Urchin PR
New Member
Foggy Notions & Strange Victory presents
An Exclusive Irish performance by
Final Fantasy
The Empire Music Hall, Belfast
August 4th, 8pm
Tickets £12.50 plus booking fee from www.ticketmaster.co.uk
Final Fantasy, aka Toronto’s Owen Pallet, will perform an exclusive Irish concert at the Empire Music Hall in Belfast on August 4th following two very special intimate shows in Dublin and Galway in May.
Owen Pallett is from a large family in Canada. He has written music his entire life, including scoring a videogame at the age of twelve, three short films by the age of sixteen, and two operas by the age of twenty-one. Throughout his teens, Owen devoted most of his time to new classical composition and learning the violin. Once he moved to Toronto, he began playing with several local acts, including gay folk church music band The Hidden Cameras, drone metal band Picastro, Jim Guthrie and Royal City. At the encouragement of Blocks Recording Club founder Steve Kado, Owen started pursuing his own pop music interests with panic folk band Les Mouches, who released an EP and an album on the then-nascent Blocks label.
Owen's violin-looping made its debut at a Bobby Birdman tribute show in April 2004. The project was hastily named Final Fantasy, in tribute to the melodramatic video-game series. Final Fantasy's debut album Has A Good Home (Blocks/Tomlab) was released in April 2005, and was lauded by Canadian, German and French music journalists, including several “Best Of” lists.
His second album, He Poos Clouds (Blocks/Tomlab) was written and arranged entirely for string quartet, and is a satirical song cycle based on the eight schools of magic according to Dungeons and Dragons. It was acclaimed worldwide. The Village Voice praised it as having “the best lyrics of the year,” Pitchfork described it as “a joy to hear... this is, in a word, fierce - it can engage you on a level most albums can't,” and many publications put it in their top ten lists for the year. Canadian journalists voted and awarded it the inaugural Polaris Prize for best Canadian full-length album, beating out heavy-hitters such as Broken Social Scene, Wolf Parade, The New Pornographers and Cadence Weapon.
Despite the increasing scale of Final Fantasy's recorded output, the live shows have remained solo outings, with Owen singing over frantically layered violin and piano. Former Les Mouches-member Stephanie Comilang accompanies Owen using an overhead projector to create live films and shadow show. They've played over a thousand shows across the globe, from garages to enormous concert halls. Final Fantasy was recently invited to play at a gala in New York City honouring Laurie Anderson on her 60th birthday.
In addition to curating the Maximum Black Festival in early 2008, Owen has toured constantly and written string and orchestra arrangements for many releases, including Arcade Fire's Neon Bible, Great Lake Swimmers's Ongiara, Dan Goldman's Your Truest Nature, Fucked Up's Hidden World, Immaculate Machine's Fables, Beirut’s The Flying Club Cup, The Last Shadow Puppets’ The Age of Understatement and Grizzly Bear's Yellow House.
In October 2008, Final Fantasy released 2 EPs: "Spectrum, 14th Century" (Blocks/For Great Justice) and "Plays To Please" (Slender Means Society/States Rights Records/Blocks). The former contains field recordings from the fictional land of Spectrum, and the latter is a big band tribute to songwriter Alex Lukashevsky of the band Deep Dark United. Owen will have orchestral arrangements featured on Pet Shop Boys' Yes and The Rumblestrips’ full-length produced by Mark Ronson. He has also orchestrated and conducted the film score for Richard Kelly's forthcoming movie The Box (2009) with Win Butler and Regine Chassagne.
Highlights from the Final Fantasy repertoire were performed by The Brooklyn Philharmonic at the BAM Howard Gilman Opera House as part of its 2009 season and will also be reprised later in the year by The Glenn Gould School at The Royal Conservatory of Music. Owen is currently working on his forthcoming full-length romance album entitled Heartland.
www.finalfantasyeternal.com
An Exclusive Irish performance by
Final Fantasy
The Empire Music Hall, Belfast
August 4th, 8pm
Tickets £12.50 plus booking fee from www.ticketmaster.co.uk
Final Fantasy, aka Toronto’s Owen Pallet, will perform an exclusive Irish concert at the Empire Music Hall in Belfast on August 4th following two very special intimate shows in Dublin and Galway in May.
Owen Pallett is from a large family in Canada. He has written music his entire life, including scoring a videogame at the age of twelve, three short films by the age of sixteen, and two operas by the age of twenty-one. Throughout his teens, Owen devoted most of his time to new classical composition and learning the violin. Once he moved to Toronto, he began playing with several local acts, including gay folk church music band The Hidden Cameras, drone metal band Picastro, Jim Guthrie and Royal City. At the encouragement of Blocks Recording Club founder Steve Kado, Owen started pursuing his own pop music interests with panic folk band Les Mouches, who released an EP and an album on the then-nascent Blocks label.
Owen's violin-looping made its debut at a Bobby Birdman tribute show in April 2004. The project was hastily named Final Fantasy, in tribute to the melodramatic video-game series. Final Fantasy's debut album Has A Good Home (Blocks/Tomlab) was released in April 2005, and was lauded by Canadian, German and French music journalists, including several “Best Of” lists.
His second album, He Poos Clouds (Blocks/Tomlab) was written and arranged entirely for string quartet, and is a satirical song cycle based on the eight schools of magic according to Dungeons and Dragons. It was acclaimed worldwide. The Village Voice praised it as having “the best lyrics of the year,” Pitchfork described it as “a joy to hear... this is, in a word, fierce - it can engage you on a level most albums can't,” and many publications put it in their top ten lists for the year. Canadian journalists voted and awarded it the inaugural Polaris Prize for best Canadian full-length album, beating out heavy-hitters such as Broken Social Scene, Wolf Parade, The New Pornographers and Cadence Weapon.
Despite the increasing scale of Final Fantasy's recorded output, the live shows have remained solo outings, with Owen singing over frantically layered violin and piano. Former Les Mouches-member Stephanie Comilang accompanies Owen using an overhead projector to create live films and shadow show. They've played over a thousand shows across the globe, from garages to enormous concert halls. Final Fantasy was recently invited to play at a gala in New York City honouring Laurie Anderson on her 60th birthday.
In addition to curating the Maximum Black Festival in early 2008, Owen has toured constantly and written string and orchestra arrangements for many releases, including Arcade Fire's Neon Bible, Great Lake Swimmers's Ongiara, Dan Goldman's Your Truest Nature, Fucked Up's Hidden World, Immaculate Machine's Fables, Beirut’s The Flying Club Cup, The Last Shadow Puppets’ The Age of Understatement and Grizzly Bear's Yellow House.
In October 2008, Final Fantasy released 2 EPs: "Spectrum, 14th Century" (Blocks/For Great Justice) and "Plays To Please" (Slender Means Society/States Rights Records/Blocks). The former contains field recordings from the fictional land of Spectrum, and the latter is a big band tribute to songwriter Alex Lukashevsky of the band Deep Dark United. Owen will have orchestral arrangements featured on Pet Shop Boys' Yes and The Rumblestrips’ full-length produced by Mark Ronson. He has also orchestrated and conducted the film score for Richard Kelly's forthcoming movie The Box (2009) with Win Butler and Regine Chassagne.
Highlights from the Final Fantasy repertoire were performed by The Brooklyn Philharmonic at the BAM Howard Gilman Opera House as part of its 2009 season and will also be reprised later in the year by The Glenn Gould School at The Royal Conservatory of Music. Owen is currently working on his forthcoming full-length romance album entitled Heartland.
www.finalfantasyeternal.com
