If you feel like you have the desperate need to know more about me or want to leave me any questions/comments/snide remarks:
DISCLAIMER: All the music here available for download is to encourage purchase of said music/artist. If you or anyone you know wants me to take down a link, please email me!
Austin Eavesdropper
Austin is Burning
Austin Sound
Austinist
Davis Ayer
Do512
Do512 Blog
East Austinite
Gorilla vs Bear
Hipstercrite
Irresponsible Voltron
Knucklerumbler
Maybe It Feels Great
Party Ends
Public School
Republic of Austin
Sailor Legs
The Peen Scene
ulovei
Ultra8201
Electric Literature
Facehunter
Garance Dore
HypeMachine
Kenyadig
Pretty Much Amazing
Sea of Shoes
The Daily Beast
Very Short Story
This kid popped onto my radar when he messed around with Ellie Goulding’s “Starry Eyed” (as previously mentioned). And I don’t even know that much about David’s Lyre aside from the fact that they have a few demos up on a myspace page, but this song is making my life better. Period. So, thank you, Jakwob, for doing your thing, and supplying me with theme songs to my life. Come play in Austin.
WATCHING THIS RAD VIDEO AND DANCING>STUDYING FOR EXAMS Video of the Day
One Life Stand, Hot Chip
Exams have officially infiltrated my life and are running it like a nintendo gameboy in the hands of a deranged, relentless kid on pixie stick steroids. Either that doesn’t make any sense because I am so mentally depleted right now, or I just created the perfect analogy. I can’t decide. Either way, still loving this song.
I’m supposed to be cleaning my room right now in anticipation for my dad’s arrival, (because right now it looks like life came in and beat the shit out of it), but then I sat down, so I’m putting that off for a bit and giving you this little gem instead. This new Hot Chip song is the namesake for their upcoming 2010 album One Life Stand, and, so far, I’m DIGGING it. Currently imagining all the bad ass remixes that will be generated from this killer beat. ENJOY.
tomorrow tomorrow! RSVP NOW
CAN NOT WAIT UNTIL 2 THURSDAYS FROM NOW.
Take Away Show of the Day: Courtesy of La Blogotheque — Phoenix perform “Lizstomania” and “One Time Too Many” while riding around the streets of Paris atop a double-decker tour bus.
See Also: Part 1 (1901); Part 3 (Long Distance Call).
[via.]
Not only is that little country across the pond sending us the electro talent of CHEW LiPS this coming March, but they have also decided to pass along Wolf Gang— the musical alter ego of 22 year-old Max McElligott (handful of a last name, so, very glad that he chose something way more rad). I would first like to comment on the fact that, yes, it seems like “wolves” are being more solidified as a meme, so it was very difficult to find out information on this kid when google searches kept throwing “Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart” (both Phoenix and classical references) back at me. But, nevertheless, I found my way to the man, himself.
Thankfully (for us) this kid dropped out of the London School of Economics 2 months before final exams and turned down employment at the Foreign Office, to nurture his niche in the musical world, recently signing on with the uber-hip and brilliant label Neon Gold (who has churned out the likes of Passion Pit, Marina and the Diamonds, Theophilus London, and Ellie Goulding <see a couple posts back>). With a style described as a menage-a-trois between Joy Division, Talking Heads, and David Bowie, Wolf Gang delivers dreamy poppy sounds, which sometimes side with an experimental style of groups like Grizzly Bear, at other times lean toward a synth-pop that screams La Roux, and even more times rest on a pure, melodic rock energy. No genre can accurately encapsulate his work, and with his vision to create an album filled with different sounds, instrumentation and production, Max will (hopefully) re-establish the legacy of the musical icons that he so greatly reveres. And in his own words, Wolf Gang is “not interested in making music that comes and goes like a fad, and [he] couldn’t care less about appealing to flippant, scenester people.”
Best quote/mission statement yet? “Pop’s had a bad name but it’s high time it was brought back into the fold as meaningful and cool.”
Love his mission, and his music. Definitely going to be one of the top acts to catch this year, so put him on your radar!
SONGS TO LISTEN TO:
Wolf Gang—The King And All Of His Men (most recent single) <3
[EDIT: AHHHH sorry, fixed the link above; enjoy!]
REMIXES:
Wolf Gang—Pieces of You (Baby Monster remix)
Wolf Gang—Pieces of You (Yes Giantess remix)
Wolf Gang—The King And All Of His Men (Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs remix)
Yes, I realize that I have posted this video clip on every social media outlet under my control, but I’ve been waiting for someone to talk about the BOOK CRISIS for some time. I’m not gonna lie, the first time I saw a Kindle, I thought to myself, “Hey, this thing is pretty neat… digital books are outta this world!” And then I really considered it. Initially I resisted the disappearance of physical literature because it meant that at some point in the near future, I would no longer “look cool” sitting at my favorite local coffee bar, sipping house cabernet and smoking a cig while hunched over my tattered copy of The Road, furiously highlighting and marking up passages. Because, let’s face it, you really can’t translate that image to include a device that looks like a super-sized gameboy. But, in the end, I came to some of the same points as Alexie and then some. His comparison to the music industry is rather spot on, and while I may not be as paranoid as he is about “government infiltration,” he does makes a reasonable point there as well.
I understand the arguments of utility and accessibility for digital books, and as a person who is completely dependent on technology and who spends the majority of her life sitting in front of a computer, I can respect the advancement that this Kindle represents in a field that, frankly, us modern people couldn’t function without. And while I don’t believe that digitalism and literature have to exist on polar ends of a spectrum, I do think that there is a key and degrading difference between reading a physical book and reading the same words on a screen. I’m not sure there is even any science out there to support what I’m saying, but these two types of reading are completely different, and I believe that a person retains and learns more from the former. Maybe that’s just because we are all kids of the “transition era”— the era when the computer first emerged and quickly became more fundamental than your kitchen sink—and because of this, we are forced to vacillate between the physical past and the digitalized future. If so, perhaps future generations, having been gleaned ONLY on computerized crap, will dispute this. But for the present, I argue in favor of the physical act of reading a book with real pages. (I mean, have you ever tried to read a book online… snoozeeee). The claim, made by Amazon hot shot Jeff Bezos, that he wants to “change the way that people read,” might sound boldly revolutionary and cavalier to some, but to me, this “new way to read” is a lesser and inferior alternative.
Call me an originalist, a hypocrite, or what not, it doesn’t really matter, and yes, I do realize the irony of me rambling about the negative effects of digital books via a social media website. I’m not saying that I am unwilling to “change with the times,” and Alexie made a good point of this as well. It is not necessarily a matter of adaptation (because, ultimately, you have to adapt), but it is more a matter of retaining an irreplaceable practice. Over all, I love books—the ones that have the creased corners and tanned pages that look like life has worn them out—and I’m just really glad that Sherman Alexie is on board with me because he is a bad ass.
P.S. I’m seriously considering starting a Save Our Books Alliance (SOBA). It was just gonna be Save Our Books… but then I realized that SOB wouldn’t look too hot on t-shirts. Let me know if you want to join. We can throw book swaps and book fairs and fun things like that. Maybe even kick off a reading group. Or a bake sale.
P.P.S. $10 bucks says my mom gets me a Kindle for Christmas…
AND SORRY FOR THE ESSAY
[Freelance Whales in the pic above]
I had to pull an all nighter last night, soooo really not in the mood to do a write up. BUT the Austinist has a great little preview of this show tonight, so I decided to link that instead. It’s basically what I would say anyway.
Oh and here’s a song to listen to while you’re at it:
I posted this a while back, but now you can download it! Definitely my favorite Freelance Whales song because it reminds me so much of Sufjan, which is exactly what this weather is making me think of right now. Even better.
I debated on whether or not to do another SXSW preview, but realizing I still have a lot more time for that, I decided to showcase this chick who I pretty much listened to non-stop this summer (thank you, Jakwob remix of Starry Eyed).
Influenced by the likes of Regina Spektor, Ella Fitzgerald, Bjork, and Ani Di Franco, Ellie Goulding is a 21 year old electro-dance-pop darling who has been a 2009 blogosphere fixture, currently working on her debut album due out some time in the beginning of next year. In the meantime, she has released a bad ass single (Under the Sheets) and some pretty stunning (and eclectic) covers of artists such as Bon Iver, Passion Pit, Robyn, and Sam Sparro. She has been working side by side with fellow Neon Gold labelmate and producer, Starsmith, who, in his own right, has churned out some unbelievably brilliant remixes (personal fave: Marina and the Diamonds—I Am Not a Robot (Starsmith remix)). With her killer vocals on top of his beats, the pair’s collaboration has come to be nothing short of amazing. Fingers crossed…hopefully this Brit makes her way over to the states soon.
COVERS:
Ellie Goulding—Black & Gold (Sam Sparro cover)
Ellie Goulding—The Wolves (Bon Iver cover)
Ellie Goulding and Erik Hassle— Be Mine (Robyn cover)
Ellie Goulding— Sleepyhead (Passion Pit cover)
ORIGINALS/REMIXES:
Ellie Goulding—Under the Sheets
