Excellent Online

Spiritualized made one of the greatest albums of all time with 1997's, Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space and will play the album in it's entirety at the ATP Festival in England on May 7th-9th.  The festival is currated by Matt Groening and also includes Iggy & the Stooges, The xx, Built to Spill and more. 

Late last year Sony reissued the album and it came in the usual variety of formats and special editions that Spiritualized is known for.  The reissue did include two bonus CD's with alternate versions and some outtakes that didn't make it on the original album.

We've got it on pretty good authority that later this week, Daytrotter will be unveiling a session taped in the late summer from The Trashcan Sinatras -- and seeing as how Excellent Online was with the band during the session, you can expect to hear a previously unreleased track that the band was still working through at the time of recording.  Pretty cool stuff.

Mogwai's Burning will be screening in England later this month.  It's a live film that has been directed by Vincent Moon and Nathanaël Le Scouarnec.  Vincent Moon has directed videos for R.E.M. and made the National documentary, A Skin, A Night.  The duo together have directed a live movie for Arcade Fire as well.  So Mogwai are in capable hands.  Check out the seizure inducing trailer below, make sure you turn it up!

The National will be releasing their followup to 2007's amazing Boxer in May of this  year.  They are currently mixing the album and original had the goal of making a "happy" record, but that quickly fell apart.  They are also touring with presale tickets going on sale across the US today. 

Daft Punk has been working on the soundtrack to the upcoming sequel for Tron, Tron:Legacy.  Several blogs have been reporting that this is a brand new leak of the track but it was actually leaked several months ago.  I found one reference to the previous version over at djMe, the main difference is that this new version is twice as long but they sound similar.  Hit 'read more' for the track.

The linup for Coachella was announced today and it's full of surprises and the usual reunions.  Jaz-Z is headlining Friday which is pretty non-Coachella-like and surprising.  He's headlining with LCD Soundsystem and Them Crooked Vultures (the rock supergroup consisting of John Paul Jones [Led Zepplin], Dave Grohl [Nirvana], and Josh Homme [Queens of the Stoneage]).  Other Friday highlights are a reunited Public Image Limited, Echo & the Bunnymen, Grizzly Bear, She & Him, and Grace Jones (?!?!).

Saturday is headlined by Muse, Faith No More and Tiesto.  And also has MGMT, Hot Chip, Devo, Coheed and Cambria, 2ManyDJ's, Z-Trip, the XX, Mew, Raveonettes, Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros, Camera Obscura, and a bunch of other little bands that I have yet to discover.

Sunday is headlined by ORBITAL!  Okay, not really, but they are the headliners in my mind.  Gorillaz, Pavement and Thom York take the top three spots.  You also have Phoenix, Spoon, Sly and the Family Stone (?!?), Yo La Tengo and about two dozen bands to round out the lineup.

This looks like a good year.  I was looking to cut a day or so out of the lineup to save some money but there are some great "must-see" bands on each day.  After last year I was questioning if I should go again and it looks like I'm going to be sweating along with the rest of you out in the desert for one more year.

NME has confirmed that Sude will be getting back together for a one off charity gig at the London Royal Albert Hall.  The lineup will have Brett Anderson, Mat Osman, Simon Gilbert, keyboardist Neil Codling, and the guitarist that replaced Bernard Butler, Richard Oaks.  I'm not digging on Richard, he was a fantastic guitarist and they make a few more great records after Bernard Butler's departure.  It would just be great to see the "classic" lineup get back together and play classic Suede.  We've already seen what happens when Bernard and Brett make new music together.

Lots of little news bits all circling around Damon Albarn:

• First off, he's collaborating with Massive Attack on their next album and is wary of a long drawn out recording process.  So he's making them work 10am-6pm at his home studio to get the recoding done.  I think he just wants them out of his home studio.
• Then his other band, Gorillaz, is finishing up mixing their upcoming album and frontman, "Murdoc", is now on twitter announcing the progress.  Their album is due out in March and a tour will likely follow.
• Finally, Blur's reunion shows last year were stellar and they made a DVD of the shows, "No Distance Left to Run", which is currently airing in England movie theaters and will be released on February 15th.  Check out the trailer, it looks pretty fun.

At the Critics Choice Movie Awards, Death Cab For Cutie covered the classic Simple Minds Track (Don't You) Forget About Me. If you somehow didn't know, John Hughes is the iconic director of the 80's who made such films as Sixteen Candles, Weird Science, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and of course, The Breakfast Club which the track is from. He became disenfranchised with the whole Hollywood scene in the 90's and stopped directing but kept writing until 2008. He passed away last year. He's also a totally awesome person.

Click "Read More" to view their performance

Oink.cd was a music file sharing website that was shutdown in recent years and has been going through the court system in the UK.  Alan Ellis was found not-guilty in a unianmous decision by the jury.  Oink was an "invite-only" music sharing website using the popular bittorrent protocol which was very popular, even Trent Renzor was a member.  The prosecution was trying to make the case that this was a for-profit website and a business, while the defense stuck with the, "it's not me, it's the users that share music" defense.  Since the owners of the wildly popular PirateBay site were found guilty, I was expecting that Alan Ellis would go down as well, but the jury felt differently.