interview

OK, is officially procrastinating on his 50 States Project. As if and from his kin weren t enough, Sufjan has now taken to interviewing his labelmates.
Today he posted a with on AK s , as part of the Half-Week of Rafter Love .

We wouldn t be surprised if Sufjan then took four consecutive power naps, moseyed over to the vending machine for his ninth Mountain Dew of the night, and gazed detachedly out the window until dawn.
Sufjan s interview is a strange thing that has him alternating between the sincere and academic-- Do you feel music should inspire the listener and/or the performer? -- and the ironic and, um, neurotic: You have red hair.

Do you belong to a Redhead organization? Do you feel Redheads suffer special discrimination in society? Do you think Redheads have special advantages?

Do you feel some ulterior motive in my capitalization of the word Redhead ?..

.
The whole thing, however, is rather cute, and Rafter reveals his convoluted music-making process, the origins behind the wacky title of his recent LP ( ), the joys of fatherhood, how he doesn t much care for Antony s vocals, and how one of [his] favorite things to get from music is a sense of total doom and annihilation. Huh?

?
Read the entire interview . Oh, and pssst, Sufjan?

Pitchfork is, like, , so...

As part of the Half Week of Rafter Love, Asthmatic Kitty has also posted the from the Rafter and promises more Rafter-riffic content in the next couple days. Annnnd Rafter has officially agreed to collaborate with Sufjan on a record about California, which means OMG SUFJAN POSSIBLY RELEASING CALIFORNIA ALBUM IN NEAR OR FAR FUTURE MAYBE.
Rafter heads to SXSW in mid-March, while Sufjan woos the Grand Rapids masses at a long-sold-out Calvin College gig March 30.

Battles Talk Mirrored, Vocals, Side Projects
We're no more an instrumental band than we are a rock'n'roll band with no lead singer. --Tyondai Braxton There s a new behemoth in town, and is its name. The fire-breathing, - supergroup comprised of Tyondai Braxton, Ian Williams (ex-Don Caballero), John Stanier (ex-Helmet, Tomahawk), and Dave Konopka (ex-Lynx) drops their proper debut LP Mirrored on May 15, .

EP-based excitement has been brewing for a few years now, but longtime fans may be in for a few surprises.
For one: vocals. First single Atlas -- out April 2 in 12 and digital formats-- has em.

So do several other tracks on Mirrored, as Battles Braxton and Williams revealed to Pitchfork during a recent chat. So what s the deal, guys?
Said Braxton, who does all the quote-unquote singing, It s not just straight vocals throughout on every track.

Sometimes it s more conventional, sometimes it s more affected and used more as a texture. So there s no clear definition of the way that we use the vocals-- but we do have maybe three or four songs with lyrical vocals in them.
For Braxton and band, it s all about pushing boundaries.

The thing that I really like about other bands that I grew up listening to-- that I was inspired by-- is they have the same tools that other bands use-- you ve got your lead vocals, guitar, bass, drums, keyboard, whatever-- but the way they use them is so different. So I always wanted to try my hand at using those same tools to go in the direction that I was interested in, and that we were interested in as a collective.
We all are very cool with just trying out a bunch of different things.

We re no more an instrumental band than we are a rock n roll band with no lead singer. We just try different things and do what we want to do, which is refreshing-- it s a refreshing formula to have in this band, where there s nothing that s too out of bounds.
And though the vocal thing might be a little more conventional in a lot of ways, even there there s no fear of being able to go that route and see what we can come up with.

And I had wanted to sing and wanted to see what it would be like to have a Battles song written, so we explored that direction. What do young people do, stuck all the way out in quaint, remote Sunderland, England? If you re David Brewis, one-third of trio , you make music with your family and friends, you kick back and watch Trapped in the Closet with the Futureheads, you rework Thompson Twins classics.

..and you start Doors and Aerosmith cover bands?

?
I was really trying to avoid getting involved, David told Pitchfork yesterday via phone, but I ended up being Robby Krieger in a friend s Doors tribute. Bandmates Andy Moore and Peter Brewis (David s brother) joined him for this anomaly at a sort-of Sunderland Stars night this past December.

And it was quite fun. Unfortunately, on that night we were billed as blooming Field Music, eight or nine minute version of The End instead. It was I m having an Aerosmith phase at the moment, so maybe I ll end up in an Aerosmith covers band.

For a list of potential Aerosmith cover band names, including PharaohSmith ( This will involve Egyptian headgear ), Hair-O-Smith ( This will involve wearing wigs, and the singer can rename himself Steve [Hair] Styler ), and Aeroschmitt ( Krautrock ), skip to the end of this story. It s worth it, believe us.
The Doors and Aerosmith aren t exactly the first bands to come to mind when listening to the succinct, rhythmically precise music of Field Music, whose sophomore LP , out now in the UK, hits U.

S. shelves February 20 via Memphis.
Fans who turn out for Field Music s UK dates this month and with Menomena and Land of Talk in March probably needn t worry about any such classic rock-covering confrontations, however.

We ll probably end up playing quite a lot of stuff from the new record, David said. The biggest surprise for anyone who hasn t seen us live is what we manage to do between the three of us. People watch and say, How the hell are they doing that?

After the tour, however-- and the release of single She Can Do What She Wants on April 9 (coupled with a radical reworking of Tones Sit Tight titled Sit Tighter )-- the men of Field Music plan to go on a sort-of hiatus.
The general plan for Field Music is that after that tour in North America, we re going to take a break for a while, David told Pitchfork. Our money runs out then.

Money isn t the whole story, however. Brewis also wants to keep the spark of creativity alive, and some of the more routine aspects of being in a band have stifled it. Touring and other matters get in the way of being able to be creative on a regular basis, David explained.

Even rehearsing for us is not a particularly creative experience-- it s an interesting problem-solving challenge. We make good music, and it s quite enjoyable for performance, but it s not usually creative. When all of that time goes out, we realized that we don t get a lot of time to spend writing new music or having ideas percolate.

So the ambition for all of us for the months after March is to find ways to get into the habit of being creative...

All three of us have got quite a bit of stuff which is just not Field Music. So we re going to have to find other ways to do it.

I've spent stretches of several days where I only talk with a pad of paper and a pen.

, one too many emotive yelps sent poor Will Sheff s voice a-packing. Vocal chord strain forced the frontman to to cancel his solo tour with Josh Ritter and suspend work on the band s new album.
Figuring Sheff might be trolling the interweb a little more frequently right now, Pitchfork caught up with the man for a brief e-mail interview, in which he revealed what happened to that expressive voice of his, what fans can expect from the new LP, and just how definitive the Black Sheep Boy Definitive Edition (out March 6 on ) is.

But first, that lost voice: Following several months of intense touring last fall, Okkervil River set to work preparing for the new album. We rehearsed every day, four hours a day for about a month, wrote Will. An unintended and painfully ironic consequence of all that work was that, by the time I stood in front of a microphone to record the vocals for the record, I could barely get a sound out of my mouth.

Sheff visited an ear, nose, and throat doctor-- he had all these signed head-shots of local opera singers hanging on the wall -- for the first time in his life. As the specialist told Will, while things could have been worse, my vocal chords were inflamed and fatigued and I d developed a couple other problems that just had to do with using my voice too much. He put me on two different medications and prescribed a month of vocal rest.

Since then, Will told Pitchfork, we ve stopped all work on the record and I ve just been sitting around Austin waiting, trying to use my voice as little as possible.
It hasn t been easy. I ve spent stretches of several days where I only talk with a pad of paper and a pen.

Whenever I d go to the grocery store or something, I d run into friends; they d walk up to say hello and I d have to stick a pad of paper in their face with the words Sorry - I lost my voice! on it, and they d say, oh! and try to ask me a few questions about it.

I d try to scrawl a few responses down before we d both kind of back away from each other wearing embarrassed looks.
I was listening to [Clipse's Hell Hath No Fury] this morning. I was shouting, 'I don't fear Tubbs and Crockett,' all the way down the street.

..And I was saying something about being a snowman.

.. will release their new album, Our Earthly Pleasures, via on April 2.

Our Velocity is the album s first single (with a recently Forkcasted video ), and it s due out March 19. Lead singer Paul Smith described the sound of the record in an we did with him in August, but we recently caught up with him to get the scoop on the U.S.

release of Our Earthly Pleasures, his opinions of some of his peers, and what he s been listening to lately, including a mutual favorite: Clipse s .
I m pretty sure I m not revealing any secret information by saying we ll be on Warp again and that [Our Earthly Pleasures] will come out [in the U.S.

] around the time [of the UK release], if not on the same day, Smith said. Max i mo Park also plan to tour the U.S.

soon. I think we ll do one or two tours, depending on if people are interested or not.
Since Max i mo Park were originally grouped with a whole crop of British bands who recently released sophomore albums (see: Field Music s , Bloc Party s , and, slightly less recently, the Futureheads ), Smith also gave us his thoughts on where his band currently stands among their cohorts.

I know Peter [Brewis] from Field Music quite well, and we were fortunate enough to support Bloc Party and the Futureheads on tour. They re part of our history. Even if I hated them, I d still be affectionate toward those times, and as it stands I think the unfortunate thing is that we re often lumped in with another section of bands that we don t really have anything in common with, like Kaiser Chiefs or Hard-Fi.

Bands like Bloc Party and the Futureheads and Field Music have always tried to reach out for something. [Bloc Party frontman] Kele [Okereke] is always talking about r b music and stuff that I love, and Field Music don t really care what s cool. They just make records that are totally representative of their tastes, which go in directions not thought of before.

And the same could be said of the Futureheads; their first record to me was really exciting. And it made you think about what you re doing. You actually felt challenged by the music, as well as exhilarated.

Frog Eyes' Mercer Talks Blood, Sweat, Tears, Bowie
Dan Bejar once suggested to me that all of my art is crumbling into that most classic and vaunted of forms: the drunken speech of the deposed dictator. This May Day, why not inject a little chaos into the ol maypole dance routine by broadcasting the new LP? , the frenetic Victoria quartet unleashes its fourth full-length beast, the nine-track Tears of the Valedictorian, on May 1 via in the U.

S. and in Canada.
Since Tears perplexing song titles have our ribbons a bit tangled, Pitchfork went straight to Frog Eyes frontman Carey Mercer with a few e-mail questions.

Thanks to the magic of interweb discourse, we learned a little about the new LP, the toil of touring, s auto show gig that wasn t, and the influence of David Bowie-by-proxy. We re also more confused now than ever.
Pitchfork: Tears of the Valedictorian-- in 100 words or less, what s it all about?

Carey Mercer: Well, there are a few down with people songs and a few up with people songs, and a few songs that suggest an affinity for stock/archetypal tragic images. Two songs are quite long.
Dan Bejar once suggested to me that all of my art is crumbling into that most classic and vaunted of forms: the drunken speech of the deposed dictator.

Tears was mastered a little quieter than Californication, and therefore will not get as much radio play.
Pitchfork: The titles of the previous Frog Eyes albums proper have all followed the pattern: [definite article] [adjective] [noun]. This one is noticeably different.

Any particular reason? Why not name it, say, The Valedictory Tear?
Carey: I had the feeling that I was leaving all the nonsense of the last three records behind, and then the pompous absurdity of such a feeling made me remember, with a love in my heart, that my oldest friend cried while delivering his Valedictorian speech.

My favorite art combines humor and crushing Pathos, human squalor and immutable, natural beauty. That is why it is called Tears of the Valedictorian. Pitchfork s been crushing on Austin, Texas indie pop quintet for well over a year now, so it s hard to believe they ve yet to actually release a full-length record.

Oh, they ve got EPs alright-- three thus far, including last fall s . And they ve got . So what s going on with that inaugural full-length foray?

Well, it won t be long now. With the band in New York City mixing their debut, Pitchfork caught up with Voxtrot frontman , who generously disclosed some of the album s dark secrets, shared his thoughts on the record-making process, considered the blogosphere, and First, the essentials: imprint will deliver the Voxtrot full-length worldwide on (or around, as the case may be) May 22. It was produced and mixed by (Nick Cave, PJ Harvey, Mojave 3) and recorded in December and January at Premier and Cacophony studios in Austin.

To tide over fans in the UK, Beggars/Playlouder will release Trouble backed by Your Biggest Fan as a limited edition 7 and download single on February 26. have a name yet, but Ramesh is leaning toward either a self-titled affair ( I guess it s the first time we re presenting ourselves to a lot of people, so Blogs? At least we think he s joking.

full-length, the record will contain 12 or 13 entirely new Voxtrot songs (i.e., nothing from the three EPs or the seven inches) drawn from a pool of 16 new jams.

Among them, Ramesh s present favorites: Kids Gloves , Blood Red In particular, Ramesh loves Firecracker because it sounds the least like his band s previous material. It s kind of like an odd marriage of styles, he said. Beats that we haven t used before.

I just like the bigness of it, The tune, as it turns out, is autobiographical. In a way first time with a record label, and what that s been like, and how it affects Srivastava and confidence, it seems, have an Fan EP late last year, Ramesh and self-confidence were on the outs. I like [the EP], and I like the songs on it, but I wasn t overjoyed with the way that it sounded, because it all had to be done in this very rushed environment.

I think when that came out I was overly terrified of critical response, because I Fortunately, they made up: In the end, it ended up not being that big of a deal. Now I like it, and I realize it s just songs. I like the songs, and it really doesn t matter that much, the sound of every instrument and every note.

Jamie Klaxon Talks Success, Violence, Family, Future spawned, are poised to crash North American shores at last this spring, where they ll drown all the glow-stuck party kids with their frantically-paced, Before all that, however, the UK trio has some business to wrap up back home: they re headlining a massive, NME-sponsored tour with CSS, New Young Pony Club, and the Sunshine Underground. Oh, and their Sound a bit overwhelming? Not for these kids.

As Klaxon Jamie Reynolds revealed in a chat with Pitchfork yesterday, the trio Just after the mayhem last year, Reynolds explained, we were really into the idea of getting a good pace going...

rather than going full steam ahead and crashing. The mayhem, however, has just begun. While the record sales week hasn t quite ended, as of yesterday, Klaxons have the number one album in the UK.

It s absolutely ridiculous! exclaimed Jamie. So how does he intend to celebrate?

I m going stop in on my mother and a couple of friends. And I m going to play a gig to 200 people in my hometown. [It s] perfect, honestly.

Today is what it s all about.
That Southampton gig went down last night, as part of a handful of warm-up shows before Klaxons hit the road with CSS and company. It s great to come here and get to see old friends I haven t seen in a long time, said Jamie.

hits the States in late April, , via Rinse/DGC. Not surprisingly, Jamie s psyched: The whole idea of being on the same label as Nirvana and bands like that is mind-blowing!

Wilson on the hit-and-run driver: He was probably an Arctic Monkeys fan or something.

They predicted a riot, and now they ve got an Angry Mob. , Brit buzz band return with Yours Truly, Angry Mob-- out March 27 on Universal in North America, and February 26 everywhere else-- and a .
As the UK press darlings brace for fan reception to their sophomore outing, Pitchfork caught up with genial lead vocalist Ricky Wilson for a chat about leaps in songwriting, onstage leaps, and over a speeding vehicle last spring.

First and foremost, however, just how many na s can fans of 2005 debut expect from Yours Truly, Angry Mob? I don t do any na s, I think. Nick [Hodgson, drummer] might, but it s because he doesn t bother learning the lyrics!

He goes in and does these backing vocals, and he just makes it up as he goes along.
The thing is, with the first [record], we needed that, because we were always a support band. We needed to get the audience to sing along, and that was the best way of doing it: having no lyrics and having big bits that went, oooh, like that.

We don t need them anymore. We ve got one song that s got a big la la la in it, but that s about it, I think.
In addition to the move away from catchy playground taunts, Wilson s confident that Angry Mob marks a step forward for the band on the whole.

I would say the album, if it wasn t better than the first one, would never be released. We don t want to be one of those bands that just get worse. We think it s better and it s the best we can do at this moment in time.

So if it s not good enough, then we re in the wrong job. But I think it s fucking great, so I m happy.
The record is worth hearing, the Kaiser Chief continued.

I know all bands say that, but if they didn t, I d be worried.
If Wilson sounds proud, maybe he has a right to be. Apart from the touch of producer/mixer Stephen Street and mixer Cenzo Townshend, the Kaisers pretty much went it alone on Angry Mob.

We made a conscious decision not to have any other musicians involved on it...

everything that s played on it is played by us, because we ve got no reason to hide behind anyone else. If we want something to sound big, surely we should be able to do that on our own. !

!!'s Offer Talks Myth Takes, Out Hud, Politics, Welfare
I like to think of myself as somewhere in between the second coming and dog shit.

People don t dance no more-- particularly people of the scrawny, white variety-- but thanks to dance-punk acts like the Rapture and , they re at least trying.
When !!

! release their much-salivated-over, third full length-- Myth Takes, their first for worldwide, due March 6-- those people will have ample reason to try the two-step once again. And, while they re at it, brush up on their chin-stroke: The disc s ambitious, often electrifying production and arrangements should have pundits minds cranking and jaws flapping just as much as its infectious grooves and gnarled guitar lines keep those hips gyrating.

Just check out the disc s scintillating centerpiece, , and color us stoked.
Pitchfork caught up with Nic Offer by phone this week as the !!

! (and ) vocalist/ party-starter was about to catch a plane-- on a quest, no doubt, to stir up some ruckus in exotic far-off locales. Sort of.

Pitchfork: Where are you off to?
Nic Offer: London for the beginning of the year, for the European promo trip.
Pitchfork: Who directed it?

Nic: The official disco-punk director, , the one who does LCD, Juan Maclean, Supersystem, Rapture, and now he did us. His treatment looked great, and actually he was a great guy to work with. We couldn t really turn him down.

You find it s good to work with people who are a bit hungry, you know? And he definitely is. And I guess he likes disco-punk.

Pitchfork: So what s the treatment?
Nic: It s kind of tongue-in-cheek; he wanted it to look like a Kenneth Anger film, or Performance, the Mick Jagger movie. So he s got us in all kinds of 60s garb.

..To me it seemed like such a New York story, but everybody came away with the haunting effects of the moon-- that seemed to be the image people got from the song.

It s pretty tongue-in-cheek, and it s going to give a lot of people a reason to hate us.
Pitchfork: Do you think a lot of people hate you right now?
Nic: Anyone who gets any level of press has to deal with some level of hate, and I think we re especially hateable-- and when you see the video you ll know what I mean.

There s going to be people who just don t get it. If you look at it and think we re taking ourselves seriously, you re going to fucking hate us. But we had a blast, it was ridiculous and really fun.

So, whatever.
Pitchfork: So Myth Takes, is that the way someone with a lisp says mistakes? Where does the title come from?

Nic: You know, I m really into meanings-- to have exactly five meanings, and that s what that one does. So of course it means that.
Pitchfork: Fair enough.

So how does Myth Takes depart from !!!

s previous work, if at all?
Nic: Lyrically we tried a less-direct approach. I feel like with the last record [2004 s ] I tried to say everything very plainly.

And it seemed like it was too in people s faces. So I tried to say what I felt was a similar message, but told more through stories. Sometimes it seems like you get your point across more by taking a more abstract view.

Sometimes the point hits harder-- comes through more directly. It was definitely fun to take that approach, and I felt fresher writing that way. And it opened up a new side of me.

..and I ve been exploring more since then.

Pitchfork: What inspired you to take that new route with your writing?
Nic: Uh, bad reviews.
Pitchfork: So you pay attention to your press?

Nic: No, I mean, you don t, but you catch a drift. I personally don t read anything on the internet-- I mean, aside from you guys [Pitchfork]. You kind of have to pay attention to you, because you re the barometer of all the internet stuff-- but I can t weed through the internet, because I can have my ego blown to gargantuan sizes and then shattered within seconds.

It s all there. I always say, if you believe all that stuff, you either think you re the second coming-- or total dog shit. So I like to think of myself as somewhere in between the second coming and dog shit.

stretches for miles, encompassing releases by her bands Throwing Muses and 50FootWave, as well as several solo records. But we re pretty sure that nothing in her discography was ever titled after a piece of spam email..

.until now. Tomorrow, January 23, will release in the U.

S.; will put it out overseas on January 29. (An EP, , lands today, January 22 on 4AD.

It features the album track In Shock as well as three non-album tunes.) According to Hersh, she also has new Throwing Muses and 50FootWave albums in the works, as well as an Appalachian folk project. So, that title.

Hersh explained it in a recent interview with Pitchfork, saying, It s hard to pretend that there s anything artful about titling a CD. It s an artificial grouping of songs. Even titling a song is sometimes a little fakey if you ask me!

But this just kept coming up; it just wouldn t shut up...

this stupid American Idol thing or whatever the hell it was. I couldn t ever bring myself to click on it, but as soon as it became meaningless-- you know, I d heard the syllables so many times-- that s when it got pretty to me..

.I mean, like, In the interview, Hersh also spilled a lot more information about the album, as well as talked about signing to Yep Roc, her upcoming tour, and what s going on with Throwing Muses and 50FootWave.

This record is going to be so good, I'm afraid that we won't get our shit together and be able to record it.

Despite near-non-stop touring in recent months, principal Nick Diamonds-- now going by his given name, Nick Thorburn-- somehow managed to write up enough new material for two whole records, one of which will follow up 2006 s selection .
I feel a lot of unease and anxiety when I don t have a guitar near me, Thorburn revealed to Pitchfork during a recent chat. I think that s where [the creative spark] comes from: an urge, a real desire to expunge music from my inner-being.

Thorburn also had mouthfuls to say about his band s latest exploits, his present songwriting ambitions, numerous periphery pursuits, the appeal of his government name, disowning Rough Gem , cryptomnesia, the Killers, and .
While Thorburn s reluctant to reveal titles, the first of Islands two new discs should reach the mainland in September-- that is, if it gets made at all. This record is going to be so good, enthused Thorburn, I m afraid that we won t get our shit together and be able to record it.

Thorburn seems invigorated of late by a new songwriting sensibility, one that might throw fans of the previous record for a loop. I wanted to make the perfect pop song and pop record, the ex-Unicorn recalled. And I realized I misquoted myself, because I have no desire to write popular songs for the populace.

I want to make interesting, good music, and I think that s what I meant...

I feel a need to write songs that are 15 minutes long right now. Maybe I ll get over that phase.
So what are we in for?

It s a physical record. It s someone plunging your face into a river and rescuing you. If Return to the Sea was the water record, this is the bodies.

I say people should eat and drink music as much as they want. International success can make for some pretty basic misunderstandings. So when the vintage psychedelia of s third album-- 2004 s -- caught on outside of singer, songwriter, and bandleader Gustav Ejstes native Sweden, he was suddenly forced to answer questions about why he sang in Swedish, as if it was the result of an aesthetic choice and not simply his native tongue.

( Hey Sufjan, why don t you sing in Portugese? )
We were able to avoid the question when we talked to Ejstes recently, though we did ask if he ever writes nonsense lyrics just because he could probably get away with it (he doesn t). He also told us about the recording process, his interest in production, and his love for hip hop (especially Madvillain).

Oh, and there was the matter of Dungen s currently untitled upcoming record (tracklist below), which will release May 1 in the U.S. A Swedish release on is scheduled for around the same time, and Dungen plan to tour later this spring.

Pitchfork: How is this new album different from Ta Det Lugnt?
Gustav Ejstes: Each song stands out more. [There are] shorter songs than on Ta Det Lugnt, [which] had that collage vibe [where] one song slips into another one, changing and fading into each other.

Pitchfork: Are there fewer of the jazz-influenced instrumental passages?
GE: There are instrumental parts, and the jazz influences are still there. [But] I think the songs are more like traditional songs.

The album is not Ta Det Lugnt 2. I think it would be bad if it were just a volume two. Believe it or not, it s been nearly four years since we ve heard so much as a whimper from , but that doesn t mean the veteran Chicago jazz-inflected pop quartet has slowed down.

Cakers and spent the last few years focusing on individual pursuits-- each released a solo record in 2005 (Who s Your New Professor and Wilderness, respectively, both on ). Drummer , meanwhile, has concentrated on his work with Tortoise, while also recording up a storm at his Soma Studios. And traded the bass for a palette and paintbrush, turning out a pretty sweet of oil paintings last year.

Now the fire, wind, earth, and heart of the Sea and Cake (water is lame, man) have reunited at last, and by their powers combined, nearly completed work on album number seven. Pitchfork caught up with Sea and Cake captain Sam Prekop yesterday for a chat about recording the latest LP at a rock n roll boot camp, his photography book, his electronic record with McEntire, and the fine art of the album cover.
We re almost done with the as-yet-untitled record, reported Prekop.

We have one more song to mix, and then the sequencing. It should see the light of day in May, and like all previous Sea and Cake full lengths, bear the Thrill Jockey stamp.
That s not the only continuing trend here: like the six Sea and Cake LPs before it, number seven will contain exactly 10 tracks (including Scribble On and What Tonight Is )-- which was far from Prekop s intention.

I was very anxious to make a record that had more than ten songs, he said. [But] this one has ten, too, which I didn t think was going to happen, because we had actually prepared 15. But for whatever reason, five of them didn t make it.

If we felt that we could have pulled off more than ten, we would have, or if it felt right.
It could be a thing where we just know that ten, that s it, that makes the best record, you can t get further than that. For someone who s known as one of the godfathers of experimental extreme metal, is a pretty happy guy.

Or at least he sure seemed that way when he spoke to Pitchfork recently about his current band, , which also includes bassist Diarmuid Dalton and drummer Ted Parsons. The former Napalm Death/Head of David/Godflesh/Techno Animal member was chatty as a schoolgirl when discussing Jesu s upcoming album and North American tour with , not to mention his slew of other projects. The second Jesu album, Conqueror, comes out on on February 20 in the United States, February 19 in the UK and Europe, February 2 in Japan, and February 27 in the rest of the world.

(Whew.) The Japanese version will be amended with a bonus disc containing the songs Sun Down and Sun Rise , originally released on a limited edition vinyl EP on . The vinyl version of Conqueror comes out February 27 on .

The appropriately epic title track can be heard by downloading the exclusive mp3 below.

I try to be candid in interviews..

.but I've learned that whenever you try and make a point about anything, you always end up sounding like a douchebag. strings wizard Owen Pallett put himself at a distinct disadvantage by naming own project .

Google it: dude s official website doesn t come up until page seven, such is the interweb might of the RPG juggernaut with which he shares his name.
But who needs Google when you ve got the , the Canadian honor Pallett for 2006 s , and the $20,000 that comes with it? Or an adoring fanbase?

Or friends in the Arcade Fire? Or plans up the wazoo? As Pallett told Pitchfork recently via e-mail, with 2006 drawing to a close, he s on a roll.

First up: releases galore. Right now I m at work on some 7 s and some EPs, wrote Pallett. Down the line, I ll follow up He Poos Clouds with an LP with the inoffensive/boring title of Heartland.

The connotations of Heartland are intended, Pallett elaborated in a on a message board he frequents at . The album title is meant to evoke that mysterious sense of homestead nationalism.
Pallett continued: It s another concept album, but this one has an overarching narrative.

A plot arc, if you will. Like a Batman comic or..

. or..

. a 19th century Romantic song cycle like [Robert Schumann s] Dichterliebe.
Recording wise, it s going to sound exactly like He Poos Clouds but with better microphones, better writing and we re using compressors to make it sound taut and clicky.

No more weak, fey shit! Except the singing. That will always be tacky.

Pallett also disclosed some info to Pitchfork on his contributions to next Arcade Fire record, which even your mom is excited about. I played on a bunch of songs with a string quartet..

. six? Seven?

I don t remember. I also worked with R e gine [Chassagne] on a couple of orchestral arrangements. It was fun!

R e gine is a genius!
It was the first time I d ever written orchestral arrangements for a pop album. It was a heavy task.

I listened to a lot of Ravel and Rimsky-Korsakov, and looked at a lot of scores. And I had to convince R e gine that trumpets and woodwinds were necessary..

. they were against the idea at first. But everything turned out great in the end.

The whole point is to get people who are having their moment...

and get a definitive record of what they're doing. , producer s -- a sort-of television show that s on the Internet and thus has nothing to do with television at all-- will be available for download December 18 on (okay, almost nothing to do with TV) and iTunes. For a small fee viewers may scoop up the show, which presents live performances in intimate settings without all the bells and whistles that usually hamper these things.

, , and all play the debut episode, and if the any indication, it looks pretty effing fantastic.
The follow-up episode (due in February) will showcase performances by and , and Godrich has high hopes for the series. Taking time out from working on the new record, Godrich told Pitchfork in a recent interview, We ve got a lot of people that I d like to see on the show [that] we re talking to.

[But] I don t want to mention their names. Obviously, I m really interested to capture some really iconic, bigger names-- really the whole point is to get people who are having their moment, to try and get a definitive record of what they re doing.
And also, I ve got a lot of friends in smaller bands, continued Godrich, and there s an element of trying to promote stuff that we think is good.

Indeed, Godrich first conceived of From the Basement as a means of authentically documenting the pulse of music being made today. Beck and I [had] been watching Rock and Roll Circus, that Rolling Stones movie that they made after they d been on tour..

.we were just saying how amazing it was to see such a snapshot of that time: You get to see them, warts and all..

.hanging out with John Lennon and Eric Clapton and all these people.
[We were] just saying what a shame it was that there wasn t anything that really felt as honest as that anymore, at the moment.

Hopes to reissue Shangri-Las, Scott Walker, 10cc, Billy Fury, Richie Havens, more For most self-acknowledged music obsessives, having access to a treasure trove of gems for one s reissue label would be a dream come true. For Bob Stanley, self-acknowledged music obsessive of London-centric (but globally-adored) pop band , it s certainly exciting, but it s also just one of many, many things he has going on at the moment. The powers that be at Universal Records have graciously agreed to allow Stanley and bandmate Pete Wiggs access to their archive (which includes the Philips, Decca, A M, Island, Polydor, Mercury, ABC, Dunhill, and MCA catalogs, and more) for the pair s new reissue imprint, (not to be confused with the U.

S. psych and hard rock labels of the same name, or the Canadian dance label). With four reissues out already, Eclipse is on a roll.

Pitchfork recently talked to Stanley about the new label and his varied pursuits in film, writing, and-- of course-- music. Pitchfork: Let s talk Eclipse. How did the arrangement between yourselves and Universal came about?

Bob Stanley: We did a compilation called The Trip for them [released in 2004]. That did reasonably well, I think, and it was fun to put together. There were so many tracks on it that were from albums that we really love and would like to see reissued.

So we just approached them and said, Well, do you think there s any chance that we could get an imprint of our own as a reissue label? And they said, Yeah.
Pitchfork: Wow, just like that, huh?

Were you given free reign over the catalogue or was there a lot of input by Universal as to what you could and couldn t put out?
Bob: No, we ve got total free reign. I mean, obviously there are a lot of things where we ll have an idea and then they ll go, So-and-so s gonna use that for part of Island s forty-fifth anniversary that s planned for 2009 or something like that.

But apart from that, yeah, they ve given us absolutely free reign. Some ideas that we ve come up with are a 10cc box set and a Billy Fury box set.
Pitchfork: Were you planning on more obscure things or complete singles collections from well-known artists, like the Dusty Springfield Complete A and B Sides?

Bob: Well, when I say free reign I m exaggerating. Of every four we release I think we can only put out one that s pretty obscure. I think with every batch that we put out there s going to be a Complete A and B Sides.

There should be a Billy Fury one. We ve got the Impressions, the Shangri-Las, Scott Walker..

.
Pitchfork: Nice! So they will still be released in chunks of four?

Bob: Yeah, that s the plan. Yeeaaah [laughs]. I m only saying that slightly reticently because they all clear at different speeds.

Some of them can clear in a day if they just have the paperwork, then it s all fine. Others, like a Richie Havens double we want to do-- he owns about a third of the tracks and he doesn t really want to let them go, which is a shame, but hopefully we can still try to persuade him.
It's a record that can laugh at itself.

You should only make records if you ve got something to say, remarked s Alasdair MacLean in an with Pitchfork s Scott Plagenhoef that took place late last year. Lucky for us, MacLean and his bandmates still have plenty to say, and thus, God Save the Clientele, the band s third full-length proper, should be gracing audio-playing devices in April 2007.
This time around, however, as MacLean told Pitchfork today, the Clientele have some slightly more positive things to say.

It s a lot more cheerful. It s a lot more of a happy record. It s an upbeat record, a fun record.

Whereas the other records were very neurotic and depressed, I think.
, the Clientele s longtime U.S.

home, will deliver the new artifact, while the band haven t settled on a UK label. And although the tracklist has yet to be finalized, God Save the Clientele should include the telling These Days Nothing But Sunshine , Here Comes the Fountain , Wench on Victoria Street , The Dance After Hours , and Bookshop Casanova -- a disco number.
There s a groovy, disco song, which still sounds like the Clientele, according to MacLean.

I said to the people at Merge, This is going to make us millionaires. And they just laughed at me.
But we ll have to wait and see.

People were like, 'What the fuck is this? Why would I buy this? This is retarded people music!

' co-captain James Murphy is set to have a big 2007. His 2006 (and many of ours) was dominated by the release of a 45-minute, single-track exercise mix, , a with Nike that showed creativity and corporate sponsorship can happily co-exist in the pursuit of telling runners, shame on you.
On March 20, he ll release the second full-length, .

A European tour is also scheduled for March. And when he s not touring, he hopes to spend his free time recording new material. Murphy discussed his plans for the busy year with Pitchfork-- but not without also telling us about his approach to taste and how it affects his recording process, reading exercise blogs, and the commonalities between Prince and himself.

Pitchfork: How are you doing?
James Murphy: I m doing okay. I ve been having record company meetings.

It s been really interesting being on a major label because you have a Machiavellian idea of what goes on, and then you get involved in it and it s more like M*A*S*H.
Pitchfork: In what way?
JM: It s a little more slapstick.

If they were as Machiavellian as one would imagine, the music industry would be doing a lot better.
Pitchfork: So when you say Machiavellian, you mean that you thought they would be the Machiavellians, not that it would be you planning to take over the world?
JM: Exactly.

I prefer to be the Machiavellian in the room. I don t like other Machiavellis in the rooms. There s only room for one.

Pitchfork: So M*A*S*H was a nice surprise, then?
JM: It was good. It s really funny because it s just really banal and weird.

It s very surreal, because I m kind of a forward-moving person and they live in an actual industry reality. Every time we talk to people that work in the industry [or] in radio, they like my record. And I m like, Can we get them to play it?

And they remind me that, yes, the programmer likes it, but they won t play it. Radio here is a weird industry. They just play 11 songs, half of which are from the same band.

I was mulling over the concept of coming up with a campaign: wouldn titbefunnyifwecharted-dot-com. It would be so funny to chart. I want to ask people that are going to buy the record, If you are thinking about buying it, buy it this week.

[I can] sell the exact same amount of records. I just want to do it in a week. I think it would be so awesome and so weird and unsettling, instead of being like, This is how it works, and we know it sucks, actually doing something and making it work organically and not just be a mystery.

Not like, Oh, this is luck! No, this is not luck. We asked people who cared about music to go buy the record: If you re not going to buy it, fine.

I don t care. But if you are, go buy it that week, and see what happens.
Pitchfork: It s much less cynical that way.

JM: Exactly. I happen to be a very optimistic guy. [If I weren t] then I would be making horrendous big records with horrendous big people and buying houses.

But I can do that later.
Pitchfork: That s for the third record.
JM: Exactly, when I have no soul left and get a funny thin haircut with highlights and tell people how awesome I think they are.

Pitchfork: You could get a reality show, like LCD: Supernova .
JM: Dude, I m so there. It s called Bummer Road .

JM: It s just going to be a videotape in the bus, and everyone is going to be bummed out. And then there s Bummer Alley . I like the idea of needing hair and makeup to actually look like myself.

...

whoa, now that name s a blast from the past. According to the Pitchfork Time Machine, May 2005 was when we last heard from the Chicago punk/funk (or junkyard afro-new wave as our own Pete Macia ) party-starters. A whole year-and-a-half ago!

That s, like, a decade in internet time. Since then, Mahjongg have been laying low, but they haven t disappeared. In fact, they re gearing up for a busy 2007, working on their debut album for seminal indie label .

Recently, Pitchfork spoke with multi-instrumentalist about what he and his crew have been up to, including their signing to K. We are really excited to be on K, Husar said. It s the best possible situation we could find ourselves in.

Calvin [Johnson, K head honcho] is really nice. On a personal level, I found him to be an interesting guy. Husar said that he hopes to release a 7 in the spring on K, and then an album later in the year.

The 7 will feature the tracks Problems and Those Birds Are Bats ; so far, the only album track title being floated is Kottbusser Tor , named after a place in East Berlin where you get drugs, according to Husar. Not that he d know anything about that, right? No.

Nothing.
Like the endangered species from which he gets his name, Noah Lennox, does not hibernate. He s too busy chewing the bamboo shoots of musical creativity.

(Terrible analogy. Just terrible. I m sorry.

I ll stop now.) Although he and his band have laid relatively low in 2006, touring a bit and releasing just a smattering of tracks and a reissue, 2007 looks to be a blockbuster year for Lennox. In a recent interview, he updated Pitchfork on the status of Animal Collective s next album, the Animal Collective live box set, his own solo album, and many, many other projects.

Animal Collective s year will start off with the January 23 worldwide release of the People EP, previously available only on the band s just-wrapped Australian tour. , it features the tracks People , Tikwid , My Favorite Colors , and People (live) . Also in January, the band will begin recording the follow-up to 2005 s , at a studio in Tucson, Arizona.

Lennox said that they hope to release the album in the fall, but I couldn t say for sure. Although reluctant to reveal any potential song or album titles ( I have a feeling the other AC boys would be mad if I told you, just because we like to have the thing be new and fresh for everyone if we can ), he did say that there will be some songs on the album that we ve never played live. We wrote them and prepped them but consciously avoided playing them live so that they would be totally new for everyone on the album.

Brief tours of America and Europe are in the works for the spring of 2007. And speaking of Animal Collective in concert, Lennox offered an update about the AC : I m really psyched about it and I guess I can speak for all of us in that respect, he said. I don t know exactly when it will be released, as we re all being kind of relaxed about that part of it.

I guess we feel like the reissue just came out so it s no rush for us to get out another live recording type thing. But I imagine it will be done and out in the spring of next year, like May or something. It s going to be three LPs worth of jams: one side of our first New York shows and stuff from around the time, one side of acoustic jams (including some recordings from home-- most of us used to live together and we would play quite a bit just around the house after work and on the weekends), one side from around the time, one side of solo jams (I think this is mostly from shows that just Davey [Portner, aka ] or I did), one side of what we called The Pumpkin Trilogy which is a three-part jam from around the time between Danse Manatee and Here Comes the Indian (same time as the Hollinndagain tour), and one side of live .

Whew! Animal Collective are also working on a film project with director Danny Perez, the friend behind their video. Will it be Animal Collective s Purple Rain?

Or their Glitter? We ll find out soon..

.
We worked together for a while coming up with the scenes and parts and that sort of thing, Lennox said. Then this past September we started filming it.

Sometime in the next four months or so, after Danny s done editing all the footage, the AC will make the music for it.
One composes urbane indie-pop songs, the other is a Pushcart Prize-winning author who has written Sleater-Kinney s press bio and liner notes for Sufjan Stevens. (of Magnetic Fields, 6ths, Future Bible Heroes, and Gothic Archies fame) and (best known for 1994 s The Ice Storm) traded wits last night at the in New York City.

As part of the Y s November , the two sat down to talk about Merritt also performed three songs on his ukulele, including one from the Gothic Archies recently released , an accompaniment to Lemony Snicket s A Series of Unfortunate Events book series.
The song, Walking My Gargoyle , has only a tenuous connection to Snicket s stories, Merritt admitted. I have a Chihuahua which has gigantic, gargoyle-like ears, he said.

It s a song about the pleasure of walking your pet, but it s a gargoyle.
In a constant deadpan, Merritt downplayed the extent to which his other songs are autobiographical, however. I ve been wildly mischaracterized as saying none of my songs are autobiographical, when they are far too short to be, he explained.

Let s dance now -- is that autobiographical? I love you, baby -- is that autobiographical?
I couldn't breathe, and I really did think that was it.

I thought I was going to die. Biggest midget in the game wasn t simply getting random when she only a few songs into her November 15 gig in L.A.

Bawling hysterically and falling to the ground , according to one bystander, Sov was practically dragged offstage and forced to cancel the performance and two subsequent shows in Las Vegas and San Diego, much to the dismay of the emcee and her fans alike.
I honestly thought I was going to die, Lady Sovereign told Pitchfork last week.
And while Sov isn t all better yet, she was hell-bent on finishing the tour when we spoke to her.

I m going to power through [the remaining dates], regardless. If I kill myself, then my family s going to have to take all the money that I d make.
Sov disclosed all: What happened was, I was sick in San Francisco, and I did one of the most awful shows of my life.

And I probably totally fucked up San Francisco, but at least I did the show. So the next show is in L.A.

...

and I get on stage and three or four songs into it, it just felt like someone had got an ice pick and pounded it into my chest and heart. I couldn t breathe, and I really did think that was it. I thought I was going to die.

recently celebrated its tenth anniversary with the release of the Chrome Children and a subsequent . Label head Chris Manak, aka , will head out on the European leg of the anniversary trek with Aloe Blacc in December, but Pitchfork took advantage of his break to speak with him about the label s past, his hip-hop history, and giving advice to his artists when they struggle. Pitchfork: On the tenth anniversary tour you took to DJing using music videos.

How does that work? Do you mix the videos so that the footage bleeds together, or are there quick jumps?
Peanut Butter Wolf: They re just jumps, quick cuts, and the crossfader is hooked up to it, so when you go from left to right or vice versa, the video cuts to the other one as well.

But if you scratch back and forth, then the person [in the video] moves back and forth.
Pitchfork: So there is manipulation of the video going on?
PBW: Yeah, definitely.

It s difficult to try to re-train yourself, because with the videos you can either manually switch them or you can do it automatically. And [when you do it] manually, you can bring in the video afterward, like, have the audio playing for a little bit so someone will recognize a song and then go into the video. Or vice versa, you can bring the video in first while the other song is going on.

It gives you some extra stuff to think about.
Pitchfork: Would you ever release a DVD of this kind of stuff?
PBW: That s definitely something on the plate for me next year for the label.

And a lot of other people have been asking me to do stuff since I did this [tenth anniversary] tour. I think I m kind of the default go-to guy for people. They don t know who [else] does it, or maybe they just like what I did.

Our distributor asked me to do a DVD mix for them; they were going to do like 40,000 copies or something. I m [also] in talks with another company right now.
Pitchfork: Do you have a favorite era of hip hop videos?

PBW: Just the 80s, because that s when people started doing videos, and there were no rules at that point. There was no formula. Everybody was just experimenting.

Kieran Hebden remixing Thom Yorke, Arab Strap, Explosions in the Sky, Aluminium, working with Fridge, Steve Reid, Sunburned Hand of the Man gets around. The man also known as had quite a year in 2006, releasing the CD/DVD package (a companion to 2005 s ), a , a in the DJ-Kicks series, of collaboration with jazz drummer , and , as well as touring with and without Reid and remixing the likes of Jamie Lidell, ex-Cure keyboardist Roger O Donnell, and His Name Is Alive. As the year comes to a close, Hebden hasn t slowed down one bit.

Pitchfork caught up with the workaholic recently, and he filled us in on what he s been up to, when he s not slacking off and doing something counter-productive like eating or sleeping. Not surprisingly, Hebden has been steadily adding to his remix discography. He recently got his hands on the version of the White Stripes Forever for Her Is Over for Me , available as an from Rough Trade s brand new MP3 store, .

, Aluminium is avant garde orchestral versions of White Stripes songs, as envisioned by founder Richard Russell and composer/arranger Joby Talbot.
I m a huge fan of the White Stripes, Hebden said. Particularly the last album I really, really liked.

It was a nice thing to remix because the instrumentation was so diverse on it. Hebden just finished his take on s Atoms for Peace , though he has no idea what the release plan for that one is. His version of s first single, The First Big Weekend , is the B-side to the retiring Scottish band s final release, a 7 also featuring There Is No Ending .

It s out now on . Finally, , the Four Tet remix of s Catastrophe and the Cure , from their forthcoming album All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone, will be included on the bonus disc that comes with the limited edition deluxe version of that album. It s due out February 20 on .

They are really good friends of mine, Hebden said of EITS. It s one of those things that we always talked about but never got around to. It finally happened.

Once in a while, are forced to slow down for a moment and consider the present. And here in the present, the band has no UK label, having just been politely dumped by . The Sunderland four-piece served up this year s solid to UK audiences via the label, as well as their self-titled debut.

(It came out on / in America.) Now, with the young, sexy band back on the market, the question is: what next?
At the minute we haven t found a label, Futureheads vocalist/guitarist Barry Hyde told Pitchfork in an interview on Monday.

I suppose you could say we re in between labels.
Hyde doesn t seem terribly miffed by the split, which was ultimately at the label s discretion. Basically, [679] decided not to take us up on our options, for various reasons.

But I was pretty pleased, to be honest with you. I was kind of hoping that it would happen, because I would love for us to have a fresh start-- try it a different way with some different people, so we re all very excited about next year.
Hyde s reluctant to say the band s experience with the label has led him to desire a fresh start -- instead, according to him, it s the age-old it s-not-you-it s-me scenario: I suppose we weren t unhappy with the label [or] the people at the label.

We were just unhappy as a band, I suppose, during that period when we were on their label...

we did a lot of touring, and it was quite exhausting.
But Hyde admits, nonetheless, that he had higher hopes for the relationship with 679. These things are give and take, of course, and it seems the label slacked a bit on the giving end.

We made an album, News and Tributes, said Hyde, and we re really pleased with it. But we don t think that enough was done with it..

.they just seemed to kind of go quiet. And maybe they ve got lots of other things to think about, I m not sure.

Hyde added that things are cool with the Futureheads American mistress, StarTime/Vagrant. We re happy being with Vagrant in America. [The split is] just in the UK.

However, the band s American A R representative told Pitchfork in an e-mail yesterday afternoon that things aren t quite so simple. StarTime/Vagrant licensed News and Tributes from 679/Warners UK for release in North America, he said. It was not a direct signing of the artist.

As the Futureheads are no longer on 679/Warners UK, our contractual relationship with the band is (unfortunately) over as well.
Obviously, we love the band and would love the opportunity to keep working with them.
Since both Hyde and StarTime/Vagrant clearly still have feelings for one another, we sincerely hope they can work something out.

Updates on Jim Jones, Cam'ron, JR Writer, Freaky Zeeky, Juelz Santana has to be the most recognizable A R man in hip-hop. The magnate s name and likeness has graced countless mixtapes and two official compilation albums (2005 s More Than Music, Vol. 1 and this year s The Movement Moves On) and, in the grand tradition of Diddy and Dame Dash, he has a gift for rambunctious, revolutionary song On the phone with Pitchfork last week, he was a bit more reserved.

Currently, Duke is enjoying the success of his crew s clownish troublemaker, . The rapper s single We Fly High (a.k.

a. ) has been worked into an for Talking about the song s football tie-in, Duke said, That s just a connection between hip hop and sports. It s a universal word and everybody can relate to it-- especially if you re playing pro sports.

It s a beautiful thing. Speaking on the Jay beef, Duke was downright, er, diplomatic: We listenin , it s like studying the film of the other football team, he said. We ll let the streets Jones will keep things moving this holiday season with , which will surely stand tall next to Bing and Frank on mom s three-disc stereo system come dinnertime.

Track titles for the album include If Everyday Was X-Mas, Ballin on X-Mas , Citing Run DMC s classic Christmas in Hollis as a reference, Duke actually kind of played down the epic release. There are gonna be little Christmas melodies on the songs, you know, he said. Graham Coxon Talks Love, Blur, Milky
That's pretty gross, isn't it?

Being called Milky? Weird. Beginning during his tenure with and continuing since his messy departure from the band in 2002, guitarist has mounted a fairly successful solo career, spanning six full-length albums and counting.

His latest, the solid Love Travels at Illegal Speeds, hit UK shops back in March and landed Stateside just last week via .