Volume 10
PR battles the vicious MCAT
And the return! Brush off your doldrums! MCAT complete, I’ve escaped to recover my sanity away from the testing…the testing…o! the testing!
In the meantime, your thirsts have not gone unnoticed, your raspy breath, dilated eyes, and salty torsos! Here is the interstellar burst. Here is the whining sound of a thousand cicadas! More bitesize, less regular, equally endeavoring, arguably thoughtful, aggravatingly untimed, inevitably weekly-ish, and good for your lips!
Let’s open this up! I need some contributors. I’ll do whatever it takes (aside from paying you cash), as in I’ll help you line up interviews, get passes for shows, edit, find photos. You want to submit a mix, that’s great! You want to submit an article? Even better! You want to just Email me and say something like, “Hey dude, you missed the release of this album, dummy.” That’s fine. Just send it on. This thing doesn’t write itself, harharhar!
Get It Together!
Get It Together - The Go! Team
Repetition Kills You – The Black Ghosts
Shempi – Ratatat
Where I End And You Begin – Radiohead
Time to Pretend – MGMT
The Geeks Were Right – The Faint
Move – CSS
Nighttiming – Coconut Records
Fair Weather Friends – Daedelus
Two Can Win – J Dilla
You’re So Gangsta – Chromeo
I’m Making Eyes At You – The Black Kids
Ooh Good – Wrongkong
Milk Crisis – The Go! Team
Full Moon – The Black Ghosts
In the Waiting Line (Live) – Zero 7
Instant Karma! (We All Shine On) [2003 Mix] – John Lennon
Albumen
Radiohead, In Rainbows
MGMT, Oracular Spectacular
Copy, Hair Guitar
Nightmares on Wax, Thought So…
Pacific!, Reveries
Whitest Boy Alive, Dreams
Nightmares on Wax
This one snuck up on me. And there it was. A Chapstick Weekly all-time favorite, Nightmares on Wax offers a prescription with its new masterpiece, “Thought so…” Another demonstration of instant toe-tapping goodness outlined in impossibly smooth percussion from all walks (i.e. samba, reggae, motown, and most importantly, drastically, hiphop), compelling loops of bass, and filled with a minimal bouquet of samples in between.
The Week that Was
Clipclop clipclop clipclop. Remarkable, if not for the steady wood block sounds, then for the soaring synths that come out of your blindspot just when you’re trying to change lanes. Well-placed accent instruments, playful beat variations, and change-ups that would make Steely Dan give half a nod come together for a solid several tracks on their most recent effort.
K-OS, Atlantis: Hymns for Disco
“The world is your’s, unless the world is ours.” This intravenous delivery of a pastiche, delicate to the lyrically delicate pallete, intrusive to your more secret searches for sonic sweetness, and abrasive to your previously developed concept of the limitations of a hiphop influence, will reorganize some neurons in a hurry. Gospel soaked, doo-wop permeated, clap-double-clapped, and unmistakeably excellent. You literally cannot go wrong with this.
Fujiya Miyagi
They still have it! Monotone intonations over a bed of jumping beans, their no-nonsense approach to repetition will draw you in like a hypnotist’s swinging clock. Steady as she goes, this ship’s voyage has a dead-on rhythm like an electrocuted Johnny Cash, and they are evidently mindful of this surgeon-handed gait, as they have devoted this disk to a one excellent, marching track after another. A must have disk.
Kings of Convenience
While we’re off format, let’s talk about this remarkable group. Their 2004 album, Riot on an Empty Street, filled with eerily clear vocals backed by bare bones piano and acoustic guitar with a smattering of other unplugged instruments. Perfect for a summer day watching those bugger hummingbirds from a vantage of a swaying hammock. Relaxing, precise, integrated melodies, involved rhythms.
Dean & Britta
Something draws me to the unsubtly depressive swells of this band, although I can’t quite bet my lithium on what it is. Could it be that I’m a sucker for the sad sweet sounds of a duet? Is it that I periodically have the Carpenters song Superstar in my head? Am I just an eternal sap who likes to hear sad love songs? Spatial guitar sounds, la la las, acoustic strumming, droning keyboards, and nostalgia combine to create a unique, compelling sound.
Like Metaphors
Some things are funny like imagining the reality of all the metaphors used in this blog-zine. I mean, seriously.