"Explain My Heart" music video

There's a new music video for the Saul Williams song I posted about a few months ago.

It's from his new album Volcanic Sunlight, which will be released this year. There's also a new interview on Dazed Digital where I found the video.

You can still download the song "Explain My Heart" for free by clicking here.

New music by Endless Hallway

According to ReviewRinseRepeat, Endless Hallway, one of my favorite newer bands, has a new album coming out tomorrow. It's the followup to their 2009 debut, Autonomy Games, which as I posted a while back, is a free download if you'd like to check that out. Apparently they've even been selling their new album at recent shows. When I find out how to go about getting the album, I will post about it.

Until then, here's a new song off of it to listen to called "Brambles"

In my opinion it is very reminiscent of Radiohead.

The Streets logo is a lighter.

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 release Cyberspace And Reds

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 multiple times 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.

This is what it looks like outside the house this morning.

I love when the snow sticks to the trees like this.

That's the driveway in front, one of the hills that my siblings and I used to sled down when we were kids.

The snow on that tree to the right reminds me of when people make gingerbread houses with frosting as snow.

The railing you can see is about the top half foot of our deck railing sticking out above the snow.

My Favorite Albums Of 2010

It's the last day of 2010, and I'm an opinionated music fan with a blog, so it's probably the law that I have to make one of these lists, right?

While there are still plenty of albums I've been meaning to check out this year that I haven't gotten to yet (Massive Attack, the new Gorillaz album, etc.), these albums really stuck out to me in 2010:





I feel like I haven't stopped listening to Crystal Castles or Plastic Beach since the albums came out, so those easily get the top 2 spots on the list. Also honorable mention goes to Barking by Underworld. I also thought Tron: Legacy, Inception, and The Social Network had really great film scores.

The cocking of the rifles, the marching of the feet.

Today I faintly overheard my big brother, who is visiting for the holidays, talking to my dad at the other side of the house about guns and the inevitable collapse of civilization. I think some degree of survivalism runs in our family. I wanted to experience that conversation, so I walked into the room they were in to find my dad showing my brother some of his rifles. They decided to go out and shoot his Weatherby rifle, which uses .270 Winchester cartridges, and I decided to go along.

As you might remember, this past fall, my dad and I went shooting with my cousin Patrick and his parents. This time was quite a bit different because there's snow and it's freezing out.

We shot at a target printed out on a sheet of computer printer paper, 8.5" by 11", a small image of which can be seen below.

The smaller colored circles on the target are the shots from a range of 100 yards. We each took 3 shots. My dad's shots are signified by yellow dots, my brother's are signified by blue dots, and mine are signified by red dots. My brother and I each missed the target with one of our shots, so you only see two of the small dots for each of us. I'm pretty proud of how close the ones that hit were to the center of the target.

Next we moved back to 200 yards, and my brother and I each took two shots, which are the larger colored circles on the target. Again, my brother's shots are signified in blue and mine in red. With my brother's and my shots, there seems to be a pattern in the relationship between our shots from 100 yards and 200 yards, but it's probably mostly a coincidence. Interesting nonetheless.