For those who haven't heard yet, it's official, Kristen and I are expecting our first in October!
Woo-Hoo! We're very excited!
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Friday, February 26, 2010
Savoir Adore - Bodies
Got turned on to this tune on the drive home tonight, love the rhythm tracks and the dueling male/female vocals of Deidre Muro and Paul Hammer. There must be something in the water in Brooklyn...
Enjoy!
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Tripping Out Over Wayne Coyne’s Bathroom...
From Flavorwire: "Flaming Lips lead singer Wayne Coyne is no shrinking violet: he’s donned fake blood and a furry suit onstage, gone full-frontal in a music video, and slammed the Arcade Fire in Rolling Stone. Now images of Coyne’s self-described “drug damaged, artist[ic]” home — a veritable compound in Oklahoma City designed byFitzsimmons Architects — are making the internet rounds."
More Pictures: http://flavorwire.com/70597/tripping-out-over-wayne-coynes-bathroom
There is some really interesting design going on here but I don't know if I'd call it home.
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Yeah, that's an entire clove of Garlic on my roll!
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> I'm in my happy place right now, grabbing some good Italian food at > Emilio's!
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10 things Noel loves\hates
via youtube.com
Always entertaining, Noel Gallagher spouts off 10 likes and dislikes. Such a knucklehead.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Viva Voce - The Slow Fade
A few months ago I lost both the main and backup hard drives containing my iTunes Library. Roughly 1TB worth of data... gone. As you can imagine I was super excited... of course not, I was uber pissed, so angry I couldn't believe it, a hugh moment of "Are You Fuckin' Kidding Me?!?!? The main and the backup!!!" It was the best Ad for a Drobo ever and helped re-ignite a strong desire for Spotify, because, well, this has happened before over the years, and even though I had older versions of my library on other drives, I'm getting tired of managing hard drives, I just want access to a shit ton of music.
Now having those older drives with part of my music library is great, except for when you want to hear something that you purchased recently. Fortunately E-Music has very liberal Re-download Policy which came in very handy yesterday when I had Viva Voce's "The Slow Fade" in my head. The haunting chorus of "Gone Gone Gone" kept playing over and over in my ears as I tapped out the lulling rhythms on my steering wheel while driving to work, on my customers desk that afternoon and at the dinner table last night. Stuck on repeat was this simple lullaby of a break up and goodbye song. This morning I re-downloaded Vive Voce's Rose City and couldn't be happier to hear the this song in full and release my self of only remembering the one phrase of the chorus.
The march of the piano and the slide guitar set the mood of a county dirge while a wobbly distorted square wave from a keyboard fades in and out to accent the vocal melody. It's a simple and beautiful song, fitting for the end of a record, a relationship or mourning the loss of your music collection... "Gone, Gone, Gone."
Sunday, February 07, 2010
Google Superbowl Ad got Kristen all teary eyed.
It's amazing to think how much apart of our lives Google has become. Wild.
Wednesday, February 03, 2010
The Knife - Colouring of Pigeons - Tomorrow In A Year
Colouring Of Pigeons by The Knife In Collaboration With Mt. Sims And Planningtorock
Download now or listen on posterous
Colouring of Pigeons.mp3 (15647 KB) Download now or listen on posterous
New challenging and ambitious work from The Knife In Collaboration with Mt. Sims and Planningtorock, written specifically for the opera Tomorrow In A Year which is based off of Darwin's Origin of Species and other Darwin related materials such as Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene. It's as if they crept into my library and wrote an album about it. I couldn't be more excited.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Justice - Beginning of the end
Beginning Of The End by Justice
Download now or listen on posterous
Beginning of the end.mp3 (7445 KB) Download now or listen on posterous
Well it's not much, but it's something new, New Justice that is, fresh from the Ed Banger outbox and to be taken from an album do out later this year also to be titled ✞ (at least according to the ID3 tag). It's a very simple track, perhaps something that will serve as an intro (Hopefully!) Just as it begins to get interesting it cuts short, probably intended. Fingers are "crossed" that our other favorite Persian dance duo will pull out another winner and not a sophomore dud.
Friday, January 22, 2010
Scratch Input - Using Audio to control your computer.
via youtube.com
For the nerds... yes, but pretty cool. It's a short but dense clip, hang in there, somewhere around the 3:00 minute mark the potential use of the technology will start to sink in.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Wild Beasts - The Fun Powder Plot
The Fun Powder Plot by Wild Beasts
Download now or listen on posterous
01 The Fun Powder Plot.mp3 (9612 KB) Download now or listen on posterous
Wild Beasts remind of the 80's in the best way possible. Eccentric English guys who can play their instruments extremely well and clean. They use words not commonly found in modern pop music, such as "bereft", "bovver" and "donkey-jaw diction". Their songs are full of drama made of glassy guitars and syncopated rhythms and have a feel that is both "modern and of the renaissance" to quote their myspace page. Boasting Falsetto, Tenor and Baritone vocalists, I had to ask myself, "Is that Antony of Antony and the Johnsons sining with a more restrained Mew..." No it isn't but it sure sounds like it.
From all of the songs on the 2nd record, Two Dancers, I choose "The Fun Powder Plot" simply because it's the 1st song on the album and it gently lulls you into their overall dramatic and dynamic sound. Plus it has may favorite lyric of the whole record "This is a booty call; my boot, my boot, my boot, my boot up your arse hole."
Love it.
Enjoy!
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Eli "Paper" Boy Reed - Take My Love With You
Take My Love With You by Eli "Paperboy" Reed And The True Loves
Download now or listen on posterous
02 Take My Love With You.mp3 (5112 KB) Download now or listen on posterous
Sometimes you just need some good old fashioned soul music, full of heart and conviction and sung by white guy from Boston. Enter Eli "Paperboy" Reed and the True Loves with 'Take My Love With You'. This version from 2007 popped up on my iPod this morning and got my day started off on the right track, smiling and sining along.
Enjoy.
http://www.elipaperboyreed.com/Tuesday, January 05, 2010
Star Wars In Odd Places | Caveman Circus
This picture says it all... but there are many more at the link above. Who knew Chewie was such a big Ron Paul fan?
Saturday, January 02, 2010
Thursday, December 31, 2009
New Music: Caravan Palace - Jolie Coquine
What better way to ring in the new year than with a talented band of dancing gypsies? Caravan Palace hail from Paris, France and quite literally mix roaring 20's Swing with classic filter happy French House. It's an unlikely yet perfect mix. There have been a handful of songs over the past two decades that have used swing samples to similar effect (Mambo No 5 I'm looking at you!) but Caravan Palace do it live with Horns, Violin, Clarinet, Double Bass and Acoustic Guitars. Let your hair down, loosen up that collar, grab that champagne and have a Happy New Year!
More Info:
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
St. Vincent - Marrow
I was reading a Bob Lefsetz review of Jamie Cullum's "All at sea" and listening to the song via Youtube, bored out of my mind by the songs performance I start to wander over to the related videos and see that Jaime also does many a cover including "Sky Cries Mary" and "High and Dry" all of which sound lifeless to me. He's emoting alright but the performances all lack a rawness that would make a song stick with you for life. If those same arrangements were sung by Sting or even Norah Jones they would have a much better chance of sticking with me, these performance just leave me flat. St. Vincent is another one of those artists, like Jamie Cullum, who's name I had heard but for what ever reason had paid no attention to (and in the case of Jamie Cullum I'm glad I had.) Ms. Annie Clark finally caught my attention not with the Letterman clip but with a performance on Austin City Limits a few months ago. I was half passed out on the bed drifting away when I was lulled into curiosity by the angelic flutes and oboe's that suddenly jarred me to attention with a full on marching band stomp.
Growing tired of Bob's selections, I searched for a palette cleanser and found this phenomenal performance of St. Vincent's "Marrow" on Letterman.
http://austincitylimits.org/seyret-video?task=videodirectlink&id=176
Kristen and I were unwinding for the night and I stumbled upon PBS and Austin City Limits. I'll admit I wasn't immediately taken in by St. Vincent. Like a good music snob I was half interested and half bored because I was unfamiliar with the music and exhausted, so much so I started to drift off... then it hit me, those horns and the guitar solo, the dynamics of soft and quiet to loud and explosive, the sophistication of the arrangements... it had all pulled me in, I was now fully awake and enjoying every minute of it.
The next day Kristen had downloaded the album Actor and knew everything there was to know about her. I then headed to e-music for her 1st album Mary Me and began diving head first in to the world of Annie Clark.
Annie Clark's music as St. Vincent is almost exactly what you would expect from a multi-instrumentalist who grew up in Texas, attended Berklee School of Music, joined the Polyphonic Spree just a couple years after high school and played in Sufjan Steven's touring band. She writes Pop songs, full of life, colorful arrangements and orchestration that are rough around the edges. A juxtaposition of violent guitars and sugary sweet "Birds on your shoulder" orchestral swoons. Not every song is a gem, and many come off better live than on record, but the potential here is undeniable, and Annie know's this...
It's interesting how the internet is this revolutionary thing that allows us to connect and share so much information with one another yet it took a TV appearance on public television to get me to finally pay attention. Crazy world we're living in.
Enjoy.
Get More info:
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Dusting off the ol' Drum & Bass shelf
While going through some files on an old hard drive this morning I found a hand full of tunes I had worked on back in my D&B days. None of them were ever released and they were played in clubs less than a hand full of times. The original session files have long been lost on a failed hard drive somewhere and I figure why let all those hours of hard work go to waste. Those that new me back in the early part of this decade might get a kick out of these tunes. Enjoy!
Joe Shockley & New Republic - Why you gotta do me like that?
The 1st tune goes back to 2002 and is one of the last I worked on with New Republic, mainly it was Wade and my self on this tune and truly it was me obsessively trying to come up with something as catchy as Zinc's "Ska" and "138 Trek" and was heavily influenced by the sound DJ's Marky and Patife were pushing at the time... all in one song. As a group New Republic had already released a 12" with Break Beat Science and were working on a Latin/Brazilian influenced Single/EP for another label before the group started to implode and eventually fell apart. Listening back to it now the song feels rushed in some parts and long in others, the drums don't punch through enough and you can barely hear the bass on my MacBook speakers, but overall it's a fun song. Good Times.
Joe Shockley - What You Want
"What You Want" written in 2003, is the 1st tune I worked on after leaving New Republic and you can tell I was a bit angry at the time. Prior to working on this tune most of the songs I worked on were mostly liquid funk inspired and upbeat. This was a total 180 from that vibe and was a very literal response to the feedback I was getting from the crowd.
Joe Shockley - Other Life
"Other Life" also written in 2003, represents the most fun I ever had making a D&B tune. I just threw my self into it for a week and had a lot of fun programming drums, finding all the samples and coming up with an obnoxious bass line/lead synth. It was also the shortest and most concise D&B tune I had done at the time and I loved how it didn't have an atmospheric "drop" and then repeat section. "Other Life" is also the last D&B tune I did as I stepped away from Drum & Bass all together, got back behind the drum kit and eventually started playing with Marqui Adora.
Saturday, December 26, 2009
Levi's Mean Machine: 1970 Mercury Cougar
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