Geographer – Kites
(You might remember these guys from a show we played with them at Cafe du Nord a few months back.)

School of Seven Bells – ILU
(A fantastic new song off their new album, which you can hear in its entirety on their website .)

Wild Beasts – All the King’s Men
(If they come to your town and you do not go see them, you are missing an incredible performance.)

Nina Simone – See Line Woman
(Because there is never enough Nina)

Jakub over on the excellent ISO50 blog just posted about the music his mom would play when he was young and how it has stayed with him all these years later. It’s funny that I read it just a day after reading about the new OMD release coming out in September. OMD’s “Electricity” is one of the first songs I can remember hearing my dad play and liking when I was very young (it was released in May 1979 as Margaret Thatcher became prime minister of Britain and I was a 5-year-old living in the Southern California suburbs). Since he could see that I liked it, he made sure from then on that I was always up-to-date with OMD – even going so far as trying to convince me years afterward that their later work was also brilliant.

I’m not sure what about their music I latched onto specifically, but I did stay a faithful fan for longer than was probably justified. I actually liked (and still do, from a distance) “Dazzle Ships,” their famous career-destroying experiment. It’s always been clear, though, that after 1984’s “Junk Culture” (if you’re a fan of superb vinyl pressings, check out the original UK pressing with the super-glossy Saville-designed sleeve and the extra one-sided 7″) things changed. They continued to be great songwriters, but things felt a lot less interesting as they adopted a sound that was more commercially acceptable.

Now, in 2010, the “classic” lineup has reunited, recorded a new album, and re-teamed with Peter Saville . Their website has me intrigued and Saville looks in top-form with his updated “vintage” OMD look. I look forward to hearing the actual album, though it’s been a long, long time since I have actively listened to their music regularly. Good luck to them, regardless. I certainly got a lot out of their music in my early days.

Also, if you only click on one thing from this post, make it the video below, which includes a typically perfect interview with Factory Records (or, if you dare) founder Tony Wilson (the Wilson interview starts at about the 4:33 mark).

- Ryan

See the rest of the videos after the jump…

Funding the new Stripmall Architecture release. from Stripmall Architecture on Vimeo.

The Project: Fund The New Stripmall Architecture Release

We’re actually in sight of our goal and it’s only been one day since we launched! First off, thanks to everyone who has pledged so far – and to those of you that are planning to do so. Also, to everyone who has endured all our posting about this stuff, we appreciate your patience, as well…

We’re thinking now that we may produce the CD’s in a 2-disc holder with space for another EP to be released in the near future. This would result in a very nice 2 CD package that would look really nice next to the We Were Flying Kites/Object03 set. If we did this, we would also be giving every backer of this project the second disc for free upon its release later in 2010.

Let us know what you think:
Stripmall Facebook
Stripmall Twitter

Thanks again, this has already been SO MUCH fun.

Your friends,
R/R

We Were Flying Kites – Motion Test One from Stripmall Architecture on Vimeo.

It’s been a while since we’ve produced or commissioned any new visuals for our live performances, but now that the album is done, it’s time to shift gears a little bit.  This is a brief motion test that takes elements of the album artwork and animates them.  The composited landscapes have been stretched which has the effect of looking more like London than any stripmall I’ve seen.  A pleasant outcome, actually.

To coincide with the Outside Lands Festival in San Francisco, we taped a performance for MTVu for their Ahead of the Curve series.  We chose to perform The Droplet Sounds since it involves the two-bass lineup and does a good job of getting our sound across quickly.  The finished video should be on-air and online shortly, but here are some photos and video from the shoot.