Ukrainian band Los Colorados cover Kate Perry’s “Hot and Cold”.
Stop the world; I want to get off here. (via reddit; Wikipedia)
A weblog by Hao Lian.
A journey into the soft of night.
A terrible secret guarded by golems.
Stop the world; I want to get off here. (via reddit; Wikipedia)
Monks on Segways, with fire on the top of their heads, playing “Lightning” by Philip Glass. Good night, everybody. We’ll start storyboarding the next chapter of the internet tomorrow because this one just ended.
Do you enjoy good things? Then you will enjoy Lost Albums, a new weblog, and you will subscribe to its insanity.
WikipediaIt should be noted that only famous rappers get national media coverage when it comes to dissing others.
When Total Blowhards released a decaying corpse onto the music scene in 2006, it was a turning point for the band whose outlandish cult following had finally transgressed into a mainstream pop success. Their stylish, in-your-face attitude in releasing old-school, physical excrement as music proved to be a fruitful new middle ground in the long-standing divide between the sculptural and the aural arts. Total Blowhards aren’t afraid to emotionally experiment with the tastes and nuances of modern music culture despite their limited success in 2004 with their EP, a bowl of toenails. It’s no surprise that many critics have compared their Coldplay-like arrangement of poo and corn to 1970s excrement disco band I’m a Hardened Criminal or prog digesters Gets Away with Felonies. The strange physical texture of their bowl of crap is the most self-confident and enjoyable album yet. It kicks off with a refined yet lo-fi “awful smell” and using a discomforting yet yearning guitar solo to take the listener to “bacterial disease.” With a big-budget production like this bowl of crap, Total Blowhards risked the edge between cool and commercial but they’re not afraid to display their accessibility with the entry “stiff brown thing.” Joe Fyou has a knack for pushing out the best albums on the scene today. They end up grandiose, wry, sharp, experimental, focused, refined, goodly mannered, extravagant soundscapes that explore the very limits of music itself. ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
It’s time to talk about tower music. What it could’ve been. What it wasn’t. What never came to be.
We had a chance after 9/11 to create a new genre of music. Something bold that spoke to our generation—Generation Aww. Because we were the generation that saw those tragic events on TV and went “aww” for a week; maybe two weeks if you had a particularly boring life. We’ve seen it before, and how we’ve envied it. How classical-era music was born of the Renaissance. How blues were created when racism was invented. How folk music started when Peter Falk threw a guitar at a street urchin that had been bothering him but now, dead, bothered him no more. How alternative music started because “miscellaneous” was too hard to spell and “et cetera” was too pretentious. A pivotal event in history calls for a pivotal breakthrough in music. 9/11 could’ve been that pivotal event.
But we were lead astray by the sexiest, most alluring of all faults: the human ones; the ones of hubris. One catastrophe was enough but the flocks of problems and reasons for discontent multiplied. When we needed a single issue to lead the humble music scene, history failed us. And what do our children listen to? Hip hop. Thigh tussle. Rap. Liver l’accord. Clitoris clash. Hanna Montana. Idaho Schmidaho. Jaundice jangle. In short, pre-9/11 music. The last generation gave our generation the worst gift of all: Its music.
And, even when the moment is most dire for innovation in spangly instruments and quivering trebles (that’s synecdoche, mind you), no help arrives. For we had our chance, and we lost it. 9/11: It’ll never happen again goddammit.
An All Music Guide review of Elbow’s The Seldom Seen Kid recently came out. Note that it thinks Elbow is a plural noun. Here it is:
In a world where even the generally mediocre likes of Snow Patrol can have honest to goodness mainstream pop success, it seems peculiar that Elbow have never broken through beyond a devoted cult following. (Admittedly, the fact that their new labels, Polygram’s alt rock imprint Fiction Records in the U.K. and Geffen in the U.S., are their fourth and fifth, respectively, after stints on Island, EMI, and V2, may have a lot to do with their lack of mainstream attention.) Exploring the fruitful middle ground between early Radiohead’s mopey art rock and Coldplay’s radio-friendly dumbing down of the same, Elbow makes records built on a balance of things not often found together anymore: strange musical textures alongside immediately accessible pop song choruses, or unexpected left turns in song structure paired with frontman Guy Garvey’s warm, piercing vocals. It’s no surprise that Elbow are regularly compared to old-school prog rockers like Pink Floyd and Electric Light Orchestra: they’re proof that records can be cool and commercial at the same time, an idea that’s not particularly hip in this day and age. Yet a song like “Grounds for Divorce,” which puts a sharp, wryly funny Garvey lyric against a clanging, Tom Waits-like arrangement and throws on one of the album’s catchiest tunes for good measure, or “Some Riot,” which filters a yearning, lovely melody for guitar and piano through so many layers of effects and processing that it can be hard to tell what the original instruments sounded like, isn’t afraid to display its accessibility even on its most experimental numbers. At the album’s best, including the spacious, atmospheric balladry of the opening “Starlings” (imagine if Sigur Rós could write a pop song as emotionally direct as Keane’s “Everybody’s Changing”) and the potential radio breakthroughs of the soaring, semi-orchestral epic “One Day Like This” (complete with choral climax!) and the wistful “Weather to Fly,” The Seldom Seen Kid is Elbow’s most self-assured and enjoyable album so far. [The U.K. version added “We’re Away” as a bonus track.]
Now without all the fluffy adjectives that never seem to match up with anybody’s personal experiences:
In a world where even the likes of Snow Patrol can have pop success, it seems peculiar that Elbow have never broken through beyond a cult following. (Admittedly, the fact that their new labels, Polygram’s alt rock imprint Fiction Records in the U.K. and Geffen in the U.S., are their fourth and fifth, respectively, after stints on Island, EMI, and V2, may have a lot to do with their lack of attention.) Exploring the middle ground between early Radiohead’s art rock and Coldplay’s dumbing down of the same, Elbow makes records built on a balance of things not often found together anymore: textures alongside immediately choruses, or left turns in song structure paired with frontman Guy Garvey’s vocals. It’s no surprise that Elbow are regularly compared to prog rockers like Pink Floyd and Electric Light Orchestra: they’re proof that records can be cool and commercial at the same time, an idea that’s not particularly hip in this day and age. Yet a song like “Grounds for Divorce,” which puts a Garvey lyric against a Tom Waits-like arrangement and throws on one of the album’s tunes for good measure, or “Some Riot,” which filters a melody for guitar and piano through so many layers of effects and processing that it can be hard to tell what the original instruments sounded like, isn’t afraid to display its accessibility even on its most experimental numbers. At the album’s best, including the balladry of the opening “Starlings” (imagine if Sigur Rós could write a pop song as direct as Keane’s “Everybody’s Changing”) and the breakthroughs of the epic “One Day Like This” (complete with climax!) and the “Weather to Fly,” The Seldom Seen Kid is Elbow’s most self-assured and enjoyable album so far. [The U.K. version added “We’re Away” as a bonus track.]
Now without all the name-dropping of bands, which usually muddles the review with people you’ve never heard of playing music that never sounds remotely alike:
It seems peculiar that Elbow have never broken through beyond a cult following. Elbow makes records built on a balance of things not often found together anymore: textures alongside immediately choruses, or left turns in song structure paired with frontman Guy Garvey’s vocals. They’re proof that records can be cool and commercial at the same time, an idea that’s not particularly hip in this day and age. Yet a song like “Grounds for Divorce” or “Some Riot,” which filters a melody for guitar and piano through so many layers of effects and processing that it can be hard to tell what the original instruments sounded like, isn’t afraid to display its accessibility even on its most experimental numbers. At the album’s best, including the balladry of the opening “Starlings” and the breakthroughs of the epic “One Day Like This” (complete with climax!) and the “Weather to Fly,” The Seldom Seen Kid is Elbow’s most self-assured and enjoyable album so far. [The U.K. version added “We’re Away” as a bonus track.]
By the way, when did a song’s having a climax become so titillating? Now with only the sentence structures that describe the music on the actual album:
Elbow makes records built on a balance of things not often found together anymore: textures alongside immediately choruses, or left turns in song structure paired with frontman Guy Garvey’s vocals. Yet a song like “Grounds for Divorce” or “Some Riot,” which filters a melody for guitar and piano through so many layers of effects and processing that it can be hard to tell what the original instruments sounded like, isn’t afraid to display its accessibility even on its most experimental numbers. At the album’s best, including the balladry of the opening “Starlings” and the breakthroughs of the epic “One Day Like This” and the “Weather to Fly,” The Seldom Seen Kid is Elbow’s [best album yet].
Well, at least this album doesn’t discriminate against handicapped people.
You must
J. stood outside his room, staring at the faux oak paneling. He nestled his toes in the brittle gray carpet, which was last cleaned—by accident—back when the only hole the Antarctic had was The Sinkhole. The Sinkhole was and perhaps is still a grungy bar where rugged marine biologists, made cynics by the twin demons of academia and government, chugged down a few beers in between tackling polar bears and ice demons, both external and internal. J. knew none of this. If he had, his thoughts would’ve been quickly drowned out by the thumping bass music playing in the room across the hallway from the time J. tried to fall asleep to the time J. tried to fall awake. To understand J., we must first understand the brain.
The brain is a large biological machine run by God’s chemicals, things with a bunch of carbon in them usually. God likes carbon because he likes the number 12. Jesus once petitioned the people of Aramaia to convert to base 12 with no luck. The mathematic world, faced with this vacuum, chose base 10. By sheer coincidence, base 10 is Satan’s favorite number. Base 10 is Satan’s greatest achievement.
M. H.Oh, you look like a pirate! A handsome pirate!
The Tenacious Lip Baums: A Trial and Error Kind of Life on the High Seas: An Autobiography in Third-Person, Captain BlackbeardCaptain Blackbeard stared at the gaunt figure in the mirror, porcelain tiles swathed around these twins. “Sometimes I think about shaving,” he mused to no one. He wished he had a protégé; anybody to talk to, really. He reached for his razor blades. “Needle in the Haystack” began playing.
I spend too much time on Reddit.
from eukaryota.animalia.chordata.mammalia.primates.hominidae.homo import sapiens
from song.objects import *
import __main__
class Me(sapiens.Sapiens):
def __init__(self):
self.made_for = You()
def love(self, receiver): ...
def find(self, receiver): ...
def adore(self, receiver): ...
def receive_love(self, giver):
if not given == self.made_for: raise Exception()
...
def stare_at(self, object): ...
def feet_hit(self, object): ...
def check(self, object): ...
I = Me()
I.stare_at(Door())
I.feet_hit(Floor(cold = True))
I.check(Reflection(I))
mystery = False
for var in dir(__main__):
if type(var) == Passion: print 'Found passion'
if type(var) == Flame:
if var.creates_more_feeling(I): print 'Found flame'
assert type(I.made_for) == You
I.love(I.made_for)
I.find(I.made_for)
I.adore(I.made_for)
I.receive_love(I.made_for)