José González's Head On

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I’ve been a fan of José González's music for a long time — Sony used his song Heartbeats for a commercial and his minimal, acoustic sound was something that really caught my ears at the time. Artists like Nick Drake, Bon Iver, Alexi Murdoch, and Iron & Wine featured heavily in my own personal playlists at the time, and González's album Veneer proved to be a good fit.

I’ve followed him ever since — I even caught him live when he swung through Vermont on a tour — and I’ve generally enjoyed listening to his followup efforts, like his more forceful In Our Nature and Vestiges & Claws, which built upon that minimalist sound, but expanded and enriched it without departing too far from what made it really enticing.

González has a new album coming out later this fall, Local Valley, and he’s released a handful of songs ahead of that release: ‘El Invento’ (his first song entirely in Spanish), ‘Visions’, and ‘Head On’. He released the first video for that last one earlier today, and it’s a sublime listen: there’s some beautiful guitar work and minimal lyrics that grows into a solid, catchy beat. This one’s going to be on my new songs playlist for a while, I can tell.

Random Stuff

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  • I'm liking this blogroll application that Blogger has allowed to be added to blogs. There's been a bunch that I've tracked over the years, but this lays them out in a neat manner, and arranges them according to when they've been updated, via RSS Feed. I've grouped the history ones, people I talk to, Authors I follow and my other two blogs (501st and Music) together to make things easier for me.

  • Residency is here at Norwich University. I've been back and forth between campus, working extra hours while all of our students have been here. It's been interesting thus far. I've sat in on one presentation, Explorations in Military Effectiveness, which was facinating, and I'll write up something about it at some point.

  • Did a troop at the Montpelier Kellogg-Hubbard Library with our newest Vermont storm trooper, Mike, which went pretty well. Details here.

  • I get to see José González tomorrow night at the Higher Ground! So excited to see him in person, finally.

  • Anna's coming up on Friday for the weekend and a couple days. Can't wait for that.

  • George Carlin died yesterday, at the age of 71, from heart failure. Undoubtedly, he would have something funny to say about it.

Something Really Cool, or, Colour Like No Other

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Has anyone ever seen the Sony Bravia commercial with th 250,000 bouncing balls in San Fransisco? Really fun advert, something really different to watch. I saw it a couple times while in the UK, and what caught my eyes and ears recently was the fact that the song Heartbeats, by Jose Gonzalez, is the background song. He's one of my favourite artists, and the song is quite good.

Naturally, this got me thinking about this. What are the logistics and random other headaches that would be brought on by this? That's a lot of bouncing balls. How did they clean up? I found (I'm actually not sure how I came across this) a website that Sony set up for the commercial, with a couple of similar and new ones, with the advert, but also with a couple of short videos on the behind the scenes filming of the commercial.
Granted, keep in mind that this is a 2 + minute advert. On one hand, the fact that they have several 7 minute features devoted to the filming is quite odd, but granted, the advert is pretty different, and as I mentioned, it got me thinking.


The site also included this:

How we did it
In an age when CGI is commonplace, this makes the commercial all the more extraordinary. Every single frame was shot over two days - with the main sequence involving a 23-man camera crew and only one chance to get it right.
An entire block was closed off and special compressed-air cannons shot the balls into the air, while earth moving equipment poured thousands down the street. Not that you'd know it from the finished product, but these balls can do some damage, so all the cars were props and crew members went so far as to having protective shields and crash helmets.
But when you get it right, you get it right. The goal at the beginning was to deliver a "really simple, visual celebration of colour". We think you'll agree the results speak for themselves.

It's a fun commercial, and one that really stands out. Good marketing. Like the song? The site also posted up a clip of it:

Heartbeats.mp3

It's a great song, and worth getting, either through the CD Veneer or via download .