2009 was an interesting year for music.
Autotune was bigger than ever, regardless of what Jay-Z declaired. Kings of Leon got huge. Country fans had a critically-acclaimed Brad Paisley album to cherish, indie fans had their Animal Collective LP and EP. Boom Boom Pow was Big Big Bucks. Lady Gaga became a sort of modern day Madonna. Drake made the most successful mixtape ever.
Let DJ Earworm, mashup artist extraordinaire, take you through the Billboard Top 25 for 2009.
What a year.
Radiohead is more than the liberal arts equivalent of Dave Matthews Band. Radiohead is more than Oasis with an anxiety disorder.
I don't give a damn if it's hyperbolic. Radiohead can only be compared with The Beatles.
Not only because Paranoid Andriod was inspired by Happiness Is a Warm Gun, not only because they both grew up on the other side of the pond, or because their stylistic trajectories were so similar (both sold out in the beginning only to drift into critically acclaimed artistic experimentation), but because, damn it, no other band since The Beatles has produced so many good songs.
Radiohead never reached the mainstream success of the Fab Four, but then again, that would have been impossible. It's a different era. Could you imagine The Beatles giving away "Let It Be" away on the internet for free? Well, maybe...
The following concert showcases Radiohead at their best. Lots of classics, with plenty of different interpretations to get old fans excited. Big thanks to Ryan's Smashing Life for the bootleg.
Energetic, moody, eclectic, anthemic. Fuck the adjectives, it's just a great show.
Radiohead - Live at Earl's Court (London, UK - Nov 26, 2003)
Their mashups are party-ready.
Their website is Web 2.0 friendly.
Mostly, they pitch up hip-hop acapellas and put them over house music. Think MIMS over Phonat.
If you check out their earlier stuff, you’ll see how much these guys have developed in a relatively short time span.
The White Panda – Sweetest Fascination
The White Panda – What Lonely Girls Do
The White Panda – Stand Up Like a Pimp
The White Panda – Eminem Front
via Gray’s Anatomy
Acapellas are either given to a producer privately so that he can create a remix, or they are bundled with the single. We don’t care about either of these option, because we’re cheap and lazy. We’re nabbing an acapella from the sewers of private forums, torrents, Rapidshare, and their ilk. We’re going to pick an acapella that was released by the studio, rather than a low quality DIY acapella. Let’s go for something uptempo – something around 130 bpm -- since this will make it easier to mix into a set.
Three 6 Mafia – Stay Fly (Acapella)
I’ve chosen this remix by Super MilkMen for its dirty bassline, big builds and drops, and weird effects.
Really you just have to play the acapella over a bunch of different songs and see what feels right.
Killa Kela - Built Like An Amplifier (Super Milkmen Remix)
Use your favorite DJ software and voila!
I didn’t mess around with the song structures of either songs. I cued them together so they would be in sync and just played the acapella over the instrumental.
The Worst Beatle - Stay High Like An Amplifier
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“Damn good indie rock is hard to come by.” – The Worst Beatle
Calexico - Not Even Stevie Nicks ...
image via lookbook
Genre Blender is like a random playlist from my music collection, only a little more handpicked.
In this mix, we have jazz, riddim, electro hop mashup, a 1920s recording of Chopin, Sinatra, and another old recording: this time, of a famous opera aria.
Bill Evans Trio - How My Heart Sings (From Trio ‘65)
Jimi Tenor/Tony Allen – Selfish Gene
A-Trak - Throw Some D's In Your Life
Say Anything - I Got Your Money
Chopin - Ballade no. 4 in F Minor op. 52 (Alfred Cortot)
Frank Sinatra - Nothing But The Best
Puccini – Turandot: Nessun Dorma (Jussi Björling)
Jeff Mangum belongs to a long tradition of singer-songwriters who can’t sing. Mangum isn’t just off-key; sometimes he misses the whole fucking note. Of course, his voice possesses a certain charm. He’s also is in a smaller tradition of singer-songwriters who aren’t talented at their instruments. He’s technically fine, but everything he plays is very simple. Spend a week learning the guitar, and you too can perform one of these fine songs.
The lyrics are psychedelic in the truest sense of the word. Intense interpersonal emotions give way to dissolution of the physical body, mixed senses, hallucinatory images, religious and archetypal imagery, and a bizarre awareness of the body and sexuality that incorporates familial feeling and notions of disgust.
From “Little Birds”:
Little birds born without a mother or a father
I can watch their bodies forming in the running water.
Now there is another in the middle of my mouth,
100 all together within me now.
Little bird little bird come into my body.
From “Rubby Bulbs”:
I need to taste your voice in my mouth.
I need to taste your voice in the air,
And I need to feel your skin against all that I retch out
And feel your voice all over everywhere.
I need to paste your skin around the mailbox
And hold the postman in your smile.
I need to fill your lungs with smallpox
And fill the glow of a sick and distorted life.
Beautiful baby
All filled with angels.
From “Sailing Through”:
The world is all coming
They're coming in millions
Billions of people too sick to believe.
And I really wanted just to be in your body,
To be in your body,
To be inside you,
And I really wanted just to be in your body,
To share in your sickness,
To shield around you.
From My Sister
Oh sister, don't be afraid of me.
I won't be nailing you down in the nursery
Just like the rest of them did
With those watery, wandering fingers that slipped
That were supposed to be glorious and fine.
All of these recordings, except “Little Birds”, comes from the acoustic session at Aquarius Records. MP3s courtesy of this fan page.
Jeff Mangum – My Dreamgirl Don’t Exist
This band has become the Beatles of indie folk. Pitchfork gave them a 10/10 and interviewed a bunch of bands about how Neutral Milk Hotel inspired them. Comparisons to Dylan get tossed around. It’s a little strange.
They made one good album and one great album and then disbanded, presumably because fame was complicating the life of their obviously mentally disturbed singer, Jeff Mangum. If at any time Jeff pokes his head in a bar and picks up a guitar, some thrilled fan is going to make the bootleg of the year. If the band ever gets together again and tours, we’ll have mass hysteria.
On Avery Island is darker, noisier, more distorted, and less unified than its successor, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea.
Click the album covers to download.
I love these guys. I know they get blogged a lot. I posted their Katy Perry remix a while back. Yesterday I posted two of their Kanye West remixes.
They’re uncle and nephew. They rock sunglasses with the lenses popped out. They often collaborate with Pitbull, which makes sense since they both make uptempo hip hop that samples house.
Their work could be described as comedy electro-hop. Yes, that’s comedy rap over electro house. They have a song called “I Am Not A Whore” which is pretty much every single Benny Benassi song but with tongue in cheek lyrics about being taken advantage of by women for sex. (Yeah, right.) They have the best shot drinking song ever created: “Shots”. They also had a Top 40 51 hit with “I”m In Miami Bitch Trick”.
David Rush ft. LMFAO, Pitbull & Kevin Rudolf - Shooting Star (Party Rock Remix)
Here are 3 remixes of "their most serious song", in their words not mine,"La La La":
LMFAO – La La La (Hypercrush Remix)
LMFAO - La La La (Terror Dactel Remix)
LMFAO - La La La (Death to the Throne Remix)
KANYE WEST IS AWESOME. HE TYPES IN ALL CAPS. HE GETS DRUNK AS A SKUNK DURING THE VMAS AND ENTERTAINS MILLIONS. HE IS A DECENT PRODUCER AND A BRILLIANT SAMPLER. I HAVE MIXED FEELINGS ABOUT HIM ON THE MIC, BUT HE’S A HELL OF A LOT BETTER OF A RAPPER THAN KID CUDI WILL EVER BE. FUCK KID CUDI. CUDI SHOULD THANK HIS LUCKY STARS COOKERS REMIXED HIM, HE’S WACK. ANYWAYS, BACK TO KANYE. ALMOST ALL THE KANYE SINGLES HAVE AT LEAST ONE GOOD REMIX AND/OR MASHUP. THIS IS BECAUSE PRODUCERS USE KANYE’S WORLD FAMOUS EGO TO SPICE UP THEIR PRODUCTIONS, JUST LIKE I DUMP SEASONING SALT ON ALL THE FOOD I COOK.
Kanye West – We Major (Kickdrums Remix)
A hip-hop remix with scratching, pitch changing, and a funky beat. Must be from some mixtape since it cuts off early.
Kanye West feat. Chris Martin – Homecoming (Discotech Remix)
A fun remix, expertly looping and cutting the vocals with a warm electro synth. Discotech picked a pretty cheesy song to remix, and with that in mind, I think they did a phenomenal job. With this said, I often just loop the beginning--“JUMP, JUMP, JUMP IN THE CROWD!”--and mix in another song.
Kanye West – Heartless (DJ Kue Klub Mix)
Fairly simple electro house remix. Rough and punchy stabs of a synth with Kanye’s sometimes filtered vox.
Kanye West – Paranoid (LMFAO Remix)
Kanye West – Love Lockdown (LMFAO Remix)
Both are ruckus party jams with LMFAO adding their own vocals. The Love Lockdown remix has the following line: “You broke my heart into a million pieces, I can’t love you but I can fuck you till you call me Jesus.” What?
Kanye West – Love Lockdown (1994 Pilotpriest Remix)
A weird and fairly original electro remix by Pilotpriest that I always pitch up. (It’s a bit slow.) I think it’s a great track, but because of the kind of creepy vocal loops saying “I love you so much” or something, you have to be smart when you’re mixing in into a party. You might get weird looks.
Kanye West – Stronger (A-Trak Remix)
Fantastic, upbeat remix. Electro -- with a lot of breaks but easy to mix. Remixes with the Harder Better Faster Stronger sample are difficult to sound like they belong to a new song, but this one does.
N.A.S.A. feat. Kanye West, Santogold & Lykke Li - Gifted (Steve Aoki Remix)
Kanye’s flow actually shines on this remix. Tip: Mix out before Lykke Li comes in.
Kanye West & Lil Wayne ft. M83 - Lollipop (The Remix of the Remix by Team Teamwork)
I know Lollipop was played out in 2008, but this mashup is noteworthy for how well Kanye on Autotune sounds with M83’s We Own The Sky.
Meditation at Lagunitas
by Robert Hass
All the new thinking is about loss.
In this it resembles all the old thinking.
The idea, for example, that each particular erases
the luminous clarity of a general idea. That the clown-
faced woodpecker probing the dead sculpted trunk
of that black birch is, by his presence,
some tragic falling off from a first world
of undivided light. Or the other notion that,
because there is in this world no one thing
to which the bramble of blackberry corresponds,
a word is elegy to what it signifies.
We talked about it late last night and in the voice
of my friend, there was a thin wire of grief, a tone
almost querulous. After a while I understood that,
talking this way, everything dissolves: justice,
pine, hair, woman, you and I. There was a woman
I made love to and I remembered how, holding
her small shoulders in my hands sometimes,
I felt a violent wonder at her presence
like a thirst for salt, for my childhood river
with its island willows, silly music from the pleasure boat,
muddy places where we caught the little orange-silver fish
called pumpkinseed. It hardly had to do with her.
Longing, we say, because desire is full
of endless distances. I must have been the same to her.
But I remember so much, the way her hands dismantled bread,
the thing her father said that hurt her, what
she dreamed. There are moments when the body is as numinous
as words, days that are the good flesh continuing.
Such tenderness, those afternoons and evenings,
saying blackberry, blackberry, blackberry.
Jazz:
Wayne Shorter - Smilin' Through
BONUS:
Robert Hass - Meditation at Lagunitas
Robert Hass' poetry reading at Berkeley.
Think indie rock/pop meets Broadway. That’s the best way I can describe the style of “fun.”
(fun., by the way, needs to change their name. Putting a period next to a lowercased word that’s impossible to Google is a BAD IDEA for a band name.)
fun. – At Least I’m Not As Sad (As I Used To Be)
image via lookbook
The particle separation room is made without tables and chairs. They say it’s because they don’t fit in here, we don’t need tables and chairs.
Thao with The Get Down Stay Down - Geography
Florence + The Machine - Kiss With a Fist
One of my favorite tenors, Björling’s vocal gifts seem effortless. He was a lousy actor, and supposedly a quiet, unassuming man, but wow, what a powerful voice! Most of his recordings suffer from the same problem most older recordings face. Think flat and distorted voice, grainy background. Very fortunately, a recording of his September 24, 1955 recital at Carnegie Hall exists that is far superior in quality to his recordings in the 30s and 40s and is mastered well.
Tosti – Ideale (Jussi Björling)
Puccini - E lucevan le stelle (Jussi Björling)
Ringo doesn’t take fan mail anymore, and he definitely doesn’t take your shit.
BONUS:
John Lennon remixes:
The Beatles – Revolution (The Yank’s Cut)
VIDEO RESPONSE:
Do you have a boyfriend? Want him to think you’re “artistic”, “sexy”, “smart”, and a little “alt”?
You don’t have to sit on a windowsill in leggings and boots.
Give him a mixtape. Give him this one.
Wave Machines - Keep The Lights On
Dirty Projectors – Temecula Sunrise
The Magnetic Fields - Absolutely Cuckoo
The Concretes – This One’s For You
Zeds Dead, two blokes from Ontario, are making some of the best dubstep out there.
Let's talk about the tracks, shall we?
Blue Foundation – Eyes on Fire (Zeds Dead Remix)
This is all over the place, in a good way. Female vocals over guitars, wobble base, phaser, and even 8-bit sounds make an appearance.
Radiohead – Pyramid Song (Zeds Dead Illuminati Remix)
Wow. What a brutal remix. Very inventive. This would either clear out the dance floor or be absolutely perfect, depending on the crowd.
Sublime – Doin’ Time (Zeds Dead Summer Grime Remix)
Their remix of Sublime is pretty standard, albeit pretty great. The drop sounds tight. The vocals could have been taken out with little damage to the track, but whatever.
Fenech-Soler - LA Love (Zeds Dead Remix)
More dubstep goodness. Like the Sublime remix, this feels like two different songs in one.
BONUS:
Barletta - Panther (Zeds Dead Remix)
Not their best, but if you like the rest, grab it.
Simon Rex went from gay porn star to MTV DJ to D-list actor to comedy rap producer to comedy rapper Dirt Nasty. You might have heard of My Dick … um, I mean … the Mickey Avalon single “My Dick” which Rex produced and rapped in.
Dirt Nasty is immature humor, appropriate for 14 year old boys – My Dick is on the same album as Baby Dick -- but tongue in cheek enough for twenty-somethings. Rex is in his thirties, and thirty-somethings who don’t take themselves seriously and who would still take a bong rip if it was passed to them would probably dig this too.
I've included his only album, Dirt Nasty, as well as a track that samples Calvin Harris' "Acceptable In The 80's"; a weird autotuned, glitched out track about Lortab; a beef track about Ed Hardy; and the only good remix of "My Dick": an electro house jam with electric guitars.
Pittsburg Slim feat. Dirt Nasty – Popular With The Ladies
Andy Milonakis, Dirt Nasty - Loritab 2
Mickey Avalon feat. Dirt Nasty & Andre Legacy – My Dick (Dr. Girlfriend Trashy Vocal Remix)
What a find. Neo Tokyo combines elements of electro house, rock, breakbeat, 80s, and chiptune to provide energetic, upbeat music that hits hard and continually surprises. Distortion, filter, vocoder, and glitch effects are used liberally, often with disregard to a cohesive song structure. This isn’t music for everyone, but for a listener well versed in electronic music, especially EDM, Neo Tokyo is a pleasant surprise.
The Robot Disaster - Guitars Are Overrated (Neo Tokyo Remix)
Passion Pit – Sleepyhead (Neo Tokyo Remix)
Chanty Poe – YesNoMaybe (Neo Tokyo Remix)
Britney Spears - Womanizer (Neo Tokyo Remix)
Tronik Youth – LaughCryLiveDie (Neo Tokyo Remix)
Two more tracks are available at Tracasseur.
Brian Eno – Ambient 1: Music For Airports
Lush, warm, ethereal, and uplifting, Riceboy Sleeps is an ambient album not only to appreciate but to love. It is the result of a collaboration between Sigur Rós lead singer Jonsi and his boyfriend Alex. This album makes me even more excited for the upcoming Sigur Rós release in 2010. Excellent for meditation.
What makes Music For Airports work is the pauses, not the texture of the sound itself. This is a classic album everyone should hear at least once. Excellent for sleeping.
It’s Friday night. Get your mixed drinks. Get ready to party.
Woodhands - Dancer (Bit Funk Remix)
Busta Rhymes feat. T-Pain - Hustler's Anthem 09 (Bit Funk Remix)
A,G. Trio - Replay (Ultrnx Remix)
Kristian Matsson (The Tallest Man On Earth) is Swedish, but he owes his influences to American folk. Matsson has a melodious voice, with warmth and texture, but he purposely disfigures it for a folksy, gravely style. Think Dylan, only prettier. The songwriting is surreal.
I’m gonna float up in the ceiling
I built a levee of the stars
And in my field of tired horses
I built a freeway through this farce.
Hell, if I ever get that slumber
I’ll be that mole deep in the ground
And I won’t be found.
The Tallest Man On Earth – Shallow Graves ♥♥♥
The Tallest Man On Earth - Live at Daytrotter
Sofronitsky was the greatest pianist ever recorded. He was great not for holding a monopoly of pianistic gifts – in that regard we can say Horowitz or Richter, both monstrous technically and with the gift of understanding how and when to color a piece, would earn the title – but for a very specific reason. He was an artist among pianists -- to paraphrase Gilels, a God among men. His interpretations are unrivalled for the peculiar reason that they touch the listener more deeply—at the very least, this listener. In this regard he can be compared to Cortot, and yet he had none of the failings Cortot had. He was not a sloppy player. His style was masculine, stern, and yet achingly emotional. One could say he was an unsentimental romantic. He was as technically competent as any world-class pianist, and yet to listen to Sofronitsky for the speed and grace of his octaves would be ridiculous.
Here is how Sofronitsky himself described his own aspiration towards artistic genius:
But most crucial is to find the heart of each piece or each sonata movement, feel its basic essence, culmination, and then-the same in each construction, every phrase. I played badly before, only in recent years have I come to understand -- better and better -- how to play. And if I am alive in several years then I will really start to play. One has to learn to hear oneself and that is very difficult. This is not a posture -- I am speaking with absolute sincerity. First of all, a performance requires a will. A will -- meaning to want a lot, to want more than you have now, more than you can give. For me the entire effort is strengthening the will. Here is all: rhythm, sound, emotion. Rhythm should be soulful. The whole piece should live, breathe, move as protoplasm. I play-and one part is alive, full of breath, and another part nearby may be dead because the live rhythmic flow is broken. Rachmaninoff, for instance, could create a rhythmic pulse that was unfailingly alive. He had the enormous artistic will of a genius. He had a greater will than any of the modern pianists. The same with Anton Rubinstein. Bulow played very cleanly and Rubinstein sloppily, but two or three dirty notes would damage Bulow’s playing more than fistfuls of them would damage Rubinstein’s. And why? Because Rubinstein had an enormous will. A will for hearing, for rhythmic life. And another point, most important: the more emotionally you play, the better, but this emotionality should be hidden, hidden as in a shell. When I come on stage now, I have “seven shells” under my tuxedo, and despite this I feel naked. So, I need fourteen shells. I have to wish to play so well, live so fully, as to die and still feel as if I have not played. I have nothing to do with this. Some special calm should prevail when you rise from the piano-as if somebody else had played.
Sofronitsky is best known for his interpretations of Scriabin, but I equally like his Rachmaninoff, Schubert, Schumann, Liszt, and others. Unfortunately, not many recordings of Sofronitsky have survived Soviet Russia, and many that have survived are bootlegs. Some of the recordings are performed on horrendously out-of-tune pianos. Fans of Richter should be familiar with this dilemma. Still, although the quality is mixed to poor, and Sofronitsky himself referred to his recorded material as “my corpses”, the quality of his playing does shine through. He was regarded in his lifetime as an uneven player, prone to mood swings that could elevate or hollow his playing. It would be untrue to say that all of his recorded material is outstanding, but much of it is, and for that he deserves the highest of praise.
Scriabin - Fantasie In B Minor, Op.28
Scriabin - Sonata No. 3, 3rd Movement
Scriabin – Etude, op. 08 No. 08
Rachmaninoff - Prelude in D major, Op. 23, No. 4
Schumann - Sonata No. 1 in F-sharp Minor, Op.11, 1st Movement
No big surprise: the “new” 50 Cent album, Before I Self Destruct, sucks. It’s 50’s Relapse.
References to incest? Check. Weird sex/rape/violence references? Check. Boasts of criminal insanity? Check. Polished but dull production by Dre and Co.? Check.
Actually, Relapse had one song I enjoyed. The beat, by Dre and Dawaun Parker, was innovative: I’ve never heard anything like it. The lyrics were…um…about raping and killing Lindsey Lohan and Britney Spears.
A couple of the new Fiddy tracks are OK, but none are interesting enough to blog about. Instead, I’m going to post a filler track from “Get Rich Or Die Tryin’” that nobody is going to remember.
Listen to the production on this one. In 2003, this kind of bassline was a little weird for Hip Hop, and the instrumental is pretty much only the bassline and a simple set of percussion. Now in 2009, I think it works a lot better. Of course, the lyrics are ridiculous. His car, jewelry, and gun all carry on conversations with people, we get an idea of 50’s Google Calendar scheduling, (Benz on Monday, Beamer on Tuesday, Range on Wednesday…), and he talks shit to people now that he’s rich.
I love this video. Fur in my cap, fur fur in my cap. The end is horrible, though.
Rob Roy has zero talent, which is evident if you listen to any of his other stuff. But like an idiot savant, by sheer accident he struck gold on the hook.
I want to hear a fidget house remix of this. BADLY.
The genre is called “chillwave”. Yes, we can make fun of it. The term will probably be forgotten about in six months. I’m already months late by blogging about it now. Think lo-fi meets surf pop meets electronica and you’re getting close. Or maybe not. Listening to it, you’ll hear its sound immediately.
I guess this is permissible music for hipsters to listen to when they get high.
Neon Indian – Terminally Chill
Washed Out – Feel It All Around
KANYE MAY TYPE IN ALL CAPS BUT THIS MOTHERFUCKER LIVES IT.
CAN’T WAIT TO SEE HIM IN MARCH.
THESE SONGS WILL PUMP YOU UP.
Disco Villains – We Just Came to Get the Party Started (LAZRtag Remix)
Disco Villains – We Just Came to Get the Party Started (Night Drugs Remix)
Drake feat. Kanye West, Lil' Wayne & Eminem – Forever (Travis Barker Remix)
Ludacris – Stand Up (Valerna “Hell Yeah” Remix)
Mr. Oizo – Gay Dentists (JFK Edit)
AC/DC – Thunderstruck (Crookers Remix)
by Tomaz Salamun
translated by Michael Biggins
Awe-inspiring cliff, white desire.
Water springing forth from blood.
Let my form narrow, let it crush my body,
so that everything is one: slag and skeletons, fistful of earth.
You drink me as though draining off the color of my soul.
You lap me up, a little fly in a tiny boat.
My head is smeared, I sense how
mountains were made, how stars have been born.
You've removed your apex from me, there I stand.
Look, in the air. Within you, drained, all
mine. Golden roofs bend up beneath us.
small pagoda leaves. I am in silken candies,
gentle and tenacious. I funnel the fog into your
breath, and your breath into the godhead in my garden, the deer
via plowshares
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Look at the cans on that guy.
I’m not keen about most of the stuff this German disco house mainstay produces, but these two remixes hit hard.
Missy Elliott – Work It (Justin Faust Remix)
Nightriders – Take My Hand (Just Faust Deep Mix)
