I missed her. Feist. Her album The Reminder was the soundtrack to so many Sunday breakfasts and cosy dinners. Her new album Metals just came out last month and I’m glad to have a new soundtrack. The beautifully haunting video to her new single How Come You Never Go There reminds me a bit of the online concert performance of Iamamiwhoami. Have a look after the jump.
To act in concert
Last night something really exciting happened: Mysterious music act Iamamiwhoami gave a live concert over the internet. It was one of the best concert experience I can remember. It was not just a live stream of a stage but a mystical journey through a haunted forrest. Amazing! Some screencaptures and a brand new awesome remix of one of the songs after the jump.
I Am Bounty
The Iamamiwhoami videos have been following me and keeping me excited now since January. It all began with a series of six mysteriously dark teaser videos and then led over to full length music videos all telling the story of a Mandrake girl.
Two days ago the 7th (and what is suspected to be the final) music video has been released. It is the longest and most epic one bringing the whole story to an end but not without leaving a little hint of what will happen after. The letters of the names of the videos have now formed the word Bounty which might be the name of a release. But there still has been no word from Jonna Lee, the artist behind it, of what is going to happen now. Is there gonna be an album? More videos? An explanation? Nobody really knows. And that seems to be kind of the intention of the artist. Not giving the viewer anything else then the videos themselves.
I personally love all the videos and the songs, N being my favorite. This must be the most inspiring and creative music project that I have ever come across. So few musicians actually use their music videos as a way to tell a story. Jonna obviously seems to enjoy playing this mental creature of nature running around naked in the woods. And I salute her for that. Why would craziness only be reserved for Lady Gaga, right?
What I do find a bit disappointing is, that they haven’t done much to keep the audience busy in between the releases of the videos. It wouldn’t have been much of an effort to spread some clues and riddles in the blogosphere and forums which is what normally happens in viral campaigns. I think it’s just more fun to speculate and guess and to chew on something while waiting for the next awesome video to arrive. And also it seems to me, that there has been a build up of so many little details that they never really got back to which is a bit of a waste. There were tons of opportunities to get people’s heads spinning and most importantly: get them involved.
After the jump you’ll see the latest videos as well as another series of viral videos for another musician of a totally different nature.
How To Destroy Angels
If have been fond of Nine Inch Nails since their 2005 release The Hand That Feeds although that type of rock music is not exactly my genre. But their use of electronic beats and noisy e-gitarre riffs somehow attracted me. In 2009 band founder Trent Reznor decided to take a break with this project. Of course he would not stop making music. He soon was suspected to be involved in the whole iamamiwhoami affair. Turns out he’s not. His new project is equally haunting and started with a series of viral teasers as well. It’s called How To Destroy Angels and features the wonderful vocals of his wife Mariqueen Maandig. They just released the first video to The Space in Between as well as a brilliant 6 track EP as a free download. The album will follow in the summer. You MUST check this out! Look after the jump for the teaser clips, the stunning music video and the EP download link.
Who is she?
I wear colored contacts, fake eyelashes, a blond Lady Gaga wig, I am covered in black paint and my voice is distorted. Can you still guess who I am? Hint: I like to get dirrrrty…
It all started with a weird video clip of trees with arms and legs anonymously posted on YouTube about three months ago. In the end of that video you could see a blonde woman in some sort of naturalistic, dark womb. During the next weeks more videos where posted under the name IamAmIWhoami showing more of this strange woman with fake eyelashes covered in dirt. People started to speculate that this is some sort of viral campaign for an upcoming album release which it obviously is. The guesses which artist it might be ranged from big pop singers like Christina Aguilera and Lady Gaga over cool semi-popular acts like Goldfrapp, The Knife and Santigold to smaller artists like Margaret Berger, Sia, Ladytron and Lykke Li. Just by looking at the videos it’s pretty obvious that it must be someone the record company spends a lot of money on. And judging from the music, it might sound dark and electronic, but it’s still so perfectly polished that it indicates to being parts or interludes of a pop record. I would consider it to be Goldfrapp if I hadn’t already heard their new album which is an 80s disco record and clearly not it. There are a lot of clues that point to Christina Aguilera (which you can read about here) and as she has a new album lined up I think she is the safest guess. I actually only like one of Aguilera’s albums which was her second: Stripped. It was quite brilliant and compared to the one before quite a change of style. So even if some people doubt it’s her because the mysterious videos are way too unconventional for a major pop artist like her I am pretty confident that she is IamAmiWhoami.
After the jump you’ll see all the videos in order of their surfacing. The animals that are shown towards the end of the video have been decrypted to point to a big revelation of the whole campaign this coming Monday 11am (Californian time, which means 20h here in Berlin). So stay tuned! I’m quite intrigued by the music you can here in the videos, especially the second one which sounds like vintage Goldfrapp glam rock!!