White Lies + Crystal Castles

I don’t like White Lies. I’m not a fan of Crystal Castles. But I blinkin’ love the music video for the song below, and the song – ‘Death’ – itself! Can you imagine?
The remixed video has an incredible sense of drama and mystery, and together with the Crystal Castles’ remix of White Lies’ song it creates a perfect audiovisual combination.
The original music video was directed by Andreas Nilsson and I guess he is responsible for the remixed version as well.

You can download the remix here.

Oh, and I’ve seen both bands at the Open’er Festival. But I’m gonna write a separate post about the festival.

Fred Falke

Today, I introduce a new category of posts on my blog. In Remixed: … I will present amazing work of my favourite remixers.

The first one that I’m going to present is Fred Falke. Actually, I discovered him not so long ago, but I’m impressed with his work on ‘New in Town’ by Little Boots and ‘Anthonio’ by Annie. Both of them are shown further in this post.

The remixes I like the most are the ones changing the vibe/character of the song or expose elements that aren’t present in the foreground in the original version. It happened several times to me that I hadn’t liked the original of the song until I heard the remix and discovered this special something that made me change my mind.

In this case, I liked both ‘Anthonio’ and ‘New in Town’ very much from the very beginning. However, as I have already mentioned before, I am impressed how Fred Falke has changed them.

‘Anthonio’ by Annie has a nostalgic disco vibe that hypnotises since the very first beat. In Falke’s remix there’s more air and light, the stifle tension is gone. Perfect for summer outside the night club (well, that’s quite funny when the vibe is juxtaposed with lyrics).

‘New in Town’ by Little Boots is a catchy, radio friendly electropop piece. Fred made it sound less friendly. The first thing that comes to my mind listening to this remix is wandering alone around the city at dark night passing people coming back from parties. There some vibe of mystery as well.

Björk in 'Dull Flame of Desire' music video

To be honest, I wasn’t aware that Björk released a fifth single from Volta until last week. In my opinion, ‘Dull Flame of Desire’ featuring Antony Hegarty is one the most beautiful love songs ever made: intimate lyrics, breath-taking performances from both singers and raw, pulsing rhythm. To see a bigger picture you should listen to the 7:30 album version, but today I want to tell you about the music video and a great remix made for the song.

Let Björk speak for herself about the video:

When we did the competition for “Innocence”, where all the fans sent in videos, they sent in like 400 videos. There were some that I thought were amazing, made by really talented visual people who had maybe never done this before, but they didn’t totally fit with the mood of “Innocence”. So I contacted them and asked them if they would work together and do ["Dull Flame of Desire"]. In that song, we repeat the same verse over and over again. So I thought it would be interesting to have one verse presented by one director, and then the second by another director, and then the third by another. I had never done that before, and it was quite exciting.

We recorded our part in front of a green screen, and sent it by email to the directors, one in Japan, one in Spain, and one in Germany. They’re collaborating via email. I don’t know how long it will take. I was being pressured by my record company [to make videos] for the more up-tempo songs, but I have great love for “Dull Flame of Desire”, and it was very emotionally special for me to make that with Antony. I thought this would be a good way of doing it.

As you already know, the video is divided into three parts. Well, the first and the third one are probably more creative, but I don’t like them even half as much as I do the middle part. The use of threshold effect is so simple, yet so powerful! See for yourself:

Modeselektor made two remixes of ‘Dull Flame of Desire’: ‘for girls’ and ‘for boys‘. I don’t know why they are gendered – I guess that it’s based on smooth/raw opposition. The one for girls is a lot better than the other one. I like the way it sets the mood and plays with the word ’sparkling’. Check it out:

Can you remember Madonna’s ‘American Life’ music video? I mean, the not-edited one. I saw it on TV on the day of its premiere – lucky me, it was the only day it was aired on TV. Of course you can find it on youtube…

A month ago a high-quality version of this music video directed by Jonas Åkerlund leaked to the Internet. But the thing is that it is… the director’s cut! It is about 40 seconds longer than the original version and contains lots of alternative shots. Believe me, it is SOMETHING. To be honest, I think it is one of the greatest music videos ever made.

You can watch two videos below:
the director’s cut that I was writing about (unfortunately, the audio track for that video is a random song – I don’t know why someone did it… Even though it won’t be as powerful as with the right audio, watch the full video with the volume turned down – who knows how long it will be on youtube…);
the other video is an amazing remix by Felix da Housecat – I really like the way he played with the song and changed it!

American Life – director’s cut (make sure that the HQ is on!)

American Life – Felix da Housecat mix

Imagine Madonna, Nelly Furtado, Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears, Pharrell and Timbaland in one song…

And now, listen to it!

This song definitely made my day right from the early morning! The double A-side maxi single (Movie star / Slave to love) is on its way – it will be released on 13/10. Róisín has also announced that she is planning to make a new music video for ‘Movie star’, which is good news to all those who were disappointed with the version she released some time ago (was it June? July?). To be honest, I was more than disappointed – I get the point that she wanted to make a really weird video with all those drag queens and lobster rape, but it lacked good taste that she is known for.

There are six remixes on upcoming CDM (maxi single), I particularly like these made by Junior Sanchez. His ‘lax mix’ doesn’t sound like a remix really, it’s rather more like soft electro pop version of the song. The other one is quite expanded and harder electro. I’ll post links as soon as remixes appear on Róisín’s remixed myspace or last.fm.

And for now, for those who haven’t seen it yet, here’s the original music video for ‘Movie star’.

Oh, I forgot to write anything about ‘Slave to love’ that makes the single DOUBLE single. Maybe because it’s nothing special, I mean – it isn’t bad, just… nothing special. You can listen to the song here.