I make things on the internet
One of my favourite albums for wandering around the city, doing workouts, etc., is All Day by Girl Talk. It’s a DJ mix sampling a huge variety of songs. Nice for those times when you don’t want any breaks between tracks, or have to think about what to play next.
Not sure if you can find it on streaming services, too many samples for licensing. But you can still grab a copy at Illegal Art.
New Chvrches is ?
Created a record collection page. It’s pretty raw at the moment, mostly spitting out the text lists I made while yak shaving the other night.
Sad Songs for Dirty Lovers
Sunday morning music: The Strokes
I recently heard about Lou Reed’s take on Kanye West’s Yeezus album and I’ve gone back to the album with a renewed sense of interest. Worth reading and re-listening to the album, if you haven’t already.
He knows about all kinds of music and popular culture. The guy has a real wide palette to play with. That’s all over Yeezus. There are moments of supreme beauty and greatness on this record, and then some of it is the same old shit. But the guy really, really, really is talented. He’s really trying to raise the bar. No one’s near doing what he’s doing, it’s not even on the same planet.
Wugazi is combination of Fugazi and Wu-Tang Clan, created by Cecil Otter and Swiss Andy. The album, 13 Chambers is available to download from their site.
Dan Solomon interviewed the pair and discussed how the album came to be. For the technically minded, Joe Gross offers a track-by-track breakdown of the album.
In casual conversation, music is one of those those canonical small-talk subjects that ranks up there with the weather. Even if you don’t share musical tastes, the topic can provide numerous avenues of discussion before the canapés arrive. It should be easy, but my encounters tend to go something like:
“So what do you listen to?”
“Umm… well… you know… lots of stuff.”
Which, is usually followed by some mumbling and wild gesticulation in attempt to coax a few band names out of my brain. Meanwhile, I’m hoping the prolonged awkward silence will push the conversation in a different direction or at least give me the opportunity to pull out my phone and distract them with videos of kittens falling over.
If my sparing partner actually seems interested and vaguely techno-savvy, I point them towards my last.fm profile. Of course, it’s just a clever way to redirect the discussion and draw attention away from the fact that I know nothing about my own musical tastes.
Now, we move on to a subject which could be considered tangential, if it hadn’t already been mentioned in the title and featured prominently in graphical format. Yes, this is a lazy segue.
I’m a regular user of the genius mix feature in iTunes, it provides a decent base for playlists and can set an overall tone better than DJ. On the other hand, I probably used the genius mixes feature once or twice when it came out and forgot about it. Most of my music wasn’t in genius at the time, but it’s the lack of customizability kills it for me.
The genius mix label gets lost in the iTunes sidebar’s sea of text, so I don’t normally notice it. I was playing around with the iPad’s Remote app, where the feature seems much more prominent and decided to give it awhirl. Honestly, I’m still not a big fan of the feature, the lack of customizability kills it for me. Although, now that more of my music is indexed it drew my attention to the genres and iTunes’ perception of my listening habits:
There we have it — new fodder for the small-talk cannon. It doesn’t even matter if the list is accurate. Memorize the genres, spit out a few of them at any given time and you’ve got enough permutations to last a lifetime or at least until the last course is served.
Stjepan Hauser and Luka Sulic playing Smooth Criminal by Michael Jackson. That is all.
The top artist for 2010 from my last.fm account. The graphic isn’t from the end of the year, but the stats should be close, we’re only a week into 2011. The idea was stolen from russell davies.
You may also be interested in last.fm’s best of 2010, and Hype Machine’s zeitgeist. It gives you some idea about what people were actually listening to versus what critics were writing about.