Those Japenese sure know how to promote their shows. This flier is so bad ass, just looking at it makes me want to go DaFunkFest, well, I guess the whole Daft
Punk thing might have something to do with it.
Oh how I would love to have one of those babies!
MP3 | Daft Punk – Digital Love
(Blackout Cover That Could’ve Been)
(WHAT?! REALLY?!)
Finally, a good week for Britney Spears? Just as we were getting to think that a lunar eclipse might come sooner, here’s some tentative cause for celebration.
In the space of 24 hours, the woman who yields roughly 82,000 results if you Google her name along with the phrase “troubled singer”, has been granted temporary visitation rights to her children and seen her new single Gimme More leap into the British chart’s top three.
Now, if Britney’s record company is to be believed, a good week just got better. Apparently, “unprecedented popular demand” has prompted SonyBMG to bring the release date of her comeback album Blackout forward by three weeks.
Cynics might point out that, one way or another, they would have been compelled to do so. MP3s of songs from the album have been circulating among fans over the last few weeks. That they have been moved to do so, does at least, serve reminder of the very thing that is perhaps most easily forgotten among her recent roll-call of infamy.
She is first and foremost a pop star. In a life not exactly saturated with joy, she should take a certain amount of pleasure in the fact that Blackout coheres far better than sprawling recent sets by her fellow Mickey Mouse Club alumni Justin Timberlake and Christina Aguilera.
Far from apologising for a roll-call of adversity that takes in custody battles, hit-and-run offences, extreme hairdressing, sudden lingerie loss and umbrella-on-pap savagery – she comes out fighting on the utterly wonderful Piece Of Me.
“I’m Miss bad media karma/Another day another drama/Guess I can’t see no harm in working and being a mama,” she declaims over an adhesively catchy chorus.
Britney may have grown up in front of MTV, perfecting Madonna’s dance routines, but she isn’t the self-determining control-freak that her heroine turned into. Neither, it should be added, does she need to be. Her recent mishaps have only compounded her status as muse of choice to top-notch writer producers such as Swedish hitmakers Bloodshy & Avant, Timbaland protégé Danja and The Neptunes.
On the Pharrell Williams-written Why Should I Be Sad and, indeed, most of what precedes it, Britney is a strangely disembodied presence – her heavily treated voice suspended amid an icy fug of minor chords and brittle synthetic beats.
If truth be told, certain songs wouldn’t have sounded too different if her vocal were totally erased. On Get Naked (I Got A Plan) and Radar her voice is a piece that slots tidily into a finely sculpted piece of burnished future-pop.
But when the whole works so well, it makes no sense to mind. Perfect Lover and Toy Soldier are quite simply two of the most strangely wonderful tunes to emerge on any record this year – exercises in sonic risk-taking that, until this point, have never hitched themselves to a Britney Spears record.
So why now, then? Well, perhaps it was in the spirit of having nothing to lose that someone suggested Britney try her hand at a marching-pace sex-fantasy about a soldier which pitched itself somewhere between Prince’s female alter-ago Camille and the sensation of watching Full Metal Jacket as ten Glade Plug-Ins infuse the air with amyl nitrate. Who knows?
Furthermore, does this stuff work on any profound level? Well, ever since she appeared in 1999 with Hit Me Baby One More Time, Britney has enjoyed a certain status as metatextual plaything of Late Review guests and chin-stroking post-ironics (no mean feat, this – Kylie and Madonna had to ensure years of highbrow snobbery to get to the same point). When it comes down to it though, the answer is no, not really. A gaggle of schoolchildren exchanging ringtones on the top deck of the bus will just as easily tell you why these songs work. They tick almost every box in the checklist of great pop, period.
Perhaps that shouldn’t be so surprising. After all, Britney Spears learned to be a pop star way before she learned to be an adult. In a sense then, it’s fitting that her facility for great pop moments is the very last facet of her to shut down. (Times)
Key Tracks:
MP3 | Britney Spears – Piece Of Me
MP3 | Britney Spears – Toy Soldier (Did you know K-Fed was a Toy Soldier?)
MP3 | Britney Spears – Radar
MP3 | Britney Spears – Break The Ice
MP3 | Britney Spears – Hot As Ice
MP3 | Britney Spears – Ooh Ooh Baby
PMA: 80%
Blackout Promo. So Jive does read blogs…
Johnny made us go “Holy Shit!”
Well, the new album is finished, and it’s coming out in 10 days;
We’ve called it In Rainbows.
Love from us all.
Jonny”
Wait… It gets better.
According to inrainbows.com, the album will be available as digital download or deluxe discbox. Both editions are available for pre-order now. Re: the discbox:
THIS CONSISTS OF THE NEW ALBUM, IN RAINBOWS, ON CD
AND ON 2 X 12 INCH HEAVYWEIGHT VINYL RECORDS.
A SECOND, ENHANCED CD CONTAINS MORE NEW SONGS, ALONG WITH DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHS AND ARTWORK.
THE DISCBOX ALSO INCLUDES ARTWORK AND LYRIC BOOKLETS.
ALL ARE ENCASED IN A HARDBACK BOOK AND SLIPCASE.THE ALBUM DOWNLOAD AUTOMATICALLY COMES WITH THIS PACK.
YOU CAN DOWNLOAD THE FILE DIGITALLY FROM THE 10TH OCTOBER 2007.DISCBOXES ARE BEING MADE TO ORDER AND ARE PRICED AT £40.00 INCLUDING POSTAGE.
SHIPPING WILL BEGIN ON OR BEFORE 3RD DECEMBER 2007.
The package is pretty cool too:
So yes, I know you love the discboxes but what about the download-only fee, you ask? Well its up to you. No Seriously. Its up to you.
CD 1 AND VINYL TRACKLIST
15 STEP
BODYSNATCHERS
NUDE
WEIRD FISHES/ARPEGGI
ALL I NEED
FAUST ARP
RECKONER
HOUSE OF CARDS
JIGSAW FALLING INTO PLACE
VIDEOTAPE
CD 2 AND VINYL TRACKLIST
MK 1
DOWN IS THE NEW UP
GO SLOWLY
MK 2
LAST FLOWERS
UP ON THE LADDER
BANGERS AND MASH
4 MINUTE WARNING
W.A.S.T.E. sent Stereogum an email that might clear a few things up:
This transaction will appear on your credit card bill as WASTE PRODUCTS LTD. or a shortened version of this.
Discbox customers. You goods will be shipped on or before 3rd December 2007 by post. Information regarding the download (included with the Discbox) as per below.
Download customers. You will receive a further e-mail shortly before the 10th October detailing your username and activation code. The e-mail will also provide the link to the download area.
We value your custom.
So let me get this straight… Radiohead are basically giving EMI the finger and going promo-free with In Rainbows? Wicked. Here is a message from Radiohead’s PR firm:
There will be no advances, promotional copies, digital streams, media sites, etc. of RADIOHEAD’s In Rainbows.
Everyone in the world will be getting the music at the same time: Oct. 10. That includes us. We don’t have anything to play anyone in the nine days until the record is available. Everyone at nasty has put his or her order in and just to clarify: you are not being asked to pay for a promo (as some have inquired). you can pay nothing or as much or as little as you want.
There will be no promotional copies of the discbox either, as each discbox is being made to order. Sorry.
There you have it guys. I have no streams, leaks, or mp3s for you until October 10th. I declare October 10th as “GLOBAL PLAY RADIOHEAD DAY”
Here are some Radiohead classics for you:
mp3: Radiohead – Creep
