Saul Williams in Paris Catacombs

Saul Williams and his band were filmed exploring and playing music in the Paris Catacombs. It's one of the most inspiring things I've seen in a while.

Seen it comin', baby.

David Lynch's album Crazy Clown Time came out yesterday. I've been pretty excited about it, and have a feeling I'm going to be listening to it a lot. I've listened to those two songs I posted a few months ago many, many times. Here's a little video that's sort of an ad for the album, featuring Lynch working in the studio.

SONOIO Red

I'm pretty late posting it, but since I've been pretty obsessed with it lately and haven't written about it, I figured I should write about it. Alessandro Cortini (from Modwheelmood and formerly from Nine Inch Nails) started a new project last year called SONOIO. I never really got into SONOIO's debut album Blue, but this year, Cortini released a followup called Red, which is fantastic. And he released a video for the song "Enough". It's a very cool and simple video, and if you aren't in love with the song after one listen, you should probably check yourself in to a hospital as soon as possible, because there's something wrong with you.



You can listen to Red on the music player on the SONOIO website. You can also download the first four songs for free, or buy the full album in a variety of formats. If you scroll further down the page, you'll also find all of the same options for Blue.

David Lynch's Crazy Clown Time

Did you know that filmmaker David Lynch is a musician? He sure is. And he's got an album coming out on November 8th this year called Crazy Clown Time.

Here's a track from the album called "I Know".



And another called "Good Day Today".

Crosses †††

Chino Moreno from Deftones and Team Sleep has a new project with Shaun Lopez from Far. It is called Crosses (alternatively known as the symbols †††).


Their debut EP can be downloaded for free on their website. You can also pay $5 to receive all of the artwork and lyrics and get higher quality versions of the tracks in the format of your choice.

Here's "†his Is A †rick", the first track from the EP.

It is a dark time for the Rebellion.

Last night I had a dream. I don't want to tell you the whole dream, but I really want to share with you my favorite part:

I went to a school play put on by kindergarteners that somehow combined the story of the founding fathers of the United States of America, and the Cloud City portion of The Empire Strikes Back. All of the characters were played by 5 year olds in full costume, except for Lando Calrissian, who was still played by actor Billy Dee Williams.

Taco Bell & Rudeness

I've been in Florida for a few days with my family, visiting relatives. Yesterday we went to a beach. On our way back to my aunt's house, where we were staying, my sister and I got a Taco Bell craving. When we got to the restaurant, we walked in, and there was this divider wall between the door we came in and the counter, and my sister seemed to not know which way to go around. I said we should go to the right since that's how you usually go up to the counter in fast food restaurants. On the way up to the counter, I realized we were walking on a freshly-mopped floor, which made me hesitate for a second, but since we were already several steps into it, we just kept going. There was a "wet floor" sign around the corner which we had no way of seeing from where we came in. I am a janitor, and have been for years. Mopping is a big part of my job, and it's not that big of a deal when someone walks across a floor you just mopped. Floors are meant to be walked on. That's their purpose. And obviously they get dirty. That's what mopping is for. And whenever you mop the floor, it's only a matter of time before someone walks across it again. It's just the nature of the job. If you are bothered by it, you'll go crazy.

So anyway, there was a young girl (maybe a teenager, maybe in her early 20's) behind the cash register, and as we got closer to the counter and I smiled at her, the thought in my head was, "She's rather cute." Then she spoke.

"Why didn't you just go the other way?" It was a very rude tone, and it really caught me off guard. I wasn't quite sure how to respond. The phrase that came out of my mouth was "I... don't... know." She repeated her question, possibly with an even ruder tone than she originally said it. My sister and I both explained to her that in most restaurants there is a queue with ropes or railings, and you are supposed to enter at the right and exit on the other side where you pick up your food. In fact, this might have been the only time I've been in a Taco Bell where it wasn't set up like that. First she acted like she had absolutely no idea what we were talking about, and eventually she said "Well it's not like that." My sister said "Well obviously we can see that now." That shut her up.

We attempted to pick out what we wanted by looking up at the menu, but we could feel her staring daggers at us. I couldn't concentrate on the menu for more than 2 seconds at a time without my line of sight dropping back down to the girl behind the register. I was planning on still ordering food there, as I am pretty easygoing when it comes to the rudeness of strangers, but my sister was offended enough that she didn't even want to eat there. We walked back out the same way we came in, walking over the slightly less freshly-mopped floor.

Volcanic Sunlight...

...is the innermost part of something special.

Saul Williams' new album Volcanic Sunlight comes out on May 2nd (and I'm assuming May 3rd in the States), just a few days from now. I guess I'm a little late with this, but on April 21st, he posted four videos on youtube about the album.

Gerard Smith

A member of one of my favorite bands, TV On The Radio died this morning. Gerard Smith was a pretty young guy (34 years old), and I wasn't even aware he was fighting lung cancer, so his death came as quite a shock to me. While he is mostly known for being the bass player with stage fright (I can relate to that), he also has been credited for many other instruments, including guitar, electric sitar, piano, organ, synthesizers, Rhodes, samples, and vocals.

I'm not sure if Gerard Smith is credited on the song "Will Do", since 4 of the 5 members of the band are credited for playing bass on their new album Nine Types Of Light (which was just released about a week ago), but I wanted to post it anyway.

Judgment Day

According to The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Skynet goes online in less than a few hours. On Thursday it will become self-aware and attempt to destroy humanity. Just wanted to warn you guys.

haiku

Jar of vampires
Sucking blood with the lights on
Fireflies with fangs

Werewolf Balls, Spaceman Balls.

Here's a little update since I haven't posted anything in a while.

I went to a St. Patrick's Day party at my cousin Megan's house. We ate food, talked, played board games, played Rock Band (including the wonderful LEGO version). Here's a photo of some of us playing Rock Band. I'm the tall guy standing up.



A week later, I went to the mall with Patrick and Caleb. It was Caleb's first malltrip with us, and I was worried that our malling style was boring him, because we generally just wander around aimlessly, but I think we all had a good time.

We went to a toy store in the mall, and played in there for quite a while. This toy store always has cheap, statuesque "action" figures that don't come in any packaging, so it was quite easy to play with them, or mostly just posing them. I put a man with a gun riding a white tiger, shooting at a triceratops. There was a werewolf figure that I noticed was so detailed that it was actually anatomically correct. While it was wearing torn blue shorts, they were very tight, and you could easily see the bulges where his penis and testicles were. Whoever designed that figure must have been such a perfectionist. I made the anatomically correct werewolf ride a horse.

When we went to the food court to eat dinner, there was a new Chinese restaurant right next door to the Chinese restaurant we usually get food at when we're at the mall. We were walking past the new restaurant to get to our usual place when we were intercepted by a young man giving out samples of chicken. Then we noticed our usual place also had a person out in front aggressively handing out chicken samples. The other restaurants in the food court must have felt that these two competing Chinese restaurants giving out samples were making them look bad, or maybe it just got them into the competitive spirit too, because several other restaurants were giving out free samples of their food too. If we had just walked one lap around the food court collecting free samples, we probably would have gotten the equivalent of an entire meal, and I'm not exaggerating at all.

The Borders Books at the mall went out of business. I had no idea until we got there and the store was almost completely empty. There would be an almost completely empty shelf except for one lonely book I'd never heard of sitting there. We didn't even go in because it looked so depressing. Borders was probably my favorite store at the mall. Besides the fact that it just had so many things I'm interested in, it also stayed open an hour later than every other store in the mall, so even after most of the mall was closing, you could go hang out at Borders for a while before going home. Now when all the other stores close, there's no where to go except home. We walked by Borders again later, and it was completely empty. No books on any shelf, and there was a sign on the door that said "Closed". I assume it meant for good, so we practically watched it die. I looked in the window of that empty store with empty shelves, and a sign on the bookshelf ten feet in front of me said "True Crime". Well said, sign. Well said.

We also saw the movie Paul. I'm kind of shocked I haven't heard anyone talk about this movie, even though it's been over a week now since I saw it. It's seriously the best new comedy I've seen in ages. I didn't know much about it going in, aside from who played the three main characters, and I was expecting to at least enjoy myself, but I couldn't have guessed I'd be nearly as entertained as I was. There were so many wonderful actors showing up throughout the movie, including Sigourney Weaver (whose voice I recognized immediately), and there was a "phoned-in" cameo by one of my favorite filmmakers. There were so many references to science fiction movies that I love, but they were always really clever references. There was a lot of swearing, but it all had to do with the story, and was really funny swearing that I can guarantee you've never heard anything like before. The movie was also surprisingly pretty deep and intelligent. Anyone who is a fan of comedies, or a fan of Simon Pegg and Nick Frost (from Spaced, Shaun Of The Dead, and Hot Fuzz), and anyone who is into Science Fiction needs to go see the movie.

Also, I guess I should mention I finally took a driving test today and passed. I now have a license to drive.

The Nannan Morning News

One of my favorite LEGO builders is Nannan Z. On The Dallas Morning News website, there is a video of Nannan talking about the LEGO hobby and showing off his massive collection and some of his creations.



If you want to get a closer look at that awesome space station he made, you can check it out here.

You are sort of listening to Los Angeles.

Many times while I'm writing, I like to listen to music that fits the mood of whatever I'm writing, just to get my head in the right setting. It's often difficult to find something to fit the mood you want, but I usually listen to film scores.

I came across these "You are listening to..." pages which pair ambient music with police radio chatter from a city, complete with a beautiful photo of that city as the background to each page. The cities available are below:

Los Angeles
New York
San Fransisco
Chicago
Montréal

While it's a cool idea, I think it would be much better if the ambient music was actually from the city. While listening to the "You are listening to Los Angeles" page, I was clicking on the SoundCloud pages of each musician to find out where they were from. The whole time, I only noticed one musician that was actually from Los Angeles, and that was probably a coincidence. It would feel a lot more like you're listening to Los Angeles if there's not music from Portland, Brooklyn, or even Sweden playing instead of just music from Los Angeles. I e-mailed the suggestion to the maker of the "You are listening to..." pages.

Moby explores empty cities with new album Destroyed

I found out about another album to look forward to this year. On May 16th, Moby releases his new album Destroyed. Suffering from insomnia while on tour, Moby would write music at 2 AM when it felt like everyone else in the world was asleep. When he was done touring, he'd take the songs back to his studio to finish them. In an attempt to sum up the album, he described it as "broken down melodic electronic music for empty cities at 2 AM." Sounds like my kind of music!

The cover of the album is a photograph taken by Moby, who is releasing a photography book with the album. Wandering around LaGuardia airport after his flight was delayed, he came across an electronic sign that said "Unattended luggage will be destroyed." The small sign could only fit one word at a time, so when it just said the word "destroyed", he took a photograph. I love wandering around airports, so this just makes me want to listen to the album even more.


He has already released the Be The One EP, which features three songs, all of which will be on Destroyed. You can download the free EP below.

I'll, however, wait until the full album comes out to listen to any of it.

like omg who is arcade fire??!!?

It would take me quite a while to explain all of the reasons why this is so damn funny.

Dynamite Steps by The Twilight Singers

The Twilight Singers have a new album called Dynamite Steps coming out on the 15th. It's one of the albums being released in 2011 that I've really been looking forward to. The Twilight Singers is one of my favorite bands ever, and in my opinion, singer/songwriter Greg Dulli (previously from the band The Afghan Whigs) is one of the best songwriters I know of. I haven't gotten a chance to listen to it yet, but you can listen to Dynamite Steps on the music player below.

UPDATE: The music player is no longer available. At this point I have listened to the album many times, and can tell you that it's amazing and beautiful. I definitely recommend it.

Turn the page, close the book.

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.

In a video on The Guardian website, Mike Skinner said:

'(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.

Computers And Blues

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.

Low to release new album on April 12th

Low's new album C'mon will be released on April 12th.

Download the first song "Try To Sleep" by signing up for the mailing list below, or just listen to the song by going to their website.

Endless Hallway unveil new album and video

Endless Hallway released their new album today. Self-titled, seven songs. The album features a less polished approach than their previous album Autonomy Games, most likely due to them producing it themselves this time. In addition to the song "Brambles", there's a slightly different version of "Magneton" and a drastically different version of a demo they did a few years back that I loved called "Mercy". You can listen to the album on the player below, but it costs $5 to download. The song "Beachwood" is a free download.



The band also has a new video for the song "Beachwood".

"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.