Out tomorrow are a whole slew of amazing albums, possibly the best week all year for releases in my opinion. And because:

a) There are so many and;

b) I’m lazy

I’m going for a mass review. Let’s see if this works shall we?

Grinderman – Grinderman 2

First up on the blocks is Nick Cave, the person Aussies would most like to see oust Julia Gillard, and his band of hairy men.

Grinderman delivered us their dirty rocking self-titled album quite a while ago now, and there is no doubt here that Cave and Co are back on the brilliance bandwagon with this one. Although not my pick for a relaxing outing into musical genius, this is hard work and rightly so. It’s Cave for goodness sake, it can’t be easy. And if you’re still not sure, then I’ll probably convert you purely on this one sentence: Their last video featured the band in dodgy Roman gear shooting lazers out of their arses. Fuck yeah.

Watch all seven Grinderman 2 trailers directed by the oft disturbing but entirely incredible John Hillcoat here.

Old Man River – Trust

Similarly, Old Man River is rocking the folk troubadour tag as well. I’d like to put forth a new tag: Folkster. Part hipster, part folk.

Yep, you heard it here first. Look at his clip for Norway for example, the track itself is a piece of beautiful modern folk, but the video reminds you of some tripped out, acid-tab taking, psychedlic version of Coldplay’s The Scientist. Nice.

Dear Ohad: Thanks for making a beautiful album and still being realy realy, unironically cool.

Royksopp – Senior

Royksopp have emerged as the alternative music saviour of the year, with a beautiful, artistic album that doesn’t need lyrics to create a great hook. And to make it even better, they got all blogger-friendly on us and provided us with an embed code for an advance full stream for Senior. Hooray for bands that aren’t scared of digital!

Their mini-film Adventures In Barbieland makes me want to marry them and have their babies – seriously amazeballs. And to add to it, the whole ambient electro thing is just going crazy at the moment, and they’re right up front, doing it best. Them and iamamiwhoami and How To Destroy Angels.

I Am Kloot – Sky At Night

I Am Kloot is the last in my stretch of amazing albums coming out this week, with the pretty offering Sky At Night. Spookily perfect in its delivery, it comes as no surprise when you read the footnotes: The producers of this record are Craig Potter and Guy Garvey from Elbow.

If you haven’t heard their back catalogue then get ye to iTunes this minute and look up Gods and Monsters for a bit of education. Then experience the jangly gorgeousness of tracks like Northern Skies and The Moon Is A Blind Eye and you’ll really be able to appreciate how this iconic but relatively unknown band just keeps getting better and better.

Well that’s it from me. Now get your arse to JB HiFi and support our gorgeous industry.

Riding off the back of the biggest ARIA Awards since Ben Hur (please don’t mention that ARIAs didn’t necessarily operate during the time of Christ), it’s difficult to let the party die down. After all, it’s only 3 weeks til Christmas!

So indeed the good times continue with the news that we (that’s EMI worldwide, not my band) have FIFTY SIX Grammy Award nominations in the whopping one hundred and nine categories – far too many to list, but here are our EMI highlights!

Multiple nominees include our favourite shaggy-haired, bikini-babe-surrounded Frenchman David Guetta (who also produced The Black Eyed Peas’ Grammy nominated album and record of the year), Coldplay, Depeche Mode, Keith Urban and American Classic legend Willie Nelson.

Katy Perry announced the Best Rock Album nominees and discussed the Black Eyed Peas nominations – watch the videos.

And yes, the reason why the Grammy artwork is so cool this year is no other than Shepard Fairey – the man behind THAT Obama / Hope and Obey / Giant artwork – is responsible. OBEY (great music)

Best Female Pop Vocal Performance
	Hot N Cold – Katy Perry
Best Dance Recording
	When Love Takes Over – David Guetta & Kelly Rowland
Best Electronic/Dance Album
	One Love – David Guetta
	Yes – Pet Shop Boys
Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album
	American Classic – Willie Nelson
Best Rock Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocals
	Life In Technicolor II – Coldplay
Best Hard Rock Performance
	Check My Brain – Alice In Chains
Best Alternative Music Album
	Sounds Of The Universe – Depeche Mode
Best Country Album
	Defying Gravity – Keith Urban
Best Rap Performance By A Duo Or Group
	Too Many Rappers – Beastie Boys & Nas
Best Male Country Vocal Performance
	Sweet Thing – Keith Urban
Best Country Album
	Defying Gravity – Keith Urban
Best Pop Collaboration With Vocals
	Baby, It’s Cold Outside – Willie Nelson & Norah Jones
Best Boxed Or Special Limited Edition Package
	Lost In The Sound Of Separation – Deluxe Edition (Underoath) Jordan Butcher, art director
Producer Of The Year, Non-Classical
Greg Kurstin It’s Not Me, It’s You (Lily Allen) Ray Guns Are Not Just The Future (The Bird And The Bee)
Best Remixed Recording, Non-Classical
	The Girl And The Robot – Jean Elan Remix (Röyksopp) Jean Elan, remixer
	When Love Takes Over – Electro Extended Remix (David Guetta ft Kelly Rowland) David Guetta, remixer
Best Short Form Music Video
	Life In Technicolor II – Coldplay (Dougal Wilson, video director; Matthew Fone, video producer)
	Wrong – Depeche Mode (Patrick Daughters, video director; Jonathan Lia, video producer)
Best Long Form Music Video
	Love, Pain & The Whole Crazy World Tour Live – Keith Urban Chris Hicky, video director; Blake Morrison, video producer
	The Beatles “Love – All Together Now” - Adrian Wills, video director; Martin Bolduc & Jonathan Clyde, video producers

The new Royksopp video This Must Be It is hella trippy: a semi-biblical story set in a nude hippy utopia (but doesn’t it get cold in Scandinavia!?). It was directed by acclaimed Swedish directors Filip and Andreas Nilsson, who are also responsible for some great nuggets like Moby’s Alice,  Jose Gonzalez’ Teardrop, Domino-fave Bonde de Role’s Office Boy, and my personal fave The Knife’s Silent Shout.

And yep those vocals are courtesy of fellow Scandinavian Karin Dreijer Andersson – another connection with The Knife.

The central character (protagonist, even?) in is a friendly chap named Runar. I get the feeling he’s a friend of the family, but he clearly had to audition anyway:

The This Must Be It digital single comes with TEN brand new mixes, all of which you can grab from Oct 24… but for the moment you can download the Leht MoJoe remix for free from the Royksopp members page. (LMJ is responsible for some pretty hot remixes of Major Lazor, Kings of Leon, and Au Revoir Simone)

If you fancy doing your own Royksopp remix – and winning yourself a copy of Ableton Live 8 while you’r at it – head over to Royksopp’s Soundcloud for the stems to another Junior album track, Tricky Tricky.

So, to recap:

• This Must Be It (Leht MoJoe remix) download
• Tricky Tricky remix comp instructions
• Royksopp Soundcloud with Tricky Tricky stems
  

Scandinavia unites! That Swedish platinum-blonde minx Robyn teamed up with Norway’s Royksopp for their latest, The Girl and the Robot.

And the video takes really takes the song title literally. Robyn falls in love with and is thoroughly ignored by yannow… a robot.

PS, a Scandinavian electronica duo is nothing without a requisite Sven.

According to Stereogum, it’s been 7 long years since Royksopp has done a TV performance. Well, thank goodness for the internet so that we can watch the duo and Robyn perform ‘The Girl and the Robot’ on Norwegian show Senkveld.

 
Love the set, the lights and multi-Robyn mosaic special effect. Maybe this Miami Horror clip isn’t so retro afterall…

Photo by SOMETHINGisBETTER

Happy Up Here is the newby from Royksopp’s first album of ‘09 (yep, there’s going to be two!), Junior. Love.

One of THE most fascinating video clips ever created is Royksopp’s ‘Remind Me’. It won the 2002 MTV Europe Music Award for best music video, but that just didn’t do it justice…

The four minute phenomenally detailed animated masterpiece (directed by Ludovic Houplan & Hervé de Crécy) is a marvel of system representation and visualised nested data sets. Extraordinarily geeky, but beautifully executed. Watch for yourself – it’s a headspin.

Told ya.

Animation student Tomas Nilsonnse has produced a project based on the clip, retelling the tale of Little Red Riding Hood. It doesn’t have quite the level of detail, and hey let’s face it – the music’s nowhere near as great as Royksopp… But it’s an impressive effort nonetheless. Check it out.

Tomas Nilsonnse – Little Red Riding Hood (music by Slagsmålsklubben)