Record Store Day is right around the corner, folks.
In honor of the independent music mini-holiday, I wrote a guest post for local music website, buffaBLOG.
Music has always played a major role in my life, and I can trace that back to my pop’s passion for the stuff. A big thanks goes out to that guy.
Anyway, check out my blog post here, and support your local record store and music scene.
- PS
Ever heard of The Residents? No? Not surprised.
The crazed San Franciscan oddballs eyeballs have been making weird music for over four decades.
To celebrate the 40th anniversary of their first release, 1972’s “Santa Dog” single, the group is releasing what they call the Ultimate Box Set. For $100,000, this “box set” takes the compilation cake.
That being said, this “box set” doesn’t come in any ol’ box. Instead, buyers receive a 28-cubic-foot refrigerator filled with over 100 Residents items, including an iconic eyeball-and-top-hat mask and other “objects.” As for actual music, the fridge comes packed with 563 songs on 40 vinyl LPs, 50 CDs, dozens of singles, EPs, DVDs and CD-ROMs.
So, you love The Residents, but you don’t have 100K just laying around? No problem. “Have a bake sale,” presses Residents frontman “Randy.” “Sell a gddamned kidney if you have to.” Only 10 of these puppies will be available for purchase on Christmas morning, so maybe you’ll want to sell a friends’ kidney too. When he wakes up in a bathtub full of ice, you can show him your new refrigerator and explain, with good reason, why you had to cut him open.
If you do have an extra hundred stacks in your piggy bank, you might be able to afford the mystery box “Randy” advertises. This one clocks in at $5 million.
If anyone can pull off this bizarre stunt, it’s probably The Residents. The band of artists/performers/musicians have been turning pop culture on its head since the mid-1960s while wearing tuxedos, top hats and giant eyeball masks. Oh yeah, they’ve maintained anonymity the entire time.
Head to theresidents.com on Christmas morning to get yours.
- PS
New week! Here’s a (less new) Little Daylight remix of Edward Sharpe’s “Man on Fire.”
Elsewhere, in missed music musings from this summer: Sasha Frere-Jones talks about Frank Ocean, and the particular blend of Ocean-fueled emotional isolation and clarity on the rise in American R&B.
Get to it, Monday.
- Maggie
Sufjan Stevens is out with his second Christmastime compilation, “Silver and Gold.” It’s a whopping three hours of 58 tracks over five volumes, so if you’re ready to batten down the holiday hatches and get right to it, here he is - NPR is streaming all five volumes this week. A nice preview if you prefer to dip a few toes in before committing.
And then, to ride this Sufjan train all the way to the station: the always excellent (Block Club pal) Scott Mancuso is penning an extensive five part album review over on buffaBLOG. The perfect, partially bearded spirit animal for your Sufjan Stevens Christmas journey.
- Maggie
Good morning! Let’s get the day started with some music, Mashup Monday roundup style. Lots to choose from, so pick your poison:
- Disco Tech Remix (Rolling Stones vs Daft Punk vs Dizze Rascal vs Ram Jam)
- Casbah Girls (Duran Duran vs. The Clash)
- Nervous-like Dap Kings (pfrank remix)
- The Chordettes, Lollipop (Squeak E Clean remix)
- Tolle Party (France Gall vs. CBRA)
- Chick Habit vs. Beastie Boys
- Rock the Casbah DJ Lifeguard Remix
- TAI vs. Mark Ronson Bang Bang
- Ooh Wee I Got Your Money (Mark Ronson vs ODB vs Kelis)
- The Clash vs. Erik B. vs. Rakim
- Beat Sauce (Duck Sauce vs. Michael Jackson)
- Gimme Gimme Shelter (Rick James vs. Black Sabbath vs. The Rolling Stones)
- LCD Soundsystem Disco Infiltrator (Stanton Warriors Remix)
Found a song? Hopefully. Let’s do this!
- Maggie
Attention party people! (Attention slightly more solitary people who like to create electronic music in the quiet of their own homes!):
DYSKOGRAF is a graphic disk reader. Each disc is created by visitors to the installation by way of felt tip pens provided for their use. The mechanism then reads the disk, translating the drawing into a musical sequence.
The installation is above all a tool, which allows the creation of musical sequences in an intuitive way. The notion of a loop, closely linked to electronic music, is represented here by the cycle of the disk. The disk passes indefinitely in front of a camera fixed onto an arm. This substitution for the needle converts the drawing into sound by way of a specific application program (software). Through this system, the sequential ordering of music is learnt in a playful way, at the same time creating a unique object, souvenir of the musical composition.
The numeric world is a world of binary choice. The object of DYSKOGRAF is to give room again for accidents in numeric creation, accidents that often favour creativity.
- Maggie
When was the last time you stopped and really listened to the soundtrack of life happening all around you? Make The City Sound Better has taken that idea and amplified it through 67 speakers in a traditional black London cab. The result is stunning both visually and acoustically.
- Steve
What’s up, science? A group of biologist have begun to study patterns in algae data through music. It’s nothing wildly practical, but it’s nonetheless super nerdy cool:
Larsen and his colleagues created different compositions to represent different aspects of their data. For example, the tune “Bloom” illustrates how some algae species bloom occasionally, becoming much more abundant for short periods of time.
“The melody is the abundance of microbial species - low notes correspond to lower abundances, and high notes correspond to higher abundances,” Larsen told LiveScience. “Chord progression is taken from physical parameters — day length, chlorophyll concentration in the water. When we combine those two, we select a note in the chosen octave that is in harmony with the chord that associates with the physical parameters.”
Bacterial theme music! The song starting at :45 feels like it could be the theme to a single camera sitcom - something involving a loveably hapless algae schlub as he navigates the salty waters of life and love. Talgaevision gold.
- Maggie
Buffalo’s grain silos, beautifully lit and exalted for all of this creative city to see. City of Night organizer Dana Saylor, and I’m sure an army of volunteers, has a lot to be proud of.
You can read and watch more about what City of Night was, but all you have to see are these images of light, color, vision and creativity. This event was successful because of all the art, vendors and activism, but more importantly, because it literally shed light on what we have to work with, and what we can create with it.
Good work, all around. Let’s do it again. Where else?
-Ben
After he gave up DJ’ing, Simons Foster needed a new outlet to express his creativity. Decorated Playlists is the result. The site showcases the fine line between music and design and how the two often mix. I’m typing this as I’m listening to some melodic beats that help me concentrate throughout the day for various projects.
There are currently fourteen different playlists available for your listening pleasure, enjoy!
- Steve
I’ve got a few remixes from SoundCloud that have been bouncing around several of my playlists lately. While they don’t necessarily fit perfectly together, here, humbly, are seven tracks with the (almost entirely out-of-date) little remix news I have:
- Frankie Rose’s “Apples for the Sun” has been remixed by the Go! Team with the beats and xylophone trills one can expect from the peppy Brighton six-piece. There’s always a lot of energy with the Go! Team, and their use of distortion usually makes me feel a bit like everything’s going down under a giant static-filled blanket.
- An Amtrac remix of Chromatic’s Birds of Paradise slaps the original brooding track around with some old school funk samples. Depends what you’re in the mood for, but this is a completely fun change up after a whole lot of moody Chromatics listens.
- Washed Out gets his hands on My Morning Jacket’s “Outta My System,” and, ooh boy, it’s really lovely. Most of the lyrics have been replaced with ruminations on consciousness that seem at home in some new age-y lecture or soul seminar, and then a few quiet “Outta My System” soundwaves wash back in to lap everything up.
- Someone has squished Blithe Field’s “Crushing” and Joanna Newsom’s “Peach, Plum, Pear” into a music sandwich. I can guess it’s not a flavor that everyone’s going to love, but I’ve found myself growing a bit partial to Newsom, that strange swoopy voiced siren. Patrick Simons put the excellent “Crushing” on my radar last year, and the two tracks together become a bit like hazy human catnip on longer drives.
- Rummage’s “dub rubdown” of Bon Iver’s Perth is labelled as “dub,” but I don’t know my way around dubstep music well enough to make any real statements on that - it’s the gentlest “dubstep” I’ve heard, I guess. Is dub different from dubstep? In any case, it’s a great addition to the calmer side of Bon Iver remixes. Just enough pulse to pick things up a bit, but still remains true to the Perthy essence of things. Or something.
- For a little more twang: the most perfect Tallest Man on Earth gets a little pep in his step with RythmiA’s rehash of “Blizzard.” Overall, it feels very non-invasive, if that’s a word you can use in this very non-serious context. (“Doctor, will it live? Will the remix live?”) Anyway, it very much remains true to the loveliest folk singer stomping around our planet at this point in time, and mostly it just adds a bit of a beat if you’d like to take said folk singer out for a run sometime.
- Finally, Kodak to Graph takes us on a breezy time warp back to the Jackson 5’s “I’ll Be There” days. ”I’ll Be There” has always made me feel a bit lonely thinking of the family drama inevitably brewing behind that iconic love song, but it feels especially dark now given the most recent drama of the Jackson Clan, what with the kidnapping accusations and the like. Hmm. But yes, I don’t know, it’s a very classic song, and Kodak to Graph gives it a different sort of weight here when he pulls it apart to all of its small pieces. This guy can make even Justin Bieber feel semi-poignant, so it makes for an interesting re-experience of the songs if nothing else.
Hopefully you’ll find at least one track you can enjoy. If not, then at least know I tend to agree - these are great, but there’s usually no replacing the originals.
- Maggie
[Image from Kodak to Graph’s Facebook page]
For at least a few days, the relentless summer heat seems to be taking a bit of a break in Buffalo. Enjoy the cooler air, and slow your summer roll with this little mix of songs made for a quieter kind of night:
Blood Sugar Love - The Real Tuesday Weld
Fleet Foxes - Isles
Swimming Story - Sea Oleena
Haller Lake - The Cave Singers
The Dreamer - Tallest Man on Earth
Wimbledon 1980 - Indian Wells
What’s On Your Mind? - Lo-Fi-Fnk
Republique - I Can Chase Dragons
Perth - Bon Iver (Rummage rubdown)
Little Army - Sea Oleena
Swimming Endless - Celista
Transforma - Niva
Nothing - Young Man
- Maggie
(Listen above, or head over to Block Club on 8tracks.com).
Good morning, world! Here’s a great new track from Kitten, an L.A.-based band fronted by Chloe Chaidez, who is, crazily, just 17 years old. World! You crazy 4.5 billion year old bag, you.
- Maggie
Ian Robertson has produced a fantastically detailed stop-motion video for Delta Heavy’s “Get By.” Robertson plays with classics of the board game variety in his butcher shop of beats, and the footage is a bit graphic - Hungry, Hungry Hippos were harmed in the making of this video.
(Robertson’s creation brings to mind the similar kitchen motif of Adam Pesapane’s most recent guacamole-inspired stop-motion. Check it out here!)
- Maggie
