Glass Animals - "Psylla"

These guys have an Alt-J feel to them. I really dig all their stuff and can't wait until they release their next EP. I had to pick up Leaflings this morning just so I could satiate my auditory craving.

Can't wait to see these guys once I'm in London.

The Pixel Painter - Amazing MS Paint Skills

Hal Lasko (aka Grandpa) used to be a typographer and graphic designer back when everything was done by hand. He also suffers from wet macular degeneration, which causes blindness in the center of his vision. His family gave him a computer about 15 years ago and showed him the MS Paint program. Grandpa has been designing pixelated pieces of art ever since.

Check out this great short documentary and take a peek at his website for a full portfolio.

I wonder how long this one took.

Kanye West vs Tame Impala - "Black Elephant Skinhead"

It's easy to get lost in the mediocre and unnecessary sea of mashups on the internet; however, every now and then you find a pearl that's worth your time.

Normally, my favorite mashups are those that draw together totally incongruous songs, stuff that you never expected to go together. See Girl Talk's incredible blend of Biggie, Pharcyde and Elton John (starts @ 1:25)

However, sometimes a mashup that pairs two similar songs can be just as good, as long as something is added to the material in the way that the producer splices it all together. Nate Belasco's combination of Kanye's "Black Skinhead" and Tame Imapala's "Elephant" accomplishes just that.

Now say what you will about Yeezus--creative riffs devoid of any lyrical content--but this song is a banger. 

The interchangeability of the guitar parts is perhaps my favorite aspect. Check it out.

Note: There's a free download via the "buy" link in the soundcloud player.

Father John Misty - Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings

Gotta love the summer. This isn't necessarily a Summer song, but I just really felt like starting out with a banal platitude (I'm so sorry Mrs. Johnson, you taught us better). 

This track by Father John Misty is definitely making it on the roadtrip playlist, somewhere in the middle, once everyone has settled in for the ride and there are longer lulls in conversation. I see this coming on while driving down a wooded highway somewhere. I was traveling around Delaware this weekend and I'll say this, Route 9 between Dover and Middletown is a beautiful stretch of road. 

If you've got wheels, go for a long drive. Living in the city has made me really appreciate that privilege. 

MØ - "Waste of Time" and "Pilgrim"

MØ of this. Talented female singer + competent electronic backing = dope song. Obviously this is a simplification, but I guarantee if Diplo started remixing Taylor Swift it would be an absolute banger.

Until that happens, check out these tracks from the Danish Karen Marie Ørsted a.k.a. MØ

Woodkid Ft. Angel Haze - I Love You

My roommate has been raving about Angel Haze for a while, and I can see why. The girl has a edgy, rapid-fire flow and can apparently sing too.

I'm going to have to look into Woodkid some more after this too. Hes got a velvety voice that acts as the perfect contrast to Angel's rap verse. 

Zeds Dead - By Your Side

I like to make up movie scenes for songs. This track by Zeds Dead definitely belongs with some sort of violence, with all sound muted--and a heavy sense of fate/inevitability that someone is going to die. 

I see a man walking through some ghetto motel, with flashback cuts of the murder of his friends/family playing out as he passes between each swath of light. He has no intention of this being a fair fight. 

The Neighborhood - Say My Name / Cry Me A River (Live Cover)

I love a good cover, and The Neighbourhood has come through with a beauty. Smooth, understated bass and pleading vocals set the perfect mood. They just released their first album this year and after flipping through it I can say with confidence--these guys can definitely do more than cover songs.

They're like a rocker version of The Weeknd. I suggest you check them out. 

Matt Corby - Resolution

Adding another Aussie to this list. Check out these two tracks by 22 year old Matt Corby. The Lancelot remix of "Brother" is also excellent and is available on his soundcloud account. 

HELP WANTED: Macklemore X Ryan Lewis Need a Choir

Macklemore and his DJ/producer/bestie Ryan Lewis are in desperate need of a choir to tour with...or at least a female vocalist. 

I was at the Roots Picnic in Philly over the weekend and got to see the ever-entertaining Macklemore borrow some girl's fur vest and tell the crowd it smelled like a grandma with a four blunt a day habit, who has a taste for malt liquor and who blacks out frequently--hell of a nose. He even managed to walk across the crowd during one of the breaks in "Can't Hold Us." (check out the video below) Macklemore puts on a damn good show, and Ryan Lewis knows how to make bombastic beats that make good use of Owuor Arunga, the man jumping around stage one-handing his trumpet. 

That said, after seeing them perform twice in the past two months I can say with certainty that they need a female singer or a whole damn choir to be on stage with them for some songs. At the show on Saturday, Ray Dalton was belting out his parts of Can't Hold Us and sounded incredible--adding accents and improvisations to the familiar beat. That song definitely would have fallen flat without Dalton, which is why I cant understand why they would do "Same Love" without Mary Lambert--or at least another talented lady on the mic. 

Macklemore came out, gave his speech about being in the midst of the greatest civil rights movement of our generation--the same speech he gave when I saw him at Columbia in April--and then proceeded to croon out another rendition of Same Love with only a recorded version of Ms. Lambert's beautiful chorus. I was disappointed and I started to realize that a number of his songs would benefit from some live vocal support. 

Same Love

Victory Lap (skip to 2:45)

Wings 
White Walls

All of these would sound incredible live if they had some singers on stage. Macklemore knows how to put on a show and definitely seems like he would enjoy the spectacle of having a choir to direct. I only hope that as their meteoric rise continues, this entertaining duo makes it happen.

The History of Magnum Opus, Incorporated - Kurt Vonnegut

More gold from The Sirens of Titan. In this passage, Vonnegut chronicles the meeting between Noel Constant (father of Malaki Constant) and Ransom K. Fern. Plenty of choice quotes in here on all the bullshit in business with my favorite being, "Noel Constant was so impressed by this monument to hypocrisy and sharp practice that he wanted to buy stock in it without even referring to his Bible."

 I really dig the names he comes up with too.

"Ransom K. Fern is the name," he said. 

"I had a professor in the Harvard Business School," said young Fern to Noel Constant, "who kept telling me that I was smart, but that I would have to find my boy , if I was going to be rich. He wouldn't explain what he meant. He said I would catch on sooner or later. I asked him how I could go looking for my boy, and he suggested that I work for the Bureau of Internal Revenue for a year or so.  

"When I went over your tax returns, Mr. Constant, it suddenly came to me what it was he meant. He meant I was shrewd and thorough, but I wasn't remarkably lucky. I had to find somebody who had luck in an  astonishing degree — and so I have."

"Why should I pay you two thousand dollars a week?" said Noel Constant. "You see my facilities and my staff here, and you know what I've done with them."

"Yes — " said Fern, "and I can show you where you should have made two hundred million where you made only fifty-nine. You know absolutely nothing about corporate law or tax law — or even commonsense business procedure." 

Fern thereupon proved this to Noel Constant, father of Malachi — and Fern showed him an organizational plan that had the name Magnum Opus, Incorporated. It was a marvelous engine for doing violence to the spirit of thousands of laws without actually running afoul of so much as a city ordinance.

Noel Constant was so impressed by this monument to hypocrisy and sharp practice that he wanted to buy stock in it without even referring to his Bible. 

"Mr. Constant, sir," said young Fern, "don't you understand? Magnum Opus is you, with you as chairman of the board, with me as president.  

"Mr. Constant," he said, "right now you're as easy for the Bureau of Internal Revenue to watch as a man on a street corner selling apples and pears. But just imagine how hard you would be to watch if you had a whole office building jammed to the rafters with industrial bureaucrats — men who lose things and use the wrong forms and create new forms and demand everything in quintuplicate, and who understand perhaps a third of what is said to them; who habitually give misleading answers in order to gain time in which to think, who make decisions only when forced to, and who then cover their tracks; who make perfectly honest mistakes in addition and subtraction, who call meetings whenever they feel lonely, who write memos whenever they feel unloved; men who never throw anything away unless they think it could get them fired. A single industrial bureaucrat, if he is sufficiently vital and nervous, should be able to create a ton of meaningless papers a year for the Bureau of Internal Revenue to examine. In the Magnum Opus Building, we will have thousands of them! And you and I can have the top two stories, and you can go on keeping track of what's really going on the way you do now." 

Just bought Hocus Pocus and I cant wait to tear through it. Should have plenty of time on the way to/from Philly. Got tickets to the Roots picnic!

Smith Westerns - "3am Spiritual"

I've been playing this song just about every day for the past week. It's got a classic rock kind of sound that I like; slowly building into a guitar solo finale. But, I think what I really like the most about it are the opening lyrics. They remind me of David Foster Wallace's "This is Water", a commencement speech he gave back in 2005 that has been bouncing around the internet lately. 

Sometimes, you have to stop and think about how you think.




It's easier to think you're dumb 
Like you were 
It's easier to think you're no fun 
Oh, I know 
It's easier to think you can't go on. 

Please keep close to me 
I don't wanna let you off my heart 
But it happened all along 
And you don't look like it used to be 
You don't look like you did on TV 

Oh, yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah

And all the while I never won 
I've been down 
And all the while I put a smile up 
Can't do rounds 
And all the while upwards and out 

Please keep close to me 
I don't wanna let you off my heart 
But it happened all along 
And you don't look like it used to be 
You don't look like you did on TV 

Oh, yeah , oh yeah
Oh, yeah , oh yeah
Oh, yeah , oh yeah
Oh, yeah , oh yeah.

Style is Cyclical

2 tracks caught my attention today. The first is a new single from one of my favorite new bands. Check out the synth-smothered goodness of CHVRCHES - "Gun"

The second, an old school soulful rap from DJ Nu-Mark who I will be checking out for the rest of today. If he's got any other beats as good as this one, then we've got ourselves a winner.

The History of Tralfamadorians - Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut is a satirical mad genius. Every time that I pick up one of his books, I find (with startling regularity) passages that sum up the insane structures we take for granted without a second thought. To use someone else's words; we have no choice, but to laugh in self-defense.

Once upon a time on Tralfamadore there were creatures who weren't anything like machines. They weren't dependable. They weren't efficient. They weren't predictable. They weren't durable. And these poor creatures were obsessed by the idea that everything that existed had to have a purpose, and that some purposes were higher than others. 

These creatures spent most of their time trying to find out what their purpose was. And every time they found out what seemed to be a purpose of themselves, the purpose seemed so low that the creatures were filled with disgust and shame. 

And, rather than serve such a low purpose, the creatures would make a machine to serve it. This left the creatures free to serve higher purposes. But whenever they found a higher purpose, the purpose still wasn't high enough. 

So machines were made to serve higher purposes, too. 

And the machines did everything so expertly that they were finally given the job of finding out what the highest purpose of the creatures could be. 

The machines reported in all honesty that the creatures couldn't really be said to have any purpose at all. 

The creatures thereupon began slaying each other, because they hated purposeless things above all else. 

And they discovered that they weren't even very good at slaying. So they turned that job over to the machines, too. And the machines finished up the job in less time than it takes to say, "Tralfamadore."

- Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan (Ch. 12)

Amurica!!

Enjoy the long weekend everyone. Rock out.

"One of these Heat Waves" - Pink Floyd vs Martha and The Vandellas

I still remember the first time I heard this song, driving back from some party in bumfuck New Jersey--a very wealthy bumfuck, but a bumfuck nonetheless. It was about 2am and between the empty roads and the fog, I started to feel like I was the only person alive for miles. My radio was tuned into some local college station, where some stoned out DJ was finish up her hour. Her final song was alright, but it wasn't helping keep me awake on my long drive back home...then after a few minutes of silence, and without introduction from the next host, this amazing mashup came blaring out my speakers and batteryfucked my mind back into action. I was full on rocking out in my seat from the psychedelic drop at 2:00, til the last note faded. 

What I love about this mashup, is that Pink Floyd's "One of These Days" really fits the lyrics for Heat Wave better than the original backing. If you listen, Martha isn't singing about any easy-breezy type of Taylor Swift love. A devil's got a hold of her and it's tearing her apart. Listen for yourself.

Original

The land down under

I found this track while going through Triple J's "Top 100 of 2012". For those who don't know, Triple J is an Australian Radio Station, and a particularly good one if you ask me. I'm sure that Aussies have their own favorite underground stations, and wouldn't like recognizing a relatively mainstream station like Triple J, but compared to what I hear here in the states...I'll take Triple J any day. 

Enjoy this piece of alt-pop (that's a genre right?)

Alpine - "Gasoline"

The best vandalism you've ever seen

Before you start reading...are you a cop? You have to tell me or else it's like....entrapment or something.

AK-64

These are a few of the stencils I've made. Initially, I made them because I was bored after my 9-5 and I live in a shitty neighborhood, but after I put up my first one, I realized that actually making something was fulfilling on a level that I hadn't expected.

Peter Rabbit: The Later Years

I'm not an artist, but I like the idea of turning an empty wall into something a bit more interesting. It's amazing how much graffiti is out there once you're actually looking for it. Maybe when I get a decent camera I can put up some pictures of my favorites from around the city. 

Free Will

Can't Stop Lauging

Apparently someone eating cotton candy in reverse is the funniest thing in the world. 

C2C has awesome music videos

No internet yesterday, just good friends, music and booze. Enjoy this jam from French DJ ensemble C2C. 

 C2C - "Happy"


I wish I could dance like the guys in the video.

The Notorious B.I.G. - Everyday Struggles (Dead Battery Remix)

I've been listening to this one all week. Pretty sure Kanye has proven, hip hop + classic soul = soundsex. It's hard to make a remix that truly changes the tone of the song, without messing with Biggie's flow. The new sound fits perfectly with the lyrics. Spaced out piano and guitar riffs, coupled with Aretha's samples remind me of long lonely night drives in caravans to take over projects in Maryland. 

 

Song of the Day

Finding new music rocks--it's like hooking up with someone new. Sometimes it's just a one hit wonder, and sometimes it kicks off something that'll last a lifetime, but it's always exciting. 

This blog is a collection of my new music, sporadically updated and never organized. Who knows, maybe I'll even try reviewing some of it, but mostly it's just a way for me to keep track of what I've been listening to.

First up, a sorrowful folk song by Milky Chance--the German Bon Iver. 

"Down By the River" by Milky Chance