So if you’ve ordered the Newspaper Album/Digital Album you should head over to your Order Tracking page at the official King Of Limbs store for this little bonus.

Well, this is not the case. This song is the perfect example of algorithmically-generated music, Auto-Tune-enhanced vocals and the best lyrics a 3 year-old could write. And of course, it went viral and is now one of the biggest things on Youtube and Twitter. It’s just so bad that people just feel the need to show it to everyone they know. Like I’m doing now, with this blog post. I know I’m feeding the beast, but here goes, Rebecca Black’s Friday:

This… thing… has garnered almost 30 million views on Youtube at the time of writing, and 1M of them just in the few hours since I’ve seen it this morning. It’s also a trending topic on Twitter and has already got the attention of music-mogul Simon Cowel. Not bad for the reported $2.000 paid to Ark Music Factory for the production of the video. And again thanks to the Internet, we now we can all enjoy the parodies.

What’s with all these songs with explanations of the ordering of the days of the week?

This Radiohead album is gathering more attention than I’ve seen any album get. In a little more than a week the album already has been fully covered and some remixes and mash-ups have also been released. And speaking of mash-ups, I just discovered Jaydiohead, and even though I’m not a fan of Jay-Z (or any rap, for that matter), it sounds great.

What did you think when you watched it? I thought “that’s some funny dancing by Thom Yorke”. And then I moved on with my life.

But some people have richer imaginations and way too much time in their hands, so the parodies started. So they started dubbing the Radiohead’s video with other songs, and the results are quite funny. Enjoy watching Thom Yorke dancing to Ke$ha’s We R Who We R, Beyoncé’s Single Ladies, or We No Speak Americano. Oh, the Internet…

And them some French ones came up with a “Course on Body Language with Thom Yorke” (in French), which is brilliant and hilarious in so many ways:

fig. 1: the shower head
fig. 2: the egyptian
fig. 3: the buffoon
fig. 4: the rag
fig. 5: the wall pocket
fig. 6: the karateka
fig. 7: the lotus
fig. 8: the acorn
fig. 9: the prayer
fig. 10: the fan

Oh, and one thing that wasn’t made as a joke, but I think it’s spot on. This guy thought that the crazy dancing would go well with the eclectic beat in Radiohead’s 15 Step. And I think he’s quite right:

Looking forward to see what else people will come up with.

UPDATE: Here’s some more good ones: Thom getting Rick Rolled, the Surfin’ Bird, and Benny Hill’s theme song.

Last Saturday I got to see KT Tunstall live for my first time. The gig was in the Radisson Live Lounge, and although I didn’t think it was brilliant, it was a very good show altogether, well worth the €20.

The show was opened by The Pictish Trail, of 28-year-old singer-songwriter Johnny Lynch. I can only describe his music as… odd… but more knowledgeable people say it’s “a sonorous mixture of acoustic-driven balladry and lo-fi synthesised pop” and “a post-summer trove of sun-warped electro, anamorphic folk”. I say it’s a bit bizarre, and a good example of that is his latest EP, In Rooms, that consists of 50 songs, each 30 seconds in length. He played a couple of them last Saturday (Birds, for example), and for some weird reason I feel like buying the EP.

After this opening, it was time for the main act. This was the first gig of the tour and KT and the band started it with some songs from their new-ish album, Tiger Suit, which, I have to confess, I wasn’t at all familiar with. That’s something that’ll have to be corrected in the next few days, I say. A few songs into it, the band got out of the stage and left KT by herself to do her solo thing. One of those songs was a lovely version of Other Side of the World (I apologize in advance for the sound quality, but my camera is really not good for concerts because it messes up whenever there’s drums involved):

Still up there by herself, KT performed the fan-favourite Black Horse and the Cherry Tree, complete with all the pedal-magic we’re used to. Great stuff:

With the band back and after a couple more songs, they said goodbye only to be cheered by the few hundred people there until they came back for the encore. It was a small once, but they ended beautifully with Suddenly I See:

The full setlist went something like this:

Come On, Get In
Glamour Puss
Uummannaq Song
Universe & You
Lost
If Only
Difficulty
Other Side of the World
Scarlet Tulip
Black Horse and the Cherry Tree
The Entertainer
Saving My Face
Madame Trudeaux
Push That Knot Away
Funnyman
Fade Like A Shadow

Encore
Close To Me (The Cure cover)
Suddenly I See

I’m keeping an eye on Youtube for more videos (because mine got the sound all messed up). Stay tuned for more.

The digital version is available in both MP3 (320kbps) and WAV formats. The price is £6.00 for the MP3 version and £9.00 for the WAV version.

The physical “Newspaper Album” version comprises two clear 10″ vinyl records in a purpose-built record sleeve, a compact disc, many large sheets of newspaper artwork, 625 tiny pieces of artwork, and a full-colour piece of oxo-degradable plastic to hold everything together. It will be shipped on May 9th. A digital version is also included in this “Newspaper Album”. All this will cost £30.00 for the one with the MP3 digital copy and £33.00 for the WAV version.

The digital version of The King of Limbs will be available for download on February 19th (that’s next Saturday!).

The album goes on general, old-fashioned release on March 28th.

I miss the good old days when Radiohead released In Rainbows as a pay-what-you-like download, but am feeling quite tempted to get the “Newspaper Album” edition. A band that I’ve been listening for so long surely deserves the money.

Moullinex – Catalina from Moullinex on Vimeo.

One can only be amazed with the impressive Kinect hacks that people come up with. And this music video by Moullinex is a very good example. The “data points” were captured using the Kinect, and after some clean-up (like eliminating the background) they used Cinema 4D to animate the frames and then After Effects for the final touches. The whole process is described here, including the project files.

It reminds me of Radiohead’s House of Cards, although this one was done using just a Kinect, instead of the “64 lasers rotating and shooting in a 360 degree radius 900 times per minute” used in the Radiohead video.

(GraphJam)

A little help on the references:

• Talking Heads – Road to Nowhere
• Journey – Don’t Stop Believing
• Gladys Knight – Midnight Train To Georgia
• The Monkees – Last Train To Clarksville
• Led Zeppelin – Stairway to Heaven
• AC/DC – Highway to Hell
• Eagle – Hotel California

J. BIEBZ – U SMILE 800% SLOWER by Shamantis

Impressive, uh? Sounds like something out of an epic movie soundtrack. Or Sigur Rós. If you want to create your own ambient sounds, just follow this tutorial at Lifehacker.

But the original is still crap:

U Smile by imd

(via Gawker)

Last night I had the pleasure to be one of the lucky few in The O2, Dublin, watching an amazing concert by Pearl Jam, starting off their 2010 Europe Tour.

If I had to describe the concert in one word, I would choose energetic. A lot of the loudest and quickest Pearl Jam songs were part of the setlist, and once or twice I wished for a quieter song to be able to get a little rest from being in the edge of the moshpit. But the band was just full of energy, and barring songs like Nothingman, Just Breathe and Elderly Woman Behing the Counter in a Small Town, it was almost constant jumping through the whole thing.

It’s hard to choose a favorite, but I’ll go for Better Man, for the awesome atmosphere caused by more than 10.000 people singing it in unison. I can’t help but feel a bit disappointed that none of Black, Jeremy, Last Kiss, Red Mosquito or Wishlist didn’t make it to the set, but on the other hand they played a completely new song. A song “so new, it might not even be a song yet” – Of The Earth.

In summary, two and a half hours of pure energy. Here’s the complete setlist of 26 songs:

Long Road
Once
The Fixer
Why Go
Corduroy
Severed Hand
Amongst The Waves
Even Flow
Unthought Known
Nothingman
Lukin
Not For You
Down
Got Some
Comatose
Arms Aloft (Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros cover)
Do The Evolution

Encore 1
Just Breathe
Given To Fly
Of The Earth
Porch

Encore 2
Elderly Woman Behind The Counter In A Small Town
Better Man
Kick Out The Jams (MC5 cover)
Alive
Yellow Ledbetter