July 2011
Misery
Big Troubles
Big Troubles /// “Misery” /// Romantic Comedy
Can someone check and see if the Internet is still there.
NIGHT DRIVE
I recently found out about this Part Time bit via g-chat conversation with Stockton, CA homie Frankie Soto, and I must say Night Drive is a bitchin’ track. The title of this track alone does the song a lot of justice, for it is a psych-funk anthem that scores those late night car rides. This is a song that concludes at the nearest and greasiest pizza joint as a hot summer night transitions into the cool early morning, and discussions ensue about the adventures had earlier that day. Apparently the record is out now on Mexican Summer, grip it over there.
Related:
COMING DOWN
I am really impressed with this new Dum Dum Girls track. I am a big fan of her earlier recordings; back when it was just her and a woozy, reverb-soaked guitar. I feel like Dee Dee’s voice contrasts really well with that woozy guitar and it is what pulled me into her music in the first place. I was pretty content with the LP she dropped on Hozac and Sub Pop, although the Hozac pressing was a bit weak due to skips that me and many other people reported encountering. Dee Dee then came out with an EP which I wasn’t particular into, although The Smiths cover was pretty rad.
However, this new track has made me fall in love with the Dum Dum Girls all over again. I think this track is the Dum Dum Girls searching for their sound in the Hi-Fi realm. They’ve found it, and made it massive. Coming Down is really a quite beautiful and emotional song which may make your heart wrench a little every time you listen and is surely a good track for a slow, burning make-out session. Only in Dreams is out September 27th on Sub Pop.
CLUB HITS
I first started going to the clubs at 18. I remember my parents weren’t to happy about it, going out late at night when I should be studying for Calculus. I believe they were worried that I might succumb to the social pressures of binge drinking, but I never did. I have so much energy at the club people tend to think I’m on drugs anyway. I get that a lot.
In the beginning, I would go to the 18+ hip-hop clubs and do the grind dance with women with a cup of water in my hand. I believed that this would make the 21+ babes may think that it is vodka and therefore increased my probability of dancing with them by playing the age card. At the time, I had not really listened to music of the independent genre and to my knowledge, an indie dance night did not exist at any of the local dance clubs. I have recently started going to the indie dance night and have been killing it with my friends Kaleb and Shelly. The last time we went I felt like I conquered something when I left.
My mom was the one to teach my how to dance in the first place. She taught me a lot of the moves that I still use to this day. Because of her, I have been able to master the ‘dance walk’, which is a method that allows one to move throughout great lengths of the dance floor while still dancing. I have used this method to jump from one group of women to another, or when I spot a dance circle from afar. I like to make sure I arrive to the dance circle still dancing for swag reasons. My mom taught aerobics and yoga when I was young, so I experienced a slew of intense, exclusive aerobic remixes of songs like “Sweet Dreams” by La Bouche and a lot of Enya, as well as tapes of just field sounds.
In addition to my mother, I have had the pleasure of dancing with many beautiful latina women at the hip-hop clubs. The latinas are every good dancers, they really know how to move. Anytime I spot a latina on the dance floor I attempt to dance with her, knowing that it will improve my skill as a dancer.
I have stumbled upon some really rad synthy and danceable tunes as of recently, Milk N Honey by Sir Stephen (via Altered Zones) is a synth dream, taking me back to my mom’s aerobic classes, it’s a track filled with tones of the 90’s club scene. Outtacontrol by LDFD is a slow-moving track to score your more fluid dance movements too, and is also ideal for grinding if you are into that. M83’s Midnight City is an instant ‘indie dance night at the local club’ song, I can see it’s popularity in the clubs being synonymous to early MGMT. The Round and Round C-Powers remix (via Friendship Bracelet AKA everything C-Powers) is a good track for glitch dance moves. Of course, we can’t leave salad fork homie Dreams West outta the mix.
Sir Stephen: Milk N Honey
LDFD: Outtacontrol
M83: Midnight City
Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti: Round And Round (C Powers Remix)
KOI POND
Last night I hung out with a bunch of my favorite Allston homies and hit up the Gatekeeper/Teengirl Fantasy/Pictureplane show at Great Scott. Below is a video of Teengirl Fantasy playing “Koi Pond” from their newest record out on True Panther titled 7 AM. Some photos after the jump.
TEENGIRL FANTASY :: KOI POND from Lou Kishfy on Vimeo.
Related:
Teengirl Fantasy: Cheaters
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GIRLS ON FILM 4
Miss Lea Mandana recently turned me onto Girls On Film, it’s a blog that puts together issuu’s of film portraits of girls. There are some really beautiful photos in this zine (including one by Lea herself), I suggest you check it out while listening to this new Porcelain Raft track to score your viewing.
Open publication - Free publishing - More camera
[via]
YOUTH'S HOURS
I was really, really happy when I saw words about some new YUNG LIFE pop up on my facebook news feed this morning via Stadiums and Shrines. I must’ve listened to Yung Life’s track Patient Love over and over again last summer during train rides to visit Paul Morse, Sammy Birthdays and Liz Pelly in Boston as I did continuously throughout the rest of the year. Yung Life literally hasn’t made anything fresh in about a year, and suddenly an LP pops up seemingly out of nowhere. This LP is very complete, ambient synth tones create landscapes and reflect against vocals and create a dream-pop effect. Divulge in this genius of an album below.
MISS SENSUAL
Andreanna is the project of one of my favorite twitter/radio show host sweethearts Andi Wilson, and her debut track titled New Beginnings is one that is soaked in a dreamy psychedelic haze with her soft, soothing vocals are seemingly intertwined with the music itself. This tracks’ percussion reminds me of a gaussian distribution, a subtle start that increases gradually to a plateau and then declines to a very satisfying end.
INSTRUMENTALS AND B-SIDES
There are some very rad Craft Spells off-shoots in this folder, it’s like getting inside Justin’s head. I posted up several of my favorites below, but you can also download the whole thing here. These tracks bounce around a few different sub-genres making these short .mp3s and .wav files real fun to listen to.
ECHOLOCATION
Echolocation is a process that marine mammals use to gather information about their surroundings and find food, and it’s especially helpful when marine mammals are traveling through dark and/or murky water. Echolocation works by the animal producing either sounds or sonar clicks that reflect back when they come into contact with an object. This is an ability that toothed whales have, so it’s important to note that some of the bigger whales such as right whales or blue whales who are not toothed navigate and find food using different means. In reference to right whales in particular, they are particularly prone to death by ship collisions. Due to their copious amount of blubber, sonar does not always pick up these massive creatures.
More recently, a company named Farsounder has been developing a forward-looking 3D Sonar that would be a detect whales by generating an ‘image’ of what is under you in front of you.
It’s pretty interesting how we’ve replicated the ability to echolocate for our own human use, with patents created very shortly after the sinking of the Titanic. I think what interests me the most about science is how sometimes we can take something that is biological and organic and replicate it non-organically for human use.
I recently stumbled upon Lone’s Echolocation EP on Friendship Bracelet and I really look how the record takes 90s-esque dance beats to move forward through the songs. The tracks are most nearly some form of House with an ambient influence, check it below to see for yourself.
THE OPTIMIZATION OF MUSIC INTEGRATION INTO THE INTERNET
For the last few days I’ve been virtually dj-ing using Turntable.fm, a website that allows you to play songs in a chat-room like setting. What I like the most about turntable.fm is that it makes it easy to find rooms with people you are friends with facebook with or follow on twitter, and well, ‘chat’ with them. It’s cool because usually these are people that I wouldn’t normally share more than 140 characters with and these chat rooms allow you to either shoot the shit or talk about the artist you are playing/find new tunes.
The above screenshot was from a room I played in last night with someone from Audiomilk.com (A pretty rad music site), Ryan Schreiber from Pitchfork, and Chris from Gorilla Vs. Bear (among others). Obviously it’s pretty cool to play music alongside some of the biggest tastemakers in music, and this is something that a public service can bring. I only played three tracks, it can take a while to get to your turn with 5 virtual DJ’s on the turntables. I think I gained about seventy DJ points playing those three songs (which is a lot by turntable.fm standards) which I can use to upgrade my guy to have a cool outfit. It’s essentially an incentive to use the site more. It’s kind of tough for me to see turntable.fm being fun much longer, and I say this only because it can become kind of tedious uploading tracks and waiting a while for your turn. I can see this as being something we’ll be doing every other day only to eventually get bored with the concept and kind of forget about it. I think it’s more important to take what this means more for the integration of music into the internet, between all of our iPhone apps and virtual services like these I feel like it’s becoming evident that the future of music and the internet is going to be a more public, shared experience.
In addition to Turntable.fm, google chrome extension/iPhone app Ex.fm allows users to organize and discover new music on the internet and share it with your friends. This is another service that is optimizing our online music listening experience, and I think we’ll have a more organized and efficient way of finding music in the future using websites and applications such as these. As with engineering, efficiency is key. We want to be able to be more organized, easier. That’s something ex.fm allows us to do.
Below are some of my favorite oldies that I listened to while in some of these rooms (I think a bunch of these were songs that @cardooons played):
Little Anthony and the Imperials: Gonna Fix You Good
Frankie Valli & the Four Seasons: Can’t Take My Eyes Off You
