March Mixtape

(photo by Oliver Lang)

'Been seriously busy trying to get my PhD done. It ain't over yet and I'm already looking back on it. Preemptive nostalgia or something.

Anyway, here's a short, kinda sad mixtape. Made to accompany my rereading of Michel Serres's Genesis. Well, sorta.

Aside: Should I just be posting mixes with mostly 'new' stuff? I've been away from the blogosphere for a while (read: marking 'all as read').

Track Listing:

Cheju - Moody Copy
Kimonophonic - On a Mountain Instrument
Verbose - The Last Lizard
Dunaewsky69 - Shkaf
Tycho - The Daydream
Sun Araw - Live Mind
Loscil - Dub for Cascadia
múm - K/Half-noise

http://www.mediafire.com/?mtwqmmcmjhm

Ecstatic Sunshine, "Turned On"

"Outside the record there are many sounds. Some of those sounds were moved, through memory, into the record. We would hear soft bass through the windows of a car, or listen to birds waking up before dawn, and learn to remember those sounds and later draw them out of synthesizers or guitars. In this way we could hear the record before it was made. It is like John Cage’s ideas about incidental sound, except instead of composing with those sounds, we composed for them. The record is an homage to the Everyday. It is music that happens, and is heard, and then said." - Matthew Papich on the new album, Yesterday's Work

Mixtapes: MEL-SIN-MNL

(image via milkpack)

This is coming a bit late, but I wanted to share the mixtapes I made out of my flight playlists for this trip back home. There are two (more-or-less coherent) mixes here, mostly made up of the stuff I've been really into over the past couple of months/year. Will hopefully make the mixtapes a regular part of the blog.

Tracklisting

Small Black - Despicable Dogs (Washed Out Remix)
Taken by Trees - Watch the Waves (Memory Tapes Version)
Memory Cassette - Last One Awake
Au Revoir Simone - Shadows (The Teenagers Remix)
The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - Higher than the Stars
M83 - Teen Angst
Moscow Olympics - No Winter, No Autumn
Wild Nothing - Summer Holiday
Asobi Seksu - Pink Cloud Tracing Paper
The Morning Paper - Always Real
Washed Out - New Theory
Memoryhouse - To the Lighthouse
Beach House - Take Care
Cold Cave - Double Lives in Single Beds

http://www.mediafire.com/?gzit4yzjr2h



Tracklisting

Le Loup - Forgive Me
Bear in Heaven - Wholehearted Mess
Fluffy Lumbers - Harry Dolland's
Andrew Cedermark - Hard Livin'
Surf City - Autumn
Girls - Lust for Life
Papercuts - Future Primitive
Kurt Vile - Overnite Religion
Thao with the Get Down Stay Down - Know Better Learn Faster
Holiday Shores - Phones Don't Feud
Best Coast - Sun Was High (So Was I)
Real Estate - Snow Days

http://www.mediafire.com/?3wdtemwr2uw

Memoryhouse

I'm flying home soon and really couldn't ask for a better time to discover Memoryhouse and, in particular, their track "To the Lighthouse." It's a perfect song for long drives and idle time in airports, things we tend to associate with "supermodernity," but which I've always linked to older forms of travel like sailing.

Memoryhouse - To the Lighthouse

Also check out the Memoryhouse cover of Grizzly Bear's 'Foreground' on MySpace.

The Morning Paper + Moscow Olympics

The Morning Paper is the amazing one-man shoegaze project of Swede David Khylberg. He's been putting music out since 2004, but his work's actually somewhat hard to track down, as it's been distributed on a number of labels, most notably, Skipping Stones Records (which released the album It's Getting Better) and the Japanese label Xtal Records (which released his other album What We Wish). Curiously, What We Wish was (apparently) re-released earlier this year by Universal Records in the Philippines, a label which is, um, not exactly known for its discriminating taste.

I don't know and can't really figure out what Khylberg's connection is to the Philippines, although it is worth noting that his most recent release is the split single "Always Real," with the equally amazing Philippine band Moscow Olympics. Ironically enough, that single, like Moscow Olympics' great album Cut the World, has not been released in the Philippines. (Actually, as far as I can tell, Moscow Olympics is better known in the blogosphere than they are in Manila.)

I guess none of this label stuff really matters as long as we're able to track down the music. I've put down a track each from The Morning Project and Moscow Olympics here, but it's definitely worth buying the rest of both bands' stuff if you're a fan of shoegaze.

On a related note, I'll be flying to Manila for the holidays and thought it would be nice to put up a series of posts on local bands here to coincide with my trip. I'll probably start that series next week.

The Morning Paper - Always Real


Moscow Olympics - Still

Jason Eppink's Pixelator

(via Twitter friends)

From Jason Eppink's website:

Pixelator is an unauthorized on-going video art performance collaboration with the New York City Metropolitan Transit Authority, Clear Channel Communications, and its selected artists.

Since 2003, the MTA has made available for exhibition purposes 80 LED screens located at subway entrances across New York City. Unfortunately, the high cost of exhibiting (an estimated $274,000 per month per screen) prevents most artists from having access to these facilities. While the MTA's effort to create more opportunities for video art exhibition in public spaces is to be commended, selected works remain wholly fixated on commercial goods and media conglomerate events, a short-sighted curatorial choice that regrettably ignores the full potential of these promising exhibition spaces.

In an attempt to broaden the scope of MTA's video art series, Pixelator takes video pieces currently on display and diffuses them into a pleasant array of 45 blinking, color-changing squares. Since the project is an anonymous collaboration, the resulting video is almost entirely unplanned and unanticipated, with the original artists helping to create new works of art without any knowledge of their participation.

(Translation: Pixelator turns those ugly, blinding video billboard ads into art.)

Eppink also provides instructions on how to replicate the ad pixelator here!

Memory Tapes

Radio edit of Memory Tapes' Graphics, from Seek Magic, definitely one of my favorite albums of the year. Actually much prefer the album version, but the more futuristic feel of this is interesting, I guess. Great b-side also up on Stereogum.

Memory Tapes - Graphics (Sci-Fi Edit)

Best Coast

New Best Coast Black Iris 7"



Best Coast - When I'm with You

Julien Pacaud

Julien Pacaud is a French illustrator and, apparently, a former astrophysician, international snooker champion, hypnotist and esperanto teacher. So basically, he's the coolest guy on the planet. Check out the rest of his work - all vintage-inspired and some great themes like giant people destroying stuff with lasers.



(via Vectro Ave)

Mato Atom

Too busy to post anything substantial these days (thesis lockdown), but here's a great little vid from Mato Atom. More of his work here.