Microfilm: Teenage Symphonies EP (Fiche digital)
For those who never heard about it (I don't think I even mentioned it here on my own blog), I thought I'd write a post about my project Microfilm's last EP, released over the summer. This is less a review and more just a bit of self-promotion, but I'd like to do my best to give this blurb some substance for anyone curious about what Microfilm has been up to lately.
Our second full-length release, The Slingshot Orchestra, is going to be available on November 11th through a variety of online stores, and I thought I'd preface that with a promotional post about this EP, which includes a track from the new album, several remixes, and an exclusive extra track. The original single is pure pop, the most pop thing we've done to date, with a more than subtle nod to Peter Hook and New Order and my own take on Kompakt's specific recent brand of pop. It's included in vocal and instrumental form, but the remixes then veer off in a variety of directions. The Astrolabe contributes an awesome slab of pure early 90s Shep Pettibone house, while my own "Little Darlings" version is a more functional minimal techno treatment. The "Olivia Hussey" reprise is another reworking we did ourselves, applying a new context to the original vocoder chorus with concrete sounds and IDM programming. Spanish laptop-folk act Monica Y Carlos contribute their own take on the track, using only the original vocal and carving an entirely different track out of it. (Neither the Astrolabe nor Monica Y Carlos had access to the finished track; we only gave them the vocal and had them run with it -- then played the original for them after the fact.)
It's an indication partially of where we headed with the album, away from the more electrohouse and diced up samples of the first album and into something a little more fully formed, more pop, more lush, less obvious. It's still dancefloor compatible, but with advances toward actual songs rather than the off-the-cuff dance tracks we did so quickly last time around.
You can hear the original via this wonderful video that French art group Les Beautiful Fools put together for us:
Click to viewmp3: Teenage Symphonies (Olivia Hussey's Reprise)
more info: Official Microfilm site | Myspace
buy it: Amazon | iTunes | Emusic