Saturday, September 5, 2015
Roger writes music for 'Ascenders' book trailer
The story from MTV:
‘Ascenders’ Is Supernatural Teen Angst Like You’ve Never Seen It Before
The Cure's Roger O'Donnell shares his inspiration for the book trailer's score.
by Kase Wickman
The afterlife has always been a great big question mark: where do we go when we die? Do we go anywhere?
As the new book “Ascenders: High School for the Recently Departed” by C.L. Gaber sees it, those whose lives are cut extremely short — think in the teen years — go to an adolescent in-between known as The Academy. The human brain isn’t fully formed until age 24, so even if a person is dead, their formative years aren’t necessarily over.
There are no rules at The Academy — you’re already dead, so what’s the worst that could happen?
MTV News is exclusively debuting the book trailer, featuring music by Roger O’Donnell of The Cure. O’Donnell told MTV News that it was “Ascenders” fresh take on the supernatural teen genre that inspired him to write a score for the trailer.
“It just sounded like a really intriguing take on the all these kind of zombie and vampire and ghost stories; a new take on it,” he said. “I thought it was really interesting, and it inspired me to write music.”
That’s not just lip service, either.
“I’m not a craft composer, it has to be a real feeling or inspiration thing. If I wasn’t feeling it I’d have to say ’I’m sorry, I can’t do this,'” he said.
He began with a piano throughline, then added cello, choral and various instrumentals to flesh out his score, which he said came from “a place of uneasiness and sadness.”
“A kind of desperation, a kind of loss, when a life is cut short. It’s like the loss of what should come from that,” he said of his score’s tone.
Plus, it’s not like unease and sadness are unfamiliar themes for him: “Those kinds of emotions come easily to me, I’ve been in The Cure for 30 years, I can do sad,” he said, laughing.
Thursday, September 3, 2015
Sunday, August 30, 2015
Yo La Tengo cover 'Friday I'm in Love'
Update (08/30/15): The band performed a live version of their cover on CBS This Morning's Saturday Sessions.
Update (July 14th, 2015): And here's the video for it, via Pitchfork. (Thanks @virgonomiroku)
Pitchfork reports that Yo La Tengo will be covering 'Friday I'm in Love' on their upcoming album, 'Stuff Like That There', which will be released on Aug. 28th.
Helpful note to bands thinking about covering The Cure in the future, you do know that they have more than 4 songs, right? Look deep into the catalog. Tons of great songs to pick from. :)
Update (06/11/15): From Newsweek:
Ira Kaplan, who plays in the trio with his wife Georgia Hubley (drums, vocals) and James McNew (bass), called Newsweek to discuss Yo La Tengo's relationship with the songs, artists and spirals of influence that make up the new record.
Ira Kaplan: "Years ago, the year that The Onion wrote that article about us with the collapse at the club killing people, they asked us to perform at their Christmas party in New York. They started telling us the money they had available to pay us and we said the money is less important—what we really want is if you'll help us reenact that article. It took some convincing. The difference was we wanted to be killed instead of people in the audience. So they ended up getting very enthusiastic, setting up fake rigging on the stage and at a certain point the lights flickered and the equipment went off and all these fake speakers fell from the rafters and landed on us, killing us, and we were carried off on stretchers.
"I loved when [The Cure] first started, those initial singles. Not quite 'Killing an Arab' as much as 'Boys Don't Cry' and 'Jumping Someone Else's Train.' I loved those songs and I loved the Three Imaginary Boys record. I kind of quickly stopped listening to them when the singles got less poppy. When the singles got poppy again, I became a fan of all those songs." (Thanks Dave)
I don't like, or agree with, Ira Kaplan. :)
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