Miroir Noir

Often when listening to music I try and account for all the sounds I hear. That is, consciously be aware of every instrument to visualize the music if you will. Once I can visualize the music, it's easier to understand how it's made, why certain instruments are used and when there should be a chord change, etc. I have no musical training so my understanding is less technical and more gut feeling. When I listen to Arcade Fire, I'm blown away, I can't understand how they make their music. How they know to us a church organ or a hurdy gurdy (what the fuck is a hurdy gurdy? I don't know, but Regine plays one!) How they can have 10 people on stage, playing the shit out of something and have the sound be so exact. For this reason their music feels like something beyond me, something bigger. I've often said if I had one wish, I would want a teleporter (I mean seriously right, how cool would that be), but if I had two, I would want to be in Arcade Fire, playing something, anything. I seriously think they are the most brilliant modern band there is.

All this leads to Miroir Noir. Miroir Noir is a film, shot by Vincent Moon of the blogotheque crew. It was shot in '06 and '07. It captures the band as they made and toured Neon Bible. After the huge success of Funeral, their debut album. Arcade Fire retreated to Quebec, bought an old church and renovated to create their recording studio. The saying goes: you have your whole life to make the first album and a year or so to make the next one, hence the term "sophomore slump". None of that applies here. The band decided to self-produce Neon Bible, adding to the idea that they are other-wordily geniuses. Miroir Noir went on sale in December, with a couple different packaging options. Once you purchased the film, you could download a digital version, the actual DVD was not shipped until the very end of March. Even though I had the digital version, I tried not to watch it very much, wanting to wait to experience it in all it's glory on surround sound on as big a TV i could find. The Film consists of artsy film maker shots in an almost sepia effect. The footage bounces back and forth between footage of shows, the recording studio, backstage, on tour, as well as audio recordings from the 1-866-neon-bible phone message machine the band used to promote the album leading up to it's release. It is certainly a film makers film, there's nothing straight forward about it, not for everyone, but so cool for a fan. I watch it a lot and find something else to love about it every time. Some highlights:
-Win and Regine in an elevator playing "Windowsill". Very simple, Win playing guitar, Regine keeping time on the wall.
-Footage of Win on the balcony of the church recording the vocals for "Keep the car running"
-A message left on the neon bible phone line by some douche bag hater, which leads right into "Haiti", a song that initially I felt apathetic to. But to see them play this live really gives it a different feel. This is Regine in her finest moment, the song is like the nice guy you can't say a bad thing about. I can't help smile when I see her doing her dance on this song.
-"no cars go", the song starts in towards the end with footage on stage from behind the drummer. The band is playing a big outdoor stadium. Every time the song gets into "let's go!" the house lights light up the whole crowd for a second before fading to black, just in time for "let's go!" and the whole process begins again.
-"power out/Rebellion" I am so glad they left these two songs untouched. This is the only time in the film where a whole song is shown in it's entirety. I have probably a dozen recordings of their shows and I think every one has these two songs played back to back. They go from "Power out" to "rebellion" brilliantly.
-During "Cold Wind" they use studio audio and juxtapose it over assorted live footage. A lot of it is of Richard and Will playing percussion. If you haven't seen footage of "Laika" you tube it, these two guys kill it!! throwing drums in the air, hammering on a single cymbal, it's just freaking awesome!
Here's footage from the film, initially filmed for blogotheque, Neon Bible in an elevator, check out Richard playing a magazine. I can't say enough about them.