This song is Calvin Harris up the wazoo. Because he partially produced it. I’ve never really been into Kylie Minogue, but that might change with her latest album.
It took me a while to get into Lykke Li, who I will put into the “Swedish pop” category even though that’s kind of vague. And that’s why I give you mp3s. It’s like giving out samples of food instead of having to come up with any kind of well though-out description of what I want you to ingest. Wooo. So yes, this remix is what got me interested, a dancier version of the original. [via The Lemur Blog]
I didn’t like this upon my first listen, and then quickly became mildly obsessed with it. And I don’t know why. Ocelot transformed the original song into something full of awesome and unicorns and Jolly Ranchers. [via discodust]
Admitting this will probably make me look bad, but this is the first time I’ve really listened to Neutral Milk Hotel. The whole 10-year-anniversary thing piqued my interest. I’m sure I tried listening to them before; they must not have meshed with my 12-year-old brainwaves a decade years ago. Now they mesh. I am happy.
I keep thinking that I can’t keep this blog going, or I can’t seem to update it more than once a month. But there’s no point in killing a site that I’m already paying for (I run all my sites under the same account.) And if anyone happens to stumble upon my monthly (or sometimes bi-weekly) brainfart, then…okay.
I’ve actually been listening to a lot of music lately, something that takes a bit of time away from writing about it. Not that I really “write” as much as “brainfart.” You might be better off going to these other blogs that share some very good qualities: 1) They update multiple times a month/week, 2) They post a lot of mp3s, and 3) I like them:
I spent the last month of last year getting into “stuff you can dance to,” which is a big change from my previous preference of “stuff you can sleep to.” I still listen to the sleepy stuff; I just even it out with the non-sleepy stuff. Only problem is that there’s a thin line between “dance music I like” and “dance music that makes me want to gouge my eyes out, which doesn’t make sense because you don’t listen to music with your eyes, but the pain of stabbing my eyes would detract from the pain of listening to something semi-unbearable,” which is why I sift through blog after blog, listening to god knows how many songs, and find a few gems from a bucketload of digital goo, which somehow makes it worth staying up until 2AM every day wasting my time on the Internet. (I think that was a run-on. Forgive me.)
Copy - Actual
(Copy is the only artist here that I’ve listened to a lot. A lot-lot. I have yet to find anyone else who listens to him with the same frequency. If you want to change that, you should get his albums. Weeee.)
I didn’t have any holiday-appropriate imagery on hand, so here’s something my friend made in response to his plane being delayed. Freakin’ sweet!
So as you may have noticed, I don’t really update this blog anymore, but it’s not dead either. Or else I wouldn’t be updating it. I’ve been annoyed with Wordpress lately because it’s fuxoring my HTML and makes me want to crawl back into a warm blanket of Movable Type, which also drives me insane but maybe less so than Wordpress at the moment. Anyhoo, if you don’t deal with different blogging tools then you have no idea what I’m talking about. Blah blah blah hi.
I never listened to Drukqs much when it first came out, but lately this track has become one of my favorite songs. It sounds like. Calculated craziness. Or something. Whatever Aphex Twin tends to sound like. “Insanity.” This makes me wanna run around and smash things. Not really.
I don’t know why I like this song by Metronomy so much. But I keep listening to it. So I guess the brain wants more. I think I ganked this from BiBaBiDi (one of my favorite blogs). Also comes with a weird video:
This song by Aarktica (a band that I admittedly haven’t really listened to aside from this song) gives me the impression of…a turning point in an ’80s teenage movie, where everything starts going slow and fuzzy. Worst description ever. Yet that’s all I imagine. Like time has stopped. And things are warm and fuzzy. Or something. Whatever it does to my brain, it’s caused me to listen to it upwards of 25 times in the past few days, so…yeah.
I ran across Shinichi Osawa quite randomly while…randomly searching for Chemical Brothers mp3s on The Hype Machine. If the song didn’t say “Featuring Au Revoir Simone” I probably wouldn’t have thought to listen to it. Which would’ve sucked, since this has been my “WUUUHAAHAH HAPPY?!” song for the week. Like “run around the room crazy happy” kind of happy. And isn’t that what we all want? To run around our rooms with flailing happy arms? …No?The original song is great too (awesome video and all), but Shinichi’s version is a tad faster and benefits from the vocals of Au Revoir Simone. IT IS FULL OF WIN.
Listening to live Daft Punk songs through your headphones is probably 50000 times less exciting than hearing them live in concert, but it’s still shizzloads more exciting than listening to…a lot of other stuff. This was my main “WUUUHAAHAH HAPPY?!” song before Shinichi’s came along. Of course, it still fills me with happies and triggers arm flailings. Flailings!
A large reason that I like Yelle probably has to do with not understanding what the hell she’s saying. And that the whole mishmash of stuff I don’t understand sounds French, which is nice. She could be talking about killing baby dolphins for sport or something equally repulsive and I’d still like her because I DUNNO WHAT THE HELL SHE’S SAYING, FALALA. (That also has a lot to do with why I bow at the altar of Hakan Hellstrom, switching French for Swedish.)
Seriously though. Um. Catchy. Oh, and i know I can stick her lyrics in a translator, but that would ruin some of the fun. I know some French and can identify things every now and then, but not to the point where I can understand a significant part of a song, which is fine with me.
Victoria Bergsman’s solo material under the name Taken By Trees appeals to the sleepy head-lolling part of me. Which is pretty much when I’m on the train on the way to work and on the way back home. Amazingly, I’ve never missed my stop.So, this song is lovely. Lilt-y. Soft and sweet. Like cotton candy. Mm, candy.
This song by The Future of the Ghost appeals to the part of my brain that would dance if it knew how to. Instead, I just bop my head around. In private. [bop bop]
This song by French duo Delete sounds really crunchy. Like, “Ah, that’s what it sounds like to eat your own teeth,” crunchy. Why that appeals to me, I have no idea.
I’ve listened to Caribou/Manitoba before, but for some reason Andorra is his first album that I felt compelled to listen to over and over again and maybe swaddle my head in if it were a pillow. It’s comforting with little happy bits in it. Like a brownie with nuts. Unless you don’t like nuts in your brownie. You can come up with your own analogy.
I only just started listening to Girl Talk a few weeks ago. Yes, my timing is a bit off. Anyhoo. His 500-songs-smashed-into-one method immediately appealed to me. Somehow he takes a bunch of songs I probably wouldn’t like on their own and turns them into something awesome. Like combining flour, eggs, butter and sugar to make a delicious cake. I wouldn’t want to just eat plain flour, you know?
So basically, Girl Talk is baking delicious cakes.
One of my friends gave me this song by Joe Dassin but I didn’t listen to it much until after I saw The Darjeeling Limited (which I enjoyed aside from the wave of motion-induced nausea that set in about 2/3rds through the movie). It’s in French. It’s kind of happy.
“Il y a tout ce que vous voulez aux Champs-Elysées / There is everything you want on the Champs-Elysées”
I don’t really agree with that (what if I want a…a PONY?), but it fits the bill as “a very nice street to walk down.”…On second though, maybe it does have everything.
I’m quite surprised I like the above album. It’s…dancey. And I recently had a conversation with friends about my undance-itude. There is visual evidence of me dancing, but it’s more like me being dragged around by other people in a dance-like fashion.
I actually have that Phonem album…on vinyl. Which is completely pointless when you don’t have a good record player. Which I don’t.
I should’ve gotten Feist’s “The Reminder” earlier. Like when it first came out in May.
But I’m slow. So I have it now. And I really like it. I listened to it while passing through the swampy marshy crap in the Meadowlands under a murky sky that looked as though it were about to barf rain, yet it all looked pretty while listening to Feist. SHE IS DRUGGING ME, THAT’S WHAT, OMG.
Nah, not drugs. Just prettiness. Here are two examples of the prettiness:
I suppose I could post some lyrics that I really like, but …lyrics don’t usually mean a great deal to me unless I can relate to them. And I suppose they wouldn’t mean a great deal to you either unless you had some connection to them. And these lyrics are kind of depressing, so nevermind.
Actually, I like this bit from “So Sorry”:
We’re so helpless
We’re slaves to our impulses
We’re afraid of our emotions
And no one knows where the shore is
We’re divided by the ocean
And the only thing I know is
That the answer isn’t for us
No the answer isn’t for us
Mild depression may be abated by watching Charlie the Unicorn. Enjoy:
If you didn’t watch it in its entirety (and you know who you are, NO HIDING)…you should. There’s a really catchy song at around the 2:30 mark. Why deny yourself of such joy? Whyyy?
Thanks to my awesome friend Janet, on Friday night I saw Becky Stark of Lavender Diamond perform a few songs at the NYPL as part of a Miranda July fun fest. The night ended with David Byrne (who interviewed Miranda during the second half of the night) playing guitar with Becky during the song, “Garden Rose” from the latest Lavender Diamond album, Imagine Our Love. It’s perty.
Although I knew that I already liked Lavender Diamond, I wasn’t set on seeing them in concert at Maxwell’s this Saturday until seeing Becky perform solo. She is…she is…quite unique. In an awkward way. To the point that I couldn’t tell whether she was really that awkward or if she was being funny for the audience. But does it matter either way? Not really. Because she sings like an angel stuffed with the love of 10000 teddy bears. She spoke softly and lightly with a wide grin on her face most of the time, every so often breaking into a strained giggle, besides the one time she cursed herself for repeating something she had just said. I really wonder what’s going on in her head. Is it just filled with looove and joooy?
“She’s goofy!” remarked a woman sitting behind me. That wasn’t the first adjective to pop into my head—awkwardly hilarious was more like it—but I guess she fits under the category of “goofy”. You forget it all when she starts singing. Her voice rings so clear. Not mature, not immature. Just…I dunno. It’s nice. You know when you have a stuffy nose and it suddenly clears up? Like the mucus has all been whisked away by a magic nose…angel? That moment of clarity is like Becky’s voice. Kinda. I think the audience was hesitant at first, possibly wondering, “What in the…” when she started playing, but I think a little more love was spread after getting us to participate in a sing-a-long (well, I stayed silent for the benefit of everyone’s ears around me).
I think Even could sing a cat food jingle and I’d probably love it.
[scratches head]
Whether that’s good or bad, I’m not sure. He has three new tracks from his upcoming album, The Simple Life, up at his myspace page. At first listen I thought, “Mm…okay,” nothing relevatory, but since then I’ve listened to each song a gajillion times, roughly. AHHHHH, WHYYYY OH WHYYY…(um, because I like them)…
I’ll admit I’m pretty tired of his lyrics. I dunno, write a song about waffles, dammit! Okay, waffles don’t sell records, nor are they the most inspiring subject to write a song about.
But even if there are no waffles, I’ll keep listening. I’ve been listening relatively non-stop for 5 or 6 years. That’s a quarter of my life! That’s a…lot.
I keep getting emails from record labels and whatnot and I don’t know why. Do you people even read this site? If you did you’d notice I barely update, that I probably won’t write about what you want me to write about and I DON’T CARE ABOUT SXSW OH JESUS.
Alright, I know you’re just doing your job. Hm. Well, while you’re in Texas, I’ll be in Paris. Not watching any live music, but sidestepping around doggie poo in the streets and gorging on pastries. I WIN, OH YEEAAH!
Actually, I’m lying; he was my latest obsession more than a week ago. I don’t know why I can’t blog as much as I used to. (Watching a gazillion episodes of Nip/Tuck doesn’t help. Kidz, don’t get addicted to fucked up TV shows. NOT COOL I caught up on three seasons in just a few weeks.)
You can find lots of new Panda Bear tracks online from his upcoming album Person Pitch, so I don’t see the point of uploading any for you. At the very least, listen to “Bros”. And “Comfy in Nautica”. And every song you can find. I could probably download the whole album now, but I’ve found that downloading entire albums before they come out destroys the satisfying effect of buying a shiny flat plastic disc that I will ultimately rip MP3s from anyway. I still like my plastic discs.
So what’s up with this music that makes me love it so much? If I had any idea what taking valium felt like, I imagine it would be something like Panda Bear’s music. …But I’m just guessing. There’s something oddly soothing about his music. Like wrapping my head in a warm towel. Or wrapping my brain in a warm towel, if I didn’t think the invasive surgery would hurt or possibly leave me braindead. Even though I don’t really know what the hell Panda Bear is singing half the time, it still puts a smile in my face. Not literally, but somewhere inside I feel it. Even though the weather has been so cold lately that I feel like the wind is ripping off my face, this music gives me the sense that there’s warmth somewhere, temperature-wise and in an emotional sense.
Posting about a concert a week after I’ve gone to it is somewhat pointless. But I’m really lazy. So lazy that I sat in the balcony at the Peter Bjorn and John concert last Tuesday at Bowery Ballroom. I only sit in the balcony at the insistence of friends, but I was thankful that night to plop my bum down for a few hours and not have my nose squished against the back of an obscenely tall guy (because I almost always end up behind an obscenely tall guy) or suffer from “the nerve endings in my feet have died” syndrome.
crowd
I would have never known the show/crowd was so “bad” if I hadn’t read Brooklyn Vegan’s immediate response to the show. Hmmm. Um. Well, I didn’t go to the first two shows. I’d say that the Bowery show was a lot like the first time I saw them, except I was looking at the band from a different angle. I must be one of those people most other people hate—the kind that doesn’t dance (a rock could dance better than me) or seemingly move to any kind of beat. I sat quietly and still the entire time while staring at the band. That’s how I soak it in. Don’t like it? Eh.
You can download live mp3s from ryspace (plus a few more). I wasn’t annoyed at all by Bjorn’s memory lapse during Amsterdam. It may have bothered me if another artist did it, but Bjorn…nah. They played my favorite songs (The Chills, Up Against the Wall…oh, and that really popular single I overheard someone whistle the other day. Over and over again and over again. DO NOT WHISTLE THE SONG, YOU WILL ONLY KILL IT) and they looked happy while doing it. More people were talking during the show than I would’ve liked, but you can’t do much about that. The show was enjoyable and I left feeling tired and satisfied.
snow?
…And cold. It’s snowing? W-T-F? Ah well, it made the otherwise gloomy Bowery look a bit prettier.
MAGNET. The artist that I love dearly, that few other people care about…(okay, that’s not true, but his fans aren’t concentrated in the US so being a Magnet fanatic can feel lonely).
I’m not a horrible webmaster; I just don’t get much info. So while randomly looking at website stats, I found some news about his upcoming album. It’s coming out on March 26th (in Norway, at least) and will be called “The Simple Life”…which I don’t know if I can get used to since it just reminds me of the reality TV show. But. Well. [shrugs]
You can listen to one of his new songs, “Lonely No More”, at sonybmg.no. The song is rather upbeat and happy feeling, which is good…right? Even if I absolutely love his depressing stuff? I WANT DEPRESSION! Give to me.
I mean…this is lovely. I’m not used to it yet, but I suppose I will be after I play it a gazillion times. Wee!
Oh, on second thought this song actually is depressing because it reminds me of my loneliness. Sweet! I feel better now.
I don’t update this thing much anymore, as you may or may not have noticed. If I’m making monthly posts, my heart probably isn’t into it. I think a whole semester of decrease music listening took its toll on me.
So, what’s the point of this message? Er…just to say that I’m not dead, but I’m not going to update this blog very often either. Meaning that if you are a involved in music PR/marketing whatnot, you shouldn’t bother emailing me or sending me CDs or anything of that sort because I’ve gotten to the point where I just delete emails and stare at a pile of unlistened CDs. Sorry. :[
I’m supposed to be studying for my computer programming final that will kick my butt in less than 12 hours, but…
[beep boop] BEGIN PROCRASTINATION TIME [beep boop]
Loney, Dear
I don’t remember whether I talked about Loney, Dear before, but judging from the infrequency of my posts, I’m going to assume, “not so much.” Here is a song that I quite like from Solonge:
Oh, am I supposed to convince you to download this song? Besides, “Because I like it”? Well…
bun bun
BECAUSE BUNNY SAYS SO. You can’t resist the bunny. Do as bunny says. Bun bun bun.
(Where did bunny come from? My housemate got her as a gift for our homestay family. I told her it wasn’t a good idea, but my god, this bunny melts our icy cold hearts with fluffy fluffness goo. It’s sick.)
Inspired by guitar pop from the 80’s and indie bands from the 90’s they sound like a Swedish relative to Echo & The Bunnymen, New Order och The Jesus and Mary Chain from the future.
I first listened to Bichi by randomly looking through Hobby Industries’ website. Yeah, it’s a common pastime; I am weird. Bichi makes the kind of fluttery glitchy plinky electronic repetitive music that I enjoy for some reason that I don’t know. Maybe my brainwaves are messed up (okay, not maybe so much as “yes, definitely”) and the pinks and pops line up with them. [shrugs]
I also like Melodium (myspace), whose latest album is out on audio dregs, a label that is notable for providing me with happy music for the past four years. Melodium sounds quite happy to me. At least, I hear xylophones, and those things make me happy. And acoustic guitars. And pianos. And pings. And tinkles.
…I’m easily soothed. Especially when I don’t have to pay attention to lyrics. I’m too lazy for that stuff. Like right now. Can you tell. From my disjointed sentences. And lack of question marks. Okay.
I was planning to see Grizzly Bear at the Cartier Foundation, but I just found out it sold out. Because…it’s tomorrow. Not much of a surprise. But I couldn’t buy tickets online and I didn’t know I had to call to get them (found that out from a French friend). So! Thus continues the live music-less existence. [bashes self in head]
It’s…sad. It’s not quite as life-threatening as having a food-less existence (a situation that probably leads to death), but you don’t realize how much you miss something until you don’t have it anymore. I only went to concerts sparingly this past year, but I always enjoyed the experience. I seriously need more calorie-free satisfaction in my life. While I don’t sorely miss the CMJ marathon in NYC, I’m pretty sure I would’ve gone to a few shows this year (as opposed to last year where I huddled in my room, alooone, wallowing in…loneliness). OH WELL!
Here’s the only Grizzly Bear song that I have [thanks John!]:
You can listen to more on their website. Their music can be quite soothing. Like valium. If that’s your thing. (SURE IS!) Or it can be fun, a capella style:
I have no idea why, but I’m semi addicted to this song by The Shins:
The Shins - Sleeping Lessons [removed]
…Which means I may get sick of it soon. Hm. I hope not. Their upcoming album, “Wincing the Night Away”, doesn’t come out for another three months, which I didn’t know when I came across it. [cough] It’s the first album by them that I’ve really liked; maybe I should listen to the older ones again.
Marie Antoinette (Aphex Twin and Dustin O’Halloran)
I saw Marie Antoinette this weekend not so much for the story (which is like 75% of the wikipedia entry) but to see the costumes and Versailles (heartstoppingly beautiful) and to hear how modern music would fit into a movie set in 18th century France.
I didn’t really know what music was on the soundtrack, so I was surprised when song’s from Aphex Twin’s Drukqs came up. The first time I heard that album I mainly though, “WTF.” It was like the auditory equivalent of a modern art installation involving random shit on the floor, ripped up fabric, broken glass, blah blah blah. I don’t mean that in a bad way; it just wasn’t something I could digest aside from a few songs, including the ones that happen to appear on the MA soundtrack. What’s different about these songs? WIKI KNOWS ALL:
At least 13 of the 30 tracks are piano compositions, both prepared piano (a style pioneered by John Cage), and normal piano. These tracks have an acoustic beauty not commonly associated with an electronic music artist such as James. The instrument used was a MIDI-controlled Yamaha Disklavier, which James programmed to play via sequencers, rather than from the piano’s keyboard. The Disklavier is a modern descendent of the player pianos of the late 19th and early 20th century, which were controlled by rolls of punched paper tape.
Uh huh. [nods] Avril 14th is one of my favorite tracks and sounds least like the rest of the album.
I don’t know what I like so much about it, but it’s just…nice. It’s nice. Yes. That’s it. It makes me feel calm, not happy or sad. Just. Content. Until the next track on the album comes on and my head is shredded by random chopped up beats going at 100000 bpm.
In October 2006, Entertainment Weekly’s website ew.com reported of Kirsten Dunst; “Before a lot of scenes, she’d play Aphex Twin’s wistful solo-piano ditty Avril 14th to put herself in the right reflective mood: That was my sad little lonely song that I’d listen to a lot.”
One of my other favorite songs from the movie was also a piano solo by Dusin O’Halloran [myspace] (1/2 of Devics, who put out one of my favorite albums of the year) . When I heard it in the movie, I immediately went into quiet panic mode: “I KNOW THAT SONG WHY DO I KNOW THAT SONG WHERE IS IT FROM?!?!?!” After sifting through my iTunes I realized I had recently downloaded it without knowing who the song was by. Take a listen:
The song is off Dustin’s latest album, Piano Solos, Vol. 2. Of course, you can also find it on the Marie Antoinette soundtrack. This is another one of those “Mm, I feel content” songs. Not especially happy or sad. Lullabye-ish.
..Which reminds me, I’m really tired.
about
Welcome to “the oh so quiet show”, yet another blog for me to lash my ego upon the world wide web and litter it with useless information. I rarely update this blog; it means nothing. Visit diskobox.net to view my other sites.
. It’s perty.
