Results tagged “owenpallett”

"When you see eight large columns and three heads of Zeus, you will know you have arrived in the correct spot."

If you've ever thought, "Hey, Final Fantasy's 'The CN Tower Belongs to the Dead' is really heartbreaking and gorgeous and fragile, but I just wish it rocked a little harder," boy oh boy is that a coincidence, because the Darcys have just released a cover of Owen Pallett's song, which you can listen to and judge against the impossible standard of the original now. It's not that the replacement of Final Fantasy's keyboard, violin, and glockenspiel with your standard drums, bass, guitars, and gravely voice is necessarily bad—the Darcys' track has its moments, particularly in the first half—it's just a bit weird to have such delicate material treated so forcefully. There are good reasons why Papa Roach has never tried to cover Sufjan Stevens, ya know?

MUSIC: Tonight, head out to the Danforth for what will likely be one of the best shows of the summer (sorry, Dave Matthews Band). Final Fantasy is playing!!! He's joined by the similarly electroclassical Nico Muhly, along with experimental musician Doveman and indie acoustic singer Samamidon, who are all visiting us from New York. Just yesterday, new tracks from Final Fantasy's two upcoming EPs were released to Zoilus and Stereogum, and they are predictably awesome; we cannot encourage you enough to go tonight. Danforth Music Hall (147 Danforth Avenue), 8 p.m., $20.

Photo of Owen Pallett by Heidi Slimane from his MySpace.

Vintage postcard of the Toronto General Hospital (1913) from Mars Discovery District.

Kincardine-born, Mississauga-bred, Toronto-based, and Berlin-bound, Joel Gibb is the musical and managerial head of The Hidden Cameras, the fantastic and always well-populated music collective whose members have included Owen Pallett (Final Fantasy), Reg Vermue (Gentlemen Reg), Laura Barrett, Maggie MacDonald (Republic of Safety), Dave Meslin (founder of the Toronto Public Space Committee), Bob Wiseman, Steve Kado (founder of Blocks Recording Club, member of Barcelona Pavilion and Ninja High School), Ohad Benchetrit (Do Make Say Think), Don Kerr (The Rheostatics), and many, many others.

When Austrian company Wiener Stadtwerke approached Owen Pallett/Final Fantasy about using the song "This Is The Dream of Win & Regine" in a commercial, Pallett declined (probably nicely). So, naturally, Wiener Stadtwerke used the song in a commercial in June of this year anyway––or, at least, the most similar re-recorded version of Final Fantasy's song possible, changing a few notes in the violin part, adding some guy awkwardly singing "can you feel it?" and crediting...

Finally, another excuse to write about La Blogothèque's Take-Away Shows. The last time we covered the France-based music filmmakers, they were psyching us up for the Arcade Fire's May concert with the best concert footage we've ever seen of the band. Before that, they won us over with The Hidden Cameras parading along boardwalks. Now they've given us Owen Pallett plucking away at two songs––"Your Light Is Spent" (above) and "Horsetail Feathers"––in Paris. If you've always wanted to hear "Your Light Is Spent" sung by an out-of-breath Owen running down a Paris street to avoid the noise from traffic, consider your wish fulfilled.

Festival fever is sweeping the city—after all, it’s that time of year. But, perhaps incredibly, there are people for whom Brad Pitt sightings and red carpet galas just aren’t worth the Ben Mulroney-sized hype. What, for example, is the ardent audiophile to do in this landscape of visual media tyranny?

Photo of Cadence Weapon by David Topping.

Final Fantasy alert! Over the past week, the always-lovely Good Hodgkins has twice graced us with new Owen Pallett tracks.

Part Pet Sounds-era Beach Boys, part Animal Collective, part something else completely, Grizzly Bear have a unique sound that's tricky to categorize. This is not music you will necessarily dance to, but you will be moved. The Brooklyn-based band hits Toronto on Tuesday at Lee's Palace with Dirty Projectors to promote their newest (and critically acclaimed) record Yellow House.

Photo of Owen Pallett by chichibebelolo on Flickr. Photo of Steve Kado by Shakeer on Flickr.

The slow move from Torontoist to FinalFantasyist is nearly complete. Owen Pallett is pretty great and all, but to date we've talked about his song "This Lamb Sells Condos"; the video for that song; the inspiration for that song; the prize that Pallett won for the album that the song appears on; the love that Canadian bloggers have for him; the love that we, specifically, have for him; previewed and reviewed his library show (and a regular show); and shown his cover of Joanna Newsom's "Peach Plum Pear" some love. Even though we're running out of ideas for Final Fantasy article titles, there's yet another interesting Pallett project that we thought that we'd share -- one that, as the press release handily tells us, "IS NOT A CONCERT!"

Special guest Victoria Kent sent us this article, and, since it's about Final Fantasy and "This Lamb Sells Condos," we're pretty much obliged to post, especially now that we've interviewed Brad J. Lamb, whose advertising slogan inspired Owen Pallett to write the song. Thanks Victoria!

Brad J. Lamb is not, to put it gently, universally loved.

We realize that we probably talk about Owen Pallett, aka Final Fantasy, way too much. So we're not going to talk about his free show on Saturday night at North York Central Library, also featuring The Creeping Nobodies, Hank, Ninja High School, and Bob Wiseman. Nope, not a word.

Owen Pallett (aka. Final Fantasy) has taken the inaugural Polaris Music Prize and $20,000 for his sophomore album He Poos Clouds. Pallett beat out nine other worthy artists including Cadence Weapon, the Deadly Snakes, Malajube and more.

Ok, so there are no obnoxious hosts (yes, we mean you Mulroney!) and we don't get to vote by cellphone, but in a way SOCAN's Echo Songwriting prize is kind of like Canadian Idol. The award relies on your votes to decide which of these five artists have written the "most innovative, creative and artistic songs created in the past year." The prize is $5000 which should pay rent and utilities for about six months.

Toronto's condominium market isn't always a pretty one. Owen Pallett of Final Fantasy (also the strings arranger for The Arcade Fire and The Hidden Cameras, pictured above at left) decided to take an unorthodox approach to dealing with the problem: he wrote a song about it.

And march over to the opening of Artcade tonight 7-10pm at Microplay (632 Queen W). The group show brings 11 artists and designers that are inspired by classic arcade games. One of our favourite illustrators, Chris Hutsul, is showing pieces like this badass bot, a mashup of two of our favourite pop-culture influences; Transformers and the 8-bit glory of the NES.

Maybe Torontoist is getting old, but turning up at a gig at doors and waiting an hour and fifteen minutes for anything to happen at all seems an unfair punishment for an eagerness to see the first band to play. The first band at the Images Festival Fundraiser, of course, being Final Fantasy, one of the most hyped bands of the year, and it’s barely started. Despite being utterly captivated by The CN Tower Belongs to the Dead, infatuated to the point of periods of hours on which Torontoist will play nothing else except that one song on loop, no other song currently available online has particularly peaked Torontoist’s interest (nor our ire), so it was in greatly conflicting crashing waves of trepidation and anticipation that we sat for over an hour. When Owen Pallett finally emerged (we could see him fiddling with his violin in the back room for ages) His live act was revealed to be truly something to be seen. Solo on stage, his ability to keep aware of a continually increasing group of samples and loops, while creating yet more using his violin in a variety of strange ways, including yelling into the strings and playing it like a ukulele, all the while singing, is as remarkable to watch as seeing Duracell perform the theme of the first world of Space Harrier using only a drum kit.

Actually there's really good music too and the Images that we're talking about is actually the dozens of films shown every year at the Images Festival. Last year's fest had groundbreaking film from the Arab world and from a little closer to home Clive Holden's Trains of Winnipeg.

Owen Pallett's most raucous cheerleader has to be blogger, Globe and Mail writer and man about town Carl Wilson. He's been singing Pallett's praises for months and all of this worthy praise has culminated in a profile in the New York Times arts section!

Barrett, a pianist who took up the Kalimba in the last year and a recent Linguistics and English U of T grad, has an artfully-packaged EP out called Earth Sciences. It includes a song called Stop giving your children standardized tests, part one. You can catch the sweet science nerd later this month at The Bagel, details of which the self-correcting power of the blogosphere will soon post in the comments.