Vacaishun

Well, I'm off to Asia for a month. Weeee! I don't suppose I'll be blogging much, if at all, during that time. I thought I'd give a heads up to the one person who will read this :)

Here's a funny picture for you to laugh (I hope at least chuckle) at.


Until soon then!

Hilltop Hoods and Tone Matrix Extravaganza

A little over a week ago a very good friend of mine asked me to send him some more songs by a really cool Aussie group called Hilltop Hoods. They're a hip-hop act. My other friend Ingers (check his blog) had told me about them, probably about a year ago and I have to say that they're still great to listen to. Evidently Viraj a.k.a. first friend a.k.a. not-Ingers agrees.

The point of that very long winded prelude is that I should write about Hilltop, which I'm obviously doing now. Logic is not my strong suit today. I think I might be too tired. Be that as it may here's "The Hard Road Restrung".



I've been searching the interwebs for good places to get some more Hilltop Hoods tracks, but I have found absolutely nothing. You'll have to purchase things on iTunes or Amazon or what have you. I hope you like the Hilltop stuff. Personally, I go through phases where I listen to lots of hip-hop and if you've ever read this blog before you'll be well informed of my infatuation with strings. So clearly and hip-hop artist who decides to re-record an entire record with full accompaniment from an orchestra is more than fine by me. If you wanna read some more about Hilltop you can go here.

Now this is entirely unrelated. But I found an awesome toy today. It's called the Tone Matrix and what it is, is a simple sinewave synthesizer. Or so the website tells me. In any case, it lets you make very short musical samples. It's fun. To say the least. Go check it out yourselves and if anyone uses this thing as a basis for a bigger musical project, report back, because I would like to see how that turns out. I found the link to this baby over at That's Also Truuuue.

Tone Matrix

Edit: This is entirely unrelated to music - rice paddy art is cool.

Eclectic Catch-Up

This post is beyond overdue and because of that it's also extremely random. I've been saving up things that I've been meaning to write about for a good while now. Consequently there's a veritable plethora of unrelated songs and other music related things to mention. I think I'll just start with the first thing I have noted down and go from there.

I found a really cool iPhone app over at the J-Walk blog. Now, personally I think iPhones are pretty unexciting and kind of a general waste of time, but this app is kind of awesome nonetheless. If you have an iPhone I would seriously consider getting it. So what am I talking about? Well, the app is called Bebot and it's essentially a very cool program that features a little robot who makes sounds and moves according to how you touch the screen. There's a video of how it works over here. If anyone has this or is going to get it, report back. I'd love to know whether it's as cool in real life as it looks online.

Alright, next up are two music videos I found while perusing a list of the "Best Bands of the Decade" (sort of) as determined by various musicians. The consensus is that there isn't one best band, but that seems like a bit of a no-brainer. Anyway, the list is here, if you'd like to see what everyone came up with. The list did have some very nice links to videos of the different artists featured and I discovered some new things.

Namely, this very cool music video for the song "Proof" by I Am Kloot.



The other video is for "Hold the Line" by Major Lazer feat. Mr. Lexx and Santigold. This song isn't necessarily my cup of tea, but the video is absolutely awesome :) Incidentally Diplo makes up half of the Major Lazer duo, I think I've written about him before...



Finally I wanted to share some music that I have been listening to for a really, really long time and that I thoroughly enjoy. I'm talking about Sam Phillips. Some of you might know her as the la-la-la-singer from the WB's Gilmore Girls. Phillips hasn't really released anything new in a good while now, but her older songs are still a real pleasure to listen to. I will admit that a good amount of her work is a bit peculiar and it might not appeal to everyone. There's one song in particular off the album A Boot and a Shoe, which is just fabulous though. Phillips' smokey voice blends beautifully with the cello in "Reflecting Light". Have a listen here, to see what I'm talking about. You can also check out more of her stuff at her official site.

So I've decided to start listing the songs I mention within my posts again at the end, to make finding things easier. This will only be done for mp3s :)

"Reflecting Light" by Sam Phillips
A Boot and a Shoe, 2004

Coo

Mayer Hawthorne is recommended over at betterPropaganda and his song "Maybe So, Maybe No" is the kind of retro cool you want in your music collection. Get it here.

Oh waaaaee wooooooooo!!!!

I've decided to go about getting the rest of the muzak that was on Chuck's finale last week. Can't believe it's been a whole seven days already and we haven't heard about renewals and whatnot yet. Still keeping fingers crossed.

While we're waiting, you can head over to here, where you can get The Thermals' "Now We Can See" or if you'd rather just listen to it first, that can be done at the same place too. Oh there's also a second Thermals song available on that blog, but I can't say whether it's any good because I haven't listened yet. The consensus on the interwebs seems to be that they're a pretty fab band though. Report back if you have any insights.

Next up is "Looking at the Sun" by Gramercy Arms. Found that one here. It's the third song down. I really like this one because it's so cheery.

The next tune is "Christmas TV" by Slow Club. This is another pretty squee-inducing song. I like it. You can get it here. Also I didn't realize that the song used on Chuck was by Slow Club. I had just downloaded another song of theirs called "Dance to the Morning Light" from here and that one is quite lovely too.

Alright there was also some Styx and The Cure in the Chuck finale, but I'll leave you to your own devices to find those. And of course there was some awesome Blind Pilot, but I've already rambled on about them incessantly for a pretty long time, so there's no need to wax poetic about them yet again. If you're looking for their song "3 Rounds and a Sound", which was on the show, or any of the other songs they have, just click on the label at the end of this post and it will take you to anything I've written about them. Easy as pie.

That's that from me for today. Check out the silly song a friend and I made about Chuck (I think it's two posts down). Have a good one!


Edit: Ok I got both the missing songs after all. Styx's "Mr. Roboto" is here and The Cure's "Friday I'm in Love" is here. Enjoy.

USofTara

Seeing as Chuck has stopped being on (hopefully only for the time being), I've started catching up on other shows that I've been meaning to watch. This means that I will probably finally get around to seeing The Wire, of which I've only seen about three episodes I think, but it's good so far. I also caught United States of Tara back when if first came on TV, whenever that was, and stopped watching after a few episodes because I had too many things going on. I'm almost completely caught up with that one now and I actually also heard a cool song on the show, which I thought I'd share with everyone.

Interestingly, United States of Tara also had a Bon Iver song in its eighth episode (this after Chuck has been featuring his excellent songs quasi-weekly). They used "The Wolves (Act I and II)" in a really creepy scene from the son, Marshall's Hell House re-enactment that involved an abortion, which was represented by some nasty looking chopped up liver. You're gonna have to see it for yourselves, but I assume you're sufficiently put off right now to not want to see it. It's a good show though so I suggest having a look-see anyway.

So on to the song that I wanted to post about. "That Knot Unties?" is by David Karsten Daniels and it's a really mellow folksy song. Listen and download here. It was used in a really lovely montage sequence at the end of an episode and it was sort of like a pretty ribbon that tied the whole scene together beautifully. Hope you like it.

Seriously Save Chuck

NBC had better renew this ish after all the time my friend and I just spent on making this video. Hope you like.

Here's the song if you want the tune for your hard drive.
http://www.mediafire.com/?mzztq3dmdtv

If you'd like to download the video, you can do so here. I tried uploading the video to Mediafire, but it kept getting stuck during the verification process. So this is what we're stuck with for now.