Pitchfork has just announced the final lineup for their wildly successful eponymous music festival, and it’s pretty much an indie kid’s dream come true: Liars, Wolf Parade, Major Lazer, Beach House, Why?, Big Boi, Robyn, and several other independent music luminaries will be playing across three days in Chicago come July, alongside previously-announced headliners Pavement, LCD Soundsystem and Modest Mouse… not to mention the likes of Broken Social Scene, Panda Bear, Raekwon, Titus Andronicus, Dâm-Funk, Sleigh Bells et al.

Prepped-out Malkmus

Liars stole the show in 2006—they’re easily one of my favorite live acts—and Stephen Malkmus was a highlight in 2007, but Pitchfork has really outdone themselves for the fifth time around. Honestly, the lineup is basically too stacked at this point (if the previous run-on paragraph is any indication), an extreme case of ‘festival oversaturation’: there’s simply no way that one would have the opportunity to see every single band he or she wanted to see.

Liars' Angus Andrew shredding

Related: Liars, St. Vincent (also playing this festival this year) and ’fork fest veterans Os Mutantes covering INXS for Beck’s Record Club (Stereogum); Awesome interview with Angus from Liars (Motherboard); LCD Soundsystem dates for what may or may not be a final tour (BV).

Shameless self-promotion, because it’s been a while:

» The Purple Ribbon Allstars – Kryptokraft 400 (K Hessel’s On It) (3:42) – 6.6MB mp3 @ 246kbps

» Das Racist – Combination Pon de Floor and Wallpaper (K Hessel’s Mas Lazer Mashup) (3:27) – 7.9MB mp3 @ 320kbps

So somehow I missed this, but LCD Soundsystem has (sort of) released a new track from their forthcoming (and possibly last, as reported earlier) album. In addition to over an hour of new music from James Murphy & co., they’ve also come up with a name and album art to spite Stereogum’s crowdsourcing campaign.

Just as Sisterworld is the Liars’ L.A. album, This Is Happening represents the same for LCD, and the different roads from NYC to the City of Angels to illustrate just how far we’ve come from the dance-punk glory days of the early 00’s.

Of course, if the Pitchfork-approved single “Drunk Girls” (below) is any indication, I imagine that the one-time disco savior has crafted a radically different sound from the art-punk experimentalists: it’s a matter of timelessness vs. timeliness, respectively, insofar as rock music evolves through a dialectic* of the two principles.

But I digress: “Drunk Girls,” for your listening pleasure.

In other album art news, D*Face × X*Tina: never would’ve seen it coming, but I can dig it. At least it sets a precendent for some kind of blockbuster Shepard Fairey / Lady Gaga collabo.

*Yes I dropped a d-bomb. No, I don’t really know what it means, and I’m not proud of it.

The Persistence of Trite Imagery

Since this Sunday marked Daylight Saving Time, I decided to put my philosophy degree to good use by pondering the psychology and metaphysics of this semi-annual ritual.

First of all, there is technically only one daylight to be saved: contrary to folk wisdom that might suggest otherwise, daylight is an indivisible entity. In a sense, daylight is like money—which is also grammatically singular but conceptually plural (insofar as one would hope to have more than one money)—such that daylight is quantifiable, at least in terms of daylight hours. In other words, official terminology denotes that summer is ‘Time to Save Daylight’—i.e., Time for Daylight-Saving—while the colloquial (if not altogether prevalent) shorthand “Daylight Savings” is a gerund, as per the nominal usage of “Savings” for that type of  bank account. (Even the Wikipedia URL for the Daylight Saving Time entry is Daylight_savings.)

The monetary metaphor is useful in illustrating how DST’s pithy essence “spring forward, fall back” belies the curious phenomenon that either occasion—the turning of the clocks in spring or in fall—can be described as gaining or losing an hour. Common parlance suggests that we have indeed acquired a full 60 minutes, yet this increment simultaneously seems to have slipped through a mysterious temporal rift in the wee hours of Sunday morning. It appears that we have both gained and lost an hour on Sunday, a discrepancy that reveals two divergent systems of belief concerning time and how it is measured: absolute vs. relative. The two views correspond to a scientific picture of an independent physical world and a pragmatic ‘lived’ experience of time, respectively.

The former system holds that time marches forward of its own accord and that to push a clock forward—from 2AM to 3AM, say—disturbs the clockwork of the universe to the effect that humans have erased an hour from their day. Here the bank analogy must be modified: on Sunday, we withdrew an hour on credit, which we will pay back in October; for the next six months, we owe one hour to the universe, or nature, or whatever. We have lost it in the interest of practicality—we need to borrow the hour for the better half of the year—though we plan on restoring balance in six months or so. For the absolutist, the hour is deferred.

Those who abide by the second perspective, on the other hand, see time as more malleable, where chronology is purely pragmatic: we gained an hour on Sunday because we now have an extra hour of sunlight—and, ostensibly, productivity—to the effect that the days themselves grow longer. By springing forward, we stake a claim to the greater daylight afforded by the rotation of the Earth, silently folding one hour into the shroud of slumber in order to extend each and every day in those six months. For the relativist, it’s possible to save daylight like money albeit not in the interest of yielding a long-term dividend: everyone cashes out the same predetermined amount at the end of each day.

Of course, both schools of thought understand that the actual demarcation of time to be incidental (i.e. pragmatic in a broad sense)—otherwise we wouldn’t have license to give and take (or take and give) hours as we please. Nevertheless, I wonder if there is any correlation between the saving(s) locution and the gain/loss dichotomy: are relativists more predisposed to regarding DST as a savings account, as opposed to absolutists who treat the extra time as a line of credit?

Does that even make sense? Rather, does it even matter?

Now for the real news:

• Advertising 2.0: This Time, It’s Personal. FaceBook is now crowdsourcing targeted advertising like social AdSense (=AdBook?). (NYT, Future Perfect) Also, Product Placement: Geolocation is so hot right now (NYT)
• Mattel Mentality x Mad Men = Barbie. WTF. (NYT)
• Google Maps now has (spotty) bike directions: Gothamist blurbs, Streetsblog mentions, Wired crowdsources; Bike Snob NYC is more thorough, with an incisive riposte to the Post
• Big ups to the Alma Mater in the Times. But seriously, the prospect of digitally tracking writers’ inspiration and composition process is quite fascinating.
• Stanley Fish on Pragmatism’s Gift.
• I’ve always been a stickler for free throws (i.e. I don’t understand why every player isn’t shooting 90+% from the line), so I was pleased to see that Wired has posted a guide on How to Nail a Free Throw.
• Old news, but here’s a couple of interesting articles on sports video games and their source material; specifically, how video games are have become increasingly true to life for athletes: League of Gamers (ESPN); Gamechangers: How Videogames Trained a Generation of Athletes (Wired)
• Speaking of video games, Virtusphere. Just watch the damn video.
• G4 (correctly, I think) identifies Chatroulette’s ‘Merton.’ NYMag’s Vulture (correctly, I think) identifies Ben Folds as a “Fin de siècle singer-songwriter.” Just watch the damn video.
• (Over)analysis of Lady Gaga’s “Telephone” music video. (Vigilant Citizen)

Music news:

• What Would They Know: Matthew Perpetua interviews Liars for Pitchfork.
• Time to Get Away: LCD Soundsystem finishing up their last record. (Daily Swarm)
• Wanna Be Startin’ Something: MJ posthumously lands a massive record deal. (WSJ, NYT)

Art news:

• Deitch Mark II (ArtInfo)
• Rhizome / New Museum presents Seven On Seven (April 17th).
• Marina Abramovic at MoMA: Reperformance art or selling out? See for yourself or read all about it. Plus a short intro vid on Nowness.
• Saltz on the demise of Dia / X-Initiative / Independent (NYMag)
• Ai Weiwei in Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall this October (ArtForum via the Guardian)

Bonus Trailer:

2.

4.

6.

8.

KEY:

1. Liars – Scissor, by Andy Bruntel

2. Greg Huglin’s amazing photographs of ’surfing’ dolphins off the coast of South Africa; full slideshow via the Guardian

3. Octopus by Jolipunk.com. Whitezine.

4. The “Sign Out” series of digitally manipulated photos by Josef Schulz. Trend.Land

Josef Schulz
Sign Out
Galerie Heinz-Martin Weigand
Mühlenstr. 31
D-76275 Ettlingen
January 2010 – March 2010

5. Faile & BAST Deluxx FLUXX Arcade 2010 at Lazarides.

Faile & BAST
Deluxx FLUXX Arcade 2010
Lazarides Rathbone
11 Rathbone Place
W1T 1HR
February 12, 2010–March 19, 2010

6. Like his subjects, Tommy Ton has a keen eye for men’s style. GQ

7. Nuit Blanche by Spyfilms, who brought you the Jodorowsky-inspired video for Yeasayer’s “Ambling Alp” (I like Odd Blood). The equally interesting  making-of will take four more minutes of your internets.

8. Old-school fixsters cruising Bedford c. 1896. Gothamist

But wait, there’s more (since too many embedded videos make browsers something-something):

• Amy Greenfeld vs YouTube. BoingBoing.
• The Copenhagen Wheel = Fixies × [Prius + Foursquare] = will save the world
• YFD killin’ it again. Designboom.
• Aaaaaaaand:

New Liars. Download “Scissor”, the first track from the forthcoming Sisterworld LP (slated for a March 9 release), here. I will refrain from commenting on the song so as not to taint the first listening experience.

Brooklyn Vegan sheds some light on the otherwise cryptic microsite.

Liars Sisterworld listening party
Wired Store
415 W 13th St
New York, NY 10014
Wednesday, December 2nd
7PM – 10PM
RSVP (required) to: mute@mute.com