The Bulletin: Arts & Culture News | 18 January

In today's Bulletin: New music from Darkstar, Youth Lagoon and The Black Dog; lineups announced for All Tomorrow's Parties, Sonar and Open'er Festival; trailers for new films by Walid Salhab and Park Chan-Wook, plus weekend gig picks

Feature by The News Badger | 18 Jan 2013

STREAM THE NEW DARKSTAR ALBUM
The new album by London-based experimental electronic pop trio Aiden Whalley, James Buttery and James Young, aka Darkstar, is out on 4 Feb via Warp. The label have released a stream of the album in full. The sound of News From Nowhere is a departure from their debut, North. "This is a totally different record to North. It's somewhat brighter in mood, but deeper in feeling and intention," the band have said. "It's much more rhythmic and fluid. It moves quicker."

Whereas North was written separately, with Whalley and Young collaborating on production and Buttery writing and recording lyrics, the new album was written by the whole band collaboratively, at a remote countryside house in West Yorkshire. James Young said: "Every place warrants a story. No matte where it is, how quiet, remote or disconnected. There are moments in people's everyday lives, no matter how subtle, that can be documented and talked about in great detail. The instances spiral and ascend and take on their own course, altering the perception of how even the slightest change in a day can be felt deeply." Stream the album below.

FESTIVAL WATCH: LINEUPS ANNOUNCED FOR ALL TOMORROW'S PARTIES, SONAR & OPEN'ER
As another day dawns, another Summer festival lineup is announced! Today we bring you the news that De La Soul and DOOM have been announced for the first of two All Tomorrow's Parties curated events taking place in May and June this year. The hip-hop legends join the likes of Doseone, Spank Rock, and Shabazz Palaces at the May weekender, which is curated by TV On The Radio. The second ATP weekender is curated by Deerhunter, and features Tom Tom Club, a collaboration between Broadcast and Ghost Box, Pere Ubu, and in a very exciting announcement, a newly-reformed Last Splash era Breeders, who will perform the seminal album in full. Details of both events can be found here.

Meanwhile, Barcelona-based electronic and experimental festival Sonar, which takes place in June, recently announced its first few headliners: the beach-side festival will see performances from Kraftwerk, Liars, Darkstar, The Pet Shop Boys, Vatican Shadow, and a collaboration from Pinch and Adrian Sherwood. Full details here

The Open'er Festival in Poland has been running since 2002, when it was known as the Open Air Festival. Now, it's a four-day extravaganza taking place in Gdynia, Poland in July, and they have just announced some impressive headliners to go along with the high-profile Polish artists and big-name headliners already on the bill. With big guns like Queens Of The Stone Age and Blur leading the charge, the festival recently announced the addition of Aussie psych-rock wizards Tame Impala and perennial art-pop mentalists Animal Collective to the bill. Full lineup and details here.

ADVENTURES OF A COUCHSURFER 
Couchsurfing has become one of the most cost-effective and interesting ways to see the world -- facilitated by the organisation Couchsurfing.org, which has over 5 million users in 97,000 cities around the world, covering every single country. Users either offer up their spare room, bed or couch and offer to host visitors free of charge, or they take advantage of a similarly generous offer in a country of their choice.

The Matador Network website recently ran an interview with Nenad Stojanovic, an 'official couchsurfing ambassador,' who has used the site to stay in 253 houses across three continents, and has hosted 182 guests at his own home over the past five years. In his travels, he has spent nights in such strange places as a Turkish furniture store, a potato truck in Tajikistan, and the home of a Taliban member. To read the full, fascinating story of Stojanovic's adventures, read the full article here.

NEW MUSIC FROM THE BLACK DOG & YOUTH LAGOON
The Black Dog, Sheffield's seminal techno pioneers with releases on Warp, Soma and a host of other labels, have been making music since 1993, helping to define and push the boundaries of electronica and techno. The band announced a new EP, The Return ov Bleep, on their own Dust Science label. The sound of these tracks is dark, claustrophobic and sinister. The band are quoted by XLR8R as saying: "While others may be dreaming of time travel and jet packs, we accept that the future is much darker and more brutal." Stream a preview of the EP at the band's Soundcloud page.

Trevor Powers, aka Youth Lagoon, released his first album via Fat Possum in 2010. A hypnotic mix of live instrumentation, pyschedelic folk melodies, electronic textures and reflective, philosophical lyrics, The Year of Hibernation was an introspective album, mostly concerned with Powers' musings about his own psyche. His new album, Wondrous Bughose, sees the multi-talented singer and producer engaging with the human condition in a wider sense, blending wide-ranging metaphysical explorations with skewed, enchanting experimental pop. The album is out on 5 March - stream and download a track, Dropla, below.

NEW EDINBURGH TIME-LAPSE FILM FROM WALID SALHAB
Director and lecturer Walid Salhab is known for his documentary films, One Day in Lebanon, his 2006 film about the Lebanese refugee crisis, and Bra-et Al Routh, a short film set in Palestine, which was honoured at Cannes after its release. More recently, he has produced some very innovative and popular time-lapse films showing the city streets and landscape of Edinburgh, attracting 1.5 million YouTube hits, according to The Scotsman. The newspaper reports that Salhab's new film, Avarita, is now in production, and is "about the state of the banking system" according to Salhab himself. The director unveiled a short prequel/preview for the film exclusively for The Scotsman, which you can watch below.

WATCH THE TRAILERS FOR STOKER AND V/H/S
Turning back to slightly more mainstream fare, we've got the trailers for two new films, both of which could well cause some highly amusing moral outrage on their release at your local multiplex. Stoker is the first fully English-language film from Park Chan-Wook, the celebrated director of Oldboy (an English-language remake of which is currently in production) and Lady Vengeance. A tale of murder, suspicion and forbidden love, it looks like Lolita with a higher bodycount, and features star turns from Nicole Kidman and Maria Wasikowska.

V/H/S meanwhile is an 'anthology horror' featuring contributions from directors Adam Wingard and Ti West (nope, us neither) and others. It's being touted as this year's 'video nasty' and uses the by now well-worn approach of shaky-cam, or 'found footage' if you want to give it its preferred name. Perhaps V/H/S can reviatlise this horror micro-genre - the film did make the offical selection at nearly every film festival going, from Edinburgh to Cannes to SXSW. Watch both trailers below.

WEEKEND GIG PICKS: SKA FOR SICK KIDS, HELM
There are a ton of great gigs on this weekend -- check our weekly Top Ten Events for a run-down of what's happening near you. If you're still stuck for something to do, why not head down to The Voodoo Rooms in Edinburgh on Saturday (19 Jan) for an action-packed ska gig featuring performances from Bombskare, This R 2 Tone and Big Fat Panda. Tickets are £7, with all the proceeds going to the Edinburgh Sick Kids Friends Foundation. Details here.

If you're stuck for something to do in Glasgow, check out sound artist Helm at The Old Hairdressers on Saturday (19 Jan) - his mind-bending performances feature an array of analogue gear and weird and wonderful sound-sources, and as the head of the Alter label, he's releases some stunning and boundary-pushing audio-visual art. Support comes from Female Band and Ex-Servicemen. Details here.

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