Daytrotter features live studio recordings of The Octopus Project
The Octopus Project was recently featured on Daytrotter, the popular website that features original live studio recordings by underground artists every week, kind of like the Peel Sessions of the Internet. The Daytrotter team was in Austin for SXSW 2008, where they recorded The Octopus Project performing three tracks from Hello, Avalanche plus "Wet Gold" from the band's Too Pure single. Download all four tracks from Daytrotter.
Pitchfork hosts premiere of new Octopus Project video
A new video for The Octopus Project's "An Evening with Rthrtha" premiered today on Pitchfork.tv. The "Rthrtha" video is the second collaboration between long-time friends Phillip Niemeyer of the Brooklyn design studio Double Triple and San Francisco-based filmmaker Ryan Junell, following their hand-animated stop-motion video for Spoon's "You Got Yr Cherry Bomb," released earlier this year. For "Rthrtha," Niemeyer & Junell used a similar stop-motion animation approach to depict a magical night with the extra-dimensional spirit agents of Rthrtha. Brilliant colors and graphic images move in breakneck stop-motion, illustrating a mind-blowing evening with an ancient psychedelic pink bat, who takes the viewer on a transcendent journey from the hazy Austin twilight into a sub-atomic singularity with the comsos.
Niemeyer described the project as a sort of DIY cell animation. The two employed a variety of animation techniques, often discovering what they could do only as it was done. They photocopied images onto office quality transparencies, layering them with a light table and a set of overhead projectors. They silkscreened color fields, adding ink with each print to create motion-gradations. They animated the light fluctuations of the double fluorescent tubes that hang above their main work table. With the assistance of Double Triple partner Dana McClure, they animated blown ink and paint seen through a macro lens. "We used over 5,000 still pictures, often layered over each other at variable rates of speed," said Niemeyer. "Our frame rates are so quick I'm not sure it still counts as stop motion."
"Rthrtha" is The Octopus Project's second video from the new album, Hello, Avalanche. The previous Zellner Brothers-directed video for "Truck" has already amassed nearly 400,000 views on YouTube, and the band's loyal fans have responded with fan-created videos that have begun to populate the site. Here are a few favorites:
The Octopus Project kicks off yet another tour this weekend at Lollapalooza in Chicago and will embark on a month of dates along the west coast with fellow Austinites The Diagonals (featuring Black Lipstick's Steve Garcia) before returning home for an appearance at the Austin City Limits festival in September (tour dates).
Peel recently completed a new collection of songs called August Exhaust Pipes. The drunken country swagger of "Selling Shadows" and driving raucous shuffle of "Famous Noises" extend the energetic, fuzzy sounds introduced on the band's eponymous album, which Magnet Magazine described as a "beautiful mess of a debut," while the cool tranquility of "Trenchula" and "Exhaust Pipes" shows the band stretching its legs a little. As its title might infer, this five-song EP makes the perfect soundtrack for enduring the sweaty traffic on a blazing hot Austin afternoon and making your way out to a nearby swimming hole to chill out with a cooler full of beer. True to the band's DIY nature, the EP was self-recorded, self-produced and self-released in extremely limited copies and distributed only at shows. In fact, the CDs may already be sold out, but the band has also posted the MP3s for anyone to stream or download.
Spoon has just released an incredible new video for "You Got Yr Cherry Bomb," arguably the best track off Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga. If the visual style looks familiar, you recognize the work of former Black Lipstick singer/guitarist Phillip Niemeyer, who co-directed and animated the video along with digital media artist Ryan Junell.
Phillip has been a Peek-A-Boo artist in more ways than one for many years. In addition to performing with Black Lipstick, The Kiss Offs & Teen Titans, he's designed many posters and album covers, including these:
Phillip is now a designer in New York and makes up 1/3 of the Brooklyn-based design studio Double Triple, while Ryan Junell is a media director and digital artist extraordinaire living in San Francisco.
The Octopus Project at the 2007 Austin Music Awards
The Octopus Project had another good showing at the Austin Music Awards last night. Yvonne won Best Miscellaneous Instrument for the second year in a row, and the band placed in eight total categories.
#9 Best Band of the Year
#2 Best Instrumental Band
#2 Best Experimental Band
#4 Best Indie Band
#1 Best Austin Musician - Misc. Instrument, Theremin (Yvonne Lambert)
#2 Best Austin Musician - Keyboards (Yvonne Lambert)
#4 Best Austin Musician - Bass (Josh Lambert)
#6 Best Austin Musician - Drums/Percussion (Toto Miranda)
SXSW 2008 is underway, and a full list of SXSW appearances by The Octopus Project and Peel can be found on the Peek-A-Boo Records tour dates page, but here are a few highlights:
eMusic SXSW Showcase Wednesday, March 12 @ Maggie Mae's 1 am - Bon Iver 12 am - Frightened Rabbit 11 pm - Peel 10 pm - Delorean 9 pm - Hysterics 8 pm - Day For Night
Kork Agency SXSW Showcase Thursday, March 13 @ Emo's 1 am - The Octopus Project 12 am - Islands 11 pm - Dandi Wind 10 pm - Gil Mantera's Party Dream 9 pm - Howlin Rain 8 pm - Jens Lekman
Porchlight Pop Fest 2008 (poster) Saturday, March 15 @ Salvage Vanguard Theater 2803 Manor Road (Map) Free entry, free beverages, all ages!
12 pm - David Karsten Daniels 1 pm - Zykos 2 pm - Peel 3 pm - Headlights 4 pm - Joan of Arc 5 pm - The Little Ones 6 pm - Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin 7 pm - Zookeeper 10 pm - Diagonals (Steve Garcia from Black Lipstick!) 11 pm - Foreign Islands 12 am - List Christee (Kevin Barnes from Of Montreal) 1 am - Gerard Cosloy (Matador Records)(DJ Set) 2 am - The Octopus Project
The Octopus Project to play All Tomorrow's Parties 2008
On the heels of the announcement of The Octopus Project's first UK release, we are extremely excited to announce that the band has been invited to play the 2008 All Tomorrow's Parties Festival, currated by fellow Texans Explosions in the Sky. The weekend of May 16-18, The Octopus Project will join Explosions, Dinosaur Jr., Broken Social Scene, Animal Collective, Iron & Wine, Four Tet, Silver Jews and many others in the resort town of Minehead, UK, to perform for the thousands of fans that flock to this festival from all over Europe every year. Additional European dates will be announced soon.
Pitchfork beat us to the scoop in announcing that UK label Too Pure will be releasing an Octopus Project 7" in March as a part of the label's new singles club. Too Pure, you might recall, is the label that first brought us Stereolab in the early '90s, and has since continued to issue music by such top notch artists as Electrelane, Seefeel, Scout Niblett and many others.
The Octopus Project 7" features two new songs, "Wet Gold" and "Moon Boil," recorded by the band and mastered at Abbey Road in London. The band describes the A-side as "a lovely jaunt through an arpeggiated land of goodness," and the B-side as "the most 'total rock' song we've ever done."
The pressing will be limited to 500 copies and only available via subscription to the Too Pure Singles Club, although the songs will also be made available for download on iTunes at some point.
The Octopus Project was recently featured on Daytrotter, the popular website that features original live studio recordings by underground artists every week, kind of like the Peel Sessions of the Internet. The Daytrotter team was in Austin for SXSW 2008, where they recorded The Octopus Project performing three tracks from Hello, Avalanche plus "Wet Gold" from the band's Too Pure single. Download all four tracks from Daytrotter.
