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It’s been a good couple months for music. Sometimes mixes don’t really have a name or a theme. Here’s some stuff I’ve been digging lately. 43 minutes.

Oh yeah, trying Schiller‘s latest SoundManager 2 release (mostly based off of the inline player) and some custom posting code. (Mixwit doesn’t seem to have an API?)

• 01 – Martina Topley Bird – Phoenix
• 02 – Zeigeist – Bunny
• 03 – Santogold – You’ll Find A Way (Switch & Sinden Remix)
• 04 – Hadouken! – Declaration Of War
• 05 – Styrofoam – A Thousand Words
• 06 – The Notwist – Gloomy Planets
• 07 – The Bird And The Bee – Birthday
• 08 – The Paper Cranes – 100 Years War
• 09 – Wolf Parade – The Grey Estates
• 10 – Murder By Death – A Second Opinion
• 11 – Cloud Cult – Love You All
• 12 – Chris Walla – A Bird Is A Song

Tech note: for those that are looking to use SoundManager, you might want to check out to see if you’re build has the onpause handler. If it doesn’t you can add it to the SM the defaultOptions at the top and then call it in the pause() function around line 727 (just apply the onpause the same way the onstop above it is applied).

Lately, I’ve been digging a lot of more instrumental/orchestral stuff than usual. I’m trying to get back in the swing of posting music regularly, and since I’m going to have some more spare time soon, looking forward to setting up something to make it easier for me to post tracks and playlists.

• 
  Olafur Arnalds – Fok
• 
  J. Ralph – Thrift Shop Warrior
• 
  Final Fantasy – The CN Tower Belongs to the Dead (Live at WMFU)
• 
  Murder By Death – Those Who Left

The Korg Kaosillator I ordered a few months back finally came in last week, and since then, I’ve been having a lot of fun noodling around. It’s incredibly easy both the get started with and making something. It’s almost like a musical sketchpad, although it’s unfortunate it can’t save or export sequences. I guess it’s more like an aural etch-a-sketch than notebook in that respect. Most the gear I got is waiting around for my new Mac Pro to come in, but I’m having a lot of fun with just the standalone Kaossilator (I’ll be hooking it up to my KP3 this week). Who knows, maybe I’ll try making 5 beats a day for 3 summers (you don’t know what harsh is!).

Here’s a loop from this morning, made w/ an assist from Jaime (his first time touching the Kaosillator).

Playing w/ scales and key:

And trying something a bit more mellow:

I’m getting better! (I wonder if I just need a different section on my site for ‘audio noodling’:

Another year coming and going… It seems to have flown right by. While I’m writing as much (maybe more than ever), it goes mostly into the Yahoo aether, never to see the light of day. I can understand now why and how people go silent – there’s an entire pocket universe in there… I’ll be making a conscious effort to change that in 2007, but we’ll see how that works out with the other things going on in my life. In the meantime, enjoy some of these great year-end/next-year tracks…

• The Harlem Shakes – Carpetbaggers
  
• Loney, Dear – Carrying A Stone
  
• The Eames Era – Benjamin
  
• Ivy League – P is for Penelope
  
• The Dead City Presidents – Atlanta
  

I made a mix for Open Hack Day that ended up being completely not needed. But, I’ve been meaning to make a mix for a while and it’s a nice change up since it’s neither my usual new-to-me-this-month or my usual style – it’s built for a crowd, for build-up (post ~1hr it sustains a peak as overflow), and is even more eclectic than usual.

Most of the new music I run into these days is either through random sampling at it or oink, or via 75minutes. My in-car listening has pretty much been exclusively XM radio (until I find my iPod Nano), and every once in a while I’ll discover something new.

Electric President is some good stuff:

• Electric President – Good Morning, Hypocrite
  

Between SD, SF, and Austin, I ended up missing all the dates the Voxtrot were playing, which is a real shame, because their new EP is completely different from their last one with the exception that it also completely kicks ass.

• Voxtrot – Mothers, Sisters, Daughters & Wives
  

I’ve heard of these guys for a while, but didn’t actually hear them until I caught one of their tracks on XMU – that Satellite radio’s been handy since I’ve been iPod-less. I think this was actually originally released back in 2003.

• Shout Out Louds – Please Please Please
  

Trying out the XSPF Web Music Player. You know, this would be pretty easy to hack/combine with the Playlist GM script to play MP3s in your browser…