Weekend

"The ferocity of punk, the drama of shoegaze, the ambition of Springsteen and the textures of noise." - That's the description on Weekend's blog and it's pretty accurate. I'm quite quick to like anything shoegaze or shoegaze-y, but Weekend's a standout I think. Just have a listen. 'All-American' is a real gem. 7" expected this November via Mexican Summer.


Weekend - All-American


Weekend - Coma Summer

(via MBV)

Mark Jenkins

I'm a big fan of the work of DC- based Mark Jenkins. I'm particularly fond of the pieces that use human figures. The way he puts private moments on display and is able to convey affective experiences using bodies with obscured faces is really impressive.

Here's a quote from Jenkins:

"There is opposition, and risk, but I think that just shows that street art is the sort of frontier where the leading edge really does have to chew through the ice. And it's good for people to remember public space is a battleground, with the government, advertisers and artists all mixing and mashing, and even now the strange cross-pollination taking place as street artists sometimes become brands, and brands camouflaging as street art creating complex hybrids or impersonators. I think it's understanding the strangeness of the playing field where you'll realize that painting street artists, writers, as the bad guys is a shallow view.“ -Mark Jenkins (via My Modern Met)

Do Make Say Think + Múm

Looks like some old favorites are back in action. Toronto's Do Make Say Think are releasing their 6th album, 'Other Truths', on Oct. 6 and earlier this month immortal Icelandic collective Múm dropped their 5th album, 'Sing Along to Songs You Don't Know' (if you get it from gogoyoko, 10% of the sales go to refugees). To be honest, the Múm track bores the hell out of me. And I like to think that I've got a lot of patience for boring music. I think it's because I assess all music based on how they fit into my imaginary life soundtrack and I really can't imagine any scene where this would be playing. The DMST mp3 below is actually a sampler for the entire album, which is just four tracks ('Do', 'Make', 'Say' and 'Think' - how clever). I'm really liking it, especially the first track. 'Sounds like something I'd put on while getting dressed. Yep, that's the extent of my critique. I've got to save brain space for my thesis.



Do Make Say Think - Other Truths (album sampler)


Múm - Illuminated

Deerhunter + Atlas Sound Live

La Blogotheque got some great footage of Deerhunter at La Route du Rock in St. Malo, France. The video also features Bradford Cox doing a bare version of 'Kid Climax', a track off the forthcoming Logos (Oct 10 from Kranky). I actually saw Deerhunter live earlier this year in Melbourne and they were really incredible. Video also includes Marissa Nadler and Delano Orchestra.

Here are a couple of Atlas Sound bonuses:

Stream: Attic Lights (via Stereogum)
MP3: Attic Lights (live at The Earl) (more here)

Nosaj Thing

Nosaj Thing Visual Show Compilation Test Shoot from Adam Guzman on Vimeo.

Adam Guzman and Julia Tsao collaborate on the Nosaj Thing visual show. The result is awesome.

The Nextdoor Neighbors

I'm a little bit in love with these tracks from The Nextdoor Neighbors' 'folktronic'/'organically-grown bedroom pop' album, Magic Vs the Machine (Bicycle Records). They make me feel like a teenage girl. They're all simple and pretty. And I don't mean that in a patronizing way. At all. It's exactly the kind of stuff I'd be listening to on a Sunday afternoon, if, you know, I didn't spend my Sunday afternoons getting killed by my PhD thesis.

As if the tracks weren't enough reason for me to love them, here's a description of what went down during their album launch:

Saturday night was the duo’s CD release party for their debut album Magic Vs. the Machine (Bicycle Records) at the Vera Project, with the most opportune word in this sentence being 'party'. The band was perfectly lovely, striking a balance between being ready for their big night and being overwhelmed by it. The room at Vera was packed with teenagers, and you could guess most were friends. Between songs, Kathy (Cote) and Jessie (Hill) tried to thank everyone who showed up and it felt like an Academy Awards acceptance speech during every break: rushed for time and afraid that someone would be left out and not thanked (but they did control when the music started). I think Cote wanted to delay the start of the set (from 8:45) by a few minutes so that her brother could make it, who was driving up from Vancouver, WA to be there. He eventually showed up about 10 minutes into the set. (via Three Imaginary Girls)

Seems really 'real'. 'Wonder if they'll turn into assholes if they make it big.



The Nextdoor Neighbors - Anti-Lullaby


The Nextdoor Neighbors - Cultural Revolution


The Nextdoor Neighbors - Magic Vs the Machine

Memory Tapes / Fool's Gold

I feel obligated to blog about the Memory Tapes remix of Fool's Gold's Nadine, 'coz the whole world is blogging about it. Half-joke. I think Memory Tapes/Memory Cassette/Weird Tapes is my most favoritest discovery of the year (and probably every other person's). Yeah, in case you didn't know, it's all the same dude, though I read somewhere that Memory Cassette is supposed to be the feminine version of Weird Tapes, which was Dayve Hawk's first monicker. I'm not sure if I really 'get' that from the tracks or if I'm just hearing it coz I read about it. I'm also not sure if my queer-theoried brain really dislikes Hawk for even thinking about that split, though I suppose the fact that the full length Seek Magic is coming as the hybrid 'Memory Tapes' is reassuring.


Fool's Gold - Nadine (Memory Tapes Version)



Memory Cassette - Surfin

Return as an Animal

(via Changethethought)

'Return as an Animal' is a short film by motionographer/animator Bruno B. Dicolla. It's supposed to be about the myth of the eternal return of life after death. I like it because it lets me watch two of my favorite things at the same time: neon animation and semi-idle animals. Seriously, I used to spend hours watching things like 'Untamed Africa' on Discovery Channel. I especially loved it when they gave big cats names and followed them around for months (e.g. "Nala is beginning to distance herself from her cubs, who must learn to fend for themselves blah blah.") I generally just lost interest when the program was about birds. Go figure.

Anyway, Dicolla was also featured in the Floating World Animation Festival last June. Check out the neat promo vid they used for the festival here.


PS Got a heads up that I put the wrong link for the Washed Out track. It's all fixed now.

Manila + Melbourne / My Cities Meet (via SM)

(via Coolhunter/twitter friends)

Coolhunter 'found' the bowling alley at SM Mall of Asia in Manila. Yep, SM is 'officially' cool. For those who don't know, SM is the largest chain of malls in the Philippines. It used to be where everyone went to go shopping, back in the 80s and early 90s, before Ayala Malls realized there was money to be made by rebuilding the 'first world in the third world'. Well, it looks like SM's really onto that game now. This bowling alley is by Melbourne's Architects EAT, which is apparently also redoing the annex of SM North EDSA. Or have they done that already? I've got an image of the scheme below, but I'm not sure if that's already been constructed or is in the process of being constructed.


Normally, I'm really against major renovations, at least in Manila, where there's a bad habit of tearing down perfectly nice buildings to build monstrosities. Just look at what they did to the amazing Greenhills buildings. Now Vira Mall looks like any other crappy mall.

Actually, now that I think about it, I dunno how this new SM North makes me feel. It's kinda stepping on my childhood memories. I got lost in that annex when I was 4 or 5 'coz I was staring too long at some window display and the maid didn't notice that I stopped trailing her. I was probably checking out shoes. And my mom probably fired that maid, 'coz you know, in the third world, maids, not parents, are responsible for kids. I've got loads of other amazing memories set in that mall. When I was a bit older, I used to get a Frosty from the Wendy's across Yamaha every Sunday while waiting for my bro and sis to get back from their voice lessons. The woman who taught them also trained Banig (Check it, her eighties moves and outfit are awesome!). And in high school, my 'straight' friends and I actually went there looking for fabric so we could make a cape for this presentation we were doing. And no, we didn't think we were being 'faggy', just 'artistic'.

New Washed Out

This just out. Fresh track from Washed Out, off the upcoming cassette 'High Times', from Mirror Universe. I don't know where all this 'coastal' stuff is coming from, but I'm pretty hooked on it. On a related note: After three years here in Oz, I'm still kinda pissed that our seasons are reversed. The music and clothes are never in sync with the rest of the world (read: 'America').



Washed Out - Belong
(via Fader)

The First Days of Spring

The First Days of Spring Official Trailer from charlie fink on Vimeo.

Noah and the Whale are releasing their second album, 'The First Days of Spring', with a film. Or rather, they're releasing an album and a film and they're both titled 'The First Days of Spring'. I'm not sure how I feel about this. Ambition kinda grosses me out (self-loathing). And I kinda hate films which have those long pauses where someone's just sitting on a bench or standing in front of the ocean or staring at the mirror or some other reflective/meaningful/overly dramatic moment that we're supposed to be able to relate to. But yea, I'll probably watch this and like it.


Bonus: Black Cab Sessions and Remixes

Noah and the Whale from Black Cab Sessions on Vimeo.

mp3: Noah and the Whale - Blue Skies (Twelves Remix)
mp3: Noah and the Whale - Blue Skies (Yacht Remix)

Data Portraits

(image via Swiss Miss)

The Swiss Miss posted this great link to a project by some nerd/fellow PhD freak named Aaron Zinman at the MIT Media Labs. The project, Personas, basically goes through the web, draws info using a mysterious algorithmic process and puts up a 'seemingly authoritative' profile. Here's the underlying philosophy:

In a world where fortunes are sought through data-mining vast information repositories, the computer is our indispensable but far from infallible assistant. Personas demonstrates the computer's uncanny insights and its inadvertent errors, such as the mischaracterizations caused by the inability to separate data from multiple owners of the same name. It is meant for the viewer to reflect on our current and future world, where digital histories are as important if not more important than oral histories, and computational methods of condensing our digital traces are opaque and socially ignorant.

Try it here.

Cold Cave

I've been pretty obsessed with Cold Cave for a while now, but more and more I've been listening to the mega-infectious 'Life Magazine'. 'Think it might be my way of coping with self-imposed 'exile'/PhD hell/hibernation in my private cave (cave! get it? yea, getting a PhD strips you of your sense of humor).


Cold Cave - Life Magazine

Here's the title track from the LP.