Now that Cyberspace And Reds and Computers And Blues are out, all that's left is a tour before The Streets are no more. The final (but unfinished) Streets song was released on The Guardian. I assume it was originally intended to have vocals, but it has been released as an instrumental.
'(This song) was created by me as the final song by The Streets. I intended on calling it "Close The Book" as the first song I ever wrote for The Streets was called "Turn The Page". On realizing that this would be shit, I decided to bin it.'
Right-click on the image and 'save link as' to download the song, or just left-click it to listen to the song in your browser.
I think Mike Skinner should have finished the song and put it on the final Streets album. It would have made a fitting end to Computers And Blues, even as an instrumental.
The Streets have a new interactive branched narrative film that goes along with the new album, Computers And Blues. It's a pretty cool way to take advantage of the annotation boxes on youtube video players.
If you're interested in what you hear in the Computers And Blues film, you may be interested in listening to the Computers And Blues album, which will be released on Monday the 7th. But you don't have to wait that long, because you can listen to the whole album on the music player below!
I think my favorite song on the album is "OMG", even if it's about dramatic facebook relationship paranoia. It seems to me as though "OMG" is the new "Dry Your Eyes", even though "OMG" has a happier ending.
I'm a big fan of interesting and creative band merchandise, from the perspective of being a fan and being a future creator and seller of my own band merchandise. Some band merch is wonderfully obvious...
The Streets logo is a lighter with "THE STREETS" printed on it.
Mike Skinner said in a recent video that "The Streets logo is a lighter 'cause we were sitting in Victoria station one afternoon trying to sum up my vibe, and my friend came back... with a Clipper and somehow it seemed to represent my whole life. We later went on to a party and that Clipper got used."
Although the design of the lighter logo has changed with each album, the logo always appeared on the cover of every album. From the second album on, it was always a Clipper lighter. What I didn't know is that on tour, they've been selling the lighters as merchandise. People who have been a fan of the band for a long time possibly have a whole collection, one lighter from each album. Skinner posted a photo today on The Streets website of lighters that are identical to the yellow and blue one on the cover of the new album Computers And Blues.
I think it's a brilliant merch idea. The lighter is sort of a big part of the mythology and aesthetic of The Streets. It's iconic. It's like owning a prop from a movie you love. Even though I don't smoke, I'd love one of those Clippers.
The Streets released a mixtape album today called Cyberspace And Reds, which seems to sort of be a companion piece to the soon-to-be-released album Computers And Blues. The Streets mastermind Mike Skinner posted a barcode on his website today, along with instructions to download an iphone app called "mike scanner" to scan the barcode with, and further instructions to also scan the barcode on a "300g tin of tomato soup by a well known brand". Although it has been reported on various sites that the soup brand is Heinz, I assumed it was supposed to be a can of Campbell's tomato soup, as that is a very well known brand, and Mike Skinner has been seen multipletimes wearing a t-shirt featuring an Andy Warhol silkscreen of a can of Campbell's tomato soup. After scanning both barcodes, you're able to download the album.
I'm all for games such as that, but not everyone has an iphone or a can of tomato soup handy, so we must get Cyberspace And Reds another way. After some digging I found the album on YouSendIt, where you can download it for free. Then I did a bit more digging and found this SoundCloud player where you can listen to the album without downloading it.
I really like Cyberspace And Reds. Some of the songs on the album are edited versions of ones Mike Skinner has posted on his site previously, and I even recognized one ("Robots Are Taking Over") as a Computers And Blues outtake that he posted on twitter quite a while back. There are several UK hiphop artists as guests on the album, emphasizing the mixtape aspect of the album. I recommend the album to everyone.
The Streets' final album Computers And Blues will be released on February 7th.
If you enjoyed that music video I posted the other day, and thought it was as clever as I thought it was, you may want to watch this "making of" video:
Like I said the other day, the new album by The Streets, Computers And Blues, will be out on February 7th, 2011.
Over a year ago there was talk of a new album by The Streets, a British hiphop project started by Mike Skinner. You may have heard that David Bowie likes The Streets, but I'm not sure where you would have heard such a thing. It is slightly less known that I am also a fan of The Streets. Needless to say, The Streets' music is pretty awesome.
I had been following Skinner's updates on his site and on twitter for a while, hoping for news about the new album, titled Computers And Blues, but then he suddenly seemed to disappear completely from the internet on October 18th, 2009.
Exactly one year later he reappeared on twitter with a link to his newly designed website. There's a ticker on the top corner of the page, counting down to February 7th, 2011. That's the date Computers And Blues will finally be released. The site's basically in a blog format with written entries and video blogs which featured Skinner answering questions asked by his followers on twitter. It didn't take long before he started getting really creative and sometimes answering them in the form of songs and posting other songs as well. I've been really enjoying everything he's posted so far, and here's one of my favorites:
