I interviewed Jimmy Tamborello last year about the enhanced reissue of his album Life is Possibilities, one of the first really successful attempts to integrate pop and electronic music, and also the launching pad for the Postal Service. Here's the feature, running today at PopMatters.
Don’t Ask Dntel: A Conversation with Jimmy Tamborello
By Jennifer Kelly 22 March 2012
Jimmy Tamborello’s 2001 landmark Life Is Full of Possibilities bridged the worlds of IDM and pop, setting lush melodies atop glitchy electro beats and launching one of the aughts’ most memorable singles in “This Is the Dream of Evan and Chan.” Now, a decade or so on, we asked Tamborello to reflect on the album’s impact – and the new expanded reissue from Sub Pop.
“I had been listening to a lot of indie rock and punk —and also a lot of electronic music,” says Tamborello, thinking about to the early 2000s period when Dntel’s first album Life Is Full of Possibilities took shape. “I was always excited when I heard people mix the two together. I remember liking Piano Magic and some of the Morr music artists at lot. I liked the idea of bringing it together.”
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I have always, always loved this song...the first thing I ever heard Mia Doi Todd sing, incidentally
Showing posts with label Mia Doi Todd. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mia Doi Todd. Show all posts
Thursday, March 22, 2012
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Mia Doi Todd
Mia Doi Todd's latest seemed a little too easy listening to me...my review at Blurt.
Mia Doi Todd
Cosmic Ocean Ship
(City Zen)
Mia Doi Todd has a voice that flickers like flame, unfurling at the slightest breath of air into acrobatic plumes and flourishes, then drawing back into itself in calmer moments, steady and free of vibrato. High and sweet, she can mimic a piccolo's purity. In lower, jazzier registers, she sounds more like a clarinet, sliding softly over the half tones. Todd's singing is so remarkable that listeners become transfixed by it, failing, in their concentration, to notice the subtle way her songs are put together or the aptness of the instrumental arrangements.
Todd has, perhaps, struggled with this a bit. Her last album, Morning Music, was all instrumentals, and on this ninth full-length, she seems to be pulling back from pure vocal intensity. She floats here, mostly, over downtempo reveries in various Latin idioms ("Paraty", "Gracias a la Vida"). She sings sweetly, without much drama, to the lilting rhythms of Laurel Canyon pop ("My Baby Lives in Paris"). She follows the contours of slow-bending melodies with a fluting, fluttering serenity, never rushing, never straining, never ruffling the surface of her pretty songs. Where Manzanita's loveliness sometimes dropped away to reveal shocking depth of feeling, these songs seem to surf atop the froth. They're easy to listen to, but hard to pin down. Where is the muscle, blood and bone?
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Check out the album stream here
Mia Doi Todd
Cosmic Ocean Ship
(City Zen)
Mia Doi Todd has a voice that flickers like flame, unfurling at the slightest breath of air into acrobatic plumes and flourishes, then drawing back into itself in calmer moments, steady and free of vibrato. High and sweet, she can mimic a piccolo's purity. In lower, jazzier registers, she sounds more like a clarinet, sliding softly over the half tones. Todd's singing is so remarkable that listeners become transfixed by it, failing, in their concentration, to notice the subtle way her songs are put together or the aptness of the instrumental arrangements.
Todd has, perhaps, struggled with this a bit. Her last album, Morning Music, was all instrumentals, and on this ninth full-length, she seems to be pulling back from pure vocal intensity. She floats here, mostly, over downtempo reveries in various Latin idioms ("Paraty", "Gracias a la Vida"). She sings sweetly, without much drama, to the lilting rhythms of Laurel Canyon pop ("My Baby Lives in Paris"). She follows the contours of slow-bending melodies with a fluting, fluttering serenity, never rushing, never straining, never ruffling the surface of her pretty songs. Where Manzanita's loveliness sometimes dropped away to reveal shocking depth of feeling, these songs seem to surf atop the froth. They're easy to listen to, but hard to pin down. Where is the muscle, blood and bone?
More
Check out the album stream here
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