Oktober 10th, 2007 by admin

Some of you may remember I mentioned Vice’s virtual Lower East Side (vLES) project a few weeks ago when Les Savy Fav hosted. If not, you’re probably all “What the fuck?” and should read the summary above. Basically, it’s Second Life for hipsters and now I’ve been invited to host this Thursday’s virtual show with Beirut at the virtual Bowery Ballroom. James from Green Pea-ness will be hosting with me, even though I’m pretty sure neither of us have ever devoted a word of text to Beirut on our respective pages.

That said, I’ve got all of his releases, have seen him live in London, am in love with his video for “Elephant Gun” (see below) and am really impressed by what the kid’s doing. I just don’t quite love him as much as everyone else seems to. Also, I’ve been called his doppleganger on countless occasions, but that’s neither here nor there. Regardless of my level of enthusiasm for Beirut, I’m psyched to be a part of this whole vLES thing even if I don’t totally know what to make of it yet. It could be something that’s fun for a few weeks or it could become a whole new phenomenon of its own. Or it could totally suck, but the literature on Vice’s site promises “it’s going to be so totally the opposite of boring you don’t even know”. I got high as balls last night and tooled around the vLES site for a little bit, but that’s pretty much the extent of my vLES experience to this point. So what do you say we all drop by from 6-7 PM tomorrow night and try it out together? It’ll only be a little bit weird I promise.

Not interested? Fuck off. Interested? AWESOME – follow THIS LINK to sign up. The whole thing is still in beta testing, so you can only sign up by following that specific link, which you will be able to then use for the next week and decide whether or not you’re into it for when the official full-fledged launch hits at some point in the near-ish future. And no, I’m not getting paid to promote this, I just think it might actually become something worth giving a fuck about at some point and want to see what it’s all about.

So yeah: THURSDAY NIGHT. 6-7 PM EST. REGISTER HERE. Please come. Thanks.

In specifically Beirut-related news, I may only really love a handful of tracks by him, but I totally worship at the altar of his video for “Elephant Gun”. Directed by Partizan newcomer Alma Har’el, there’s not much more to say about it other than that it’s fucking amazing. Possibly the best video of 2007, featuring the best choreography this side of Lil’ Mama and breathtaking cinematography and set design to rival even the silver screen’s finest cinematic accomplishments of the year, “Elephant Gun” proves Har’el to be a very special directing talent who’s certainly someone to keep an eye on. While I prefer the “Elephant Gun” video to her other Beirut clip for “Postcards From Italy”, both are most excellent and warrant a special spot in your heart and your hard drive. Enjoy them both in mad pretty high resolution below.

Video: “Elephant Gun”
Artist: Beirut
Director: Alma Har’el
Watch: [YouTube]
Download: [Quicktime • 51 MB]

Video: “Postcards From Italy”
Artist: Beirut
Director: Alma Har’el
Watch: [YouTube]
Download: [Quicktime • 92 MB]

In other news, LCD Soundsystem fucking KILLED IT at Randall’s Island on Saturday. I hope you were there.

Also, I’ve decided to do my best not to freak out about In Rainbows, considering every other blog ever is already doing a pretty good job of that for me. Instead, I’m currently focusing my energy on flipping my shit about how totally bad ass the first available track from Daft Punk’s Alive live album sounds. “Too Long”/”Steam Machine” was made available for streaming on the duo’s MySpace today, and fuck if it doesn’t sound absolutely glorious all professionally mixed and shit. This is a record I am very excited for.