Some tracks that have caught my ear recently. The XX album in particular has been on heavy rotation lately.
Tag: mp3
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.
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)…
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:
2008: Looking Back, Looking Ahead
Some years seem to pass by without much to commemorate them. I’d be hard pressed for example to recall anything specific about 2003 (that’s sort of embarrassing actually, but literally true). This year flew by for me, and while it wasn’t filled with any monumental realizations, it was abound with changes and things that happened – I thought I’d make a few notes in case I find myself looking back in 5 years…
Early this year I felt like I closed a chapter, tying up loose ends and wrapping up at Yahoo! and by extension (and with more finality), Upcoming. I left for my 9th SXSW in March a free man – and for the first time with both the inclination and the time to stick around for SXSW Music. I’ve booked my two weeks for next year.
I had a couple months to play (thanks Brady) before getting wrapped up in presidential politics. Enough has been written about how a bunch of geeks helped make a new type of campaign possible. For now I’ll just say that I’m proud (and rather humbled) to have been able to spend a big chunk of 2008 helping to elect a better President. It was worth doing.
There were a lot of things that I didn’t get to this year, and I’ve made a list of the things I want to make an effort to do better for next year, not least of which is emerging from semi-hermitude — at some point over the past couple years, “hanging out” seems to have become a much harder thing to do; not a novel observation I know, but true nonetheless. Still, this year I think was a great boon in terms of tempering, in the best way, both my expectations and ambitions. Rather than being dulled, I feel rather my resolve and focus being made more durable. And while I’m stilling processing it all, I emerge not feeling old, but rather older, and maybe a bit wiser.
I’ve been up for the past 2 days working on a brand new project that I’m incredibly excited about, and I’m thinking that 2009 might see a return to regular blogging – sharing the news lessons I’m learning, and maybe telling some old war stories as well.
Happy New Year everyone.
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).
Feeling Orchestral
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.
Kawesomelator
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’:
New Music: Where does it go?
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…