Animal Collective - "Merriweather Post Pavilion"

For those keeping track at home, Merriweather Post Pavilion, at one point after its release on January 20th, was ranked #2 on the iTunes Top Album list. Maybe it even peaked at #1 for a little bit, I'm not sure. Either way, that's impressive, given the amount of mainstream shit that typically graces the top of that list. Amazing what "accessibility" can do for an album.

I often cringe at that term, because it means that suddenly, the barriers of critical thought have come crashing down; the thinkers are no longer separated from the sheer consumers, and now it's easy to like Animal Collective. What percentage of those who downloaded MPP like, appreciate, or even own Sung Tongs? Probably 2-3%. And I love Sung Tongs, so because of all the hype and all the Pitchfork-gushing and all the bloggers, I feel less special with my copy of MPP. Because everyone's already loved it to death without proper context of Animal Collective's career creative arc.

But enough ranting; MPP is a great album. I'm really accessing it, you might say. Animal Collective have taken the flippant acoustics of Sung Tongs and Feels and drenched them with a modern, hallucinogenic make-over. You're placed in a pool of red, purple, and orange water, with a green sun rising overhead. Likewise, instrumentally, there's really nothing that doesn't wash over you in some way or another, and those happiness-tinged harmonies and repetitive lyrics stand out better than they ever have. This is an album of complete listening immersion. However, I'm not going to flip my shit and call it their best ever. MPP is still too different, too new. Besides, not enough people have listened to Sung Tongs.

Books and reading

Read some interesting discussion--here and here--about books and reading in the last couple of days. What interests me most is how the physical-to-digital transformation of text is on one hand killing some forms of the book sales industry, and on the other is vastly re-shaping the way we approach text. One is being sacrificed for the other. And as sad as it is to see some bookstores phased out, it's rather exciting to live in an age where it is now necessary to analyze new environments and contexts for reading. Think about page-turning vs. scrolling; the places we can take text; the amount of text we can carry/have access to at one time; how we orient our physical selves to digital texts.

"My Girls"

Video for "My Girls," off Merriweather Post Pavilion. Fairly hallucinogenic...

Footsteps

When you work in one department long enough--especially when your desk is close to a hallway--you begin to identify people by the sound of their footsteps and gait, those auditory fingerprints that are unique to each person in your office. For example, there's guy with loafers, gal with little feet in little heels, guy with keys on belt, the plodder, fast walker with windpants, and of course, guy who always has dollie. I know when all of you are coming, so don't even try to surprise me.

Clifford Ball footage

Some Clifford Ball footage has surfaced from the upcoming DVD release, slated for March 3rd:

"Gran Torino"

Get off my lawn. Perhaps not as memorable as "Go ahead, make my day," but nonetheless, it's Clint Eastwood being bad-ass. He's more corpse-like than human at this point in his career, which somehow makes Walt Kowalski's persona in Gran Torino all the more real and life-like. It's as if the physical is finally melting away, revealing the raw, vintage soul that has defined an iconic actor.

"Beacon"

Developed by Chris O'Shea--who also created this interesting installation--"Beacon" again asks the question: are the machines watching you? (via fubiz)

Auditorium

An addicting exercise in manipulating trippy beams of light:

Auditorium is really all about the experience, both visually and aurally. Take a deep breath, relax, and start playing.

Umphrey's McGee - "Mantis"

I haven't really listened to Umphrey's McGee much since 2004's Anchor Drops. That was a great prog-rock record, full of fast-paced guitar, changing tempos, and cool licks. But album-wise--their live shows stayed a bit truer to form--something diminished over time in their sound. They had a fairly quick rise in the jam world, and personally, I think they felt obligated to quickly achieve "maturation" in their sound while Phish was gone and the jam crown was up for grabs. That's the ultimate downfall of any band who jumps ship too early on a good thing. But sometimes, bands can rediscover the best of what made them great in the first place (think Pearl Jam not too long ago), which is why I decided to give Mantis a shot.

Fortunately, Mantis does revisit some of that face-melting prog that I first discovered at Bonnaroo in 2002. Unfortunately, it only does so for about two or three songs. "Turn and Run" features some great shredding (although it fades out too soon!) and closer "1348" builds up with a drippy bass-line and hits you again and again with guitar until the album ends. However, the title track goes way overboard with the composition sections (a la Mars Volta, but without the packs of wolves, sarcophagi, tourniquet men, and melting cones), and the rest just doesn't seem to go anywhere. And how did a New Deal song accidentally get recorded on the album ("Cemetery Walk Pt. II")? Prog, by definition, is multi-faceted, but there's no central coherence here binding it all together. I can't keep the disc straight while listening.

I don't know if I just don't get excited about this type of music anymore, or if Umphrey's is just running out of steam in the studio. Their fan-base certainly remains intact on the road, but such is life for a band that thrives on live shows. I just wish they could do both consistently.

Biden's new hairstyle

I'm really enjoying Joe Biden's new hairstyle...

Spoiler art

Movie spoiler art...sorry if I ruined it for anyone...

"The Wire"

I've heard people say that The Wire is up there with The Sopranos. We'll see. I just picked up the complete series on Amazon for $82, an insanely cheap price (originally $250).

McLovins original

More McLovins, this time playing an original, with split-screens! Watch them rip into "Tweezer Reprise" at 4:09...



(via coventry)

Fever Ray - "s/t"

For me, Fever Ray came out of nowhere. I caught the video for "If I Had a Heart" on Muzzle of Bees, liked it, and subsequently purchased the rest of the album. I never listened to The Knife, nor did I know that Karin Dreijer Andersson was a member of said group. Turns out, she is Fever Ray, and this is her first solo effort. That's the chronological extent of my experience with this album and its predecessor. But I've listened to it quite a bit since then, so the personal history is at least getting longer, if not richer.

Fever Ray is an electronic-with-ghostly-vocals album, tribal at its innards, yet darkly urban in its appeal. Visually, the grass grows up between the concrete slabs and there's oil in the river. Musically, the beats are poignant and are always placed at the exact point of mood and rhythm. Lyrically, it speaks of some pretty crazy jungle voodoo (like keeping plants moist and setting souls on fire), but the juxtaposition with the music is great. It's like an electronic safari, and you keep pushing back leaves and vines, revealing the next layers of mystery, until you come to the empty streets Andersson is wailing about.

Social media "experts"

Saw this random link on Twitter today. I love it when accurate observations turn into creative rants. Great use of imagery to support his "argument." And he's totally right.

"Tribes"

The last three books I've read--Cass Sunstein's Infotopia, Clay Shirky's Here Comes Everybody, and now, Seth Godin's Tribes--have all centered around Web 2.0 and how this gargantuan social movement is changing everything we've held sacred in terms of communication. Sunstein spoke of the dissemination of information, Shirky of the way we self-organize. They were both very interesting books with many insightful examples, but looking back, they took a long time to get their messages across. Here, Godin effectively tackles the potential of leadership in 2.0, but does so much more succinctly in 145 little pages (literally; it's a little book). And for those interested in what Godin has to say, a quick digestion of concepts will probably be of most value, because who knows how long the iron of 2.0 will still be hot.

Simply put, Tribes is a motivational tool. It never flat out tells you what to do; rather, it nudges your understanding of what is possible should you choose to lead a tribe. I typically think of these types of motivational gimmicks as bullshit, but the information age has become so encompassing that books of this type have become more theory than motivation. From business to blogging, there's value in understanding when/how to lead, and when/how to follow. It's all about connecting, and keeping those chains together.

I'm going to honor Godin's request in his concluding paragraph to Tribes--I'm going to pass the book along to someone else. But first, I'm going to write my name in the inside cover, and urge the next reader to do the same after they've finished. Who knows how many names could get on the list? Maybe only a few, but tribes need not be large to have big effects.

Vegas trip

As I was heading to our departure gate at McCarran Airport in Las Vegas, I decided to make a stop in the restroom before the three hour flight home to Milwaukee (the kind of stop you don't want to have to make on an airplane bathroom). I entered an empty stall, locked the door, and turned around to proceed when suddenly I saw a bag of marijuana floating in the toilet. It was a hearty bag. Someone obviously got cold feet about bringing it on the plane, and decided to dump it. I flushed the toilet a couple of times, but there must have been some air inside the Ziploc bag, because it just keep popping back up to the surface of the bowl. It was the ultimate example of what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.

Anyway, here's some pics from my trip.

"If I Had a Heart"

Here's Fever Ray's new video, "If I Had a Heart," off the new self-titled album. To say it's dark and spooky is an understatement:



Also just downloaded the album and am really enjoying it thus far...

Yorke at Grammy's

Original Phish drummer

Read an interesting interview today on Hidden Track with the original Phish drummer, Marc Daubert. He talks about his extremely short tenure with the band, some of the songs he penned, and the reasons behind his exit from Phish:

“Trey was becoming increasingly domineering about the band,” says Daubert. “He wanted things to be his way. It may be that he thought I needed to be eliminated so that he could move ahead with his plans for the band. I represented a creative orb and that, to him, seemed amorphous. I was used to this sort of treatment before in my life, so Trey’s animosity towards me was not a surprise. Trey came back in January 1985 from a holiday break. He found that I had not gotten a job over the break and that I had and I had gone on a 36 hour music, alcohol, and drug binge. He was upset that I was still there. Rightfully agitated, he said that I did not fit in anymore. He then began to literally toss all my belongings out on the curb."

Apparently, the two have long since patched things up, and Daubert is credited as being a "founding member." A nice bit of history.

Heavy metal phylum

Came across an extensive breakdown/classification of heavy metal band names on Buzzfeed. Two notable observations in this otherwise comprehensive chart: 1) Pantera--classified under "Actually Foreign"--is actually from Texas, and 2) no mention of Tool; probably could have gone under an "Inanimate Object" category.

NIN enroute to Chicago

Last Saturday, I made a late night trip down to Chicago. For my driving tunes, I threw along Ghosts I-IV, Nine Inch Nails' 2008 bleak, experimental release. There aren't many chances to listen to this all-instrumental double-disc in its entirety--it's not really meant for daylight hours and can be quite challenging in terms of mood--but a drive down I94 in winter conditions seemed like the perfect time-frame to plug Ghosts into a slice of physical life.

The drive turned out to be one of those reality-soundtrack listening experiences where the music perfectly syncs up with your surroundings. Trent Reznors' ideas of isolated social landscapes met well with the flurries of snow in my headlights, the black outlines of trees against gray night sky, and the sporadic, unlit street lamps on the barren tollways. I kept thinking back to the liner notes and realized how well the imagery fit. It was like being in the opening credits of a scary movie, set in an industrial wasteland. But in reality, it was Kenosha.

Poe reads "The Raven"

Video of Edgar Allan Poe reading "The Raven":



(via kottke)

Tiltshift Maker

Tiltshiftmaker.com allows you to create tilt-shift photography (which makes big things look miniature) without having to actually perform tilt-shift photography. I uploaded a few of my own photos, and this one--a mini Red Rocks Amphitheater--is my favorite:

Best barrell roles ever

Phish tour

After quite a few rumors, the announcement was finally made, ticket requests were put in, and my calendar was cleared for a weekend in June...

Fairway hazards

Trey's Ross Compressor

The emerging story of Phish fans presenting Trey Anastasio with a Ross Compressor pedal is an interesting one. I've long argued that Trey's grungy, distorted, post-hiatus tone was one of the primary reasons the first Phish reunion didn't last. It completely changed the sound of Phish, and while attendance at shows never even came close to declining, the quality of the live show was never the same. Mike, Page, and Fish remained lethal as ever, but Trey brought the band down with whatever it was he was trying to do.

People have tried to bargain with that, claiming that it was his "new sound" and that Phish was as good as ever with it. I never bought it, and as much as I love Phish, I'm enough of a realist to know that 2003-2004 was nowhere near what Phish was previously. Now that this story surfaces, it's obvious that this issue can't be denied, even by the most in-denial fans: nobody wants a repeat of '03-'04. So how do you prevent that? You buy him the pedal he used in the 90s and send it to him.

Well, he's got it and has acknowledged it. We'll see what he does. Will Trey accept the fan's gift and return to glory? Should make for an interesting side-story as the (second) reunion tour commences.

Flickr Pro

I caved in and finally upgraded to a Flickr Pro account. It's only a couple of bucks per month, and since it's becoming a social norm to build permanent, public, digital histories of ourselves, I'd like to have all the convenient flexibility that online photo sharing can offer.

Jell-O San Francisco

USA split, 2010

A Russian professor's prediction of how the United States will dissolve and split in the year 2010:


(via bldgblog)

Twitter phishing attack

Over the weekend, Twitter experienced a massive phishing attack. In short, direct messages were sent out that contained a link to a fake Twitter login-in page. If you logged in to that page, your account was hijacked. Obama, Fox News, and even Britney Spears were among the "big" accounts hit (after being hijacked, Spears' account indicated that she had a 4-foot wide vagina with razor sharp teeth).

Despite the inconvenience caused for so many users, it was interesting watching the Twitter community rally around itself to protect its users. During the height of the attack, thousands of users were tweeting warnings on the live community page. In almost no time at all, it seemed that the majority of the Twitter community was aware of the phishing scam, and the direct messages have since ceased (at least for me they have). Of course, Internet security is nothing new, but now that the users, rather than the webmasters and administrators, are taking the initiative to protect, it's indicative of massive social change and behavior.

New Year's burrito

My first food of the New Year...

It was incredible.