Luke Yocum update

I've just received word from Arcade Fire's management that my previous post about Luke Yocum doing Arcade Fire's new album art is "completely false". I'm sorry if anyone feels misled, I was just passing on the info Luke Yocum himself put out on his twitter and facebook.

Don't think Luke Yocum and I will be having a cup of tea together anytime soon...

Stream the new The Knife album!

Tomorrow, In A Year

Now that you've been mindblown, go and download the album over at theknife.net.

Oh happy day!

Un! Deux! Trois! Dis: Miroir Noir - Black Mirror!

Tracy Maurice, who made this music video for Arcade Fire, put it up on Vimeo the other week here. The song has been stuck in my head ever since. Really like the creepy video also.The awesome interactive version can ofcourse still be found over at rorriMkcalB.com

Arcade Fire Haiti Benefit Posters

Came across this last night. Nice gesture from Arcade Fire.

ARCADE FIRE HAITI BENEFIT

Some of you may know about Arcade Fire’s long relationship with the country of Haiti. The group’s co-founder Régine Chassagne’s family emigrated from Haiti before she was born in Canada and her Haitian heritage shines through in songs such as “Haiti” and in the group’s ongoing efforts to support non-profit organizations working in Haiti.

We dug through our archives and were able to dig up some extra copies from the original run of Arcade Fire Spring 2007. We will be selling twenty (20) complete sets of the four posters this Thursday at 2pm. All proceeds will be donated to Partners in Health, Arcade Fire’s preferred charity organization.

The prints will be sold in complete sets of four.
We are unable to offer matching numbers.

$120 + $10 shipping US / $20 international at Burlesque Design
If you would like to make a direct donation to Partners in Health, you can do that right here.

Scratch My Back bonus disc

Peter Gabriel will release a Special Edition of his Scratch My Back album that comes with a bonus disc. On it is an alternate version of My Body Is A Cage. Full tracklisting for the bonus disc as follows:

1. 'The Book of Love' (Remix)
2. 'My Body is a Cage' (Oxford London Temple Version)
3. 'Waterloo Sunset' (Oxford London Temple Version)
4. 'Heroes' (Wildbeest Mix)

Might be worth checking out if you like the album version he did.

It's also been confirmed that each month during 2010 a 'double A-side' will be released from the project on the iTunes Store. One song taken from Peter Gabriel's covers and the other a song from one of the artists covering a Peter Gabriel song (you remember this is a song swap project, right? I'll cover you, you'll cover me - that sort of thing). First out is Gabriel's cover of The Magnetic Fields 'The Book of Love', the flip side will be Stephin Merritt's (The Magnetic Fields) cover of 'Not One of Us'. I wonder which Peter Gabriel song Arcade Fire will cover.

Peter Gabriel - My Body Is A Cage

I have to say the song sounded to me much more promising from that preview. I can't find a way into this version. Maybe in time I will. Anyway, you can also stream it over at Stereogum and read a bit about what Peter Gabriel thinks about Arcade Fire and some other bits and pieces surrounding the Scratch My Back album.

Peter Gabriel covers Arcade Fire (Stereogum Premiere)

Heartland

Owen Pallett's latest album is by far his most consistently amazing recording to date. There's not an average song on Heartland. It's pretty much all I'm listening to - along with Joanna Newsom's The Milk-Eyed Mender. If any album will be better than Heartland this year it has to be something truly remarkable *cough*Arcade Fire*cough*. At the minute I'm particularly awestruck on "Lewis Takes Off His Shirt" and "Keep The Dog Quiet", but ask me again in a few and I'll surely name two other songs. Can't recommend Heartland enough. So with that said, listen to the entire album belooooow. I dare say you won't regret it.

Arcade Fire are taking licensing requests

Bank Robber Music just announced the following via their twitter.

**Arcade Fire are taking licensing requests for the next 10 days with proceeds going to Haiti relief org., Partners In Health. Hit us up!**

This is the first time Arcade Fire have publicly stated they'll consider offers to use their music in movies, films, tv series etc etc. But as stated above, only for the next 10 days and only to help raise money to Partners In Health so they can continue their tremendous work in Haiti following last week's devastating earthquake.

Win in the latest issue of Rolling Stone

Arcade Fire's Anthems for a New Generation: Win Butler Q&A

Régine talks to BBC News Hour

Arcade Fire's ever-amazing Régine Chassagne talks to BBC News Hour about Haiti and the incredible work Partners In Health do in the extremely poor country.

[MP3] Régine Chassagne - talks about Haiti and Partners In Health

www.StandWithHaiti.org/Haiti

Somewhere in my heart, it's the end of the world

Régine Chassagne writes in today's the Guardian about Haiti. I can't find the words to describe how disheartened I feel having just minutes ago read it so I'll let the article speak well and truly for itself.

I let out a cry, as if I'd heard everybody I loved had died
In a moving response to the earthquake, a Haitian singer demands that her homeland isn't once again abandoned by the west

Régine Chassagne
The Observer, Sunday 17 January 2010

Somewhere in my heart, it's the end of the world.

These days, nothing is funny. I am mourning people I know. People I don't know. People who are still trapped under rubble and won't be rescued in time. I can't help it.

Everybody I talk to says the same thing: time has stopped.

Simultaneously, time is at work. Sneakily passing through the cracks, taking the lives of survivors away, one by one.

Diaspora overloads the satellites. Calling families, friends of families, family friends. Did you know about George et Mireille? Have you heard about Alix, Michaelle etc, etc? But I know that my personal anguish is small compared to the overwhelming reality of what is going on down there.

When it happened I was at home in Montreal, safe and cosy, surfing the internet, half randomly, like millions of westerners. Breaking news: 7.0 earthquake hits Haiti near Port-au-Prince.

Such emotion came over me. My breath stopped. My heart sank and went straight into panic mode. I knew right away that the whole city is in no way built to resist this kind of assault and that this meant that thousands were under rubble. I saw it straight away.

I ran downstairs and turned on the television. It was true. Tears came rushing right to my eyes and I let out a cry, as if I had just heard that everybody I love had died. The reality, unfortunately, is much worse. Although everything around me is peaceful, I have been in an internal state of emergency for days. My house is quiet, but I forget to eat (food is tasteless). I forget to sleep. I'm on the phone, on email, non-stop. I'm nearly not moving, but my pulse is still fast. I forget who I talked to and who I told what. I leave the house without my bag, my keys. I cannot rest.

I grew up with parents who escaped during the brutal years of the Papa Doc regime. My grandfather was taken by the Tonton Macoutes and it was 10 years before my father finally learnt he had been killed. My mother and her sister returned home from the market to find their cousins and friends murdered. She found herself on her knees in front of the Dominican embassy begging for her life in broken Spanish. Growing up, I absorbed those stories, heard a new version every year; adults around the dinner table speaking in creole about poor Haiti.

When I was growing up, we never had the money to return. Even if we had, my mother never could go back. Until she died, she would have nightmares about people coming to "take her away". My mum passed away before she could meet my future husband, or see our band perform and start to have success, and though I have dreamed of her dancing to my music, I know she would have been very worried to hear that I was travelling to Haiti for the first time last year.

It is strange that I was introduced to my country by a white doctor from Florida called Paul Farmer who speaks perfect Creole and knows how to pronounce my name right. He is the co-founder of an organisation titled Partners in Health (Zanmi Lasante in Creole). There are several charity organisations that are doing good work in Haiti – Fonkoze is a great micro-lending organisation – but in terms of thorough medical care, follow-up and combining of parallel necessary services (education, sanitation, training, water, agriculture), there is none that I could ­recommend more than Partners in Health. It takes its work for the Haitian people very seriously and, indeed, most of the staff on the ground are Haitian. PIH has been serving the poorest of the poor for more than 20 years with a ­curriculum that really astounded me, given the limited resources available in the area.

Visiting its facilities, I was overwhelmed by, and impressed with, the high-level, top-quality services provided in areas where people own next to nothing and were never given the opportunity to learn how to sign their own name. I was delightfully shocked to see the radically positive impact it has had in the communities it serves. Of course, during my visit, I saw some clinics and hospitals that were at different stages than others, but through it all, I could clearly see that PIH staff are very resourceful and set the bar extremely high for themselves. I know that, right now, they are using their full ­capacities to save as many lives as possible.

So in these critical times where death comes every minute, I urge you to donate to Partners in Health (www.pih.org) and be as generous as you can. I know from having talked to some staff that they are on the ground right now, setting up and managing field hospitals as well as receiving the injured at their clinics in the surrounding areas.

I realise that by the time you read this it will be Sunday. The cries will have died out and few miracles will remain possible. But the suffering survivors should not be abandoned and should be treated with the best care countries like ours can offer.

Many Haitians expect to be let down. History shows they are right to feel that way. Haitians know that they have been wronged many, many times. What we are seeing on the news right now is more than a natural disaster. This earthquake has torn away the veil and revealed the crushing poverty that has been allowed by the west's centuries of disregard. That we must respond with a substantial emergency effort is beyond argument, but in the aftermath, Haiti must be rebuilt.

Ultimately, we need to treat Haiti with compassion and respect and make sure that the country gets back on its feet once and for all. Haiti's independence from France more than two centuries ago should be thought of as one of the most remarkable tales of ­freedom; instead, she was brought to her knees by the French and forced to pay a debt for the value of the lost colony (including the value of the slaves: the equivalent of $21bn by current calculations). We cannot ­overestimate the strength and resilience of the brave people living in this country whose ancestors had to buy their own bodies back.

The west has funded truly corrupt governments in the past.

Right now, in Haiti, there is a democratically elected government.

Impossibly weak, but standing.

This is the moment where we need to show our best support and solidarity.

Since Haiti shook and crumbled, I feel as if something has collapsed over my head, too. Miles away, somehow, I'm trapped in this nightmare. My heart is crushed. I've been thinking about nothing else.

Time has stopped – but time is of the essence.

So I've been sitting here at my computer, food in the fridge, hot water in the tap, a nice comfy bed waiting for me at some point… but…

Somewhere in my heart, it's the end of the world.

Régine Chassagne is a member of the rock band Arcade Fire

The Guardian | I let out a cry, as if I'd heard everybody I loved had died

No May release for the new Arcade Fire album

That's the conclusion you obviously have to draw following what Billboard.com just published.

Arcade Fire, Title TBD (Merge)
Release Date: Second half of 2010

Merge confirms that an Arcade Fire album should be out in the second half of the year

Arcade Fire Album Preview | Billboard.com

Merge is of course Arcade Fire's record label so the info is bound to be accurate.

Get involved!

Partners In Health just launched

www.StandWithHaiti.org

- please visit and learn how you can help their efforts in Haiti.

Plea for help from Win & Régine of Arcade Fire

Win & Régine on behalf of Arcade Fire just put up this plea for help on the front page of ArcadeFire.com.

Friends,

Haiti needs your help in her darkest hour.

We just got off the phone with our friends at Partners in Health (Zanmi Lasanté).

Most of the medical infrastructure in Port-au-Prince is down.

Since Partners in Health’s clinics are in situated the surrounding areas and haven’t been damaged, they are mobilizing their resources towards the capital, setting-up field hospitals to treat the injured on the ground.

Also, Paul Farmer (the founder of PIH) is at the UN and has access to the best information on where to direct the money… so for the moment

if you want to help, we suggest sending funds to:

www.pih.org
+ http://www.standwithhaiti.org/haiti



Volunteer Request
If you work in the medical sector, or know someone who does:
Surgical/trauma experience only | Stand With Haiti | Partners In Health

Canadian residents with Roger and Fido cell phones can text HELP to 1291. 5 $ will be directed to Partners In Health’s Haiti emergency fund.

Please be generous as time is of the essence.

love,
Win and Regine

p.s.
these photos convey some of what is going on:
+ www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/01/earthquake_in_haiti.html

——————————————————————————————————————————————

Chers amis,

Haïti a besoin de vous. L’heure est grave.

Nous venons de parler au téléphone à nos amis de Partners In Health (Zanmi Lasanté).

La plupart des infrastructures médicales de Port-au-Prince sont non-opérationelles.
Comme les cliniques de Zanmi Lasanté sont situées dans les régions environnantes et qu’elles n’ont pas été endommagées, une partie du personnel a été mobilisé pour la mise en place d’un hopital de camp à Port-au-Prince.

D’autre part, ces mêmes cliniques ont commencé à recevoir les survivants blessés qui ont réussi à s’échapper de la capitale.

Partners In Health et leur branche haïtienne Zanmi Lasanté ont grandement besoin de vos dons immédiats en argent, ainsi que d’une grande quantité de matériel médical.

Paul Farmer (le fondateur de Partners In Health) travaille présentement avec l’ONU. Il a ainsi un accès crucial aux informations de première ligne en tout ce qui concerne la coordination des efforts sur le terrain.

Si vous voulez aider une organisation intègre et formidable qui se démène pour Haïti depuis plus de 20 ans, nous vous suggérons d’envoyer vos dons à:

www.pih.org
+ http://www.standwithhaiti.org/haiti



Si vous êtes du domaine médical, ou connaissez quelqu’un qui l’est:
How you can help: volunteer and donate supplies | Stand With Haiti | Partners In Health

Nous savons qu’ils sont tout particulièrement à la recherche de personnel médical francophone.

Les résidents canadiens abonnés à Rogers et Fido peuvent envoyer le message texte AIDE à 1291. 5 $ seront acheminés au fond d’urgence pour Haïti de Partners In Health.

Nous vous encourageons à être aussi généreux que vous le pouvez. À ce stade-ci, chaque minute compte.

Sincèrement,
Régine et Win

p.s. ces photos nous montrent une fraction de l’ampleur de la catastrophe
+ www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/01/earthquake_in_haiti.html

Haiti is in pain

The Boston Globe | The Big Picture | Earthquake in Haiti

Heartbreaking pictures and equally heartbreaking reports flooding in all the time. Haiti is in pain, help Partners In Health help them. Donate what you can.

Haiti needs your help!

Please consider making a donation to support Partners In Health in their efforts to help the needing following the horrible 7.0 earthquake that hit Haiti earlier this evening.

Major earthquake hits Haiti

A major earthquake centered just 10 miles from Port-au-Prince has devastated sections of the city and knocked out telephone communications throughout the country. Reached via email, Partners In Health staff at our facilities in the Central Plateau report that they experienced a strong shock but no major damage or injuries. We are still attempting to establish contact with other PIH facilities and to locate several staff members who were traveling in and around Port-au-Prince.

The earthquake has destroyed much of the already fragile and overburdened infrastructure in the most densely populated part of the country. A massive and immediate international response is needed to provide food, water, shelter, and medical supplies for tens of thousands of people.

In an urgent email from Port-au-Prince, Louise Ivers, our clinical director in Haiti, appealed for assistance from her colleagues in the Central Plateau: "Port-au-Prince is devastated, lot of deaths. SOS. SOS... Temporary field hospital by us at UNDP needs supplies, pain meds, bandages. Please help us."

With our hospitals and our highly trained medical staff in place in Haiti, Partners In Health is already mobilizing resources and preparing plans to bring medical assistance and supplies to areas that have been hardest hit. In Boston, our procurement and development teams are already fielding numerous offers of support and making arrangements to deliver resources as quickly as possible to the places where they are needed most.

You can help us respond to this emergency by making a contribution.

Sign up to recieve email updates about earthquake relief efforts.

Rule of Three by Brantley Gutierrez

Cool Arcade Fire on stage footage in Rule of Three by Brantley Gutierrez who has has served as personal photographer to Arcade Fire quite frequently. The video below is his entry in Nikon's contest 'Your Day in 140 Seconds or Less'.

Nikon Festival: Rule of Three

Awwww!

Quite possibly the most adorable thing I've ever seen!

Love how she goes all rockstar there at the end. Too cute. Oh and if anyone is wondering, it was this version of Rebellion (Lies) that she was watching on the TV while rocking out.

The Knife - An Audio Visual Experience

Still high on The Knife's new track Colouring of Pigeons, mind-melting song! Anyone remember just how stunning these shows were a few years back?
0:50 Pass This On 5:45 The Captain 11:59 We Share Our Mother's Health 16:26 You Make Me Like Charity 20:46 Marble House 25:46 Forest Families 30:09 Kino 35:06 Heartbeats 39:28 Silent Shout 44:52 From Off To On

Help Partners In Health

Just going to relay this one because it's so easy and can help so many in Haiti.

Win $15,000 for PIH with a click!

Hello Friends of Partners In Health!

Partners In Health has been selected as a finalist in the Project 7 Grand Giveaway. If PIH receives the most votes in the “Heal the Sick” category, we’ll receive a grant of $15,000 to support Zanmi Lasante’s Orphans and Vulnerable Children program in Haiti.

Vote now and pass it on!

1. Visit http://www.project7.com/voting/ to vote for PIH in the “Heal the Sick” category
2. Post the Giveaway to your Facebook profile
3. Forward this email to friends

Project 7 is a socially conscious, for-profit company that manufactures and sells bio-bottled water, gum, mints and T-shirts. For every purchase, the company donates 50 percent of its profits to seven areas of critical need in the world – Build the Future, Feed the Hungry, Heal the Sick, Help Those in Need, Hope for Peace, House the Homeless, and Save the Earth.

Thank you for voting,

Christine

Christine Hamann, Partners In Health

Become an official fan of Partners In Health at http://www.facebook.com/partnersinhealth

New The Knife album!!

Colouring of Pigeons by The Knife

My excitement level can't even be measured. So happy. The free mp3 above sounds absolutely marvellous! 2010, I love you already.

The Knife, in collaboration with Mt. Sims and Planningtorock, are to release the studio version of the opera 'Tomorrow, In A Year', on the 1st March 2010. Free download for all mailing list subscribers

Commissioned by Danish performance group Hotel Pro Forma to write the music for their opera based on Charles Darwin and his book ‘On the Origin of the Species’, The Knife decided to make this a collaborative process, working with artists Mt. Sims and Planningtorock for the first time, to capture the huge width of the Darwin and evolution theme. They extensively researched Darwin related literature and articles, with Olof attending a field recording workshop in the Amazon to find inspiration and to record sounds.

‘Tomorrow, In A Year’ is a unique musical project. Richard Dawkins’s gene trees have formed the basis of some of the musical composition, artificial sounds have been mixed with field recordings, with the music inspired by everything from the different stages of a bird learning its melody, to a song based on Darwin’s loving letters about his daughter Anne. These are compositions that challenge the conventional conception of opera music.

Pushing the experimental process further still, composer, choreographer, costume designer and set designer worked separately, only coming together 3 and a half months before the first performance of ‘Tomorrow, In A Year’ in Copenhagen on the 2nd September 2009. Described as “shifting the position of operartic art in a single leap”, further performances of ‘Tomorrow, In A Year’ are confirmed to take place in Athens (8-9 Jan), Stockholm (29 Jan-1 Feb), and Munster (5 June), with further dates to be announced.

Olof Dreijer says: “At first it was very difficult as we really didn’t know anything about opera. We’d never been to one. I didn’t even know what the word libretto meant. But after some studying, and just getting used to opera’s essence of pretentious and dramatic gestures, I found that there is a lot to learn and play with. In fact, our ignorance gave us a positive respectless approach to making opera. It took me about a year to become emotionally moved by an opera singer and now I really do. I really like the basic theatrical values of opera and the easy way it brings forward a narrative. We’ve approached this before in The Knife but never in such a clear way.”

The first track to be taken from the album, called Colouring of Pigeons, is free to download now for all mailing list subscribers

Tracklist:
CD 1
01. Intro
02. Epochs
03. Geology
04. Upheaved
05. Minerals
06. Ebb Tide Explorer
07. Variation of Birds
08. Letter to Henslow
09. Schoal Swarm Orchestra

CD 2
01. Annie’s Box
02. Tumult
03. Colouring of Pigeons
04. Seeds
05. Tomorrow in a Year
06. The Height of Summer

Bonus track
07. Annie's Box (alt. vocal)

http://theknife.net

First taste of Peter Gabriel's cover of My Body Is A Cage

As I told you guys earlier Peter Gabriel has started up a song exchange project. What it basically comes down to is all the artists/bands he covers has agreed to do a cover of one of his songs, Arcade Fire included. Peter Gabriel decided to do an interpretation of My Body Is A Cage. In this clip you can hear him talk about what his thoughts on Arcade Fire are and most importantly a snippet of the song.

[MP3] Peter Gabriel - My Body Is A Cage preview (at the 10 min mark)

Epic sounding strings! The album "Scratch My Back" is out February 15th and can be pre-ordered via Womad Shop. Will be interesting to hear the full song.

KEXP's listeners love Funeral

I decided quite quickly I wasn't going to mention every single best of the decade accolade Funeral gets because there's been like a million of them or so. But this one feels worthy of recognizing since it's based on a large vote by the very popular American radio station KEXP's listeners. The top-10:

01. Arcade Fire - Funeral | Merge (2004)
02. Radiohead - Kid A | Capitol (2000)
03. Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot | Nonesuch (2002)
04. Radiohead - In Rainbows | ATO (2007)
05. Sufjan Stevens - Illinois | Asthmatic Kitty (2005)
06. Death Cab for Cutie - Transatlanticism | Barsuk (2003)
07. The Flaming Lips - Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots | Warner Bros (2002)
08. Modest Mouse - The Moon and Antarctica | Epic (2000)
09. Band of Horses - Everything All the Time | Sub Pop (2006)
10. Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes | Sub Pop (2008)

Neon Bible coming in at a very decent 19th place. The full list can be found here.

Arcade Fire on Austin City Limits

2010, you are finally here! I have longed for you so badly. And what better way to start this exciting year than watching this video of Arcade Fire on Austin City Limits back in 2007. Really reminds you of what an extraordinary band they are. Turn up the volume and let the neighbourhood know you're alive.

Setlist
01. Black Mirror 02. Keep The Car Running 03. Neighborhood #2 (Laika) 04. Haiti 05. Intervention 06. (Antichrist Television Blues) 07. Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels) 08. Neighborhood #3 (Power Out) 09. Rebellion (Lies) 10. Wake Up