welcome to Wales, where downtown is a castle
February 28th, 2010
again.
February 26th, 2010
why am I always flying when it snows?!
activity
February 26th, 2010So I'm heading out to the UK for a couple of weeks — if the snowwicaine doesn't spoil my plans, which it probably will — so things may be a little more quiet than usual…I've got a couple of posts scheduled in the queue for next week, and I'm taking my phone, so if I can get the international picture send working, I'll post some pics…
otherwise, I'll see you back here on 3/16…
snowwicaine
February 26th, 2010
ATTN #10
February 26th, 2010I know, I know, but they actually make me laugh out loud…
"build a turtle fence/so we can pay our rents"…
some places never let you go
February 25th, 2010
(get it? never let you go)
Raaaaaaaandy and Dave Sitek: “AAAAAAAANGRY”
February 25th, 2010
This has good vibe. You don't hear parody rap all that often, and when you do it's usually awful. This is pretty great. Aziz Ansari…
I also like the way the beats kind of shift a little for certain rappers…the MF Doom bit is golden…cameo from RZA at the very end…
[audio: http://downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/Raaaaaaaandy%20-%20AAAAAAAANGRY.mp3][got it from pitchfork, dig]
Apocolypse Pooh
February 24th, 2010This is kind of spellbinding. I don't know where I came across this…the intro is kind of long so I cut it for you…make sure to see the bit with PIglet as Dennis Hopper (or vice versa)…
the tet offensive
February 23rd, 2010So last night tuesday I went to see Four Tet at Le Poisson Rouge and it was a pretty interesting show. For one thing, it started at 11pm and I'm slowly realizing that I'm not sure I want to do late night shows if I have to go into work in the morning. The crowd was geek-chic, which was cool. The opening guy was really good, I did an iphone film to kind of give you an idea…it's pretty loud on the vid, but you have to imagine it so loud it hurts your ears:
Then Four Tet was good. His stuff was more subtle, more in sync, better produced. Sometimes this had the unfortunate effect of kind of sounding exactly like he sounds on CD, which tends to bore me at live events. But people were dancing, it got hot, the sound system was killer. After a while, I'd had enough. I thought to myself "I've seen enough of this show now to know that no matter how amazing he gets, it's not going to blow me away." I started to head out, got to the stairs, and then he dropped this track:
[audio: As_Serious_as_Your_Life.mp3]
It stopped me. The bass sample was do deep and great. The sound system there is amazing, and this track came to life in a big way. Amazing.
It also reminded me of this conversation I had with Wall Matthews last June. Wall is one of the owners and the main music writer for Clean Cuts, this audio house we work with a bunch. Great people, and Wall is a totally nice guy, talented. (Plus his kids are these hip hop beat makers who've done beats for 2Pac, Bone Thugs, etc. Legit.)
Anyway, in the 70's, Wall was in this band called The Ensemble or something, with a bunch of other folks. One of the women he was in the band with is now a teacher, and for one of her classes, she did this music appreciation thing where she had her students come in and play a song they liked for the class. Then they'd discuss, etc.
So this one kid comes in and plays a Four Tet track, and she recognizes the guitar part as being sampled from this song that The Ensemble did! She's blown away! Can you imagine? It's so random. You hear this modern electronic track and it has a part from your old band from the 70's. Amazing.
(When Wall told me this story I was well on my way to being drunk (Promax) and I'm pretty sure I over-reacted to it in a completely over-the-top manner. But it is pretty wild.)
She tells Wall, they hunt down the album, and it's confirmed. Then the story takes a old school vs. new school flavor. They get a lawyer and contact Four Tet and basically make him pay some royalties to them for sampling the track. Boooo. When telling me the story Wall was old school adamant "C'mon Josh, he lifted like the entire part! He didn't play anything!" I did my best to make the argument that part of the talent of the sampler (the person who samples) is the ability to dig into a crate of old obscure records and find some great bit and then re-contextualize it. This didn't go down as well as I hoped, but we kind of left it with a "agree to disagree" kind of thing.
This is the track that has the sample, it's a pretty good one:
[audio: She_Moves_She.mp3]
And then I did a search for Wall and The Ensemble and came up with this gem. The part Four Tet sampled starts around 1:30ish I think. this clip has such a solid freak-out vibe…it's classic. If you know Wall, this is going to blow your mind…if you don't, well, I'm not sure what you'll think…
Anyway, it was a pretty good show, amazing sound, and too late. By the time I got out of there I was so beat…next time I'm gonna look at the show time before buying the tix…
more strong messaging
February 21st, 2010
banananananananer
February 20th, 2010this banner was from when Maxine surprised me on my birthday last Fall and took us to see this unbelievable art installation in Beacon, NY called Big Bambu. it was installed in an ENORMOUS old foundry, and consisted of hundreds upon hundreds of bamboo sticks lashed together to form this huge structure. also, you could go up inside it and climb around on it. it was amazing!
and to take it even further, the artists had people climbing up the outside of it constantly untying some of the bamboo poles and moving them down the structure and attaching them at the other end. So it was constantly moving. Sometimes you'd go to climb on a bit, and a pole near you would suddenly, slowly, move.
It's one of the most impressive, conceptual, and amazingly well executed pieces of art I've ever seen.
here's a pic to give you a sense of the hugeness of the whole thing…I've put a label in there so you can tell where I am to give you a sense of the scale…I'm kind of sitting on the edge…
go to the artists' web site about it, they've got videos and all sorts of interesting stuff there…whatta birthday that was…
oll raighth!!
February 19th, 2010Crank this up for Friday, it is amazing. AM played this for me a while back and it blew my tiny mind…when the beat kicks in, wow, play it as loud as you can…the beat is ferocious, the 1974 choreography is fierce, the dancers are rubber-limbed funky, and the lyrics are Italian gibberish that someone wrote to sound like English. It messes with your head…you keep thinking they're singing something real, and it sounds so cool, and that beat, and the mirrors and dancers, and that hobo guy…
wowza…the weekend starts now…
do I have to choose?
February 18th, 2010
strong messaging
February 18th, 2010
scratch tape dex
February 16th, 2010This is so tantalizing. Obviously this guy has some mad DIY skillz and there are some fantastic sounds being created, but I want them to coalesce into some great performance. Maybe I've gotta see him live.