Final Fantasy
Besides being singer/songwriter of the band Final Fantasy, Owen Pallett is string composer of the widely-known band Arcade Fire. Owen used to play in Hidden Cameras, and he is also a guest musician in great demand. Recent invitations include the ones from Beirut and Holy Fuck. With Final Fantasy, which is essientially a one-man-solo project with guest musicians he creates gems of baroque pop music. He employs a measured croon caught somewhere between Scott Walker and Louis Philippe with a soft Donovan-esque vibrato. Alternately dissonant and willfully melodic, his songs evoke either the emotional notion of crushing sigh of defeat or violent outbursts of passion. By the detailed musical instrumentation (using piano, strings, cembalo and percussions) he creates an epic of highly artistical degree. At the moment he is working with Arctic Monkey’s Alex Turner on another solo project.
Dirty Projectors
The Dirty Projectors are the project of Dave Longstreth, a former Yale student who left college to become one of the most prolific and unique indie singer/songwriters of the early 2000s. Longstreth's distinctive, crooning voice and equally unique approach to arrangements and both lo-fi and hi-fi production characterize the Dirty Projectors’ sound. David Longstreth has created in Dirty Projectors a body of music of original and variegated beauty. The breadth of his talents as a songwriter, arranger, bandleader and singer call to mind Prince, Joni Mitchell, and Bjork. His constantly evolving sound -- both live and on record -- the sheer intensity of the music, and the originality of his voice set him apart. Among modern music makers, he is a maverick: a loner and a rebel.
The music is many things at once: sophisticated and heartfelt, tender and aggressive, pleasing and miserly in its refusal to please, a mixture between soul, punk, pop, noise and complex rock. Dirty Projectors' new offering, Rise Above, is a reimagining of Black's Flag seminal 1981 record Damaged. It is not a covers record. Longstreth attempted to rewrite his favorite adolescent album word for word, from memory. A concept so lofty might just be hot wind if Rise Above weren't such a hell of a record on its own terms. It resounds with a kind of elegant simplicity: beautiful interlocking guitar parts, gorgeous three-part vocal harmonies, and some great songwriting.
Six Organs of Admittance
Six Organs of Admittance is basically just one man - Ben Chasny, along with whomever he ropes in for recording or for shows. Since 1997, Six Organs of Admittance has had many releases on a variety of labels, most notably Holy Mountain. In 2005, Ben found a home at Drag City and released the landmark album, School of the Flower. Free jazz ninja drum master Chris Corsano joined Ben and the results were a perfect blend of melody, out-folk, minimalism and noise, getting much critical applause and ending up on year-end best-of-the-year lists by magazines such
as Mojo, Wire, and Magnet.
2006 sees the release of The Sun Awakens which features some of the most feedback-drenched, dark, cult-chanting, completely beautiful music ever released by the band. Chasny has also played in the touring band of Bonnie 'Prince' Billy and plays guitar in the bands Current 93, Badgerlore, and Comets on Fire.
Frog Eyes
With Frog Eyes you have the unusual combination of a lyricist / front man whose influences are as much early Russian and Irish literature as, you know, "Cinnamon Girl", "Virginia Plain" or Thurston's screech, all laced over this incredibly intuitive and connected music. This is wholly due to the band Mercer has assembled around him - his wife Melanie Campbell has developed a drumming style that supplants or at least challenges that voice as the primary mover and shaker. Michael Rak's bass playing is steady and precise and it's certain he's studied the great Peter Hook. Spencer Krug's keyboards are an unholy marvel, at once the flock of baroque birds chirping, and at other points the boom and groan of piano earthquake. Mccloud Zicmuse compliments Mercer's guitar, looping melodic blips and squiggles over the cyclone thrash. Of course, there's the voice, Mercer's voice, almost channeled, frightening and maybe a little frightened, defiantly soulful and impossibly bleak, a hundred thousand years old, a hundred thousand hailstorms, a hundred thousand old photographs, a hundred thousandth of a second from epiphany.
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