So what do you think? Could one of the shots from the .gif end up being the real album cover, or is it actually a sneak peak from a music video for one of the songs from the album? We know that they have shot a video for Your Life Is A Lie, directed by Tom Kuntz, and were scheduled to shoot a video for Cool Song No. 2 this summer.

MGMT’s third album, the self-titled MGMT, is set to be released on September 17th, 2013.

Hello guys, straight to our first question. Where did the name Jirapah come from?

Ken (K) : Hello, hello hello (imitating a phone gesture), actually the name Jirapah came from our dearest friend who used to call me “Jirapah” because of my height. Well, me and Mar loves the idea of using the name, so, that’s where the name “Jirapah” came from. Pretty simple, isn’t it?

Yup, it was pretty simple. So could you tell us more about how you guys met?

K : Oh okay, so, I met Mar a long time ago, we used to date each other for a very long time during our days in New York, and uhm, I met Jan right during my first gig back in Indonesia. Jan was hitting on me (laughing) and we found out that we shared a lot of things in common, such as our love of Hardcore music, Classic hip-hop and Japanese Noise bands. I’ve met Yudhis during one of my gigs at Treehouse, Kemang. Jan and Yudhis are playing in a same band, Vague, and at that time, Jan asked Yudhis to catch my performance. And Nico, He used to work as a graphic designer at Whiteboard Journal, same place where I work. At first, he was a roadie, and then we asked him to play bass. We’ve been playing together since then.

For Ken, what is the difference between being in a one-man band and a full formation like this one?

K: Actually, I’ve never played as a one-man band. Well, maybe once or twice back in New York. But yeah you could call me a one-man band when it comes to recording. But back in my NY days, Mar and some of our colleagues used to help me play on stage. So yeah, I love playing with other people, especially my friends. I think I’d never hire someone to play with me (laughing).

What is the difference between New York’s scene and Jakarta’s? Is there anything that Jakarta’s scene doesn’t have? (Being compared to NY one)

Well, because of cultural differences, we can’t say that Jakarta’s scene is not as good as New York ones. Every scene has its own signature. But there are some pros in the New York scene such as massive amount of venues and good infrastructure. But it doesn’t mean our local scene doesn’t have an adequate number of venues. Well, we can take Keuken Bandung as an example. They have transformed an empty warehouse to become a good place to play. Well, that is why we think our local scene is not inferior to a scene in New York.

Well, could you tell us a bit about the story behind one of your song, Alexander?

Um, back in New York, there’s this French guy named Jacques who was a frequent customer at the place where Mariati used to work. He used to be a famous actor back in his homeland. But he decided to throw it all away and start a life in New York. Despite the fact that he’s not young anymore, he decided to start everything from scratch again.  Personally, I think his story is a one hell of a good story to tell. So that’s why I wrote “Alexander”.

Since you’re in Bandung, What is your favorite Bandung-based band?
M: Mocca
K: Sigmun
Y,J: Sloth
N: Pure Saturday

Okay, this is my last question. Is there any plans to release a physical album/EPs somewhere in the future?

Yeah, we have planned to release a physical album since a long time ago. But, right now all of us are in the condition where our life outside music is much important than our band. But still, there are some plans to drop a physical release of our album. If we ought to make a full-length album, It has to be a well prepared one. I’d rather have an album with a good concept from start to finish instead of a compilation of our songs that we’ve created. But yeah, there is a plan to release a 7-inch vinyl with our friend from Orange Cliff Records. So, wait for it, we hope we could drop it as soon as possible.

Okay Jirapah, thank you for coming to Bandung. I hope that you guys are enjoying Keuken Bandung as much as I do.

Yeah, we hope that we don’t have to encounter a technical difficulty tonight and we could entertain our friends in Bandung. And, our pals, Bergaz is also DJ-ing tonight. I hope you could catch him later on.

If you want to hear the raw vocals and raw musics that the New Yorkers have on their first album, you’ll totally miss them out on Mosquito, as Karen O said to NME “So much feeling went into this record, it was the rope ladder thrown down into the ditch for us to climb up and dust ourselves off.” This fourth album actually gives you the second version of ‘It’s Blitz!’. The first track of this song is ‘Sacrilege’, it tells about a love story, well, we don’t want to discuss about the materials and the meanings of this song, but what is really interesting is Karen O’s idea to add gospel choirs at the end of the song, which gives a sacred-like ambiance or more religious’ point of view. For the next track, ‘Subway’, gives a gloomy with a sound of a subway train. The fact that Karen O wrote this song because she thinks the band should have a song that describes about New York, is not really delivering the point of the song. ‘Mosquito’ is probably the song that will be the band’s opener for their upcoming concerts, the song is really pumping, not as pumping as ‘Date With The Night’ or ‘Tick’, but if you are looking for the song that you’d like to karaoke for, this song will fit you most. Their ‘Under The Earth’ is our next favourite, it’s full with the heavy drums, and eventhough it sounds dark (or not so dark). ‘Area 52’ is the bomb! We’ll say that because this song is the closest one to the raw Yeah Yeah Yeahs, plus to confirm about the raw-ness of Area 52, Karen O confessed that this song has the roughest lyrics (after ‘Art Star’), it also has the best Nick’s riff in this album (there you go for those who scream a Fever To Tell-ish song!). Area 52 is obviously the song that has the richest materials among the other tracks. Their songs like ‘Despair’ and ‘Wedding Song’ are some of the song that show the genius part of the band’s musicality.

The fourth album is just different, it gives the different side of the band, intriguing and also less crazier. Most of the tracks offer dark and low tunes, and even for ‘Buried Alive’ features DrOctagon, the guest rap for the song. It’s just different. Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ three previous albums got nominated for Grammys, we were expecting the fourth would be the goal of the band to score the triumph, but after ripping the album, we are quite doubt this album will even be nominated. However, Yeah Yeah Yeahs are on their transition way, this album is just not their strongest work. Yeah Yeah Yeahs are not the party-punks anymore, the songs in ‘Mosquito’ are not the songs that will make Karen do some crazy stage acts, it’s the mature Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

Mosquito :

The band’s musical architect, aesthetic director, and also producer, Rostam Batmanglij said on his twitter page that “It is a good time to tell you I think it’s our best record“. With help from Ariel Rechtshaid as co-producer, Batmanglij and Rechtshaid successfully built the ‘dark’ character on this album and made it to be their best record. If you listen the song ‘Hudson‘ and look at the album’s cover, it’s an art photograph taken by Neal Boenzi for The New York Times on November 24th 1966, you can easily feel the ambiance of the tunes.

Photo by: Alex John Beck

Batmanglij and Koenig started writing materials for their third album right after they finished ‘Contra‘ tour in 2010. The band’s drummer, Chris Tomson helped them writing ‘Hannah Hunt‘, a song about Koenig’s classmates in college. After all the material wrapped up the band who just performed on Saturday Night Live last Saturday (11/6) began to record the album at L.A.’s Vox Studio.

Speaking of the whole album we can assume that it is different than the two previous albums. You can see the preppy Ivy Leagues grads have become more mature in every songs both for musics and lyrics. But you still can feel their unique characteristic. Like in ‘Diane Young‘ or ‘Dyin’ Young‘, ‘Unbelievers‘, ‘Finger Back‘ and ‘Worship You‘ you can still jumping around and dance your ass off (just like what you do when you listen to the songs on their previous albums). In the last track ‘Young Lion‘ you can hear Batmanglij’s tender voice because this song is written and sung by him.

The actor and director Steve Buscemi, who directed Vampire Weekend American Express Music Unstaged at Roseland Ballroom, said, “What I love about them is that you can either just get off on the musicality of it or go deeper.” and we couldn’t agree more with him.

]]> http://www.svanapaper.com/the-modern-tunes-from-vampire-weekend/feed/ 0 http://www.svanapaper.com/the-next-big-thing-parquet-courts/ http://www.svanapaper.com/the-next-big-thing-parquet-courts/#comments Sat, 04 May 2013 06:03:26 +0000 Alcander Alonzo http://www.svanapaper.com/?p=4122 From the Big Apple comes a big talent, Parquet Courts. The band consist of Andrew..]]>

Photo by: Matt Ellis/Spin

Earlier this week, the four-piece Columbia alumni held a concert directed by Steve Buscemi for American Express Music Unstaged at Roseland Ballroom, New York City, where they finally played the newest song from MVOTC Obvious Bicycle for the first time. It was also the first time we saw Ezra Koenig sang without his Epiphone Sheraton II/Rickenbacker 330. According to Rostam Batmanglij’s interview with NPR regarding Obvious Bicycle, “This song is interesting because it evolved. It started with a very hectic drum beat that I made, and that inspired me to play piano, and I just played these simple piano chords that came very quickly. I was listening Plastic Ono Band, the John Lennon album a lot, and that might have had some inspiration on me.” Their most recent track is obviously different than the other Vampire Weekend’s song. Also in this interview they leaked a short clip of ‘Hudson‘, another track from the new album.

Last night the band performed ten songs during a live session at Maida Vale Studios for BBC Radio 1′s Zane Lowe and they played all the six new songs. This is the set list and times: Diane Young – 00:48 | interview – 3:44 | Holiday – 8:04 | White Sky – 10:21 | Obvious Bicycle – 13:38 | Shots/Everlasting Arms – 18:05 | Step – 22:28 | Ya Hey – 26:56 | Diplomat’s Son – 32:28 | Unbelievers – 38:56 | Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa – 43:13 | A-Punk – 46:57 | Diane Young (encore) – 51:18.

The story when we discovered about Brandon Rowan was pretty much a spontaneous thing. It started when we saw a video “Everyday Things You Never Knew Had Name” by Buzzfeed on Youtube. The video (and its content) is pretty interesting, but what really caught us is the music. Luckily, Buzzfeed put some credit about the music so we can easily track the producer of the very catchy tunes. When we checked out his page on soundcloud.com, we were pulled to some dimension where it took us to the Urbanity atmosphere. So, we decided to do an interview and try to dig more about him.

Can you tell me about how did You end up being picked by buzzfeed?

Sure. To be honest, I don’t really know. I woke up one day two weeks ago with a well-above-average number of new subscribers and plays on my Soundcloud profile. I shrugged it off and figured that my profile got linked on some blog somewhere. I didn’t really think twice about it. But the next day it grew even more, so I Googled myself and found a link to the Buzzfeed video. They hadn’t asked my permission or even notified me at all, and they still have made no contact with me. And they’ve used three of my songs now, in just under three weeks. Well, at the same time, they credited me very officially, and linked to each of the songs.

How long have you been doing this?

Well, I’ve been producing since my senior year of high school, so about 2 years. But I only really started doing hip hop last spring. before that I was just experimenting and getting to know the program I use- Logic Pro 9 – without any clear sort of goal.

Have you tried to promote your music before? (I mean beside on souncloud), Like sending them to some club or lounge there? or?

Nothing very public. I’ve sent my EPs to blogs before, but I know I still have a lot of work to produce before I start “shopping” beats. But what I’ve recently been doing is making beats exclusively for some rappers – pretty well-respected and locally famous ones – and hoping that they’ll also be a great platform for getting some publicity/promotion.  So I’m going the producing-beats-for-others route for the time being. I like doing that because it’s not only a good way to get my name out there, but also because I can form some sort of an artistic alliance with the rappers I’ve been working with. If there’s a mutual respect/appreciation for one another’s music, it can lead the way to a serious working relationship, which is something I’m aiming for.

So NYC has influenced most of your work?

Definitely. All the music on my soundcloud (all the music that’s public) was made within the last year, and this is nearing the end of my second school year in NYC. Originally I’m from New Jersey, but I always dreamed of going to school in the city. Even when living out in the suburban areas of New Jersey (actually closer to Philadelphia) the vibe of the city always enticed me and inspired my music.

I can say that all is pretty much about the urban stuffs? are you trying to explore on another thing? Or actually those tracks have their own meaning?

It’s not necessarily about ‘meaning’ per se. For me, it’s about imagery and ‘vibe.’ I know it’s very hard to define those terms, but I want my music to subtextually convey images of urban life. Meaning is ultimately left up to the listener – I don’t want to impose any sort of strict interpretation of my music. It’s fairly unobtrusive, and I like that. But at the moment I’m all about urbanity.

What actually brought you to urbanity stuffs? Tv series? the city culture?

You know, I’m not really sure. I know that TV and the general hype surrounding the whole “Bright Lights, Big City” idea probably factored into it. I think I’m more fascinated by the concept of living in close proximity to millions of other people, because where I grew up was very spread out and I lived in the woods. There was farmland everywhere, and it was somewhat boring. I always had so much fun every time I visited the city, and I think it probably grew from my desire to be around people all the time, to be in a place where art and professionalism thrive, not just a place where there are horse farms everywhere.

Any ritual or stuffs that you do in finding the inspiration? like walking on a pedestrian walkway or nightwalking

I definitely love walking around at night. It’s a very thought-provoking process for me. I don’t really do it as a ritual though–I walk all over the city just to get from place to place. But I’m always looking around as I am, appreciating everything around me. It’s really special to be able to live here. Every once in a while, I’ll stumble upon a scene that really strikes me. Like emerging from the subway and seeing that the city is covered in snow, and it’s quiet… that’s beautiful. And I got a lot of that this winter. But it’s not a specific correlation – I don’t have an experience and then produce a song about it. I feel that my songs are rather reflections of my personality and of all the things I love, but it’s very subconscious. Each song represents a different shade of who I am and what I love, but not necessarily on purpose. It just happens.

What does “stay gold” represent you as?

That’s the thing, I don’t really know. It’s a very interesting song, I think. It combines a lot of happiness with this really melancholy sort of tone. And since I work with samples of other artists’ work, and rearrange them into new musical ideas, each song I make is dependent on the songs I choose to sample. but that’s a different story.

Did you conclude that stay gold is pretty much a spontaneous work?

In a sense, yes. Every song I make comes from small samples of other artists’ songs rearranged into new musical ideas and new textures. If you listen to the original song that I sampled in “stay gold,” it sounds nothing like my song. And the process by which that comes about it somewhat random, and somewhat based on chance, and somewhat based in my own musical sensibilities. So it’s a combination of spontaneity and my musical influences at work.

Let’s talk about the music scene in NYC.  how is the hip hop scene in NY?

Hip-hop is not bad, it’s still popular in brooklyn and the bronx. There’s a deep appreciation for the history of the genre here, as it started in the south bronx. The indie hip hop is fantastic, I think, but it’s not easy to find necessarily and it’s not a huge crowd, at least from what I’ve seen

Have you tried to do a remix version of some well known song?

Oh wow, that’s a big deal. No, I haven’t really done many remixes. There’s one on my soundcloud, but it’s not a very well-known song and I made it for a beat battle (like a battle of the bands but for producers) in Brooklyn a few weeks ago, which I won. It was very exciting. But for now, no remixes. I just sample and make new arrangements, which is similar, but not the same process.

What’s your long term goal? do you consider being featured on buzzfeed as one of the nicest accomplishment that you have ever got so far?

Well, yes and no. My long term goal is to be able to make a living making my own music for myself as an artist and for others. I’m a producer first and foremost, and I love collaborating as much as I love making my own music. The Buzzfeed videos are a cool thing to brag about, but I think that getting a few of my beats placed with some very prominent NYC rappers is the biggest achievement so far.

Anyway, who is your currently favourite musician?

I really like Flying Lotus, he inspires a lot of my music. Bonobo is excellent, so is Nujabes (RIP). I think those three are probably my favorite/biggest influences.

Well,any message that you wanna deliver to people who listen to ur work?

I guess just let the music speak for itself.

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If you’d like to listen to more of his work, you can easily check them out on his soundcloud page below :

The story of how this duo was formed is simply caused by an unfinished project. MS (Lizzie Plapinger) and MR (Max Hershenow) were a friend but were not a close friend. In college years, Max was a producer for a band which had not even started or even close to that word. And as they graduated. The project turned out into ashes. Later then, having a fiery skill to produce a music, Max e-mailed Lizzie and asked her (Lizzie runs a record label called Neon Gold Records) for an artist that he could develope. So Lizzie, who happened as an artist too, decided to work with him and develope music together. The reason of why they decided to be quite anonymous. Because they want their music to be judged fairly and easing the subjective opinion from the listeners. Since Lizzie is being well known in the industry.

The chillwave/glitch-pop/gloom rock tunes from MS MR will be easily received by Florence + The Machine’s fan or Lana Del Rey’s. Quoted from Pitchfork “A little more sashay and they’d be Poliça; more rapture and they’d be Florence; throw in some trolling and they’d be Lana (Del Rey).”. The duo have released their E.P titled “Candy Bar Creep Show” on September 14 2012. And it was released via Tumblr. The ep consists of four tracks, they are “Bones”, “Hurricane”, “Dark Doo Woop”, and “Ash Tree Lane”. Their debut single “Hurricane” get good critics from the reviewers and complimented that the song has the enchanting vintage sound. Their latest single , “Fantasy”, which was released on February 4^th 2013 has received more that 500.000 views and mainly giving a good feedback. The duo’s full album (and also debut) will be released on May 14 2013 with a title “Second Hand Rapture”. Who says that Tumblr can only give you unique pictures with acid colours on it? It can give you a good music too.

After performing two new songs “Diane Young” and “Ya Hey” from their new forthcoming album, Modern Vampires at SXSW, Vampire Weekend finally released their official “Diane Young” music video which apperently was only about burning car with a background of New York skyline and “Step” which basically a lyrics video with New York city daily life as the background. They must’ve been very proud of their Yankee roots, huh?

Well, anyway based on their official web, the album itself will be out May 7 in the U.S. and May 6 in the U.K. via XL Recordings. Through this song, we can clearly hear that they are trying to expand their range of music with more of jazz and soul vibe, but off course without deleting their own charachteristic. So what do  you think about their new songs?

Have you heard about Ra Ra Riot latest album, Beta Love? Well if you haven’t, you really have to check it out as they share it from their channel only for this week.

Who are they? Are you sure, you named yourself music enthustiastic but haven’t heard about Ra Ra Riot before? This is the sample of what New York has turns an indie band into too-much-productive-and-having-a-good-time band.  RRR was fromed in early 2006, and as a young musicians they gained lots of good feedback from their performances in such early age (ok I probably shouldn’t talk as if I was an lame old jerk writer), but anyway, after the ups and downs they released their EP on the following year through Rebel Group label, and signed with major label V2 Records and released A/B single on 7″ vinyl record “Dying is Fine” and “Each is Fine”, and later on 2008 they released their debut LP and their debut album “The Rhumb Line” through Barsud Records, which their music video “Can You Tel” won best music video in 2009 Finger Lakes Film Festival. In 2010, as they were based on the best indie bands could ever be, they collaborate with other Indie musicians such as Chris Walla (DCFC) and Rostam Batmaglij (Vampire Weekend) for their second album “The Orchard”. Their loveable pop rock music then became more famous as the songs were featured on many comercial and tv shows.

So how’s this latest album goes? The band’s third studio album “Beta Love” is set to be released on January 22, 2013, but it will aslo be the band’s first studio album since the departure of cellist Alexandra Lawn. Basically this album was so much fun, you want to use it in your summer party album. Even tough it was pretty much a new set of music style than their previous baroque pop sound, but it still have the magic to make you move. Their first song “Dance With Me” is so much fun you just want to repeat it over and over, the next song “Binary Mind” is the perfect song you want to use to forget your ex and just be happy for your life right now. Maybe “Beta Love” will be their single , and it does deserve to be a single, as it was the perfect combination of a urban city theme soundtrack but less hyper fun. Slower tunes can be found on “Is It Too Much”, ”When I Dream” and “For Once” which I can imagine it will be use when the band have to take a rest from their attractive act during their live performance, it’s a nice songs though. I also like “Angel Please” which it reminds me a little of Passion Pit but less high pitched vocal. “Wilderness” is a bit like Hurts kinda theme songs but less sad. “What Do I Do” and “I Shut Off” are another songs you can basically use for any situation. You know, listening to this album just reminds me of either it’s gonna be bad or good feedback they will receive next Tuesday, this album will remains as the perfect soundtrack for everyone who wants a happier day.

So, what are you waiting for? Stream “Beta Love” NOW  before you have to pay for it :p (but if you love it, make sure you buy it!)