Koop - I See a different you

I've been a bit unprolific--my power cord died, and I can't use my laptop at work anymore :(

But this is cheery. I totally get you, dude.

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Better late than never

The playlist for this week is two days late, I know, I think Mondays may work better for me actually. But this one seems to match up with my last week experience nicely. There were some emotional ups and downs, restless energy I wanted to express, but by the end it sort of settles down into my previous contented happy summer state. Hope you like it. I made some more notes on individual songs for anyone interested.

I know the widgity thing is a bit squished but you can expand it or go to the imeem page if you want to see album info, etc. Old playlists will still be available on my imeem profile. Imeem is pretty cool unless it does things like shorten songs, like it did last week's final song, as well as this week's Bn Loco song which I actually bought in order to put it on a playlist. LAME. Like I say in the extended post, you should check out the full version if it's not working, on the player here.


Some notes on this week's playlist

1. Air- Another gorgeous Air song. I'm a recent intense Air fan, this album has been in rotation a lot lately.

2. Heartsrevolution- I've gotten this song into my head, makes me want to jump up and down and dance. I like the grunginess too, makes me think of the creak of leather couches or rubber.

3. Vitalic- Italo-discoy, I love the melodies and the heartbeat, it makes me think of flying

4. Blonde Redhead-- I love love love this song lately. I've been listening to 23 on repeat at work when no one is around, I definitely didn't appreciate the album when it came out last year, but now it calls to mind the live performance of theirs I saw for my 20th birthday. They're amazing, the songs amazing.

5. Bn Loco-- Last week I was checking out the artists at Modus Vivendi Music, and I just had to have this song once I heard it, so I bought it off iTunes as well as his album. If it's not playing the full version (it's around 5 minutes not 1.5 minutes), then you should go to the label site and listen to it on their player. There's a bunch of other good stuff there as well. Thanks to discodust for getting me to go over there to check out the new Sam Sparrow remix, which it turns out I wasn't that impressed by.

6. Burning Spear- Hard to fit this song in, but I really dig it. I love all the keyboard effects and the horns, great song. I fell asleep to it the other day on my couch under the fan with the sunshine filtering into the room. So peaceful and happy, so summer.

7. Atmosphere- A little hiphop to mix it up. The back melody sounds like oldschool videogame music to me, like the music played during pause, when you're stuck in a long conversation with someone or in a shop. Fellow dorks know what I'm talking about it.

8. Glass Candy-- AWESOME Glass Candy song that doesn't sound like any of their other stuff (well they've used those same lyrics a ton), but I've heard that the next stuff they are brewing has this more funky sound. And it fades out nicely...

Also thanks to Hackosphere for the instructions and code to make Selective Expandable Posts
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I hope you can read French

Luckily for me, I can a lot better than I thought I could considering I only took a few years in high school (I took pretty much all the languages offered at some point. Doesn't mean I know any of them.), so I could enjoy this article comparing the wonderful Ellen Allien (see the first track of Playlist 1) to fellow Berlinette electronic music badass Anja Schneider. 

The lesson is all romance languages are the same. And also Boing Poum Tchak is a pretty cool online magazine--don't worry it has English articles, too, including this interview with Swedish artist Andars Ilar. Here's a taste:

Do you think your music is sometimes too complex / experimental according to the listeners ? And why there are so many elements inside your music ? Are you afraid of the silence ? (silence = death ?)

I await death with curiosity, but life is so overwhelmingly full of sounds, and I see music in almost everything around me. In nature, in architecture and infrastructure, it’s really everywhere. I like to listen to a good track over and over again, and be swept away every time. It may be intense and chaotic the first listenings. But then you start to hear new sounds that appear by coincidence, and other sounds dissapear. In life there is always more input than the brain can handle, and you automaticly sort thru this and focus on what’s important. But I don’t think my music is really that complex. To me it seems more like it’s people that’s afraid of noise.

(thanks mnml)

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Oh wait yeah

I mentioned I was listening to the mixtape put out by The Hood Internet of mixes they did of stuff of the new album by Lykke Li. It's actually free on their website! Yay! All can enjoy!

Free stuff is one of my favorite things about electronic music. Read More......

Thoughts

So far this is a very excellent project. I'm really glad I'm doing this.

I'm rediscovering html. Learning stuff trying to figure things like sound embedding. I love the internet, if I want to learn to do something, I can just google it and read enough instructions until I get it. And it's all sort of building on each other.

I'm realizing I am in a love affair with media.

Listening to NPR now. I realize what I love about it: I love its ability to connect so many disparate points of our lives and those of others, of our society. And it does so with such a voice. Listening to it alone, and letting the thoughts run over your mind, it's like briefly letting someone else take over, thinking with someone else's stream of consciousness. It's very intimate, and it's the kind of feeling we don't have day to day in our lives, interacting with people.

I think that's sad. I wish life was such that we could walk in and out of each other's minds without fear. But there are so many things that help to keep our truest selves tucked away.

But that's why I love media. Especially the kind of media like NPR that has this kind of voice. When I was working in the library at school I picked up The Dream of a Common Language, and I immediately fell hard in love with the poem of that name. Excerpt:

It’s simple to wake from sleep with a stranger,
dress, go out, drink coffee,
enter a life again. It isn’t simple
to wake from sleep into the neighborhood
of one neither strange nor familiar
whom we have chosen to trust. Trusting, untrusting,
we lowered ourselves into this, let ourselves
downward hand over hand as on a rope that quivered
over the unsearched…. We did this. Conceived
of each other, conceived each other in a darkness
which I remember as drenched in light.
I want to call this, life.

But I can’t call it life until we start to move
beyond this secret circle of fire
where our bodies are giant shadows flung on a wall
where the night becomes our inner darkness, and sleeps
like a dumb beast, head on her paws, in the corner.

But it doesn't have to be academic, I mean that's part of what makes me (and everyone?) fall in love with bands, movies, books, photos, art...Jon Stewart, Colbert, David Sedaris, that's what makes me love their comedy--I guess for me the division between comedy, art, literature, music all seem irrelevant. Yes, this is technically a music blog. But life is musical so is music then lifelike? life-ical? Oh words.

Anyway, I guess if I could do anything, I'd want someone someday to read my book (or blog?), or hear my song (or playlist?), or listen to (or read?) me musing in such a way that it struck them in the same way so many things have struck me.

I want to develop my voice, and for that reason I'm glad I'm doing this.



P.S. Case in point about Adrienne Rich, reading Fox. It's not technically music but it's close. Read More......

Venetian Snares

Found this today, it's some Crazy stuff

Live Venetian Snares featuring Jo Apps--Dance Like You're Selling Nails



Commenting on youtube, japps:

yeah, it was only a bit of fun really, a silly throw away joke.. I'd sung "dance like you're selling nails" a couple of years before for Aaron, and never met him - it was all done over the internet, so he asked me to do some jokey mcing on stage as a one off. Someone threw their bra at me on stage, and afterwards aphex twin came up to me and said it was the best thing he'd ever seen. I was about 18 years old, wasn't on any drugs, and was just having a bit of an extended in joke laugh on stage.

I didn't realize she was Patrick Wolf's sister. Cool family. Read More......

Playlist

Just added a little Widget/thing-a-ma-jigger to the side of the page, and threw together a playlist. I'm still fiddling with it a little. There's some good stuff in there, I intended for it to be of the more relaxed variety. Next week's will be more polished. I intend to put up a new playlist Saturday nightish every week so look out for that!

Love, me Read More......

Tiësto - The Making Of In Search of Sunrise 7 Asia

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Currently Listening to

I'm listening to a bunch of things that I'm excited to spend more time going over. I may or may not write a review/something about the ones that are truly fantastic, but it'll clear my head a little to get it out.

I should give a warning: Last semester several things combined to hurl me into a whirlwind love affair with all things electronic, which previously I haven't spent much time listening to. Those were related to events from the previous fall in Scotland as well as my summer at home: in Scotland I was listening alot to the three disc compilation of Disco I got in the summer (I was going to have a disco dance party, maybe a little Saturday Night Fever inspired. It didn't happen) which as it turns out is the perfect music to listen to on a twenty minute walk into town before an exciting night at the pub; an increasing interest in dance music stemming from the summer in which I got into M.I.A, and, more saliently, Chromeo and Justice; and finally a lot of this crystallized for me when I went to a Death Disco party at The Arches in Glasgow---an amazing venue for an amazing monthly event which basically blew my mind.

And second warning: Coming home I seem to be so happy for some reason, it's like I've achieved self actualization. I don't think I really have, maybe like Self Actualization 101. But anyway, I seem to be appreciating a newfound love for trance. For some reason I don't fell any other explanation is needed; makes sense to me, anyway.


Point demonstrated: Tiesto has a video introducing the album In Search of Sunrise 7: Asia, and I got more excited about listening to it then I have anything else I've gotten my hands on in the past couple of months. I don't even like compilations. I've only listened to one of the discs, but think I'll have a lot to say about it soon as I'm planning on buying it when it is released in a few days. Here's the video (below), which I saw on an awesome electro blog Platen&Schijven.

Paavoharju --Laulu Laakson Kukista. Can't remember where exactly I got this, but it should be interesting.

I can't remember where I got this mixtape of Lykke Li of The Hood Internet either (see I need a reason to keep better track of these things), but I can find it, may just have been off their website. I have been listening to this and it is a pretty great minimix tape. Only wish it were longer.

Gossip--Rework It. Listened to this a little, I like it because these songs unmixed run long and are kinda repetitive to the point of being boring, which is sad because they are great songs, the Gossip is awesome, and Beth Ditto has an amazing voice. So this version is more badass, although listening to it straight through makes them sound boring in the same way, because the same elements seem to just be shuffled around in the different mixes (there are only mixes of, I think, three songs on there). But I'll keep listening.

And others, mostly singles I download from places like DISCODUST, and some CDs which I've already deleted. They will remain nameless. Read More......

Beginnings

In the summer I have a lot of time to think, or at least, I have a lot of time in which I don't feel bad about thinking. Maybe I actually think more when I don't feel like I have the luxury, when instead of steadily tunneling my way through the neverending pile of work standing in the way of graduation, I lay on my bed, turn on the music, and stare at the first letter of the page. But I'm supposed to shake those thoughts out of my head and work on the second letter.

I also have a lot of time in which I listen to music. But I don't have an outlet for it as I do in the school year, when the good songs are filed onto my next radio playlist or the artist is written about in my next column. I don't have an excuse to share the music I really like with the people I really like. And, not that I need one when I have nothing better to do, but, I like having a reason to look up old interviews with musicians, and memorize details from their website and wiki entries, and look up their back-catalog. And I also like having a reason to think about my musical responses, what they says about the music, and maybe on a deeper level, what they say about me.


I've tinkered with the idea of starting a music blog for some time now. Sooo..I'll see how it goes. Read More......