I Can See Russia From My House!

Thanks random chick from Russia I found through livejournal! Thanks to your journal, I got all this!

Pew Pew Pew!

Someone asked me the other day about the Battles song "My Machines" I posted the video for, specifically about the guest singer on the track. Yes, that is in fact THE Gary Numan who is responsible for this lovely tune you may recognize from before I was even born, back in 1979: "Cars". Gary Numan who has 23 studio albums under his belt, 21 live albums, and 50 singles, just released a new album this year entitled Dead Son Rising. You can see the promo video for the album here.

Many musicians have given props to Gary Numan, citing Numan as an influence, as well as covering his music. Nine Inch Nails covered his song "Metal" (you can watch them perform it together, live here), as did Afrika Bambaataa featuring vocals by Gary Numan. Fear Factory covered his song "Cars" which also featured Gary Numan doing some of the vocal work. Even Basement Jaxx's popular hit "Where's Your Head At?" relies heavily on the use of Gary Numan's song "M.E." for its hook.

Epic Post-Rock Break-Down

Found a rad Post-Rock group from Portugal today called Indignu, this is their track "Choro Da Saudade" from their only album entitled Fetus In Fetu. Waffles didn't have their album, but thankfully what.cd did so I scooped it up off there. It's nice to have a post-rock group that speaks another language. Most of my post-rock library has no vocals but the little that does is all in English. It's also nice to hear stuff coming from a place I don't listen to much music from. I love finding bands from other countries... especially when they are a good band, and relatively unheard of (Indignu only has 1,398 fans on Facebook most of whom are definitely not U.S. citizens), because I love introducing people to new music.

If you liked this track and have plenty of time on your hands, some other post-rock bands I enjoy/recommend are 65daysofstatic, Explosions in the Sky, Collapse Under the Empire, If These Trees Could Talk, We Invented the Night, Maybeshewill, Mogwai, There Will be Fireworks, Three Steps to the Ocean, These Hands Could Seperate the Sky, And So I Watch You From Afar, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Thee Silver Mt. Zion (Formerly A Silver Mt. Zion), and Mono (A Japanese Post-Rock band, not the same Mono I posted the other day which is a Trip-Hop band from the UK). As a side note, I love some of these band names, their album names, and their track names too. Epic epic stuff sometimes, just like their music. I consider Post-Rock to be the most epic style of music. It has such power, such emotion. It can be this giant powerful force that can be soft and soothing, but mostly it makes me feel like I can take on the world!

Some Kind Of...

The View by Lou Reed & Metallica

From the unlikely pairing of Lou Reed and Metallica comes this fantastic track, The View. These men have been working on the album "Lulu" since it's announcement in June and it is finished and shipping out for it's hard copy release on November 1st, though it was released today from online retailers such as iTunes.

Metallica who is also celebrating their 30th anniversary this year, told Spin magazine they will be playing four shows at San Fransisco's Fillmore the week of December 5th. You can expect the shows to cover their entire music catalog (9 albums, 5 EP's and 4 live albums!), and you might even see Mr. Reed onstage with them. "These unique shows will include special guests and events, rare songs, varied set lists, odds and ends, and all the nutty stuff you expect from Metallica," the band said.

Metallica's full discography (according to wikipedia) consists of:

9 Studio albums, 4 Live albums, 5 EPs, 46 Singles, 24 Music videos, 3 Box sets, 1 Cover album, and 10 Demos.

It's A Trip Hop Kind Of Day

It's definitely a Trip Hop kind of day for me today... wish it were raining here or something, then things'd be perf. I've found myself listening to the likes of Portishead, Mono, Sneaker Pimps, and Morcheeba so far today. A little history/vocabulary lesson for you: the term "Trip-Hop" was coined by one Andy Pemberton (a writer for MixMag) in 1994 whilst describing this song, "In/Flux" by DJ Shadow. Here are some of my favorite Trip Hop songs... Hope you like them!

Portishead - Only You

Massive Attack - Splitting the Atom

Sneaker Pimps - 6 Underground

Bonobo - The Keeper (ft. Andreya Triana

Mono - Life in Mono (Original Video from 1996) (See the video they made in 1998 for it's re-release on the Great Expectations Soundtrack here.)

Morcheeba - Enjoy the Ride

Symbion Project

The band Symbion Project is a long time favorite of mine, and today was most definitely a Symbion Project kind of day. Symbion Project is the moniker of Kasson Crooker, a talented musician who has participated in several bands such as Freezepop, Splashdown, Larkspur, and Sirensong. He is currently in another group called The Planets Won't Let You Sleep Tonight, as well as also working on Symbion Project. Symbion Project has released 4 albums, Red in '98, Immortal Game in '03, Wound Up by God or the Devil in '06, and Misery in Soliloquy in '09. Kasson is also a Project Director for Harmonix (the video game company responsible for Frequency, Amplitude, Guitar Hero, Rock Band, and many more, and he was the Project Lead on Phase, Rock Band 2, Dance Central 1, and Dance Central 2 releases for Kinect/Xbox360. He has also had several other monikers that he has used to release music on video games, for instance in Amplitude, he uses DJ HMX, Komputer Kontroller, and Cosmonaut Zero. 

I met up with Kasson at a Freezepop show here in San Diego at the now defunct Beauty Bar a few years ago and he was quite fun to chat with. We talked about Freezepop, Symbion Project, and Amplitude, and he even signed a few albums for me! At the time he hadn't toured as Symbion Project and didn't intend on it any time soon: he just doesn't have enough of a fan-base to do so. So here I am, spreading the word about this amazing artist, in hopes that maybe one day, he'll have enough fans to want to tour, and I'll get to see him live!

From Zero To WOAH!

Dude rips it up at the end!

Love, Whatcha Doin' To Me?

An amazing video from an amazing band! Monarchy is playing TONIGHT at the Echoplex in LA. Some friends and I are about to head up there very soon to see them. I'm really excited for this show after seeing them play an amazing set at Coachella this year.

A Mon Or A Monkey?

Bonobo is playing during Roctober up in LA! Maybe I'll be able to make it to this show... it's during the time that Stephanie is in town and it would be fun to take her to it. I've played her some and she enjoys it, so we'll see. It's on the same night as Amon Tobin's show in Pomona which I'd rather take her to, but it's much less expensive, and I have tickets to a different Amon Tobin show anyway. Hrmmm... might have to move things around.

A Man With Class,

A man with style, Daedelus! I've seen him twice now, once at Coachella and another time at a small, free show at UCSD. This video is fun and I love the decor. There are two more videos from this set, one here, and one here. Enjoy!

Cover Me Ballad

Just found this beautiful cover of Bjork's "Hyperballad" by Robyn! Hope you like it!

Live At The Stage

Here's a little behind the scenes video of a band that my friend Michael plays the drums for called Abandon the Raft. They are my newest addition to Rocktober, playing October 11th in San Diego at The Stage, right across the street from Voyeur! Excited to see them again and watch Michael rock out on the drums! Feel free to check out their music on their facebook page and like them if you do!

4 Pages Of Lyrics!

This video is absolutely hilarious! This is Jeff Tweedy from Wilco, who just put out a spectacular new album called The Whole Love. Go check it out!

Do The D.A.N.C.E.

I absolutely love this video and the song/mashup is great as well! My friend Aja sent this to me a couple days ago while we were chatting about music. The choreography is great, and you may recognize the guy at the beginning as Martin Starr aka Bill Haverchuck from the tv show Freaks and Geeks, and he plays a role in Party Down!

In The Sunshine

Here's a video from the A, B, and the Sea show that I went to in San Jose. A, B, and the Sea is a surf/pop band from San Francisco that features a great friend of mine, Ben Laatsch who is partially responsible for my finally getting around to starting this music blog you're reading right now! He plays the bass guitar for them, and sometimes does his own stuff on the side as well. This isn't really the type of music I listen to, but I feel like it's important to support your friends and the things they do and he's a great supporter of the things that I do, so I gotta show him some R.E.S.P.E.C.T. Thanks, Ben!

I've Got A Fever

Fever Ray has such an amazing video catalog, I can't not share it. They've only released one album, but they have 6 videos from it! Pretty amazing. And not a single video is bad... they're all spectacularly put together videos with amazing directing and super emotional... very fitting for Fever Ray's music! Here they are:

If I Had A Heart

When I Grow Up

Seven

Triangle Walks

Keep The Streets Empty For Me

Stranger Than Kindness (A Cover of a Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds song)

Don't Let The Walls Cave In On You!

What does a 52 piece orchestra have to do with Basement Jaxx?? Well this song of course! There's a whole album too, and there was a couple of shows! You can see some live video here, but the sound quality is quite shite. Maybe they'll make a dvd or something? The Metropole Orkestra is currently working with Todd Rundgren and has worked with a wide variety of musicians like Burt Bacharach and Serj Tankian of System of a Down!

How Long Is This Line?

S.P.Y is a drum and bass artist that is starting to pick up the pace and get noticed. He's worked with a few artists I have known for a while like Total Science and some others. He hasn't got any videos yet or a soundcloud to point you to, but I'm sure he will have more than just his myspace hopefully soon. For now, check out this remix he did of Zero 7's "In The Waiting Line," and you can search for him on youtube and check out some of his stuff there.

Aaaliiiceee!

Pogo is a great sample artist chopping up Disney movies among other things and putting them together in a fashion to create a song. I have a few favorites but this is the first one I saw. I saw it featured on Yooouuutuuube.com and feel like it is still better watched there for the full effect. Pogo just played a show in Solana Beach that I knew was coming up but completely forgot to follow up on and I missed it. Shucks. Hopefully next time!

Falling Down

Battles + Gary Numan + Vertigo = one highly anxious feeling video. Love it!

ps. Escalators freak me out.

Can't Breathe

I was thinking back to Coachella this year and there's a few things that stand out to me as flat out disappointments. Magnetic Man was one such artist. Having heard this song and his whole album prior to making the trip out to the desert in Indio and walking the lush polo fields that Coachella rests upon I thought Magnetic Man had so much potential, but his set was just awful. Even this amazing song wasn't even up to par. Such a shame. The album version is great, but slightly reminds me of how bad it was live. Hopefully I didn't ruin this song for myself by seeing him perform. Haha! 

Cut N' Paste

Cut Copy is playing at 4th and B on October 14th! I really want to go to this show, but it is the same night my friend returns from Indiana for Fall Break. I'd take her, but the doors open before she arrives and I don't want to risk missing the show if her plane is late upon arrival or other such occurances. They are also playing on the 12th at the Palladium in Los Angeles... maybe I can swing going to that show instead of the SD show? Here's a few of my favorite tracks from them.

Need You Now

Lights & Music

Hearts On Fire

BeginStep

My friend asked me to make her a "Dubstep for Beginners" mix disc so I'm including this as a bonus track at the end! 

Re Burn

Found out about a group I'd never heard of before while I was at Burning Man this year as well. NeuroDriver! Great techno! I saw them twice, this set, and once at Osiris as well. At Osiris I even got onstage dancing with them and they gave me a mix disc he made specifically for Burning Man!

Don't Burn The Mushrooms!

Infected Mushroom played an amazing set consisting of music from their album "Classical Mushroom" and prior, so, all old stuff. They even played my favorite song by them, Symphonatic! This song is from their other set though, since I couldn't find many good quality videos of the other set. Looks like the guys from Infected Mushroom had some fun while they were there as well, check out their own video here!

Home From Burn

I have returned! Burning man was an epic adventure: everything I had hoped, dreamed, and imagined plus so much more! This photo is the schedule at Osiris, one of the many "music venue" camps at Burning Man this year. This was Osiris' first year, but they managed to pull some amazing musicians. Ken from the Crystal Method played a set there, and NeuroDriver, as well as many others. I saw Ken spin two sets while I was out there, but I can't find any good videos of him... not even decent videos, so here's another compilation video for now, and when I find one, I'll post it!

Rites of Passage from Croshane on Vimeo.

Temple Burn

Burning down the Temple of Transition.

Man Burn

Burning The Man!

OctoBurN

My second favorite art car at Burning Man 2011. (Can't find any good ones of the Magic Carpet which was my fav, but this is great too!)

Burning Man 2011's Earth Harp At The Temple Of Transition

The Earth Harp at the Temple of Transition was amazing. Here's a couple videos of it so you can really capture the feel of it, and actually be able to see what was going on.