Some tracks that have caught my ear recently. The XX album in particular has been on heavy rotation lately.
Category: Music
June 2009 Tracks
It’s sort of hard to believe how fast the months have flown by.
I have to admit that I haven’t quite been keeping up with the latest and greatest albums, although Aurgasm has been providing a nice stream of discoveries, and I’ve been a fair amount of random digging. I’ve also been completely addicted to the new Phoenix album for the past few months.
Ahh, Nostalgia…
I was clearing out some old files from my server and came across a bunch of old Prodigy videos (VOB no less!). Before “Big Beat” they were straight up rave. Pretty fun stuff.
Of course these are on YouTube, so thought I’d share.
(Everybody in the Place, Out of Space, and Wind It Up are from Experience (1992) and No Good is from Jilted (1994)).
Neither here nor there, but back somewhere between 94-96, Prodigy’s “Jericho” and “Fire” were some of my first MP3 tracks. I believe it took most of my of my computer’s CPU to play (I think it was a 386SX that had a Cyrix 486 upgrade by then?) to decode with Winplay (there was a DOS based player before Winplay, right? Or maybe I’m confusing some tracker players with that…). One of these days I’ll have to try to dig that old stuff out, since the dates are all a bit fuzzy.
Trent Reznor Interview
If you missed/passed on this the first time around like I did, check it out if you want to hear some thoughtful talk on the music industry, etc.
UPDATE: err, for whatever reason, this embed makes my browser run like crap, so here’s a link to the interview instead.
SXSW Music 2009 Wrapup
Like last year, I tried to shoot some video of the sets I went to for SXSW Music. This time, I tried to get more substantive clips. I also upgraded from a Leica D-Lux 3, which had OK video quality but very poor sound quality to a Samsung NV24HD, which shot 720p H.264 video and higher bitrate audio. The sound (mics) still leave a bit to be desired, but overall I was pretty happy with the results, especially since the camera is very pocketable (camera battery life was my main bane).
I’ve finished posting most of my videos on Vimeo. Here are some of my favs:
I wanted to catch them after hearing them on the SXSW torrent and saw they were only playing once. They got started a bit late (good for me, since I first hit the British Embassy), and didn’t disappoint.
I tried to catch Yppah last year after discovering him on a Ninja Tune compilation, but it was just a DJ set. This year, he was w/ a live band which was more along the lines of what I was expecting.
Just a tiny clip of Amanda Palmer in church. The funny story behind this is that there are two church venues right next to each other and I was totally confused on why the schedule was all off…
Unfortunatley, by the time I got a better view, my battery had given up the ghost. He played a song at the end of Quincy Jones’ keynote, so I knew I had to see him play at the Elephant Room that night…
For whatever reason I never gave them a good listen, which thankfully is rectified because their set was great.
The only artist I saw twice this SXSW because I lurve Alcatraz Kid (his first album) so much. The venue was a bit out of the way, but I also had flan while I was out there, so that worked out.
Tell me when P.O.S. will be in town and I will be there.
The best set I saw this year. Great songs, amazing performance, front row. Damn skippy.
One of my few “I wanna catch that” artists, I missed him in the previous days, and with the venue opening super late, I was fearing the worst, but I got to see a great, if short set, so that worked out.
I had only caught one track from the torrent, but got it in my mind to check her out and was pretty pleasantly surprised.
This isn’t the greatest clip, but Nosaj Thing’s set roxored. Will definitely need to catch him next time he’s rocking a party in SF or LA.
I didn’t catch as many day shows as I had some work to do, but overall, I was again very happy w/ my SXSW Music experience.
This was also my 10th SXSW Interactive – which flew by way too quickly (and was surprisingly, even larger than last year). I want to say that maybe next year is a good time to take a break, but I can’t say that I didn’t have a lot of fun catching up with old friends again.
New To Me
Here are a few tracks that are a year or two old that recently caught my ear…
- Kevin Devine – I Could Be With Anyone
- The Real Tuesday Weld – Last Words
- Anchorsong – Set The Bears Free
Anchorsong (it’s better when you realize that it’s sequenced live w/ an MPC and Triton) was from the SXSW torrent – my original goal was to go through the entire torrent, but that may be a bit ambitious (a week and a half left)…
Take Away Shows
Recently I noticed that La Blogotheque now has a Vimeo account. This of course, led to an afternoon catching up on Take Away Shows.
Here are some of my favs on Vimeo:
Amanda Palmer – Amsterdam (A Take Away Show) from La Blogotheque on Vimeo.
Piano Session by Why? & Son Lux @ BBMix – Back on Stages from La Blogotheque on Vimeo.
Margot and the Nuclear So & So’s – As Tall as cliffs – A Take Away Show from La Blogotheque on Vimeo.
Satine “October Dane” – Concert à Emporter from La Blogotheque on Vimeo.
Bloc Party, ‘This Modern Love’ – A Take Away Show from La Blogotheque on Vimeo.
Currently Diggin’
It’s been a while, but while I’ve been busy, I’ve also been enjoying a steady stream of great new (to me) music. Thought I’d share a couple tracks.
- Kris Menace & Spooky – Stereophonic
- Matt and Kim – Daylight
- Circlesquare – Hey You Guys
- P.O.S. – Purexed
- The Gaslight Anthem – Blue Jeans & White T-Shirts
Also, while I haven’t really dug the new album as much, I thought it’d be fitting, to put up a Telefon Tel Aviv track w/ Charles Cooper’s (half of the duo) untimely death. Here’s one of my favorite tracks from their 2004 release, Map of What Is Effortless:
New Music, Catching Up Edition
I’ve had a few weeks to decompress/catch-up on life post-election. One of the things I did involved clearing out my music backlog (almost a thousand albums – completely done until a late-night of sample chasing…). Thought I’d share some of the stuff that has caught my ear so far:
- College – When You Smile
- Cibelle – Green Grass
- Brazilian Girls – St. Petersburg
- Screaming Tea Party – Let’s Do Not Say Another Word
- No Age – Eraser
- These United States – Honor Amongst Thieves
- The Old Believers – There It Is
- Emily Wells – Symphony 4: America’s Mercy War
- Nosaj Thing – DISTRO
- Xploding Plastix – Kissed by a Kisser
May 2008 Mix
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).