Hi everyone.

I have some exciting news for you. Most of you have probably already heard that a deluxe version of The Information is coming out soon (Feb 27 in North America). It’ll have the international bonus tracks, a bunch of remixes, homemade videos for all the songs except O Menina, and two studio videos.

Last year, though, we kept hearing news about a deluxe 10th anniversary edition of Odelay coming out. When 2006 ended without official word of the rerelease, many of us gave up hope of seeing it. Well, it’s back, baby! HMV Japan has a page up for the rerelease! There’s not much information there, other than a release date (April 4) and the fact that it’ll be 2 CDs. Hopefully we get official confirmation and a tracklist soon. And hopefully there’s some new stuff on there that we haven’t heard before.

(Thanks to my favourite Japanese Beck blog HamBeck for linking to this.)

It may be a little bit late for this, but who doesn’t enjoy a good year-end review? 2006 was a good year for Beck fans, so I’ve put together this list of all the new Beck stuff that was released or discovered last year. For all the non-commercially-released stuff, make sure to head over to the BeckTabs hub, your Mecca for Beck earcandy media. (I can’t believe I wrote earcandy. I apologize.)

Keep in mind, this list is leaving out a whole mess of great concerts, club gigs and TV appearances, not to mention videos, puppet shows, t-shirts and lots of other great stuff. You can find a lot of that on the hub, too.

December

• Bloodless

November

• 99X Live X 11: Strange Apparition featuring Nausea (The Chap Remix)
• The Harry Smith Tribute DVD, featuring Beck’s performance of Last Fair Deal Gone Down

October

• Nacho Libre soundtrack and DVD, featuring six Beck songs (though only three showed up on the CD)
• 1st & Hope DVD, featuring an all-Beck soundtrack
• The Information - most, if not all, of the tracks and their videos were leaked ahead of time, but the album actually dropped on October 3. Along with the album came international bonus tracks and singles/promos for Cellphone’s Dead, Nausea, O Menina and Think I’m In Love (though the actual month these were released is unclear).
• Dark Star (TV On The Radio Remix)

September

• Cellphone’s Dead (Jamie Lidell Remix)
• a Lemonade video, the first whiskeyclone.net video production.

August

• California Rodeo

July

• Beck and Dava, a new old tape full of unheard covers (and possibly some original songs)
• Breaks and Beats
• We’re Punkers Now

March

• Kill The Moonlight DVD + soundtrack

January

• new version of Don’t Get Bent Out Of Shape

So what am I leaving off? Any major Beck events you think deserve attention? Let us know in the comments!

(On a personal note, I saw Beck perform three times in 2006, tying with 2002. Yeah, me!)

So it’s Information Week around the world.. if Beck’s new album isn’t out where you are already, it should be really soon. Nothing as fun as when a new album gets released. There’s 15 tracks on it, and depending on where you are, any number of the three bonus tracks (”Inside Out,” “Oh Menina,” and “This Girl That I Know”). Each CD comes with a DVD full of homemade videos for each song. The CD also comes with one of four sticker sets, with which you can make your own cover. Enjoy! If you want to mail a picture of your covers to this site, I guess they’ll be displayed. It seems like “Cell Phone’s Dead” and “Nausea” are going to be singles, but to what extent, I’m not sure (”real” videos were made for both) (fingers crossed for b-sides).
The band is doing a short US tour this month, with the idea of a fuller tour a bit later on. Go see them, they’re an energetic, fun, and tight band. I saw them last week and had a blast.

Looking to the future.. there obviously isn’t much talk about that yet. Beck was asked in a recent podcast/interview about that, and it sounds like he’ll be working Information for a bit.

The first single from Beck’s new album (no name, nor release date known, yet) is called “Cell Phone’s Dead.”  A video was shot by Michel Gondry.  Bootleg collectors will know the song as “Knock Out” from some of the club shows in early 2005.  You can hear the song over at Beck.com now… enjoy!

So I happened to see an early screening of Nacho Libre last night.  As was reported a few months back, Beck was recording for the score of this movie.  The movie poster and IMDB, however, said the score was by Danny Elfman.  Turns out, both are right.  Elfman did much of the score.  But Beck did some too.  There was one piece in it that was Beck playing acoustic guitar, with harmonica.  Another had Beck sort of humming/”la la la”ing over some acoustic guitar.  And there was a new Beck song with lyrics in there as well!  I watched the credits, and it listed 6 or 7 new Beck titles; the only two I can remember are “10,000 Pesos” and “My Heart Is With The Children” (both titles relevant to the movie).  If anyone sees this, please let me know the other titles.  I do not yet know of any way these songs will be released.  (The movie was hilarious, btw.  Highly recommended if you enjoy Jack Black.)

From http://icv2.com/articles/home/8569.html:

Tokyopop will team up with Interscope Records to combine Beck and Beck. With every copy of BECK: Mongolian Chop Squad Vol. 4, Tokyopop will include an online access code to get Go It Alone, an exclusive remixed track from the musician Beck’s 2005 Guero.

The track will be downloadable from the Tokyopop website.

The Shynola-directed ‘E-Pro’ video has been nominated for, and lost, a 2006 British Animation Award. Apparently the nominations were announced in late February and the awards handed out March 9.

The winner in the Best Music Video category was Subtle’s ‘Swan Meat’ (sidenote: you may remember that Subtle remixed ‘Farewell Ride’ for Guerolito). Mum’s ‘Will The Summer Make Good For All Our Sins’ was also nominated (and also lost). The public choice winner for Best Music Video was the Gorillaz’ ‘Feel Good Inc’.

Nacho Libre update: iTunes and quicktime.com will soon feature “confessionals” from Jack Black shot during the filming of Nacho Libre. There will be two per week starting March 15 and going for two and half months. In a crazy case of meta-promotion, there is a trailer out advertising these confessionals, which you can download here.

How is this Beck related? Well, Beck is scoring Nacho Libre. An earlier trailer for the movie featured already featured a new Beck song and it is likely that some/all of these confessionals will also have some new Beck tunes. In fact, the new trailer linked above has a better version of the same song we’ve already heard, so that’s pretty darn exciting. Scratch that, I’m just stupid. This is a song that is in the other trailer, but not the Beck one. At least, I don’t think it’s Beck.

Confused? I’m sorry. I know that was poorly written, but I’m tired and can’t bring myself to edit it right now.

That “some shows with Radiohead” news from a few days ago seems to be meaning that they’re both hitting the summer festival circuit: Beck and Radiohead will both be playing the V Festival in the UK in August.

So. Rolling Stone has a paragraph up on some Beck news. Here’s the exciting summary:

1. some shows with Radiohead this summer [we already know of Bonnaroo... will there be others?]

2. Odelay 10th Anniversary Deluxe edition [with original "Debra"! Slo-jam!] [I feel old]

3. finishing up the new Nigel Godrich record [with a song called "The Girl From RIP-anema"]

4. soundtrack/scoring the new Jack Black movie

HOORAY