favorite beck album? (official beck thread)

[Stefen]

BECK MARRIES BELLE

American rocker BECK has reportedly married his eight-month pregnant girlfriend MARISSA RIBISI.

According to American news site PAGE SIX, the pair tied the knot in secret in Santa Monica, California, on Saturday (3APR04).

Ribisi, who is the twin sister of actor GIOVANNI RIBISI, was last seen at a concert Beck performed in Los Angeles last week alongside fellow Scientologists JULIETTE LEWIS and ERICA CHRISTENSEN.

I love how they throw in "alongside fellow Scientologists"

[superdrag76]

'mellow gold' hands down. probably one of the greatest albums ever. it's got style and soul.

[Mesh]

BECK MARRIES BELLE

American rocker BECK has reportedly married his eight-month pregnant girlfriend MARISSA RIBISI.

According to American news site PAGE SIX, the pair tied the knot in secret in Santa Monica, California, on Saturday (3APR04).

Ribisi, who is the twin sister of actor GIOVANNI RIBISI, was last seen at a concert Beck performed in Los Angeles last week alongside fellow Scientologists JULIETTE LEWIS and ERICA CHRISTENSEN.

Hey, that's the redhead from Dazed & Confused, right?

[MacGuffin]

Source: MTV

Still aren't convinced Beck's about to issue his third LP in two years? A post that appeared on Beck.com late last week further confirmed the hard-to-believe accomplishment: "Beck has just completed his new album, which he's been in the studio working on with Nigel Godrich," the post read, referencing the producer who worked on 2005's Guero and 2002's Sea Change. "The album is due out this fall."

[tpfkabi]

i don't really consider Guerolito an album. i mean, it was an album, but Beck didn't really have to do anything.

any hints on what direction this album will be?

both Godrich albums have been mostly acoustic based affairs.

[MacGuffin]

Los Angeles radio station KROQ had a breakfast concert with Beck a while back:

http://www.kroq.com/kevinandbean/breakfast/index.html

[modage]

Beck Giving Fans Sticky Fingers With Quasi-Hip-Hop Album
Source: MTVNews 6.26.2006 6:00 AM EDT

MANCHESTER, Tennessee — Though he may have been reclining on a couch backstage at the Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival earlier this month, Beck was hardly relaxing.  Rather, after his prop-heavy set, Beck was fielding a barrage of calls on his cell phone from his keyboard player, wife and grandmother. He was also dodging hippies — "I smell patchouli. I smell tie-dye," he laughed — and bringing MTV News up to speed on his new album, a collaboration with longtime producer Nigel Godrich that's been almost three years in the making.

"It's all mastered and the artwork's pretty much done," he said. "Nigel and I did about 40 tracks, and we've worked on it for about two and a half years, getting it down to about 20. Now we're trying to squeeze them down even further. I worked on them in tandem [with sessions for last year's Guero], and then at the beginning of this year we got together and finally mixed them and put them together."

Though there's still no title for the album, Beck promised it'll be in stores this fall and said he's been working several new songs — including "Soldier Jane," "Nausea" and "1,000 BPM" — into his recent set lists that will more than likely make it onto the record.

But again, that could all change.

"We're days away from finishing the record, but it's proving very difficult to come up with a track list because each song has its own identity. Nothing's really obvious," he said. "Before we started, Nigel said he wanted to do a hip-hop record. And in a way it is, and in a way it isn't. It has hip-hop songs, and my previous work with him was Mutations and Seachange, these sort of introspective records, and so this new one is sort of bringing those two worlds together."

One thing he is certain about is the new album artwork, which he's been working on for almost a year with an unspecified production company.

"It's a pretty cool concept. It's supposed to be a secret, but I'll let the cat out the bag — it's all stickers," he explained. "It's really pretty amazing. The artwork is laid out in stickers, it's modular, the cover is blank and you get a sheet of stickers and you make your own cover."

But completing his new album isn't the only thing on Beck's schedule. He's also burning the midnight oil to finish the 10th anniversary edition of his landmark Odelay album, which is shaping up to be a double-disc affair loaded with B-sides and remixes.

"There's quite a lot of remixes floating around from that era," he observed. "Aphex Twin did one, Mario C. did some, the Dust Brothers did a bunch of them. So I they're going to be on there. 'Deadweight' [from the soundtrack to 1997's 'A Life Less Ordinary'] will be on there.

"I mean, I know I'm sort of behind the 8-ball," he admitted, "because [the Odelay reissue] was supposed to come out now — it's been 10 years — but I think I blew it. It'll be out sometime this year, though."

[MacGuffin]

Beck is giving out The Information. His ninth studio album and fourth one produced by Nigel Godrich (Radiohead) will contain 15 tracks — the most songs the Silver Lake, California, Scientologist has put on one album since 1994's One Foot in the Grave. Homemade videos for "This Girl," "1,000 BPM," "No Complaints," "Nausea," "We Dance Alone" and "Movie Theme" have already been floating around online, but, according to Beck's Web site, "This Girl" won't be appearing on the record. The remaining tracks will be: "Elevator Music," "Think I'm in Love," "Cell Phone's Dead," "Soldier Jane," "Strange Apparition," "Dark Star," "Motorcade," "The Information," "New Round" and "Horrible Fanfare/ Landslide/ Exoskeleton."

[sickfins]

the information



i haven't really gotten into all of the tracks yet, but it's wonderful music to work to.  it was on repeat all day yesterday.

particularly wonderful are
think i'm in love
cell phone's dead
the information

it's sort of like guero minus the spanish feel.  much more similar to guero than any of his other albums, but not as much variety.  there's a very interesting disco vibe running through it.  this album is what sea change dreams about when it goes to sleep

[modage]

i love the first four songs so far and the rest of it kinda runs together.  i need to keep listening, but already i like it more than guero which was too odelay redux for me.  my favorite song is probably Strange Apparition.  love  the beginning when the piano kicks in.

[MacGuffin]

Beck Takes A Walk On The Wild Side — Kind Of — For 'Nausea' Clip
Video for first single from The Information twists gritty reality.
Source: MTV   

For more than a decade, Beck has dabbled almost exclusively in the surreal. But when it came time to shoot the video for "Nausea," the first single from his October 3 album, The Information, he decided to change things up a bit: he got surreally real.

Because while it's based in reality, nothing is truly what it seems in the "Nausea" clip, which Beck shot with director Patrick Daughters (Yeah Yeah Yeahs' "Maps") recently in Los Angeles. Borrowing a page from "The Truman Show" — and the eerie, cinematic photography of Gregory Crewdson — the video follows Beck as he strolls through the seedy underbelly of L.A., past thugs and assorted riffraff that all look a bit, well, too perfectly cast.

The result is an underlying sense of surrealism that's bolstered by the fact that various street urchins snap into character as Beck approaches — a homeless man goes from standing upright to hunched in just a beat, a couple quickly joins hands when Beck glances their way — and then revert to their former stances as he passes. Clearly, something is amiss.

But it's not just the viewer that's suspicious. As the clip progresses, Beck becomes increasingly aware that this so-called reality might actually be some sort of elaborate stage production. The city skyline wobbles as if to suggest it's merely a backdrop painting, the sidewalk looks like plywood and strangely, the same cast of characters reappears time and time again, seemingly a group of actors playing different roles.

As the video reaches its conclusion, the viewer's vantage point gets wider and wider until it's evident that Beck's entire world is taking place on a gigantic soundstage, complete with massive spotlights and scrambling stagehands. At the clip's end, Beck walks off the stage, toward an unmarked door and into the unknown.

The "Nausea" video is similar in spirit to the reality-folding clip Beck shot last year for "Girl," the second single from his Guero album. And while it's the first proper video from The Information, it's by no means the only one he has filmed.

Just last month, news broke that Beck had been hard at work on a series of homemade clips — one for each song on the album — all of which are included on a DVD that comes packaged with the record.

[MacGuffin]

Someone I'm close to very kindly slipped me a pair of 12th row tickets to see Beck this weekend at the Download Festival.    I've yet to get a hold of "The Information," but will be sure to give it a few listens prior to the concert.

Review please.

[MacGuffin]

Beck's new CD is not allowed on England's charts

Beck loaded up his new album "The Information" with a bonus DVD with homemade videos for each song and stickers that fans can use to create customized CD covers, all in the hope of giving consumers more reasons to buy it. So what happens?

In England, the album has been disqualified from appearing on sales charts because those extras give it "an unfair advantage" over less elaborate packages.

The ruling comes from the Official U.K. Charts Co., which establishes the standards for what charts and what doesn't.

The album, released Monday in the U.K. and on Tuesday in the U.S., won't have that problem at home.

"This does not run afoul of any Billboard chart rules and I am surprised it was a problem in the U.K.," Geoff Mayfield, director of charts for Billboard, said Wednesday.

Through a spokesman, Beck said he was disappointed at the situation in England but that chart position isn't his top priority with the new album.

"It's an unconventional package, but it shouldn't be penalized for that," he said via e-mail. "Any art on a CD is an incentive to buy and listen. Ultimately, it doesn't matter, the response from the fans has been so strong ... and that is the most important thing."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The album cover for The Information isn't the only make-it-yourself item Beck has planned: He's also letting fans customize their own T-shirts at his upcoming shows. Fans will be able to choose from four different colors of blank tees, along with iron-on decals, and the shirts can be pressed at the respective venues.

[MacGuffin]

Beck Lists Favorite Album Covers, From The Stones To ... Toncho Pilatos?
'I've always aspired to have a cover that's so emblematic of the music that the two are inseparable,' he says.
Source: MTV

For Beck, the worlds of music and art have always been inextricably linked.

His grandfather, Al Hansen, was a paragon of the Fluxus art movement of the '60s and '70s (works by the two were featured in a touring show called "Playing With Matches"), and as a teen, Beck supported his bizarro-folk leanings with a slew of jobs, including working at a museum.

Throughout his career, nowhere have those two universes collided quite like they do on the cover of Beck's albums. For more than a decade, he's worked hard at creating, as he puts it, "iconic, identifying images" to showcase the genre-defying tunes contained within. And more often than not, he succeeds (think the cow-skull-and-carburetor sculpture that fronts Mellow Gold or the leaping Komondor on the cover of Odelay).

So it came as a bit of a shock when news broke earlier this year that he was taking the opposite approach for his new record, The Information. With a simple sheet of graph paper and some stickers, Beck handed the design responsibilities over to his fans. While some saw the move as a cop-out or a shrewd marketing decision, Beck prefers to think of it as the next step in his artistic progression.

"Art has always been a huge part of my upbringing, and in the past, I've used music as an excuse to work with [artists like] Marcel Dzama or Tim Hawkinson. But with this new record, I decided to sort of turn the controls over to the people who buy my music," he said. "Also, I've always aspired to have a record cover that's so emblematic of the music that the two are inseparable, and often I've had to, like, slave over cover choices. So with this album, it's been a relief because there is no proper cover."

But that doesn't mean Beck is abandoning the medium altogether. Rather, with The Information, he's looking to re-examine the definition of just what an album cover can be. And when he stopped by MTV News recently, he let us in on the albums that inspired him to think outside the, um, jewel case in the first place.


The Beatles' Rubber Soul (1965) and Revolver (1966)
"I love both of these covers, just love the imagery. They're kind of, you know, psychedelic and weird but still also kind of innocent. Records need an identity, or else they all start to blur together. Some people will say that there are other, more famous Beatles covers, but these are simpler and yet still tripped-out — kind of like their music was becoming."


France Gall's Baby Pop (1966)
"When I was growing up, my friends and I would go to swap meets and thrift stores and buy records just for their wild covers. But then something happened. We started actually listening to those records we bought in the used bins, and we'd go, 'Wow, there are some cool songs on [these]!' So that's how we sort of discovered France Gall. I think we originally bought her albums because of the way she looks on the cover. But she was actually really, really talented."


Os Mutantes' Os Mutantes (1968) and Mutantes (1969)
"Same thing goes for Os Mutantes. We'd go to thrift stores, and it was like digging through the vaults and discovering these lost treasures. At first we probably bought these records because of their really weird, spacey covers. But when they turned out to be great, it was like an extra bonus."


Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica (1969)
"This is a great album cover. Making one and choosing one is a complete art form, because it really can change an album for me. And here is this incredible image on this incredible double album. It's completely fearless, a really bold and funny statement."


The Rolling Stones' Sticky Fingers (1971)
"It's really this multimedia sort of presentation [designed and photographed by Andy Warhol] because of the zipper and all. It's simple and yet really iconic. If you picked the record up and you had never heard of the Rolling Stones before, you'd immediately understand just what this record was all about."


Toncho Pilatos' Toncho Pilatos (1971)
"I grew up in L.A., so I have tons of weird Mexican rock from the '70s — that's a whole universe unto itself. Like Toncho Pilatos, these wild-looking guys. All of these album covers were full of, like, gangs of psychedelic-looking Mexican dudes and pyramids. It was their version of what was going on in England or the U.S. but with more of their culture and influences thrown in there."


Pool-Pah's "The Flasher" Motion Picture Soundtrack (1973)
"I have some thrift-store records that I really love the covers for. There's a soundtrack to this movie, 'The Flasher' — I got it when I was about 18 in a used bin. And I've never seen the film or heard any mention of it. I don't even know if the film exists, but the soundtrack exists. And it's an illustration of this bearded, Jesus-looking character in a trench coat, sort of shazamming through space. And on the back cover are stills from the film: He's flashing an old lady, she's beating him with her purse, he flashes a statue in a park."


David Bowie's Low (1977)
"I'm such a huge fan of all the Bowie album covers from the '70s, but this one [an image from the 1976 film 'The Man Who Fell to Earth,' which stars Bowie] sticks out in my mind. Making a cover is torturous, because you're sentencing the music to one image, forever and ever. And, like, you start to think, 'Is it going to be too kitschy or too retro? Too serious or too dark?' I don't think David Bowie thought about any of those things, but for the music contained on the record, this cover was perfect."

[MacGuffin]

Too Much Information?: Beck concocted a video for each song on last year's The Information — an album that contained 15 songs, the most the singer/songwriter had put on one album since 1994. He presented those clips in the form of a bonus DVD that came with the original CD release, but just in case that's not enough Information for you, he's now teeing up a brand-new, three-disc version. The hefty — and definitive, we hope — deluxe-slipcase edition features a trio of bonus tracks on disc one; a second CD boasting six remixes; and a DVD with a grand total of 17 videos. Hopefully that's not nausea you're feeling.