German metal legends Rammstein are on tour of the US to celebrate their first career retrospective, Made in Germany: 1995-2011. They came through the Puget Sound area on Monday, playing a show at the Tacoma Dome. We were fortunate to have star photographer Alex Crick there with his camera. He came back with these amazing photos. You can find more of his photography on his website.

Bad Brains: A Band in DC (2012, dir: Mandy Stein and Benjamen Logan)

Taking their name from a song by The Ramones, DC hardcore band Bad Brains has been one of the most influential bands for the past thirty years. This (mostly) glowing documentary showcases their formation and influence, while being bookended by their comeback tour in 2007 that ended with singer HR getting booed while sitting down on stage during a show in Chicago. The film makes a compelling case for how influential the band is, including getting A-list musicians to sing their praises, like Dave Grohl, Beastie Boys, Henry Rollins (who is far less annoying here than any other time I’ve ever seen him, probably because he’s an uncynical fan here) and Ian MacKaye. The reason for the band being considered homophobic is glossed over a little bit, but the confrontation between HR and bassist Darryl Jenifer at the end of that Chicago show is real and compelling. What is enjoyable about this doc is that it’s for fans of music documentaries and those curious to learn more about this important band. Unlike a lot of music documentaries, it’s not just preaching to the converted.

{Bad Brains: A Band in DC screens at SIFF on Sunday, May 20 at SIFF Cinema Uptown at 9:00pm and on Sunday, May 23 at Harvard Exit at 9:00pm. Co-director Benjamen Logan is expected to attend both screenings.

My Sucky Teenage Romance (2012, dir: Emily Hagins)

My Sucky Teenage Romance is the third feature film from eighteen year old filmmaker Emily Hagins. That is not a typo. It’s a light and often funny (in a campy sense) vampire movie that gets in some funny (but easy) jokes at the expense of Twilight fans and the creepy older guys that go to comic conventions (much like my Twitter feed). It’s a quick seventy-seven minutes from beginning to end, but it’s often a joy to watch because Hagins has developed into a very good filmmaker who does a nice job pacing the film that is about an awkward teenage crush that turns both would-be star-crossed lovers into vampires after a grocery store robbery goes bad. The young actors all do a nice and convincing job in a comedy that hits more often than it misses.

{My Sucky Teen Romance screens on Friday, May 18 at Pacific Place at 4:00pm and on Sunday, May 20 at SIFF Cinema Uptown at 6:00pm. Director Emily Hagins is expected to attend both screenings.}

Wonder Women! The Untold Story of American Superheroines (2012, dir: Kristy Guevara-Flanagan)

Before watching the engrossing documentary Wonder Women!, I had no idea that the creator of Wonder Woman was also the creator of the lie detector test. The documentary traces Wonder Woman’s World War II-era creation and transformation throughout the years (not always progressively). Plus, the film details Wonder Woman’s influence on other (but too few) female superheroes in television, comics and film, including The Bionic Woman, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Xena: Warrior Princess. Noting the endurance and success of the character, it is at its best when it makes the case that the traditionally male-dominated geek/comic culture that perpetuates the sexism isn’t just bad for society and the culture that pretends to be inclusive, but bad for business, too. It’s always a pleasure to see Bikini Kill/Le Tigre frontwoman Kathleen Hanna interviewed, but the film also features Gloria Steinem, TV’s Wonder Woman Lynda Carter, Lyndsay Wagner (who played The Bionic Woman on television) and author Jen Stuller, who provides the most interesting context for Wonder Woman’s importance and history.

{Wonder Women! plays at SIFF on Saturday, May 26 at Everett Performing Arts Center at 3:30pm, on Sunday, May 27 at the Egyptian Theater at 4:00pm and on Monday, May 28 at the Harvard Exit at 6:00pm. Director Kristy Guevara-Flanagan and cinematographer Gabriel Miller are scheduled to attend all screenings. There is also a free forum on Saturday, May 26 at the SIFF Film Center featuring Kristy Guevara-Flanagan, author Jen Stuller and Reel Grrls youth filmmaker Daniel Tayara.}

Tomorrow night begins another Seattle International Film Festival, the longest-running and most highly-attended film festival in the US. Some 269 feature films and many, many more shorts will be screened over the next 25 days, starting with Your Sister’s Sister, the new film from Seattle treasure Lynn Shelton. Before each screening is the trailer for SIFF, a minute long trailer that sets the theme of the festival and includes clips from movies that have previously played at SIFF, as well as live-action footage featuring burlesque star Shanghai Pearl.

Andy Seaver, an editor at the local video design firm World Famous who worked on the SIFF trailer answered some questions via e-mail about how the SIFF trailer was created this year:

What is the process like for creating the SIFF trailer? How long did it take to complete this one?

Fortunately for World Famous, we were contacted by the advertising agency in Seattle who has been producing all the SIFF materials for years now. Wong, Doody, Crandall Wiener presented us with this year’s poster for SIFF and asked how we could help bring it to life.  Beginning in January we started collecting films that had played at SIFF in previous years, starting with films that people at the office had either seen or heard about. We went through each film and found interesting bits of them to use as raw material.  

After working with Madrona Music to come up with some SIFFtacular music (original score) we began the editing process.  We grabbed our favorite moments from the films and made them look silly, matching them up to the music, then went back and found more films and more spectacular moments in order to round out the styles represented.  We wanted to make sure we highlighted the breadth and diversity of movies that play at SIFF.  So we built up an edit with some points showing one movie alone and sometimes a dozen shots on screen at once.  Then we began exploring different techniques and styles for layout and kaleidoscoping and creating that Busby Berkley effect. 

Next we had our shoot.  After much deliberation over costumes, colors and cast – including custom costumes and zentai suits from China – local legend Shanghai Pearl and six other dancers gave us lots of material to choose from.

The following step was integrating our production footage (Shanghai Pearl) in with the movie edits.  Meanwhile, now that we’d decided (along with WDCW) on a design direction we began rotoscoping (meticulously cutting out) all of the movie elements.  We arranged, and occasionally multiplied, these elements and created the trippy looking footage.  Then we repeated that last step for several weeks, edited back and forth between them, gradually refining the style and layout and occasionally losing our minds.  After adding the finishing touches with an audio mix, color correction and final compositing, it was finally World Famous SIFFtacular!  It took about 3 months and countless hours of work but was a blast to create and we were honored with the opportunity to create something so visually compelling.

Knowing that it will be seen before every movie that plays at SIFF, and that SIFF is almost a month long, what do you do to keep film audiences from growing tired of it?

With almost 50 movies hidden in the 60 seconds there are new things to see upon every viewing.  We just saw something new yesterday!

You can see more work at http://www.worldfamousinc.com/

Yesterday, I posted a long feature I wrote on the Seattle band Atomic Bride and their brilliant new album Dead Air, which comes out officially next Tuesday. The CD release party is on Saturday (May 19) at the Lo-Fi Performance Gallery with Summer Babes and Love Battery.

Atomic Bride was kind enough to let me post their new single “Radio Recession,” one of my favorite locally-released songs of the year. I wrote of it:

The best song, and first single from Dead Air is called “Radio Recession.” (Singer-guitarist) Astra (Elaine) explained, ‘it was 2009 when I wrote that song. It was in the middle of the recession. We’re not a political band or outspoken in that sense at all. I really wanted to have a song that was about a song. I thought it fit in well with what was going on at the time, all the media was blasting all of this shit that was happening. It was really depressing.” The song is instantly catchy, with Astra singing the verses mostly and Chris Cool singing the chorus. The hook comes in just a few seconds into the song. “It’s on the radio; don’t want to hear it, though; turn it all off; I can’t stand that shit,” she snarls. It’s one of the very best songs a Seattle band will release in 2012.

You can download and stream the song below, and pre-order Dead Air here.

If you’ve ever attended an electronic dance music show, you’d know it’s much more than a concert: it’s a mind-blowing explosion of the senses made up of pulsating strobes, thundering bass and flashing lights. In true EDM fashion, the Bass Land VI show at the WaMu Theatre on Saturday night was no exception.

Known for his hours long live sets, and elaborate light production, headliner Bassnectar brought the whomp to Seattle in one of the most awe-inspiring visual spectacles I’ve ever seen: the video clips, the psychedelic animations, the spliced segments from the Dove “Evolution of Beauty,” commercial all added to the vibe of the night – a full on dance party that rolled between high-energy rave and drug induced coma.

The eclectic mix of electronic music fanboys and raver girls was held captive throughout Ashton’s nearly 3-hour long set as they swayed, trance-like to the pulsating cuts from Ashton’s newest release, Vava Voom.

Yet the songs that drew the most excitement were easily the hits: the world-music infused mix of Imogen Heap’s “Hide and Seek,” the titillating remix of Ellie Goulding’s “Lights” (his version of which is probably more popular than the original) – and a slowed-down mix of “Boombox,” off 2009’s Cozza Frenzy.

Also of note was Ashton’s thoughtful – if not completely predictable – ode to the Northwest. “This one’s for you, Seattle,” he shouted above the drops, before kicking in to a bass-heavy mix of Nirvana’s “Breed.”

While focus of the show was definitely the display on stage, it’d be safe to say the audience was just as attention-worthy: while half-naked girls wearing layers of glitter and tape were among the most commonly spotted, not to be out done by a variety of spirit animal head wear, fairy wings and capes.

The most interesting look had to be the pair of college-aged girls, wearing neon tanks and shorts, sucking on pacifiers atop their respective male companions’ shoulders. Hyper-sexualized hooker babies dressed in neon? That’s one for the books.

And if there was anything to complain about it might be that Ashton has too much music – because with a discography that includes nine full-length albums and four EPs from the last eleven years, even three hours isn’t enough to hear the full-version of every song.

 He made a good effort at trying to include bits and pieces of as many tracks as possible, but frankly, the teasers were never enough.

Atomic Bride is a glam-punk Seattle band, with male/female vocals from singers Astra Elaine and Chris Cool, who are self-releasing an excellent sophomore album called Dead Air next week. It’s a fun and sexy record with catchy choruses and great surf guitar riffs. If The Cramps and Frankie and Annette joined The B-52s to form a supergroup, it might sound something like Atomic Bride.

At an interview in a lower Queen Anne dive bar, Astra told me, “We’re a good-looking band and we don’t wear ripped up jeans and t-shirts. We want to look good. We’re into the performance and the glamour. We want people to appreciate that again.” She added, “It’s not that looks can be that important, but it can enhance something and make it all about all of the senses, especially when the music is good. I want people to get the aesthetic and not just that we look good, but that we look like how we sound.”

Of the five members of Atomic Bride, singer/guitarists Astra and Chris Cool, bassist Avtar Crowder, keyboardist Rachael Byrd and drummer Chris Coutsouridis, only the drummer is not in the band with their significant other. Chris Cool responded to an ad Astra posted on Craig’s List shortly after she moved to Seattle in the fall of 2006. She said that the ad’s headline was “Nancy Search for Lee.” Astra explained, ‘I had this idea of a Johnny Cash/June Carter vision in my mind and he had this John Doe/Exene vision in his mind and somewhere in the middle along the way, we tried to honor everything we loved but still compromised.” Together, and with the other band members, they found a sound that fits the band’s aesthetic and dynamic and it’s irresistible.

The best song, and first single from Dead Air is called “Radio Recession.” Astra explained, ‘it was 2009 when I wrote that song. It was in the middle of the recession. We’re not a political band or outspoken in that sense at all. I really wanted to have a song that was about a song. I thought it fit in well with what was going on at the time, all the media was blasting all of this shit that was happening. It was really depressing.” The song is instantly catchy, with Astra singing the verses mostly and Chris Cool singing the chorus. The hook comes in just a few seconds into the song. “It’s on the radio; don’t want to hear it, though; turn it all off; I can’t stand that shit,” she snarls. It’s one of the very best songs a Seattle band will release in 2012.

Astra and Chris Cool make a great partnership, with him writing most of the music (though other band members are becoming more involved in that process) and she writes the lyrics. She tells me, “Usually, Chris will come up with a melody and puts together an idea for the composition of a song, then I’ll put lyrics to it. That’s how it happens more often than not, but sometimes we’ll work on a composition together. Recently, our bass player wrote the music for ‘Crush Vaccine.’ Everyone is involved with arranging or pitching ideas.” “Crush Vaccine” is an excellent song that isn’t included on Dead Air, but is available as a free download from the band’s website.

Dead Air is a meticulously crafted album, mixed by local legendary producer Steve Fisk. Astra tells me, “I want people to appreciate everything I do about this album: the diversity of it, the feel of it, the vibe. There’s so many tributes to other artists that inspire us. Someone who knows us can tell, or someone who has an ear for music can tell, they can hear that. It’s an album that keeps getting better the more you listen to. We’re so passionate about our influences, but it’s a compromise. I don’t want to compromise on what I love, but when it works, it’s magic. ‘Let’s make it sound like an old Bruce Lee movie, or let’s give it that tremolo like a fifties sci-fi movie.’ Every single note is thought out on this album. It’s done with a lot a love.”

When Astra talks of a “compromise” she says of herself and Chris Cool, “We’re from two different generations. I’m more first wave punk rock, and he grew up listening to nineties punk rock. There was sometimes a conflict, sometimes a complement. I think we ended up finding the common genres that we both like, like surf music and the fifties sci-fi soundtracks, and a lot timeless punk bands like Dead Kennedys, Scratch Acid, The Cramps, The B-52s, X. The bands that helped glue us together.”

The sound and aesthetic of Atomic Bride clicks because of the relationships in the band, but also because they’ve found a sound that’s timeless and timely. Great rock and roll that’s cool and sexy and glamorous will never be unfashionable. It’s a sound that Atomic Bride and found that meshes all of their influences together, overtly and openly. It’s may only be rock and roll, but I like it.

{Atomic Bride’s CD release party for Dead Air is on Saturday, May 19 at the Lo-Fi Performance Gallery with Love Battery and Summer Babes, $8, 9pm doors, 21+.}

The Swedish pop group We Are Serenades (who I have raved about here before), featuring Adam Olenius of Shout Out Louds, are finally coming through Seattle, playing a show on Monday, May 21 at the Crocodile. It’ll be in support of their new album Criminal Heaven (streamable here), which came out last month on Cherry Hill.

You can get tickets here for $10 each (plus fees) …or you can send an e-mail to anotherrainysaturday@gmail.com by 9am on Thursday, May 17 with “Serenades” in the subject line for the chance to win a pair of tickets free. The show is also all ages, so anyone who can be in the Seattle area that night should enter. It should make for an excellent show.

We Are Serenades – Earthquakes by We Are Serenades

The first line from Tigermending is unforgettable. The first album by the excellent British singer/songwriter and Puscifer touring member Carina Round in five years opens with a song called “Pick Up the Phone.” She sings in a direct delivery, “Pick up the phone, I’m pregnant with your baby; I wanted you to know the dreams I’ve been having lately.” The song has a great rhythm over Round’s harmonies and lyrics. The tempo builds a tension that coincides perfectly with the lyrics. The instrumentation is rich and lush and the lyrics are jarring. After a few listens, it may sound like the best Portishead song Portishead never recorded. It’s 2012’s most memorable track one, and easily one of the best singles of the year.

During a telephone interview last week, I asked Round about that song and she said, “Oh lord. It took a long time to write, because it’s obviously pretty heavy subject manner and I was trying to say it in a way that’s too obvious or too serious. It’s about when you get to a point where you realize you need to slam on the breaks a little bit with the direction in your life, and the consequence of that, and slowing down and realizing the things you need to go back and fix.”

She added, “It was a big decision with me to start the record with that song because the opening lyric is really strong. I thought it was a good choice for that reason.”

Tigermending is Carina Round’s first full length album since 2007’s Slow Motion Addict. She’s still remained busy during that time, releasing an EP called Things You Should Know, worked on her side project, a alt-country band called Early Winters, sang with The Twilight Singers, had a song in the film Valentine’s Day and toured as the opening act and female singer in the Maynard James Keenan band Puscifer. Over that time, though, Round has been writing songs and working towards Tigermending. It’s not so much as a comeback as a welcome reminder of how great of a songwriter and singer she is.

The whole album feels cohesive and consistent, though the songs are thematically different and she often sings in different tones and keys. She explained, “Some of the songs were written four years ago and finished right before the record came out. Some were written a long time ago and some were very recently and very quickly. All of the songs were written over that four year period in very different ways.”

Elaborating, she noted its consistency by saying, “I wanted the album to sound cohesive and every song to have its own personality. Although they were written at different times, they were recorded in the same place with the same producer, Dan Burns, with the same musicians and I lived in the same location. I think that had a lot to do with how it sounded. Your surroundings have a lot to do with how it turned out.”

Another memorable song from Tigermending is “Girl and the Ghost,” which she says what about her relationship with a former record label, though the lyrics read deeper than that. She explained:

That’s a similar subject matter. I think the literal thing that inspired that was the whole situation of coming to the end of my relationship with Interscope, to a point. It was a difficult and interesting turning point and I had to decide which direction I wanted my life to go in. It just made me question a lot about where I had been going and what I had been doing and what I had been fighting for. When you wake up every morning fighting for something or against something, it really makes you feel much more strongly about what you want. That song is about letting go of the guilt that I was feeling about that whole situation, the whole years before and opening my arms and heart to whatever direction I want to go in with my art and my life.

I asked Carina Round about the differences between touring as a member of Puscifer, playing large venues but for a crowd that isn’t her own and she said, “Opening for a band like that in that situation is less responsibility and less stressful because I can just go out there and we just do our thing and hopefully the audience likes us and we can makke some new fans. At the end of the day, it’s a lot easier, but when you’re doing your own show, there’s a lot more responsibility, a lot more costs.” It also has the potential for bigger rewards, as you’re playing to the fans you earned along the way and playing the personal and introspective songs written and recorded over a period of several years. When Carina Round comes to the Crocodile, it’ll be with a full band to fill out the instrumentation from Tigermending. It must make for one of the most satisfying and intense performances you’ll likely see all year, and remember for a lot longer.

{Carina Round plays at the Crocodile on Wednesday, May 16 with Anomie Belle, 8pm, all ages, $10 tickets available here.}