Functional family debut album alert! Ortolan: all sibling, no quibbling

By Nobodaddy on Mar 9 2010

After a 2009 that saw the release of two albums — Embyronic and the collaborative recitation of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon with Stardeath and White Dwarf — Flaming Lips’ Wayne Coyne is donning his filmmaker’s beret again.

Coyne tells Billboard that he’s starting work on a project designed to be a bit more modest than 2008’s Christmas on Mars (TMT Review). “My only goal was that I didn’t have to build space station-looking sets every time I wanted to have someone say something,” Coyne notes, “only because I built those sets myself every time we shot something for Christmas on Mars over the seven years we took to make it. This one is set in someone’s house and in a back yard and in a slaughterhouse; all those are available to me right here, so I don’t have to build everything this time.”

Like Mars, Coyne says the new film will be shot primarily with his Flaming Lips bandmates and friends and family in Oklahoma City. “I’m gonna try to get real actors, too,” he adds, “celebrities to show up and have fun with us for a couple of nights. I’m in the process of begging Justin Timberlake to be part of it; if I’m lucky I’ll be able to wear him down in another year.” That, of course, implies that we shouldn’t hold our breath waiting for the finished product. “I think everybody would be relieved if it all got done in six weeks and we could say, ‘Look at that!’ ” says Coyne, who’s also started working on music for the movie with Lips bandmate Steven Drozd. “But because I get to do it with people I love and it’s my art, I don’t care how long it takes.”

Flaming Lips are hardly going on the back burner while Coyne works on the film. The group has already announced 14 shows, including a March 12 stop at the SXSW Film Festival in Austin, Texas, a performance at the Bonnaroo Music Festival on June 11, and a Central Park Summerstage gig on July 26 in New York City. The Bonnaroo show will include a full run-through of Dark Side — which comes out in limited-edition vinyl for Record Store Day on April 17 and on CD May 4 — but Coyne doesn’t think the Floyd classic will become part of the Lips’ regular repertoire.

• The Flaming Lips: http://www.flaminglips.com

By Erika H on Mar 9 2010

Composer Jonny Greenwood, better known as the guitarist for Radiohead, announced following a February show at BBC’s Maida Vale Studios that he is composing the score for a film adaptation of Haruki Murakami’s popular novel, Norwegian Wood.

You may remember Greenwood’s solo work from a few years ago, when There Will Be Blood struck musical gold (or oil, if you prefer) after Paul Thomas Anderson recruited him to provide the film score. The original soundtrack stemmed from “Popcorn Superhet Receiver,” a piece Greenwood debuted in 2005 with the BBC Concert Orchestra. In a similar transformation, Norwegian Wood’s music will be an amplification of “Doghouse,” the piece that Greenwood (BBC Concert Orchestra composer-in-residence since 2004) showcased last month to a select few.

Directed by Tran Anh Hung, the movie is slated for release in Japan before the end of the year (see stills here). If done well, the Murakami/Radiohead association will guarantee every third person between the age of 17 and 27 as a fan. If not, you can always press mute and play The Beatles on your acoustic guitar.

On Friday, March 19, BBC Radio 3 will broadcast the performance of “Doghouse” and a preview of the Norwegian Wood score at 2 PM.

• Radiohead: http://www.radiohead.com

[Photo: Michell Zappa]