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.

Playlist: Open Hack Day Mix
Title	Artist	Time
Nel Cimitero Di Tucson	Gianfranco Reverberi	2:11
English Lesson Remix	DJ Format	4:37
KRS1 – KRS1 Attacks	Krafty Kuts	2:26
The Gloaming (DJ Shadow)	Radiohead	5:37
Four Hours In Washington	M. Ward	3:01
Mount Wroclai (Idle Days)	Beirut	3:15
What Comes at the End	Cloud Cult	3:57
Intro	Cut Chemist	0:37
Ooh La La	Goldfrapp	3:24
Too Young	Phoenix	3:19
The Comeback	Shout Out Louds	2:48
No Key, No Plan	Okkervil River	3:00
Sex Machine	James Brown	5:18
Funkastic	Rip Slyme	4:42
Ganges A Go-Go	DJ Shadow & Dan The Automator	1:59
The Power Is On	The Go! Team	3:14
Get Myself Into It	The Rapture	4:42
Sunday Bloody Sunday	RX	3:09
Intro	Basement Jaxx	0:37
A Fifth Of Beethoven	Walter Murphy	3:03
Robot Rock (Soulwax remix)	Daft Punk	6:32
Lights	I Love You But I’ve Chosen Dar	4:08
Desperate Guys	The Faint	3:06
Mr. November	The National	4:00
Hey You	Basement Jaxx	4:54
I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor	Arctic Monkeys	2:53
China Girl (Diplo Mix)	Diplo & M.I.A.	2:08
Vats of Urine	Danger Doom	1:48
Ping Island/Lightning Strike R	Mark Mothersbaugh	4:15
Oh Mandy	The Spinto Band	3:35

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…

I’ve still been digesting a lot of the stuff that came out from last year, but hopefully, if one good thing comes out of my iPod dying, it’s that I’ll finally have space/opportunity to load new music more regularly. In between that, a couple of tracks worth mentioning:

• Skalpel – 1958 (Quantic Remix) (bio) – Polish Ninja Tune producers working exclusively with Polish Jazz samples. The Quantic Remix gives it all a Soul Orchestra flavor.
• Hotei vs Rip Slyme – Battle Funkastic (buy) – I came across this pretty randomly. Apparently, Rip Slyme are pretty popular hip-hop artists, in Japan at least. I’m totally in love with their old-school funk asthetics.
• Swearing at Motorists – Waterloo Crescent (site) – a two-piece singing about the life of the brow-beaten, a lot of these songs are surprisingly catchy

It’s been a while since I’ve posted any music, mostly due to insane busy-ness. Before I left I caught Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and the National at the Troubador. CYHSY wasn’t bad, but The National blew me away. Audree has pics. I also caught The Go! Team @ the El Rey last night, who were great fun (site).

I’ve been completely too busy to hunt, but luckily 75 Minutes does an awesome job of highlighting a huge diversity of great new music. The most recent show features a song from Think Differently Music Presents: Wu-Tang Meets The Indie Culture, a new collaboration featuring not only Wu-Tang members, but others like MF Doom, Aesop Rock, Del tFH, etc. Sound hot? It is.

• Casual, Rock Marciano, Vordual Mega & Tragdey Khadafi – Think Differently [5.3MiB MP3]

Jason linked to the video for Sia’s Breathe Me, which is quite nicely done. I still have to say though, that Four Tet’s remix makes a night and day difference.