Tagged with bon iver

Watch: Bon Iver Live On Saturday Night Live

This past Friday night, Justin Vernon and his fellow Bon Iver bandmates made an appearance on Saturday Night Live to perform two tracks from their fantastic 2011 record Bon Iver, Bon Iver, one of our favorite records of last year. As expected, the band launched directly into the ethereal, Grammy-nominated “Holocene”, but then surprised the audience when they began playing the opening notes to the highly-divisive, cheese-filled “Beth/Rest”. Personally, my favorite version of the song is still the solo piano version Justin did for NPR World Cafe, which you can listen to right here. Be sure to check out the videos from SNL below.

“Holocene”:

“Beth/Rest”:

Listen: Flaming Lips & Erykah Badu – “Now I Understand”

The Flaming Lips and Erykah Badu have worked together to create the song, “Now I Understand”. The band’s description of the song in Soundcloud is “Sound construction piece featuring Lips, Erykah Badu, Siri, and Biz Markie backwards. It’s called “Now I Understand” It’s funny and will be available on SoundCloud for one week only!!! Life is beautiful. Music gets you high.” The song also features sampled vocals from Apple’s Siri. This collaboration is a part of a huge compilation album that the Flaming Lips plan to release on Record Store Day. The Flaming Lips plan to collaborate with Nick Cave, Neon Indian, Yoko Ono and Bon Iver. Frontman, Wayne Coyne, also hopes to work with Lykke Li and Ke$ha.

‘Bon Iver, Bon Iver’ Gets Digital Re-Release

Bon Iver‘s critically acclaimed self-titled LP will be getting the re-release treatment on November 29th. The 10 track album will be released digitally on iTunes via Jagjaguwar and does not actually include any new songs. The caveat is that the re-release includes 10 short films, one for each of the album’s tracks. From the press release:

“Comprised of individual visual works that both complement and enrich the audio on the album, the video accompaniment was in itself another year in the making. Featuring work by Dan Huiting, Isaac Gale, David Jensen, JoLynn Garnes and Justin Vernon, the video work is meant to be consumed as a visual extension of the music, to enhance each listener’s experience with one of the year’s most acclaimed albums. While not music videos per se, these visual accompaniments are striking in their distinctive atmosphere, and compelling works in their own right.”

After the break, you can check out a 47 second long trailer. Powerful and deeply moving imagery combined with ethereal music from Justin Vernon and co. – what more do you want?

Bon Iver Wins Q Award, Discusses Future Collaborations

Q Magazine dished out honors yesterday for its Q Awards, in which Bon Iver received a well-deserved award for “Best New Album”. After receiving the award, Vernon discussed his recent collaborations with Kanye West and James Blake, stating that they were “awesome” and hinting that there was more to come. On his recent collaboration with Blake, Vernon stated that the two were “mutual fans”, that “it became pretty obvious” that the two should work together, and that the two would be doing “a lot in the future”. Check out Darcy’s review of the new Bon Iver album right here and click read more to check out the short interview with Q Magazine. You can also watch Bon Iver perform on BBC’s Later with Jools Holland (via P4K).

Other award winners include Coldplay with “Best Act in the World Today”, WU LYF with “Best New Act”, Lana Del Rey with “Next Big Thing”, and Snow Patrol with a peculiar “Best Classic Song” award.

Interview: Phil The Thrill

My favorite thing about talking to artists is just hearing how humble they really are and how much work they’re putting in to achieve their dreams. Hard work definitely does pay off. So last week, I was extremely fortunate to speak to an up-and-coming rapper from Virginia named Phil The Thrill, who has been releasing an EP a month for the past five months, garnering attention from XXL Magazine and SmokingSection.com. On October 25th, Phil will be concluding the series with a full-length mixtape entitled Barely Awake, which you can preview here.

Check out my full interview with Phil below.

Hey Phil, what’s up? How’s it going?

Phil The Thrill: Good, good, good.

I’ve just been reading about Steve Jobs. Man, that’s terrible.

Phil The Thrill: Crazy, crazy. I mean, they knew it was gonna happen eventually, but it was just all of a sudden it seems like.

Yeah… ah, the man’s a genius. So I hear you’re 22 years old and from Newport News, Virginia, is that correct?

Phil The Thrill: Yessir.

Actually, where have I heard of that place from? Is that…Michael Vick’s hometown?

Phil The Thrill: Yeah, yeah. Michael Vick, Allen Iverson.

Oh, okay. How’s the music scene there?

Phil The Thrill: It’s… pretty scattered. This area is known as Hampton Roads, the 757. I’m not sure how familiar you are with this part of Virginia but Missy‘s from here, Timbaland‘s from here, Pharrell‘s from here,The Clipse are from here. So yeah, we have a pretty crazy rich tradition as far as music goes. It just seems like they’ll move away and you know, it’s hard to really get them back to reach out to artists that are coming up now. But as far as tradition goes, we’re definitely on the map when it comes to music, period. And then 45 minutes up the road is where Trey Songz and Chris Brown are from.

Man, that’s nice.

Phil The Thrill: Yeah, man, it’s crazy.

So where did your rapper name, Phil The Thrill, originate?

Phil The Thrill: It’s actually been a name that’s stuck with me. It’s actually been my nickname since I was around twelve years old. I was an athlete playing basketball and football and you know, when little nicknames happen to you when you’re a kid… they’d just be like “Oh, Phil The Thrill!” It sticks and through high school, when everyone would have AIM screennames, I was like lemme use my nickname. It stuck with me then and when I went on to play college basketball, it stuck with me there. So it became my Twitter name and once it sticks, I’m not going to try to change that just because I’m doing music. It’s my nickname and what people know me as. Continue reading →