Owen Pallett - Heartland

One thing that gets me is that it feels pretty continuous with the stuff before -- obviously the same pretty unique sensibility -- but it makes exactly the right changes to open it up to a much wider audience: grander scope, a dash of drums and electric bass, the whole relationship between orchestral instruments and electronic ones. I hope that doesn't sound like I'm just looking at it in commercial terms, but it really does manage to invite a lot more people in without really changing what it's doing.

It's also fun thinking about the concept of arrangements "modeled on the principles of electronic music," in terms of decoding them -- so you get stuff like the bit that works like Neu!, or the bit that sounds like an organ played by a sequencer (and filtered), or brass working like square-wave oscillators...

owen & I are pals & have worked together, cards on table there ok, but that said, what a tremendous album - even the song that bugs me live ("midnight directives") works here, really beautifully, and the sequence as it unfolds is just gorgeous: it's an album I settle into like a great big book. in a sense, it reminds me of what I like about heavy metal: it's daring enough to try to create, in each song & in the songs taken together, a whole world to sink into. I feel like owen's love of his creation, the character & the world in which he lives, kind of achieves lift-off here; it's hard to take on a conceit that doesn't, at first, seem forced, but on this record it all feels really natural to me, which is the difference between a cool-sounding record and the real journey that this one is.

arrangements "modeled on the principles of electronic music,"

what are these "principles" of electronic music? electronic sound is just another medium for producing oscillations. It is a medium through which the composer often has more precise control, but ultimately it is based on the same acoustic principles as "physical" sound. Square waves, triangle waves, etc were conceptualized and harmonically analyzed long before electronic music came about.

Decided to give in and go buy this album today- only for HMV not to have it :( Sorry Owen for you staying poor like me.

I think he means the set of aesthetic priorities that electronic composers might be said to have - what exactly these are isn't something I'd be in a position to state, but it does seem that composition, for electronic composers, is a different activity from composing on standard instruments of the symphony in some ways, right? or maybe not, just thinkin'

all I wanna know is does Owen know how to do fourier transforms, if not he should learn

he plays a violin iirc

Wow that footage of him doing Lewis Takes Off His Shirt is amazing, that and Tryst With Mephistopheles are my two favorites on the album. I loved the first two albums when they came out but Heartland feels like a combination of the very best moments from them both, it's a huge leap forward and I'm already excited to hear how the next album will sound.

Heartland and the new Hot Chip album have made this a really good start to the year for new albums.

he plays a violin iirc

this is a huge thing imo

(that's what she said)

Man, I can't stop singing "I'M NEVER GONNA GIVE IT TO YOU!" at the moment. Fantastic album, easily the best I've heard this year.

i'm not sure if the songwriting is for me yet, but the arrangements and general sound of the album are v gorgeous and impressive. also there's a really wide variety of textures and melodic styles, but the transitions between them are really effortless and natural. it might just be because it's the only other indie rock violins album i've got, but it reminds me of parenthetical girls' "entanglements" in that way.

Man, I can't stop singing "I'M NEVER GONNA GIVE IT TO YOU!" at the moment.

OTM. i start dancing in my chair and mouthing those words a lot when that song's on -- and it's on very, very often

Am I the only one who thinks the vocals are mixed too fucking low? I can barely hear him sing, and there are some great melodies here.

Man, I can't stop singing "I'M NEVER GONNA GIVE IT TO YOU!" at the moment.

That moment is such a hook that I end up playing the song on repeat about 5 times every time I listen to it.

Damn you Owen for completely distorting my listening tally over the last few weeks...

Curt1s the "adapted electronic" music part came from an aborted collaboration with OMD, where they asked me to envision some of their early material as orchestral music. It was an impossible challenge... I spent about two days on the intro to "Souvenir" alone, trying to figure out some way of individually voicing a 50-piece string section to approximate the sound of a filter closing on a hissy Oberheim (or Jupiter or whatever). Although I did find some success on "Of All The Things We Made", I eventually had to bail, it was taking too much out of me and my personal connection to those early OMD records is too deep. Revising them seemed like it was belittling them. But some of the solutions that I had come up with over that project stuck with me and I adapted them into the arrangements for Heartland. I could give specific examples but it'd be about as tedious an exercise as trying to write a melody based on an Eigenvector har har har.

was thinking about listening to this but judging by that post this album is not for me

Empower yourself, brother.

i was thinking about not listening to this but judging by that post this album might be for me.

i love that shit, although in my experience it's mostly been drummers figuring out how to approximate electronically-generated beats & sounds.

A collab with OMD, wow...
A friend of mine told me how you played the opening songs of Dazzle Ships as an encore at a gig in Utrecht last year (or was it '08?) - I was sooo pissed I wasn't there. Luckily I now have tickets for the Amsterdam gig in march.

Just to be clear, this isn't something that particularly sounds like "let me arrange everything to imitate synths," at least not to me -- it's just something to think about when the arrangements/instruments behave in ways that are a little unexpected. It might not have occurred to me if I hadn't read it somewhere and then thought, you know: ah, yes, those strings there do do that, don't they.

I think I made the "voice mixed too low" note when talking about He Poos Clouds, but it doesn't seem like an issue to me here. (Maybe because the sonic profile of this one is lower and warmer? It felt like more of an issue when the voice was up against a lot of mid-rangey strings.)

BTW, am I alone in this experience, or does this album present to other people at first as great but not-super-lively, and then repeated listening reveals it's way, WAY more lively than you thought at first?

Four kestrels manoeuvre in the dark.

BTW, am I alone in this experience, or does this album present to other people at first as great but not-super-lively, and then repeated listening reveals it's way, WAY more lively than you thought at first?

Absolutely. The first listen was very impressive, but I was almost too enmeshed in the arrangements and the leaps forward/sideways in terms of what Owen's been doing with percussion and countermelodies and texture. The second and third were spent wrapping my head around what the hell was going on with Lewis and his wife and Cockatrices and such. And while clearly the melodies were embedding themselves in my brain, it wasn't until recently that I realized how much the album really drives itself forward. There's a KICK to it that appeared in moments on the last two (Dream of W&R, Song Song Song, etc.) but it's somehow less stately/mannered than Has a Good Home and He Poos Clouds.

Plus, things like

For a man can be bought, and a man can be sold,
And the price of a hundred thousand unwatered souls
Is a bit of meat and a bit of coal.

should not be nearly as catchy as they are. Humming this shit EVERYWHERE. Haven't seen Owen since the He Poos Clouds preview at Lambi - at the time translating the string quartet parts for solo violin was mind-blowing...looking forward to seeing how the new arrangements morph for live concerts.

Oh, and while Owen's around answering questions about recording procedures and stuff...where does Spectrum 14th Century fit in?

If Heartland is totally from the perspective of Lewis, is the EP a collection of disparate voices just supplementing with context? Are any of those "Lewis" songs as well, or should we just treat them as vaguely connected bonuses? (Specifically is The Butcher supposed to be in the voice of "Owen, God of Spectrum", because that's the only way I can make head or tails of it).

http://www.comixconnection.com/uploaded_images/286100~Portrait-of-Baby-Crying-Posters-713652.jpg

Thanks for the kind words! I'm preemptively banning myself.

Question though Owen- did you decide to just go by your name after they printed up all the sleeves to your records? I noticed when they shipped in they all say
Final Fantasy on the spine and theres a sticker on the front with you name. Just curious.

I think Owen's checked out of this thread. Or at least from answering questions. Which makes sense.

This is from P4k:

From now on, Owen Pallett will be known as Owen Pallett-- we'll have to put those bad jokes about hit points and geeks in sweatpants to rest. According to a message from Pallett, "the laws of trademark infringement exist for good reason, and so I am voluntarily retiring my band name."

http://pitchfork.com/news/37436-final-fantasy-changes-nameto-owen-pallett/

Eh oh well.

Yeah but I was wondering how last minute that decision was, since it still says Final Fantasy on all the record sleeves, but the sticker says his name. These dull little things hold my curiosity.

Oh shit. I seriously read

Question though Owen- did you decide to just go by your name

And then went to Pitchfork. I'm tired. Sorry dude.

I'm not THAT behind here.

No problem haha.

:-)

I think his voice suits the music well. Good pairing.

Little snatches of Oh Heartland, Up Yours really remind me, vocally, of Aimee Mann circa the Magnolia soundtrack.

This is a terrific record.

My copy is labelled up with Owen's own name, incidentally.

Really now? Spine too? Neato.

Yep, spine too; from Amazon's preferred merchant.

i like this record a lot and feel a bit guilty about whining about how long it was taking to come out on pwen's other thread

Great record owen!

Finally listening, and it sounds like what would happen if Josh Groban went slightly insane or took some drugs.

Good way, in a.

Josh Groban? No. Just no.

inspired by that 45rpm to 33rpm thread I slowed down some Joanna Newsom and the singing sounded quite a bit like Owen.

my few listens to this album have been real satisfying and I still don't have a real grasp of what it's doing (it's kind of just drifting awesomely by), so I expect to be back in a couple of weeks saying how amazing it is.

Is there a good online shop for buying indie vinyl (UK based)? That is trustworthy and not too expensive? I hate living in a town with only a shitty hmv to rely on and now want to buy this.

(Sorry we have an incredibly shitty vinyl store that tries to rip you off even if you know what you are looking at and doesn't seem to know anything about music that hasn't been on the cover of Mojo.)

you probably already know it, but Boomkat? http://boomkat.com/ - not exactly cheap, but 'okay' pricewise I'd say.

Ah cheers. No, I've never really bought records online unless they were from rapandsoulmailorder.com's sale section

How much is their shipping? The only thing I could think of to knock it up close to their free shipping mark (the GSH) is out of stock :(

erm, think it's about £2 for a double LP? Not entirely sure, though.

ordered. cheers merdy

wahey. I'd better get commission on this.

Great news in the midst of so much bad news.

Whoa that’s fantastic fgti!

Great to hear fgti!

yay, owen - excited on all fronts and hope you are weathering this bad weather as well as could be hoped.

Cool stuff, fgti!

nice to have some nice news

Yeah this is one of few bright bits of news this week. Can't wait for the next album

Can't wait! I was the sound recordist for HBO's Suited - loved that you came onboard for it and the score was great. Excited to catch some of these other films you did.

Man, that was such a weird project, Suited. You know I scored the entire film based on a slow-core temp score? The temp score was like... Low and Loscil and stuff. Got the whole thing approved by the director? That score was REALLY beautiful. Then, on the last day of recording that score (which was also the next-to-last project recorded at Magic Shop in NYC before it closed-- that's where Bowie made The Next Day and Black Star), the super-famous producer of that film, god bless her, called the director with her feedback on the temp score: "why does this sound like a score for a documentary about cancer survivors? I want it to sound fun! like Arcade Fire! or like.. fun. (the band)" I ended up having to redo the entire score as indie pap (I say this with affection), using pretty much entirely in-the-box Logic instruments-- I had already spent the budget on the recording sessions and had no other choice. Def my worst score, ha! Good doc though.

Amazing. I'm glad to hear the director approved, he and I were close before and thru shooting. We were, together, invited to one of the subjects' bachelor parties, a night of laser tag with his family. Any chance the original will ever see the light of day?

Oooh that's amazing! All the subjects seemed really cool, I wanted to hang out with the cellist especially. And no to the original score appearing at any time... there was one cue that had a melody I liked so much that I used it for a new song, but aside from that, it's on the rocks.

Breaking from my Fetch the Bolt Cutters repetitions to play the remastered Has a Good Home, which is now up on streaming services under Owen's name :)

What a day for tunes. Fiona, Owen remaster, new Mountain Goats project on streaming services too.

oh i missed the release date news upthread, amazing!

He Poos Clouds will be up today, also :) apparently it just takes a bit of time

today is so fuckin good.

Remasters not on Apple Music?

With reissues (as opposed to new releases) they're kind of lower priority and so every DSP does their own thing. They're not up on Tidal yet either (my DSP of choice). I'm not even posting on socials about anything until everything is live

Both reissues are great, new life to familiar music.

I have no idea what remastering is from a technical perspective but I *can* say the songs hit different (in a great way).

They're on Apple Music now. Listening to Has a Good Home and I can definitely here more clarity on (for example) "Furniture" and "The CN Tower Belongs To the Dead," and I'm not the type to typically notice such things unless the upgrading is super dramatic.

man, it's been forever since i listened to "he poos clouds"
i remember it being mailed to me and thinking it was a TERRIBLE name and then i fell in love with the album
still feeling the same 15 years later reallyl!

Thought Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project was excellent, film and soundtrack both. I've never felt better about my life as a hoarder.

I'd never heard Has A Good Home before

SPOILER: it's great

<3 thanks DJP

btw, I scored this and it's coming out May 8

https://variety.com/2020/film/news/neon-spaceship-earth-release-coronavirus-1234585849/

coooooool was already on my must watch list!

remastered Has A Good Home sounds so goooood. <3

can't wait for Island!

island out tonight !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! https://www.instagram.com/p/CAdyxJcA8XE/

fair play, gatecrashing the 1975 love-in like this

https://music.apple.com/jp/album/island/1509744953

oo!

WHAT

ahhhhhhhhhhhhh

AHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!

owen pallett - island (2020)