The Airborne Toxic Event – ?
http://www.myspace.com/theairbornetoxicevent
Track to start with: Sometime Around Midnight
If there’s one song you listen to all month, make it The Airborne Toxic Event’s Sometime Around Midnight. It’s been on repeat on my Winamp ever since I bought it off Amazon the other week. Sometime Around Midnight starts off with a symphonic string melody that fades into a soft guitar introduction. As the vocals and percussion come in, the song gradually builds a crescendo of sound into an intense, almost Arcade Fire – Intervention-like swell into head bobbing, belt-it-out bliss.
No, the album isn’t called “?”, the title just hasn’t been revealed yet. This Los Angeles quintet’s quickly garnered a lot of buzz recently amongst show-goers and local radio stations. Singer Mikel Jollet, has a smooth baritone voice that reminds you a fair bit of Morrissey with a splash of Win Butler intensity in there to keep you in check. Only four recorded studio songs have been released thus far and they showcase the band’s spectrum of sounds, from Franz Ferdinand-like danceability on “Does This Mean You’re Moving On?” to contemplative melodies (“Wishing Well”) to simply… epic (“Sometime Around Midnight”).
Operator Please – Yes Yes Vindictive [AU Import]
http://www.myspace.com/operatorplease
Track to start with: Just A Song About Ping Pong
Five-piece band from Australia, these kids are lots of fun. Operator Please takes the exuberance of The Go! Team and focuses it with the brattiness of The Donnas and the confidence of Shirley Manson.
A few of my favorites:
#2 RAPPING WORDS THAT DONT ALWAYS RHYME
#12 PROTOOLS,,,,STARTED USING IT IN 98
#19 WEB SITES, I HAD INFAMOUSSTORES.COM AND WAS WRITING BLOGS BACK IN 99 LONG BEFORE IT BECAME POPULAR IN HIP HOP TO HAVE A WEB SITE.
#23 MAKING EXPOSING THE ILLUMINATI, SECRET GOVERNMENT AND HIDDEN TRUTHS THAT NEW HOT SHIT…
#26 I COULD JUST KEEP GOING BUT NOW I’M TIRED… HOW DARE YOU QUESTION MY TREND SETTING, LOOK AT WHAT I BRING TO THE TABLE.
For what it’s worth, P, I have never ever questioned your trend setting. You bring to the table a delicious feast of fresh and innovative actions that define the zeitgeist of the 21st century.
(Full list after the jump)
You Don’t Know Jack is a trivia game from Chicago developer, Jellyvision. It was first introduced in 1995 as a PC CD-ROM title published by Berkeley Systems, whom you might remember as the people who made the “flying toasters” screensaver for your Windows 3.11 machine. Needless to say, YDKJ is the best thing that ever came out of that company. Billed with the tagline, “where high culture and pop culture collide”, YDKJ was (and is) the most well-written trivia game ever made. After spawning a few sequels and spinoffs (e.g. sports), the game disappeared in 2000 and was only recently brought back in a web format in winter of 2006-2007. YDKJ’s charm comes from it’s ability to seamlessly weave stuff like the movie Juno together with Roman mythology in creating trivia questions that will either make you feel smart, or borderline retarded. Either way, you’ll still be having fun.
This year’s Oscars were serviceable if uninteresting. Stewart was good, but not particularly memorable. Which, I guess, is a pretty solid performance. None of the awards got me riled up except for a slight twinge when No Country For Old Men won out over There Will Be Blood for Best Picture. Personally I thought There Will Be Blood was far and away the best picture of the year, but I’m fine with No Country For Old Men as it would have been my second choice. At least Atonement didn’t win.
What really saved my Oscar watching experience, though, was being involved in an Oscars pool. Of course I failed miserably, but it definitely made the show more interesting. Only after the fact did I discover that along with being the coolest guy on the planet, George Clooney is also an expert at picking Oscar winners.
Mein Gott. He was on the fucking dot in every category! He didn’t pick the right actresses, but he did talk about them in depth on the little blurb in that Time article.
Is there anything this man can’t do?
Read George’s picks [time.com]
My email may be a little acerbic, but something about communicating with Lefsetz gets me in a CAPITALIZING MOOD. The fact of the matter is, Activision has severely diluted the Guitar Hero brand by releasing so many expansions/”sequels” in such a short time frame. In a 12 month window we’ll have had Guitar Hero: Rocks the 80′s, Guitar Hero 3, and Guitar Hero: Aerosmith. None of these titles have advanced the core gameplay of the series in a significant way. They all basically amount to song expansion packs. While this may be fine and dandy for fans of the game who just want more tracks (or for aging rock bands to feel like they’re relevant again), but I feel that Guitar Hero is no longer synonymous with cool, innovative rhythm gaming. It’s just about become like The Sims and its shamelessly exploited expansion packs. A mainstream, casual gaming cash cow for sure, but zero credibility with gaming connoisseurs. Understandable from a business perspective, but don’t go around plugging Guitar Hero like it’s Animal Collective.
The book is not so much a biography of Kennedy’s life as a whole, but a snapshot into the 18 months of his life as a creative video marketer for Atlantic Records circa 2002. Having never worked in the industry before, Kennedy’s perspective as an outsider depicts an industry of excess, complacency, and hilarity. In fact, many of his initial encounters mirrored my own initial impressions when I started working in music. The internal monologue of “Oh shit I am standing next to (insert big name music star here)! Pleaseletmesaysomethingnaturalbecoolbecool” that he writes is spot on with how I reacted when I was a wide-eyed initiate in the music industry. A lot of the humor comes from Kennedy’s written “thoughts” and they had me lol’ing in my chair quite a few times.
There’s not much of a coherent plot, but that’s fine. Rock On is basically a collection of anecdotes from Kennedy’s tenure at Atlantic. If you’ve never worked in the business before, it’s an eye opening tale about just how ridiculous the inner workings of the industry are. You have executives in corner offices who don’t even show up to work because the whole reason they have their jobs is because they signed a big artist 25 years ago and have been riding the coattails ever since. $50,000 office desks, fat expense accounts, cluelessness, artist hypocrisy, two and a half hour lunches, corporate sycophants, high employment turnover are all things you’ll read about. All that glamor, glitz, coolness that you’ve attributed to the music industry in your mind is brought crashing down to earth in what amounts to an episode of The Office.
The funny thing is, everything Kennedy writes about working at a major label seemed natural to me at the time. In fact, I probably had less of a jaw-dropping reaction to a lot of the anecdotes than most people will when reading the book. If you’ve worked in music before, you’ll know what I mean. Nevertheless, Rock On was a very entertaining book that I read in two sittings one day. Recommended if you like music and/or office humor.
*statistics are from googling “the average american reads how many books a year” and checking out what the first page gave me
Both Best Buy and Netflix gave the ol’ press release one-two punch today by announcing plans to phase out support of the HD DVD video format in favor of Blu-ray. Best Buy’s press release basically says that starting in March, they will give better product placement for Blu-ray discs and players while also having salespeople recommend the format to prospective consumers. They still say they will sell HD DVD discs and players, but it’s quite obvious that come this time next year we probably won’t be seeing much of our red-boxed friends. Netflix’s press release has more decisive language, with definite plans to stop buying new HD DVD immediately while also removing existing HD DVD titles from circulation by year’s end.
So is this why they didn’t ship me Gone Baby Gone on HD DVD today? I was kinda pissed about that. As a recent new owner of an HD DVD player, I can say I’m a little surprised how quickly things are shaking out in this format war. I’ve watched enough movies via Netflix in the past month to justify my purchase already, but I didn’t expect Netflix to drop the format completely so quickly.
Oh well, I guess the next step is to wait for the blowout clearance sales for HD DVD titles so I can grab some titles before we inevitably get gouged by monopolistic Blu-ray prices.
Netflix goes Blu-ray exclusive [hi-def digest]
Best Buy recommends Blu-ray [hi-def digest]
Au contraire, mon frère.
I just got word that Audiosurf releases on Steam this Friday for only $9.95 ($8.95 if you pre order it before then). A demo will also be released if you’re undecided on getting it. If you missed the boat on this game, read my recent Indie Game Spotlight on it.
To sweeten the deal even more, the game comes with the soundtrack to Valve’s Orange Box, including the lovable Portal credits song, “Still Alive.” On top of this, the game also has achievements as one of the first titles to take advantage of Valve’s new Steamworks package.
Support great indie developers and affordable digital distribution!
Excuse me while i fire up Steam to preorder it.
Audiosurf on Steam [steampowered.com]
A nummy Twix bar to you if you can spot what’s wrong with the above video for Heidi Montag’s new song “Body Language”.
(answer after the jump)
