systemisch by German electronic group Oval during one of his Sunday Evening “Freak Zone” hours. I was so enamoured with it that I immediately got my e-hands on a copy and it became a popular accompaniment to revision for my finals in May. Oval’s other work is a mixture of styles. From the aggressive ambience of 1995’s 94 Diskont to the Haschuka-esqe, prepared piano inspired sounds of 2010’s O, they have remained pioneers of ambient/glitch. In an era of digital synth patches, sequencers and cheap home recording equipment, the ambient genre has been one which has flourished in the internet driven world as artists have found themselves with the tools available to make convincing, if not terribly inventive music at home.

TKOL RMX 1234567

I know that The King Of Limbs remix album has been out for some time now, but I only really got round to listening to it in the past couple of weeks. If you too have had a brief lapse in concentration and have not yet listened to TKOL RMX 1234567, then I highly suggest that you rectify this immediately.

65daysofstatic - Silent Running

I've been trying to force myself to read a bit more fiction recently. I generally have a dire attention span and despite the connotations with being somewhat dim witted, I'll readily admit that reading for pleasure has always been difficult for me. Yet the fruits of reading - particularly fiction - are not unknown to me, so when I do get going with something good, I find huge rewards. At this point you may be wondering where this post is going, but bear with me.

In Praise Of... This Heat

Morning one and all! Time we all laid down our worries and took a moment to appreciate a classic band that seemed to get somewhat lost in the annals of time. A band that sound incredibly unique, mainly because they were far too ahead of ther time back in the late 70's. A brilliant, bizarre whirlwind, bringing in raucous elements from punk, post-punk, dub, electro sounds reminiscent of Aphex Twin via Pink Floyd.