Latest blogged music
Friday, July 27, 2012
Full album available August 7th 2012
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Fluxblog Housing Works Event Podcast
You can download a podcast version of the Fluxblog 10th anniversary event at Housing Works in New York City earlier this week above. It was recorded by the kind people at Housing Works, and it sounds really good. The show is being presented with no edits, but there were only a couple little flubs along the way, so it’s no big deal. I’m really proud of how this turned out - everyone was great, and without any of us having an idea of what each other was doing, the songs all flowed together well and there were a lot of complementary themes. (I’m particularly pleased with how the idea I laid out in my intro was resolved in Rob Sheffield’s finale.)
Here is the running order of speakers:
• Matthew Perpetua on Scissor Sisters’ “Paul McCartney” and music as a way of communicating with and connecting to people we’ve never actually met.
• Emily Gould on Martha Wainwright’s “Love Is A Stranger” and songs that keep you from destroying your life.
• Heather D’Angelo of Au Revoir Simone on Electrelane’s “The Valleys” and how creativity triumphs over destruction.
• Mark Richardson on Silver Jews’ “How to Rent A Room” and learning how to enjoy settling down in one place.
• Amy Rose Spiegel from Rookie on the Delays’ “Nearer Than Heaven” and learning how to find music that you love.
• Sean T. Collins on Nine Inch Nails’ “Leaving Hope” and finding peace of mind in hopelessness.
• Amanda Petrusich on Interpol’s “NYC” and adjusting to life in New York City.
• Dick Valentine of Electric Six on Mark Mallman’s “True Love” and how love songs are often not what they seem to be.
• Rob Sheffield on Stephen Malkmus’ “Malediction” and looking to musicians for advice about life, and finding good advice in unexpected songs.
Plus, the entire group discusses the merits of R. Kelly’s classic “Ignition (Remix).”
You can download a mix featuring all ten of the songs here. Please do what you can to support the writers, the artists and Housing Works, which is a terrific charity and worth your time and money.
Premiering on the Hype Machine this week: Seams’ Tourist/Sleeper
Winamp’s woes: how the greatest MP3 player undid itself
Ars Technica on Winamp’s history:
MP3s are so natural to the Internet now that it’s almost hard to imagine a time before high-quality compressed music. But there was such a time—and even after “MP3” entered the mainstream, organizing, ripping, and playing back one’s music collection remained a clunky and frustrating experience.
Sketches from set: CBGB
I’m currently working on this movie.
Wait, are you literally Dire Straits?
Menomena - Heavy Is As Heavy Does
Attention, nerds: New music from Menomena! From the forthcoming Moms, due in September.
Ministry - I Wanted to Tell Her
This is from Ministry’s debut album, With Sympathy.
This is synth-pop at its finest. Unfortunately, Ministry never intended to be a synth-pop band and Alain Jourgensen has referred to this album as an “abortion” forced upon him by Arista records. Three years after With Sympathy, the band released Twitch and became what might very well to be the only band to go from new wave to dark industrial metal in one fell swoop.
Preview Eternal Summers’ Correct Behavior on the Hype Machine this week.
“David Byrne gets Alzheimer’s” by Evan Dorkin.
Chris over at dailybeatz has been running a cool music discovery game where he picks a random word, searches for it on the Hype Machine, and finds something great he’s never heard before. We love it, and we’ll be featuring his Hype Machine Hunting posts here so you can join in on the stuff he’s found. Click through to read the full posts on his blog, and if you’ve found something new to love, let him know!
First up is a neat little instrumental track from German producer Sven Weisse who goes by the name EWOK FUR. “Vhs Sahara Heat” (and lots of his other tracks) have a pretty solid African influence, and he’s giving away all his tunes over at his Bandcamp page. If you dug this track, check out the rest of his tunes and show him some love over at his Facebook page as well.
Listen to the “Vhs Sahara Heat” on Hype Machine [via Grufftrade]
Normally, the beauty of these posts is that there I end up with 4 or 5 songs that have nothing to do with each other and represent a crazy wide range of sounds. However, in this case, it just so happened that the first two tracks I found and liked both had some sort of tribal influence. “A.M. Heat” by Young Island is sort of the minimalist version of a tribal chant with the barely there music and is perfectly named because it sounds like it could be the soundtrack to one of those shots in a movie where the sun is rising over the African plainsand the heat waves are rising from the baking ground slightly distorting the larger than life bright red orb that is the sun as the silhouette of a gazelle darts across the screen. Pick up Young Island’s iii EP for whatever price you want.
Listen to “A.M. Heat” on Hype Machine [via Believe In Sound]
Let’s now take a trip back in time to the wonderful decade that was the 80s courtesy of Japan’s :visited. “Touch Your Heat” features a nostalgic and funky groove that make me long for neon windbreakers and hairspray. Hit up their Bandcamp page for even more tunes inspired by the decade of my birth, which you can even buy on cassette, the official medium of the 80s.
Listen to “Touch Your Heat” on Hype Machine [via No Modest Bear]
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