Owen Pallett - Heartland

Awesome hearing about the making of Island, can't wait to hear tracks with or without crazy time-signature drumming

re "The Great Elsewhere": thanks for the explainer, Owen! It's still crazy to me that the whole thing works.

need to listen to the Sarah-Beth Tomberlin record - I keep forgetting to check it out.

fascinating to hear about how The Great Elsewhere works, it's my absolute favourite. still very excited for Island

I don't know a lot about time signatures, but is "The Riverbed" doing the same thing rhythmically? I once tried to cut off the start and end of that song so that it would loop (it is so awesome that I could listen to it all day - and I have), but I could never get the edit points right.

Threw on the A Swedish Love Story EP (which I'd forgotten I'd purchased on vinyl until I spotted it among my records earlier today) while doing some writing this afternoon and was reminded what a lovely little collection of songs it is. Understandably overshadowed by his other 2010 release, I still think that "A Man With No Ankles" might be my favourite OP song of this era.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUeynkQPg8s

Just want to chime in to say ‘me too!’ - I recently rediscovered this EP and have been enjoying it very much. Played that exact song on the radio a couple weeks ago!

<3

New album will be out this year, and I’m going in to get the Final Fantasy albums remastered and repackaged with bonus stuff, the Totally Legal edition

yayyyyyyyyy

Huzzah! <3

a welcome recess from hyperreality <3

listened to in conflict this morning, one of my favorite parts of the album is the piano break between the verses of “i’m not afraid” that sounds like an rpg save point

also realizing how grateful i am that this album exists

that sounds like an rpg save point

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-jEYv97CMwc4/UjC2_hJSBBI/AAAAAAAAADk/dh2bvdLLWUY/s1600/save+point.png

Probably not unrelated to the fact that that moment is taken from the Ryuchi Sakamoto cookbook, as is lots of JRPG music

this is wonderful news, owen.

cool, looking forward to new stuff

this is good news.

Very glad to hear this!!!

same :)

Happy belated birthday to this achievement of a record--and to ten more years of being in my music rotation.

New live versions of some Heartland tracks have been periodically finding their way onto YouTube, and they're wonderful to listen to.

Cheers!

How in hell is this a decade old.

It came out 10 years ago

proof?

It's a decade old

owen-pallett-cooleth-story-brethren.jpg

"And from my ginger chest, there
came the sound of thunder"

Blasting this tonight in honor of its anniversary. An album so unique and with a truly transformative power I did not think I'd come across after my 30s any more. Shame the "life altering" cliche, but alter my life, it did. Up yours.

<3 :) thank you guys

starting this thread prob in my top 5 moments on ilx.

My album of the decade no contest (and maybe song of the decade too for "The Great Elsewhere").

i remember this being the first record i bought after deciding i'd never buy a CD again!

the synth of lewis takes off his shirt is still one of my favourite musical things ever

new OP album announced soon surely?

It’s a wonderful record, Owen.

I need to listen to this record again asap. The problem with having a mental list of albums you love is that the list keeps getting longer and longer, so it's nice to be reminded of a record you love that you haven't listened to lately, for no particularly good reason!

idk if this was really "public knowledge", but there was a re-issue of this album back in 2014 or so that included a number of bonus tracks. I know the "Deluxe Edition" is available on the iTunes store (and on CD format); I don't know about streaming services, because I don't use them. (I do use Tidal but I think it's bad luck to search for your own music on streaming services for some reason.)

The "Deluxe Edition" includes an instrumental b-side from the "Lewis Takes Action" single ("A Watery Day"), and then the entirety of the "Export EP". "Export" was a bit of a weird thing. I originally had this idea that I might record re-imagined versions of Heartland's songs that were stripped down and sung by other singers. I recorded beds for them, and started soliciting certain friends of mine to sing them. The wrangling process was more than I'd bargained for, and I got impatient. Fall 2010 was a frustrating bit of time for me. My guitarist (the brilliant Thom Gill) abruptly left, which was for the best (on a global level, he's a genius and should be doing his own thing). I had been in talks with new management, which made me optimistic for 'what would happen in the 2010s', and those talks abruptly fell through. There was some other stuff going on at the time, I can't remember what.

At the time, I'd only experienced one episode of adult depression (Spring 2007)-- funny to think about it now that depression/anxiety have become such a defining feature of my personality/existence. But in December 2010 I fell into a depression. I began cobbling together some unreleased stuff, including the instrumentals to this "Heartland reimagined" EP, and other fragments of things, to put together what would become the "Export EP". Prior to a set I played in Osaka, my last set of the year, I started sobbing desperately in front of my friend who worked at P-Vine. The year had been overwhelming and I was just exhausted. That night, in a daze, I uploaded "Export EP" to Soundcloud instead of bothering to consult anybody about a proper release for it. It was ignored. (The depression lifted a few days later and I had a really happy and healthy few years; 2011 especially was a really great one.)

Anyway you might be interested to try and track down the deluxe edition of Heartland for that EP. The best track on it is a really fucking good version of "The Great Elsewhere" from that Heartland Reimagined thing. Shara Nova (fka Shara Worden aka My Brightest Diamond) was the first and only person I solicited to record their vocals, and she... absolutely slayed it. The version has Shahzad Ismaily on drums and Thom Gill on guitar, I'm playing Rhodes, and three NYC string player luminaries (Rob Moose violin, Nadia Sirota viola, Clarice Jensen cello). Here it is if you're interested. The version began as a joke that Thom and I used to play at sound check but we decided it was actually amazing and recorded it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vuQKPjaP08

I saw the songs from this album live every night for the better part of a month and "lewis takes off his shirt" just fuckin killed me every time

Holy shit, she did slay it. That was awesome.

shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit

i have always loved loved loved that Export Elsewhere

<3 that version of TGE (which I think I first heard on saidthegramophone!).

Yeah it's superb.

Love Shara's cover sooooo much

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7WxTP3ger8

this performance <3 <3 <3 <3 <3

(I do use Tidal but I think it's bad luck to search for your own music on streaming services for some reason.)

this is a mood

That performance in the rain is genuinely one of my favourite things on the internet.

really enjoyed the sound track to Recorder; it's a shame that's not readily available anywhere.... that i know of?

"Recorder"'s OST is not gonna be released. It works really well in the context of the movie, but not-so-much on its own. (The same is true for the score I did for the HBO doc "Suited"). I do have four soundtracks mastered and ready for release-- Anton Corbijn's "Life", M Blash's "The Wait", Shannon Walsh's "Illusions Of Control" and Matt Wolf's newer doc "Spaceship Earth"-- the last of which is 80 minutes of orchestral tootling that is a hybrid of Michael Nyman and Aaron Copland and is something I'm really proud of. Variety reviewed the film and said the score was "tremendous" :)

I've got the Final Fantasy-era material all re-mastered and it sounds insanely good, we're literally just waiting on my label to upload it to DSPs. The new album has a release date but I can't announce it yet-- I'm not anticipating that Covid is gonna push it back but I can't be sure sure.

that's a lot of great news!!

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