Toronto Islands to host music fest with Strokes, Dears, Flamip Lips, Sam Roberts, Massive Attack

http://www.vfestival.ca/en/

SAM ROBERTS BAND

"Whoever said you can't be saved by a song?" Sam Roberts asks on "Uprising Down Under," an elegiac track from his band's new album, Chemical City "Whoever said that was stringing you along."

It's a bold assertion, but it's not the first time Roberts has put himself on the line, worn his heart on his sleeve and tackled apathy head on. His band's debut album, We Were Born in a Flame, was an uncompromising collection of songs about love, faith, compassion, struggle and transcendence, on which Roberts made his now-famous declaration that he'd die for rock 'n' roll.

The Strokes

The sound of The Strokes is the result of frantic living, and the late nights and the early mornings they’ve spent making their music in New York City. Their music makes you want to forget who you are, and unlocks the possibilities of what you might want to be.

Massive Attack

Massive AttackThe pioneering force behind the rise of trip-hop, Massive Attack were among the most innovative and influential groups of their generation; their hypnotic sound — a darkly sensual and cinematic fusion of hip-hop rhythms, soulful melodies, dub grooves, and choice samples — set the pace for much of the dance music to emerge throughout the 1990s, paving the way for such acclaimed artists as Portishead, Sneaker Pimps, Beth Orton, and Tricky, himself a Massive Attack alumnus. Their history dates back to 1983 and the formation of the Wild Bunch, one of the earliest and most successful sound-system/DJ collectives to arrive on the U.K. music scene; renowned for their seamless integration of a wide range of musical styles, from punk to reggae to R&B, the group's parties quickly became can't-miss events for the Bristol club crowd, and at the peak of their popularity they drew crowds so enormous that the local live music scene essentially ground to a halt.

Massive Attack have made four albums to date, each one extraordinary in its own right. “Blue Lines”, “Protection”, “Mezzanine” and “100th Window” all pushed musical boundaries and made their mark.

With these critically acclaimed albums clocking up 9 million sales, a clutch of awards and a new album due for release in early 2007, the time felt right for a Massive Attack Best Of, an apt reminder of their musical legacy to date. The album, entitled “Collected”, features tracks chosen by the band, including such gems as “Unfinished Sympathy”, “Safe From Harm”, “Protection”, “Teardrop” and ”Angel”.

The special edition of “Collected” contains a bonus CD comprising of a new compilation of rare and reworked material as well as brand new recordings, whilst the flip side features a DVD of all the videos to date.

The album will be preceded by a brand new single, “Live With Me”, featuring Terry Callier on vocals. Written by Robert Del Naja, Neil Davidge and Terry Callier, and produced by Del Naja and Davidge, this track sees a return to a more soulful sound for Massive Attack, while retaining the lush production of their more recent albums. The powerful new video is directed by Jonathan Glazer, his first in six years.

Massive Attack are currently in the studio and have completed seven tracks for their fifth album, “Weather Underground”, with long time cohort and co-producer Neil Davidge. At present, they are dividing time between Bristol and New York where they have been recording with Dave Sitek and TV On The Radio, one of several collaborations for the album.

The band will be performing a series of live dates and festivals throughout the summer and autumn of 2006, details of which will be announced in due course.


THE FLAMING LIPS

The Flaming Lips YOSHIMI BATTLES THE PINK ROBOTS
by The Flaming Lips
Release Date: July 16, 2002
The Impact of Death on the Sunrise

In the spring of 2000 we were on tour (somewhere on the west coast U.S. of A.) when we began to receive some strange e-mails concerning a friend of ours (a Japanese woman who worked for a magazine and ran a record store in Osaka). The e-mails were poorly translated to English from Japanese – so the message, unfortunately, was not easily understood. But as the days went by we were able to, little by little, decipher the horrible news being transmitted – our friend (the Japanese girl) had become ill – a heart ailment of some kind – and suddenly and sadly had died. Though she (our friend) had spoke and wrote English very well, her sisters who were sending the e-mails, did not – so the seriousness of the situation was hard to confirm. You see, we had seen this girl not too long before this and – although we did not know her well – she spent several days with us traveling around Japan, and seemed fine. Whatever condition we perceived her to be in then and there, she was… now – dead… and; like I said earlier, we were on tour, traveling from city to city with a very busy schedule. So, while we were receiving this news – that she had died – we were skeptically unsure – the translation being so odd. It left us a little room to still be optimistic that perhaps this was not the final word.

As weeks passed and spring became summer, the realization of her death slowly bloomed – it was very strange – never at once did it overwhelm me, it did not come like some giant black spear piercing my chest, as other deaths had done – it came a drip at a time – never a rush of the unthinkable – it came as a gentle devastation… As the summer rolled on we were set to do a remix of “Race For The Prize” for, I believe, an UK only release. We needed a B-side and, never one to pass up an opportunity, I thought I would write up a quick new song and without giving it much thought sat down and began to sing into the tape recorder (I don’t know why but it seems the more profoundly internal something is, the more intensely one wants to scream out loud about it). What came out of me was this sympathetic plea to those sisters that I could not, with any certainty, communicate my condolences – it went almost exactly as it’s heard now – “It’s Summertime and I can understand if you still feel sad – It’s Summertime and though it’s hard to see it’s true possibilities” – and what I meant was this - the aims and appreciations of life are the best defense against death and the summertime when there is such an explosion of life – everything bursting ripe – this distraction – this noticing of life erupting all around could give them comfort. I know it did for me. So, I exclaimed “Look outside – I know that you’ll recognize it’s summertime!!” – not to be some cosmic hippie solution – there is no answer – just a change… but better to express sorrow and experience sadness than to let inner emotions inflate to the point of despair – despair only leads to more death. For it’s bad enough that something wonderful in your life has left you – but to fall into despair - despair does not allow you to even enjoy what is still living… So, as the summer came to an end, we were never satisfied with the remix and the “Race For The Prize” single was never issued, but unbeknown to us at the time, this sad song about the impact of death and the victory and celebration of sunshine was the beginning of our post “Soft Bulletin” sessions.

For the next couple of years we would be in and out of the studio (primarily Dave Fridmann’s) piecing together three different and unrelated ambitions. The first of these presented itself when our friend and filmmaker Bradley Beesley was finishing up his documentary, “Okie Noodling,” about a clan of weirdo fisherman in the backwoods of Oklahoma. “The Southern Oklahoma Cosmic Trigger Contest” (not for sale yet) was the result and it consisted of music I call, “Epic Country and Western,” utilizing mainly acoustic sounds such as harmonica, banjo, upright bass, strings and occasional hiccups. The unplugged nature of these sessions was a bizarre contrast to the tracks we were beginning to assemble with Dave Fridmann (which were, at first, completely computer generated and electronic for “Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots” and the “Christmas On Mars” musical score) not only contrasting in technical terms but also in tone. The “Okie Noodling” batch had a decidedly un-moralizing bent (unlike most C&W derived from Gospel and Folk), while the “Pink Robots” batch were of an optimistic and philosophical spirit – and (if it can be pronounced to be so as a thrichotomy of priorities) – the “Christmas On Mars” score being melancholy and sometimes crushingly depressing dirges with religious textures and spacey sound effects. Our earlier experience of working on Zaireeka (an experimental 4-disc set) while working on the “Soft Bulletin” illuminated the benefits of changing focus from one sound dimension to another and though we did not intend to be juggling all three at once – it never became an un-manageable workload and actually proved to be a wonderful change of atmosphere and process.

In the past, we had never approached any collection of songs with an overall intention of mood, as we were doing here – our curiosity of sounds and production had usually shaped our identity more than any specific, pre-ordained idea. With these three projects happening simultaneously it would be very easy to drift from one idea to another carrying influences from the previous to the next – and we didn’t want this – we wanted each to be distinct and with its own logic and character and impression. So, without having too rigid a parameter we began throwing sonic and melody creations into different piles – one for the “Fish Movie,” one for the “Christmas Movie” and one for what ended up being “Pink Robots” (and it’s funny, but some kind of biological-psychological reaction mechanism kicks in and deduces that – any emersion in one sensation – for too long at a time – heightens the desire for the opposite - kind of like how eating a bag of potato chips detonates the panic response for a candy bar). And so it was with a relaxed urgency that we (at first) easily shifted from acoustic stuff to computer electronic stuff and from spacey Christmas stuff to beat-heavy experimental rock stuff. But, (and I know this begins to sound absurd) if you did actually do an experiment where you had a bag of potato chips and a candy bar and you repeatedly grabbed one and then the other – and you did this for say – half a million times over the period of a couple of years – you would eventually end up with some version of candy coated potato chips… and so while I believe the “Okie Noodling” tracks sound Real-McCoy hillbilly and the “Christmas On Mars” tracks (so far) sound very cosmic and religious – the “Pink Robots” tracks (because it was the most reworked, the most fucked with, and essentially the most “touched” of the three) have absorbed the influence of them more than they… it… And has emerged as something that, if looked at on paper – like you’re doing now – could seem impossible or wrong – perhaps like some genetically altered plant, it’s alive and thriving, but disturbingly unnatural… But, with any luck, such will be music’s triumph over the psyche that this concoction of confusing companions with it’s story-telling acid rock (I guess??) and it’s theme of sunshine funerals will render its listeners powerless to study or analyze it and enable them to sit back and – hopefully for a couple of minutes at a time - just simply be… entertained.

Thanks,

Wayne – April 2002


Gnarls Barkley

Gnarls Barkley, St. Elsewhere

“You are the best. You are the worst. You are average. Your love is a part of you. You try to give it away because you cannot bear its radiance, but you cannot separate it from yourself. To understand your fellow humans, you must understand why you give them your love. You must realize that hate is but a crime-ridden subdivision of love. You must reclaim what you never lost. You must take leave of your sanity, and yet be fully responsible for your actions.” -Gnarls Barkley, in a letter to the legendary rock critic Lester Bangs So who is Gnarls Barkley? Diligent pen pal to Bangs, soul giant Isaac Hayes, and Violent Femmes ringleader Gordon Gano? Well-kept romantic consort to pop stars Mariah Carey and Janet Jackson? English teacher to synth-rock legends Kraftwerk? Croupier at a mysterious annual gathering in the Bay Area that allegedly draws members of the Wu-Tang Clan and Britian's Stuckist art collective? It seems that, in the music world, Gnarls Barkley is always nearby yet impossible to find. The membership rolls of both the Atlanta hip hop collective Dungeon Family and Athens, Georgia’s psychedelic enclave Elephant Six list Barkley as an affiliate, but mention him to either group and they’ll shoot each other frightened looks and start talking basketball. The rumors fly hard in every direction and remain defiantly unverifiable. Clinton Jacks works as a cook in a Waffle House restaurant near the South Carolina coast. “One night back in the year 2000,” he recollects, “I saw Danger Mouse come in here. Cee-Lo was with him. And they had this other dude with them, dressed up like H.R. Pufnstuf. Danger Mouse and Cee-Lo ate big meals, but H.R. Pufnstuf only wanted hash browns. Then they left, Danger Mouse and Cee-Lo, but H.R. Pufnstuf stayed around for hours. He must’ve had twenty cups of coffee. I went in the bathroom, and when I came out, he was gone. But he left a $500 tip on the table. And he left a little note that said, ‘Compliments to the chef. Gnarls Barkley.’”

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Danger Mouse, a/k/a Brian Burton, produced the infamous Grey Album, a full-length blend of the Beatles’ music and Jay-Z’s raps that became a cult classic after it was suppressed by EMI. He recently garnered a Grammy nomination for Producer of the Year for his work with the “virtual band” Gorillaz. Having recorded with enigmatic rapper MF DOOM, not to mention a cast of voices from “Adult Swim”, Danger Mouse is no stranger to outsized characters. He admits that he helped out with St. Elsewhere, the first album credited to Gnarls Barkley. “A lot of people ask me about him,” says Danger Mouse when the topic arises. “He found one of my Pelican City records, which was this downtempo experimental stuff I did in college, and I started getting letters from him. He’s

not [Blur frontman and Gorillaz co-creator] Damon Albarn – I can blow that myth out of the water for you. A lot of people think he lives in South Carolina. Personally, I think you’d be more likely to find him in Europe.”

From beneath his shroud, Burton's spiritual adviser, the usually silent “Dr. President”, murmurs something unintelligible and then…”Not that I know where he is.”

Cee-Lo Green, a/k/a Thomas Calloway, is a Dungeon Family alumnus, once and - future member of Goodie Mob and a wildly eclectic solo artist. His music is steeped in the gospel and blues traditions of the Southeast, merging timeless soul with experimental funk and hip hop. He confirms reports that his dramatic voice and soul-rummaging lyrics appear on portions of St. Elsewhere. “Yes, I believe that I sang on at least some of the Gnarls Barkley record,” he says. “But we are not the same person. I am Cee-Lo. I am a humble trumpet, and the wind of God blows through me. You might consider Gnarls the spit valve on the trumpet, were you inclined to consider him at all.” As he walked away, Cee-Lo could be heard to mutter, “You want to know who he is? He’s the dude who owes me thirty-five dollars, that’s who he is.”

Does St. Elsewhere shed light on this mysterious personage, or does it further obscure him? It’s a complex record, to be sure. It employs the full spectra of pop music and human emotion. The warm, breezy single “Crazy” and the spry finger-snapper “Smiley Faces” recall "Songs In The Key Of Life" and “Good Vibrations” in equal measure. “On Line,” a lament for the lonely and ambitious, could be a tricked-out G-funk holdover. Often dark and unpredictable, St. Elsewhere nevertheless retains its sense of joy throughout. Even Cee-Lo’s darker moments, his introspection on “Necromancer”, and the chilling “Just A Thought,” on which our hero fights off suicidal ideation, flourish in their lush, funky surroundings. It constantly shifts its shape and never sacrifices momentum. And it contains a mess of contradictory clues about just who Gnarls Barkley actually is.

“I’ve made him my life’s work,” says Milton Pawley, a Los Angeles music writer widely considered the world’s leading Barkley scholar. “And even with all the evidence I’ve gathered, I’m still not sure he really exists. Maybe Gnarls Barkley isn’t a person. Maybe he’s out there in the wind. Maybe he’s inside of all of us. Like ‘Bob’ from Twin Peaks, only more funky and less evil.”

Perhaps Gnarls Barkley will never fully reveal himself. But if St. Elsewhere is any indication, his music bears Marvin Gaye’s depth of feeling, Jeff Buckley’s emotive theatrics, and wild courage not seen since Prince’s prime. Behold the most exciting debut of 2006. A psychedelic soul masterpiece. Gnarls Barkley may not be easily located, but he won’t be a stranger.

-Emerson Dameron