Up On Music: March

I find it all the more hilarious that I said that I couldn’t find any music and yet here I am. Once again the variety made its way into ye old list, but there you go. Otherwise enjoy the stuff and check out (aka support them financially) if you dig any of the things I talk up here…

Artist:
The B-52’s
Album:
Funplex
Released:
March 25, 2008
Label:
Astralwerks

The B-52s – Funplex

And out of the left field is The B-52’s, and it is good? Well I wouldn’t go that far, but their newest single ‘Funplex’ is damn catchy. Seems like their enjoying some kind of come back (since it’s been more than 10 year since their last album), which is always cool since their not exactly a super well known band with the ‘current generation’. If you find yourself pining for that sound give it a listen, it’s all kinds of ‘kewl’.

Artist:
Kylie Minogue
Album:
X
Released:
April 1, 2008
Label:
EMI

Kylie Minogue  -  Wow

I’m not sure if I should admit to listening to Kylie Minogue let alone admitting to enjoying one of her songs, but I do and I do. It’s just got this addictive electro pop thing going on which I am always a fan of (when it’s done right of course). I actually gave a listen to her latest album, and while this is one of the few good tracks I like what I hear. I’m can’t really call myself a fan, but I can definitely see why someone might be. Oh, and check out the various remixes available because some of them might be a little more geared toward your tastes.

Artist:
MGMT
Album:
Oracular Spectacular
Released:
January, 22 2008
Label:
Columbia

MGMT – Electric Feel

I’m not sure why this installment of Up On Music seems to be ‘musical catchup’ edition, but that seems to be how is, but I’m OK with that when it’s a band like MGMT. I don’t why, but they have this interestingly unique sound that gets me, especially on ‘Electric Feel’. But really the only reason I picked this song in particular is A) I simply couldn’t pick a ‘favorite’ song off their debut album and B) It has this insane interactive music video thing (Warning: autoplay video), so if nothing else check that out.

Artist:
Gorillaz
Album:
Demon Days
Released:
May 23, 2005
Label:
Virgin Records America, Inc.

Gorillaz – El Mañana

As much as I would like to say otherwise I’m not sure what my reasoning for including this track on the ol’ list other than I’ve had a severe lack of Gorillaz. Perhaps it could be (to bring it all full circle) this track was actually featured rather briefly in the opening part of Cloverfield, which I just recently saw. Besides, any excuse to have more Gorillaz featured is a worthwhile endeavor.

Artist:
The Raconteurs
Album:
Broken Boy Soldiers
Released:
May 16, 2006
Label:
V2 Records, Inc.

The Raconteurs – Broken Boy Soldier

As a fan of classic rock I can say this is one of the few songs I’ve heard that really hearkens back to that style and energy that seemed so prevalent ‘back in the day’. The ironic part being that I only heard this song recently even when it was released almost 2 years ago; as long as you discover music sometime I guess it really doesn’t matter when…

Artist:
MSTRKRFT
Album:
N/A
Released:
N/A
Label:
N/A

MSTRKRFT – Bounce

I can’t honestly say I know how many know of MSTRKRFT, but it seems safe to say that they are one of my more criminally underrated groups around. Whatever they touch they seem to have a very distinct style and structure and this newest single is really no exception. This particular track seems to have light up the musical blogosphere and if anything it makes me all the more interested to see what their rumored 2008 album is going to turn out like.

Artist:
The Flaming Lips
Album:
Killer Queen: A Tribute to Queen
Released:
August 9, 2005
Label:
Hollywood Records

The Flaming Lips – Bohemian Rhapsody

The Flaming Lips cover Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody…nuff said. But seriously, it’s really not that bad of a cover if not because it’s pretty much just Bohemian Rhapsody done by the Flaming Lips.

And now, for da blog…

Oh and if you didn’t notice while reading I added the release date to all the entries since I figured it might be important to put the music in it’s proper context assuming it’s older. As I’ve said before I’m always thinking on how to spruce up the format of these things, because I do enjoy doing them regardless.

Oh and in case you didn’t catch this on my other GameSpot blog Muxtape might just be the coolest little website I’ve found in some time. It basically allows you to upload up to twelve full length songs (under 10MB) and share them with anyone you see fit. Currently mine is just a strange assortment of electronica, but their is definitely a wide range of tastes out there and it’s a cool idea regardless of it’s legality. Though as much as people make that joke you can’t exactly upload songs of the same album, it has the obvious size limit, their doesn’t seem to be any easy way to download/record the audio, and just recently a link was added under each song to Amazon and their MP3 store, so props to them for making it all a little more legitimate.

Beyond than that I’ll catch you cats later.

I declare…

Perhaps it was me finally declaring my major in Graphic Design, perhaps it is the amount of time I’ve had to spend working inside of Illustrator and Photoshop recently, but whatever the reason I have come to the conclusion that… I need (?) a Wacom tablet. Seriously, if that’s the only thing anyone in my family buys for me for the next 4 years I will be completely content, otherwise I will continue to pine like I have for the past few weeks. Sorry, just had to put that out there just so the blog isn’t completely empty.

P.S. Trust me when I say Up On Music is coming, I just hate to push it out there without a bit of the old proofreading and all that (another wonderful feature of WordPress).

Start! Relax!

Yeah, I’m not sure what it’s about my obsession with single words followed by a exclamation point, but here you go, a update on the goings ons of yours truly.

So, sorry for the lack of any updates since last week, but honestly, I’ve been busy being home and seeing some of my friends, which is of course one of those things people do, right? Beyond that though I’ve just been chilling and trying to enjoy having nothing crucially important to do. Speaking of crucially important (not exactly) I posted up my Color Theory finals on my GameSpot blog which I’m actually pretty proud of in retrospect. That whole project was the most fun I’ve had on a homework assignment at school yet, which is saying something.

In other unrelated news, I’m starting to think their will not be a Up On Music March edition, simply because nothing really caught my ear this month. Plenty of stuff that I dug, but nothing quite with the same variety as past months. Though who knows, March is still relatively young. Oh and just as another aside, I’ve been playing Audiosurf during my time off and wow, that game has seriously grew on me. I don’t have a huge music collection, but the more I play it the more I have come to enjoy it. I’d say it’s a tad overhyped, and I’ll hopefully have some better impressions later, but it can be a blast. For instance, remember that Boys Noize remix of Phantom Pt. II I posted in Februarys Up On Music? No? Well, that song is blast to play on Ninja Mono. You can download the track here if your interested (and I dare you to beat my 50k high score ).

Oh, and as much as I realize the irony of me talking about this, I just had to talk about today’s release of Vista Service Pack 1. I know the hate for Vista is strong with the collective internets, but whatever, that’s not my point today. I figured I would try to update my laptop to SP1 only to figure out their was some sort of issue with display drivers for my good ol’ Intel Integrated Display chipset. So after doing a bit of searching I find the latest drivers for my chipset and install those, which was a far more complicated task than I let it on to be. Point being, was it really worth a good hour or so of install/prep time? I dunno, Vista does seem more snappy and responsive, so perhaps it was all worth it. I will say as a side note though, I think Vista gets way more crap than it deserves, at least from the perspective of the common user. I understand in many IT/educational fields Vista is far more of a nightmare than XP for a myriad of reasons, but it’s not all that bad. And while I didn’t mean for that to come off as ‘shilly‘, I think people tend to give Microsoft crap unfairly sometimes for no reason (and I stress sometimes).

Other than that I’m just back home doing the Spring Break thing, trying to slowly prepare for my next quarter. Thankfully I still got a good week to do that, so no rush at the moment even if I probably should be. Don’t let that fool you though, I have a few blog entries in the queue so you may or may not see those in the next couple of days, I always got something in draft form you know.

How to Build a Bomb, Part Deux

Amid the frenzy of finals, a ray of hope funny makes its way through the impenetrable layer of depression clouds that is my current mental state.

I’ll, be alright when all is said and done, but in the mean time, enjoy.

In the rough

Just remembered something I saw the other day while in my Color Theory class. Our final project is surprisingly open ended as far as what medium and approaches we can use. so many people are choosing to use programs like Photoshop and Illustrator and bringing in their laptops so they can work on it during class. So what do I see among the legions of MacBooks and PCs? A older ThinkPad-looking laptop running Ubuntu with GIMP running in the background. Now who’s to say how that persons project will turn out , that’s not my point, it’s just that maybe their is hope for humanity after all. I mean, if your ‘ ‘typical’ college student starts using distributions of Linux such as Ubuntu then we’ve got quite a change there, which I think is awesome.

Just my random thought for the day.

Addendum: My other reason for posting this? Totally jealous. I’ve always wanted a spare laptop/desktop with Ubuntu (or the like) installed that I could just mess around with and simultaneously enjoy the benefits of the ‘open source lifestyle’. One of these days I’ll go completely Windowsless…

Outward Bound

I try to keep a constant schedule when it comes to writing in this blog, but I’ve been actually pretty busy this past week to be honest. Thankfully, Thursday allows me to have my one day to chill and have a life for a moment…before I immediate jump right back into the school work, but enough about that.

I’m still planning some things for this blog (ie more regular posting) since right now it’s all very sporadic. One thought being that I have some sort of week in review that is not only a wrap up of that weeks posts, but points out some interesting ’stuff’ I stumbled upon that week just so folks don’t have to religiously check out the blog to get a idea of what I’ve been going on about. Honestly I don’t know how interesting that is to anyone else but myself , and I’m not sure how anyone else builds a audience when it comes to a personal blog, but point being stuff is being worked, yo.

As I may or may not of mentioned school is wrapping up proper, so much that next week is the last week of the quarter (?) before Spring Break and the beginning of Spring Quarter the next week. Kind of crazy if you ask me, but I’ll get to see some of my friends and family ideally so if nothing else it’ll just be a week of relaxation before I’m back in the swing of things again.

I got nothin’ else guys, like I said in my GameSpot blog it’s just gonna be one of those weekends.

Megaton

Giantbomb.com, the new home of Jeff Gerstmann and Ryan Davis (and I’m assuming Alex Navarro though he seems to have a job at the moment). Looks pretty cool, and just like everyone I’m pretty interested to see what exactly these guys have got cooking.

Attack of the 80’s Logos

The video for Justices ‘DVNO’. Directed by So Me.

Maybe a little too similar to their D.A.N.C.E. video in execution, but what a seriously cool looking video.

A la Asian Dan.

Up On Music: February Pt. 2

This month out of any other was probably the strangest musically, not in that what I listened to but the variety, I went from new pop/techno to almost completely classic rock and pop. This isn’t to say I don’t do that normally, but it was quite the notable shift, and that’s not something you normally notice. No matter though, here are my second round of picks for February. Click on for the entire (equally lengthy) post!

Artist:
Cansei de Ser Sexy
Album:
Cansei de Ser Sexy
Label:
Sub Pop

Cansei de Ser Sexy  -  Alala

Cansei de Ser Sexy is one of those bands that I more or less rediscovered in 2007, not to say I’m a huge fan, but their sole 2006 album was really not so bad and Alala along with Music Is My Hot Hot Sex where probably my favorite tracks off the album. It’s not really for everyone, but I guess that could go for any artist on this list or any other.

Artist:
Miracle Fortress
Album:
N/A
Label:
N/A

Miracle Fortress  -  Digital Love

Covers are a delicate business I’d day, they can come off as just unorigianl knock-offs or in rare instances they can transform something interesting and unique, though most of the time it’s the former than the later. While Miracle Fortress here is not a complete exemption to the rule their cover of Daft Punks Digital Love is a pretty faithful rendition and manages to capture the spacey/house vibe that was so prevalent throughout Discovery. Any cover that makes me check out more of their music is a successful cover I say.

Artist:
Boys Noize
Album:
N/A
Label:
N/A

Justice – Phantom Pt. II (Boy Noize Remix)

Not much to say about this one I’m afraid. As mentioned in my first edition of Up On Music, Boys Noize has put out some pretty sick stuff and this remix of Justices Phantom Pt.2 takes that track and really lights a fire under it’s ass (in a good way of course). Besides anyone who says they didn’t start bobbing their head at around 1:16 is either not a fan of electronica or is without a soul…ok, perhaps a bit harsh, but the build up to that point is perfect.

Cue the ‘classic rock’!

Artist:
The Rolling Stones
Album:
Let It Bleed
Label:
ABKCO Records

The Rolling Stones – Gimme Shelter

I don’t know about you, but hearing this song in Rock Band only reinvigorated my love in the Rolling Stones. If anything really it just makes me somewhat crazy that people are discovering music like this through Rock Band, but whatever, if they discover good music it shouldn’t matter what medium it’s through, right?

Artist:
The Band
Album:
Music from Big Pink
Label:
Capitol

The Band – The Weight

The other day I got the chance to watch Easy Rider in my Composition class (English class to the rest of us); which is quite the interesting film as a aside. Point being that I got a chance to hear the sound track, most of which I was familiar with. One of the many riding scenes has the song “The Weight” by The Band playing and it just reminded me what a cool song that is. Though I must be honest, I did not hear this song originally from this movie and that kind of makes me a bit sad.

Artist:
Pink Floyd
Album:
The Wall
Label:
Columbia

Pink Floyd – Another Brick in the Wall Pt. 2

I don’t consider myself much of a Pink Floyd fan, I’m just going to say that right now. However, one summer I decided to go to a summer camp off in North Carolina and for whatever reason my cabin counseler (who was incidentally Romanion) played The Wall almost the entire time, and from then on I started to really enjoy that album. I’m not sure what it is about Pt.2 that sits so well with me, but every time I give it a listen I can’t help but enjoy the experience. My apologies for the YouTube link, but I simply could not find a legal alternative.

So I decided to bring Up On Music over to this blog for the sake of consistency (or lack thereof depending on how you look at it). At the same time I hate alienating anyone, so it’s certainly not set in stone. At this point though I’ll continue to do it and post it in this space. Besides, if you didn’t notice the extra width allows me to do some cool layout stuff with the individual tracks and such. I mean I love GameSpot, but man that 432px fixed width kills me sometimes….