Words About Things

“This is a brief tribute I made to the experimental work of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop who recently staged a performance in London, that I couldn’t attend. All the sounds and loops originate from the BC8 synth, the Gakken SX-150 synth and the BugBrand Weevil synths. All the effects and processing is done with the Boss pedals. Oh yeah… and I did the whole thing ‘upside down’.”

Experimental Tribute from Chris Carter on Vimeo.

The Mercury Music Prize award ceremony took place last night with the honors going to The xx (spelled with lower case x’s if you don’t mind) for their album xx. This didn’t really come as a big surprise to anyone, The xx were the bookie’s favorites and seemed destined to win. If you missed the awards here are the 10 albums which were nominated, click on the title of the album to launch it if you are a Spotify user.

Biffy Clyro – Only Revolutions
Corinne Bailey Rae – The Sea
Dizzee Rascal – Tongue n’ Cheek
Foals – Total Life Forever
I Am Kloot – Sky at Night
Kit Downes Trio – Golden
Laura Marling – I Speak Because I Can
Mumford & Sons – Sigh No More
Paul Weller – Wake Up the Nation
Villagers – Becoming a Jackal
Wild Beasts – Two Dancers
The xx – xx

I was quite pleased that The xx won the award, I’ve enjoyed their album and found it to be a well rounded and complete work. I featured the band on this very blog in August of last year before their album was released (“I liked them before they were popular etc”).

I have also been enjoying Laura Marling’s album I Speak Because I Can which is well worth a listen. It is darker than her previous album Alas I Cannot Swim with a bigger sound and better production. Judging by last night’s performance she has grown in confidence and is no longer too shy to look at the audience. If you haven’t heard it yet check out the video below.

Interestingly, as the Guardian pointed out, the Mercury Prize was created by the same man who created the ‘Now That’s What I Call Music’ compilations. It is no coincidence that the awards take place at a time of year when record sales are traditionally quite low. Who ever wins the Mercury Prize tend to see a big spike in sales although I’m not sure if that happened to last year’s winner Speech Debelle who seems to have vanished.

Vampire Weekend’s second album Contra was a critical and commercial success that reached #1 in the Billboard charts and sold 124,000 copies during its first week during its first week on sale.  It went to number one in 5 countries and sold well in a time when album sales are falling. The album was awarded a score of 8.6/10 from esteemed Indie music site Pitchfork.com and features three well received singles.

Not everybody was happy about Contra however, the girl pictured on the album cover is currently suing the band, their record label and the photographer who took the picture. Kirsten Kennis was a model in the 80s and the cover image actually dates from 1983 when it was taken by photographer Tod Brody (or possibly not). Kennis claims that her signature was forged on the model release form and that the image was used without her knowledge. Brody denies the claim and says that the image was his to use as he wished.

To further complicate the issue Kennis is now claiming that her mother actually took the photograph in question. Her lawyer Alan Neigher released a statement saying:

“Her mother was a chronic Polaroid snapshot taker, and used to sell whole archives of photographs to these shops, five bucks a hundred or whatever … She has no idea how that photograph got into the photographer’s hands … Her mother may have given away to a charity bazaar a whole ream of photographs. We just really don’t know.”

Tod Barry calls this claim “blatantly false” and says that he took the image and it has been in his possession for the last 26 years before he sold it to Vampire Weekend. The band’s singer Ezra Koenig is hoping to get things settled:

“This is the first time any of us has ever been sued, so we’re still learning how it works… There’s nothing we can say about it, We’re not trying to be mysterious. I imagine in the next few months, there will be plenty to talk about. Given it’s our first time, we just want to do it properly.”