Every Saturday, I post a 15-20 minute podcast featuring some tracks I’ve been jamming the previous week, as well as some commentary and random musings from yours truly. Enjoy!
Tracklist:
Dum Dum Girls – Bedroom Eyes
Rustie – All Nite
Phantogram – Don’t Move
DJ Khaled – I’m On One (feat. Drake, Rick Ross, Lil Wayne)
A friend of mine and I were discussing the awesome awesome lineup for Fun Fun Fun Fest this year, and recently, they announced their schedule for our viewing pleasure. My friend was excited, but admitted he knew only a few bands. Where, he wondered aloud, could he find a comprehensive rundown of each band, a sampling of their musical chops, so he could further educate himself before the finest weekend of his year? I assume the Fun Fun Fun website has such a playlist, and they do, and it’s cool, but I wanted to make my own. So every Friday, from now until the fest (that’s nine weeks), I will be posting a playlist for your educational purposes for each stage and day, excluding the Yellow stage, which is mostly comedy.
This week’s playlist covers the bands playing on the Blue (Hip-Hop/Dance) stage on Saturday – Cecil Otter, Purity Ring, T-Bird and the Breaks, Brandt Brauer Frick, Cold Cave, Childish Gambino, Rakim, Dan Deacon, Neon Indian, and Major Lazer.
Listen to the playlist on Spotify.
Missing From Playlist (not on Spotify yet): B-L-A-C-K-I-E, Wugazi
My Stage Pick: Purity Ring
After jamming to “Belispeak,” “Lofticries,” and “Ungirthed” this year, this group’s upcoming debut LP is one of my most anticipated albums currently. I am curious to see how this group’s ethereal synth-pop translates to the stage.
Just Tuesday the news was all about the lackluster Apple summit new CEO Tim Cook hosted, and the new iPhone 4S, which is receiving underwhelming press. The commentary constantly remarked this was the first launch without the company’s figurehead Steve Jobs, and that something felt….off. Without Jobs around, is this a turning point for Apple? Are its glory days over? And now, with the untimely death of Jobs Wednesday afternoon, all of that is trivial.
To deny the radical influence Steve Jobs had on the world, and the profound sadness of his death, is simply foolish. I grow tired of seeing #iDead hashtags, Mac haters naysaying, or people who ridicule others for acknowledging the man’s productive life because they “didn’t know him.” Unsurprisingly, the ignorant Internet misses the point. Jobs’ work impacted everyone you know in some form. If you’ve played with an iPod, owned a modern smartphone, messed around with a computer, or watched a computer-animated film, you’ve experienced the inspiration of this man. It could be argued he helped saved the music industry from sheer collapse with the iTunes model. There’s a reason why his death is front-page news, why it’s a trending topic, why public figures are comparing him to Thomas Edison, why the President found it prudent to release a statement honoring him.
There’s no doubt Jobs lived a full life; he created and innovated technologies which are now second-nature household items, and his left-field thinking is still present in Apple’s mindset. And yet, we can sense that he was just getting started. That he still had a lot to show us. Very rarely does a visionary come around as forward thinking and as revolutionary, and Jobs certainly filled a void and created a vision that will resonate for years to come. The scope of that vision should be honored, and the loss of that vision should be mourned.
And so, I invite you to spend what will undoubtedly be the fifteen most inspirational minutes of your day and watch a speech Jobs gave in 2005 to a group of Stanford graduates. He tells three stories about connecting the dots, love and loss, and death. Each are fitting for a commencement speech (ironically, Jobs never graduated college), but they also apply to life in general. And if you’re looking for motivation for a full life, look no further than Steve Jobs.
Today I continue a series of posts dedicated to the best albums of the last decade, posting analysis of one album at a time.
If I remember correctly, these guys took quite a while to get pretty popular, at least they did by comparison to some of their blogosphere peers who had almost overnight success (Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Black Kids). Â I recollect finding rough demos of “Oxford Comma” and “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa” on Aquarium Drunkard up to a year before they released this gem, their debut album. Â I also remember the Paul Simon comparisons being made almost immediately, as most critics are wont to do when they hear anything remotely referential to Afro-pop.
VW were the first to really incorporate the sound into the ever-growing indie pop landscape, however, and they brought the influences to a much younger audience. Â They dubbed the sound “Upper West Side Soweto,” and indeed it had a small movement of its own, generating bands like Ra Ra Riot, the electronic experiment Discovery, and more traditional projects like The Very Best.
I’m not saying the Simon relation isn’t correct; it obviously is, but to deny the band’s growth from that blueprint is simply dismissive. Â One listen to the simple pop of the aforementioned two tracks, as well as the stomping “A-Punk” (my personal favorite) and the falsetto friendly “Blake’s Got a New Face,” and you’ll see these guys either were showing all their cards at once or they had healthy knowledge and a palette to grow from. Â We know now from their great sophomore effort two years later the latter was the case.
Once every three months I list the best of what I heard in albums/songs/remixes for the quarter. I do this to personally keep up with all the awesome music I hear, as it ultimately helps me at the end of the year when I do my overall listing for the previous twelve months. I also do it to introduce you cool cats to tunes you may have missed independently.
Every Saturday, I post a 15-20 minute podcast featuring some tracks I’ve been jamming the previous week, as well as some commentary and random musings from yours truly. Enjoy!
Tracklist:
Games – No Disguise
TV Girl – Girls Like Me
Trailer Trash Tracys – Wish You Were Red
TEETH – Flowers
Youth Lagoon – Bobby
A friend of mine and I were discussing the awesome awesome lineup for Fun Fun Fun Fest this year, and recently, they announced their schedule for our viewing pleasure. My friend was excited, but admitted he knew only a few bands. Where, he wondered aloud, could he find a comprehensive rundown of each band, a sampling of their musical chops, so he could further educate himself before the finest weekend of his year? I assume the Fun Fun Fun website has such a playlist, and they do, and it’s cool, but I wanted to make my own. So every Friday, from now until the fest (that’s nine weeks), I will be posting a playlist for your educational purposes for each stage and day, excluding the Yellow stage, which is mostly comedy.
This week’s playlist covers the bands playing on the Black (Punk/Metal) stage on Saturday – Touche Amore, Death Grips, The World Inferno/Friendship Society, Trash Talk, Youth Brigade, Paint It Black, Dead Horse, Negative Approach, Cave In, Hot Snakes, and The Damned.
Listen to the playlist on Spotify.
Missing From Playlist (not on Spotify yet): Thieves, Shapes Have Fangs
My Stage Pick: Trash Talk
I would watch this show just to hear “Awake” in a live setting – if the new song is any indication, these guys have not lost their ability to completely destroy eardrums and blow minds. Like most Black stage shows, I would of course be watching from a safe distance, as I’m sure this will be one of the wildest pits of the weekend. Wear a helmet!
As far as emerging artists go, Star Slinger has had the Culture Greyhound bump ever since he dropped Volume 1 last year. Of course, the UK producer’s sound has evolved in that time, and he’s gone from banging remixes to his own original material. Today we hear the first finished product he can call his very own, a track called “Dumbin'” available from Green Label Sounds. Listen and download below, and if you’re in ATX, be sure to check out Star Slinger at Beauty Bar on October 12.
