I like to listen to electronic music of various sorts when I’m working. Lately I’ve been deep into Drum & Bass. My search for new mixes lead me to this awesome little seventy minute set put together by AK1200. Great track selection, good energy, and impeccable mixing. You can’t really ask for more than that.
I’ve been meaning to post this for awhile, but here’s an awesome video of British DJ and electropop artist Little Boots, covering Hot Chip’s “Ready for the Floor”.
That funky little box of awesome she’s playing is called a Tenori-on, and I have to say, I want one with a fierceness. Apparently, in addition to being a stand-alone instrument, it can be used as a midi controller, which is kind of cool.
Here’s a sweet little video. Ken Stringfellow (producer and musician extraordinaire, formerly of the Posies, R.E.M, Big Star, the Minus Five, etc.) covers The Long Winters’ “It’ll Be a Breeze” on a bench in Vienna:
Absolutely perfect.
Sasquatch! Festival 2010 Lineup Announced
Great news which I’m a few days late in reporting, the lineup for this years Sasquatch! Festival has been announced. Hooray! The festival will, as always, be held over memorial day weekend. The music will go from Saturday, May 29th through Monday, May 31st. The lineup is pretty impressive, as always.
Some highlights for me personally include Pavement, Massive Attack, The Long Winters, The New Pornographers, The Mountain Goats, Vampire Weekend, MGMT, Camera Obscura, The Hold Steady, She & Him, and Nada Surf. If that list alone isn’t enough to make you want to get tickets, then there’s plenty more awesome bands where that came from. Presale tickets are available through the weekend and run $170 for all three days of the festival.
I’ve been fairly obsessed lately with a Los Angeles-based Synthpop duo called The Bird and the Bee. They craft some absolutely perfect little pop gems. Case in point, this tune off of their 2009 album Ray Guns Are Not Just the Future. It’s called “Love Letter to Japan” and it’s a dozen different sorts of groovy:
I was listening to Oasis’ great (What’s the Story) Morning Glory album this weekend with some friends while driving down a bunch of back highways. A perfect soundtrack for an awesome weekend. I’m sure I’ve posted this tune before, but here’s a great live version of the title track off the album:
First of all, I’d like to go on record as saying that I really like the new Blvd. While it may not be a return to the glory days of the B-Side or the old Fat Tuesdays, it is a great addition to the Spokane music scene. It’s also a damn sight better than the old Blvd, which was basically a lame dive bar that just happened to have bands most weekends.
The new Blvd is a fairly nice, professional, all-ages venue in the old B-Side building (230 W Riverside). It’s got good acoustics and professional, friendly staff. It’s also got a good sound system, and a clear floor that runs right up to the stage. The show last Monday was a fairly low-key affair. The turn out was decent, though hardly the sold out crowd I was expecting.
The opener, a local folk artist named Karli Fairbanks (MySpace, web site), was a pleasant surprise. Her guitar work was much better than most folk artists. It clean and strong, with unique melodic voicing and worked well with her singing. Her vocals were also excellent, if stylistically unoriginal (she used the soft, light-vibrato voice that’s been used by so many female folk artists that it’s hard to recall who first pioneered it). All in all, I’d be very inclined to see her again. If you’re a Spokane folk-fan, definitely make an effort to get out and see her.
The next act was a country artist named Willy Mason (MySpace). How he managed to fly under my radar for so long is unclear to me, but I was very impressed with his set. He’s got a much more classic, folk-influenced voice than most modern country artists. Put a drum kit and some synthesizers behind him and some Pitchfork twerp would be claiming that “he’s no Jeff Tweedy”. Which is fair insofar that he does sound much more like a stripped down Uncle Tupelo than he does a stripped down Toby Keith.
A. A. Bondy (MySpace) and his band were, of course, phenomenal. The trio included Bondy, a drummer/slide guitar player, and a bassist/keyboardist. They were professional almost to a fault (other than thanking the crowd for applause, they didn’t seem interested in interacting with the audience.) They played a solid set of material taken from both of Bondy’s albums. They played with a great deal of energy, and played enough with the form of the songs that they seemed both fresh and familiar at the same time. Highlights of the set included great versions of “O The Vampyre” and “A Slow Parade”. The only tunes they didn’t play that I wished they had were “How Will You Meet Your End”, “American Hearts”, and Bondy’s cover of “John the Revelator.”
The show was truly an excellent one. A great venue hosting some amazing talent. The openers were amazing, and I will be definitely purchasing their albums as soon as I can lay my hot little hands on them. Bondy continues to impress and I look forward both to seeing him in concert again and to whatever new music he turns out next.
Gorki Aguila – Punk Rock Anti-Communist
Here’s a great interview with Porno Para Ricardo frontman Gorki Aguila. It was filmed by Reason TV and the aim of the interview is largely political. That being said, it’s interesting to get a glimpse into just how hard it is to be a musician in Cuba.
Also, being arrested for “Social Dangerousness” is punk as fuck.
6th Borough Project
Is your Saturday bereft of awesome music? Have you been sitting around, thinking, “man, if I only I had some funky house tunes, this day would be so much better”? Well you’re in luck! Via my friend Jon, who’s always a reliable source for awesome electronic music, here’s the 6th Borough Project’s “Just A Memory”:
Jon also linked me to this mix by the same artist, which I haven’t gotten a chance to listen to yet, but will definitely be checking out.
Enjoy!
I’ve been meaning to blog this for awhile. Well, I’ve been meaning to blog something, anything for awhile, and look where that’s gotten me. Hacker, guitarist, and gadfly extraordinaire Zed Shaw has been working on a pretty cool project called Fret War. From the About page:
Fret War gathers guitarists from all over the interwebs to a showdown for fame and glory to prove they are the fastest, most accurate, creative or unique players out there.
The idea is simple: Once a week the Conductor submits a round with a musical challenge. It could be based on a mode, a motif, a particular piece of non-copyrighted music, or something totally weird.
Once a player submits an entry for the round, they get to review and comment on other people’s entries. The best reviewed entry wins the round, earning that player fame and fortune cowbells. The next week it starts all over again with a new round and a new challenge.
I’m a fan of the concept, since it seems like an awesome way to build skills. I’m a flat amateur when it comes to guitar, so I’d probably be massively outclassed by the talent on Fret War, but for someone with more skill and time to devout to it, the rounds seem interesting and diverse and the competition seems lively. Here’s a few of my favorite submissions from the last few rounds:
Chad Woolley, “Southern Weather” -
EDIT: It looks like the above embedded objects aren’t working. I’ve updated the artist/song names to be links to the applicable Fret War pages, so you can click through and hear the submissions.
EDIT: Fixed. Via Chad Woolley in the comments, it looks like Zed only implemented the feature today. I recopied the embed code and they appear to be working again. Thanks Chad and Zed!