Owen Pallett
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| Owen Pallett | |
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 Owen Pallett
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| Background information | |
| Born | September 7, 1979 |
| Origin | Toronto, Ontario, Canada |
| Genre(s) | Experimental music Indie pop Baroque pop |
| Occupation(s) | Violinist Singer-songwriter |
| Instrument(s) | Violin, Vocals, Piano, Harpsichord |
| Label(s) | Blocks Recording Club Tomlab |
| Associated acts | Picastro Arcade Fire Les Mouches Beirut The Last Shadow Puppets Enter the haggis Hidden Cameras Patrick Wolf |
| Website | finalfantasyeternal.com |
Michael James Owen Pallett (born on September 7, 1979) is a violinist and singer from Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and winner of the inaugural Polaris Music Prize.
Pallett is the principal member of the band Final Fantasy, which is essentially a solo project, although Leon Taheny is also credited as drummer and engineer. The name Final Fantasy is a tribute to the well-known video game series, of which Pallett is a fan[1].
For his live performances, Pallett plays the violin into a sampler controlled by foot pedals, which then loops back one or more of the previously played musical phrases as he plays additional parts simultaneously.
Pallett has performed on tour with Arcade Fire. He wrote orchestral and string arrangements on Funeral and Neon Bible.
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[edit] Biography
Pallett's father is an avid church organist who provided a background in solely classical music until early preteens. From toddler age, he studied classical violin and composed his first piece at age 13. A notable composition includes some of the music for the game Traffic Department 2192, to scoring films, to composing two operas while in university. Apart from the indie music scene, he has had commissions from Bang on a Can, the Vancouver CBC Orchestra, and Fine Young Classicals.
He believes his work is implicitly influenced by his sexuality, saying, "As far as whether the music I make is gay or queer, yeah, it comes from the fact that I'm gay, but that doesn't mean I'm making music about the sexuality specifically".[2]
Pallett received an Honours Bachelor of Music for Composition from the University of Toronto in 2002.[3]
Patrick Borjal, Pallett's boyfriend, began working as his manager in 2006, and formed the management company Boyfriend Management. [4]
[edit] Music
On 12 February 2005, his debut album, Has a Good Home, was released by the Blocks Recording Club (sometimes referred to as 'BlocksBlocksBlocks'), a cooperative, Toronto-based record label of which he is a founding member. Adventure.exe from this album was used in a series of 2006 commercials by Orange in the United Kingdom[5]. Pallett did not intend to sell the song for this purpose, but its use was authorized due to an alleged miscommunication with his record label, Tomlab. All of Pallett's income from this use is donated to Doctors Without Borders.[6]
Pallett's second album, He Poos Clouds, was released in June 2006, though the video[7], directed by Jesse Ewles, was released on March 1, 2006. The album consists entirely of string quartet arrangements. Eight of the ten songs are about each of the schools of magic as described in the rules to the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game. The album was named winner of the inaugural Polaris Music Prize. Uncomfortable with receiving a prize sponsored by a mobile phone conglomerate, Pallett gave the money away to bands he liked who needed financial assistance.
His previous projects included a 3-piece Toronto-based band, Les Mouches, now defunct. He was once the violinist of another Toronto band called Picastro, and briefly played keyboard in SS Cardiacs (with Leon Taheny, Jessie Stein and Michael Small in 2005). Pallett has also recorded and toured with Jim Guthrie, The Hidden Cameras, Royal City, The Vinyl Cafe, Gentleman Reg, and Arcade Fire (he co-wrote the strings arrangement for their albums Funeral and Neon Bible[8]). One of his songs, "This Is the Dream of Win & Regine", was inspired by the principal members of the latter group, Win Butler and Régine Chassagne, and is a play on a Dntel song called, "(This Is) The Dream of Evan and Chan."
On November 11, 2006, Pallett posted to a fan forum to announce a new album, tentatively titled Heartland, presumably to be released in mid to late 2007.[9] Subsequently on July 9, 2007 on the CBC Radio One program Q, Pallett said that the album would be released no earlier than mid 2008. In the same interview he confirmed that it would be titled Heartland, and that it was an album about nothingness.
Pallett has been noted for his live performances, wherein he plays the violin into a loop pedal, a technique also used by musicians such as Andrew Bird, KT Tunstall and Zoe Keating. Pallett uses Max/MSP to do multi-phonic looping, which sends his violin signal to amplifiers across the stage.
Pallett contributed remixes for the bands Stars ("Your Ex-Lover Is Dead," for the redux album Do You Trust Your Friends), Grizzly Bear and Bloc Party. He also wrote string arrangements for the Canadian bands Immaculate Machine, on their 2007 album, Fables, and Fucked Up, on their 2006 album Hidden World. He also wrote the string arrangements for the Beirut album The Flying Club Cup, as well as providing guest vocals on some tracks.[10] Most recently, he provided orchestration for the solo debut of Arctic Monkeys frontman Alex Turner (with Miles Kane, as The Last Shadow Puppets), entitled "The Age of the Understatement". Pallett also conducted the London Metropolitan Orchestra in the recording of this project.
In 2007, the song "This Is The Dream Of Win & Regine" was used in a commercial for Wiener Stadtwerke without Pallett's permission. Instead of litigation, Pallett and his booking agent Susanne Herrndorff approached the company for sponsorship for a music festival of their curation. The resultant Maximum Black Festival featured Final Fantasy, The Dirty Projectors, Deerhoof, Frog Eyes, Max Tundra, Six Organs Of Admittance and others. It played Vienna, Berlin and London. In September 2007 they did a Take-Away Show acoustic video session shot by Vincent Moon.
In October 2007 Final Fantasy released a vinyl 7" on Tomlab's Alphabet Single series ( The Letter "X" ). The two tracks on "X", recorded in Montreal with Zach Condon, of the band Beirut; predate the album He Poos Clouds. The tracks - "Hey Dad" and "What Do You Think Will Happen Next?" are both played regularly at live shows. The song "Hey Dad" contains a melody borrowed from the Nintendo video game "Super Mario Bros. 3"; specifically it is the music from the "Coin Heaven" bonus/hidden stages. Also, the song is quite similar in melody, lyrics and tone to another of Pallett's songs - "→".
In March 2008, Owen Pallett under the alias Final Fantasy, collaborated with Grizzly Bear's Ed Droste on a cover of Björk's 'Possibly Maybe' as part of Stereogum's tribute to Björk's album, 'Post'.[11]
In June 2009 at Luminato, Toronto's annual festival of arts and creativity, Pallett provided part of the live soundtrack for the outdoor screening (at Yonge-Dundas Square) of the 1919 silent German horror film Tales Of The Uncanny (Unheimliche Geschichten), alongside Canadian instrumental band Do Make Say Think and electronica music artist Robert Lippok from Berlin, Germany.
[edit] Discography
[edit] With Les Mouches
- The Polite Album - 2002
- Blood Orgy!!! - 2003
- You're Worth More to Me Than 1000 Christians - 2004
[edit] Final Fantasy
[edit] Studio albums
- Has a Good Home - February 12, 2005
- He Poos Clouds - May 15, 2006
- Heartland - TBA
[edit] EPs and singles
- Young Canadian Mothers - March 10, 2006
- Many Lives → 49 MP - May 29, 2006
- X - October 2007
- Spectrum, 14th Century - September 30, 2008
- Plays to Please - October, 2008
[edit] Contributions
[edit] Various Songs
- 'Don't Ask' - Remix of a song by the band Grizzly Bear. Appears on their 2005 album Horn of Plenty (The Remixes)
- 'Your Ex-Lover Is Dead' - Remix of a song by the band Stars. Appears on their 2007 album Do You Trust Your Friends?.
- 'Softness I Forgot Your Name' - Duet with Montag. Appears on the 2007 album Going Places.
- 'Possibly Maybe' - Duet with Ed Droste of Grizzly Bear. Appears on the Stereogum compilation Enjoyed, a tribute to Björk's Post.
- 'Joys' - Collaboration with David Shrigley. Appears on the David Shrigley album Worried Noodles.
- 'Flare Gun' - appears on a compilation released by Esopus.
[edit] References
- ^ http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/feature/10301-profile-final-fantasy
- ^ Liss, Sarah (2005-06-23). "Final Fantasy". NOW Magazine. http://www.nowtoronto.com/issues/2005-06-23/cover_story.php. Retrieved on 2007-06-03.
- ^ "Experiments with Violin". University of Toronto Magazine. Summer 2006. http://www.magazine.utoronto.ca/06summer/alumninotes.asp. Retrieved on 2007-06-03.
- ^ "Toronto musician embarks on cross-country tour". Capital Xtra!. June 29, 2007. http://www.xtra.ca/public/viewstory.aspx?AFF_TYPE=2&STORY_ID=3247&PUB_TEMPLATE_ID=2. Retrieved on 2007-07-10.
- ^ YouTube - Orange Animals Big Idea 30 second - panther
- ^ "When Final Fantasy Sells Out". SHZine posting board. 2006-08-01. http://shzine.proboards10.com/index.cgi?board=fantasy&action=display&thread=1154462172&page=1. Retrieved on 2007-06-03.
- ^ "He Poos Clouds Video". http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=1549158669315142277&q=he+poos+clouds. Retrieved on 2007-06-03.
- ^ Deusner, Stephen M. (2005-03-09). "Profile: Final Fantasy". Pitchfork Media. http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/feature/10301-profile-final-fantasy. Retrieved on 2007-06-03.
- ^ "Heartland". SHZine posting board. 2006-11-11. http://shzine.proboards10.com/index.cgi?board=fantasy&action=display&thread=1163299438. Retrieved on 2007-06-03.
- ^ Solarski, Matthew (2007-06-21). "Beirut Announce Album Release Date, Tracklist, Tour". Pitchfork Media. http://pitchforkmedia.com/article/news/43770-beirut-announce-album-release-date-tracklist-tour. Retrieved on 2007-08-09.
- ^ "Enjoyed: A Tribute To Bjork's Post". http://stereogum.com/bjork/. Retrieved on 2008-07-02.
- ^ http://media.www.thestrand.ca/media/storage/paper404/news/2008/10/02/FilmMusic/Whats.In.A.Name.The.Holy.Fuck.Story-3469874.shtml
[edit] External links
- Final Fantasy official website
- Interview with RadioUTD
- Party Poopers Owen Pallett and Ed Droste of Grizzly Bear interview one another in Out magazine.
- Audiojunkies Interview with Final Fantasy (Owen Pallett)
- Profile by Carl Wilson in The Globe & Mail (Toronto), toward the end of the Les Mouches period
- Another piece by Wilson, on Final Fantasy, in The New York Times
- Interview where Owen denies the rumor that he has never played the Final Fantasy video games
- Interview with Owen Pallett aka Final Fantasy at twistedear.com
- [1] Losingtoday.com interview with Owen Pallett by: Philip Kenneth Lenczycki
- Video: 2 acoustic songs for 'They Shoot Music Dont They'
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