Oh time off: how I have missed you. It was March that I last had more than one day off in a week. Thursday I napped for an entire hour because why the fuck not! It was glorious.
I digress. I should probably mention that my store loves me right now. In the last week, I have picked up the following albums:
At The Drive-In - Acrobatic Tenement
The good ol' reissue of At The Drive-In's first full length album on bright red vinyl. Dine Alone Records has done a great job with these reissues. The liner notes and artwork is all faithfully restored and the presses are great. I would say that this is an essential grab for anyone who loves fast sudo-punk and recordings that can sound like shit and sound amazing at the same time. One thing that threw me off was that this particular press does not come sealed. Paper Bag Records has been notorious for this with all the limited edition releases they have been doing as of late. I don't think it changes much and the environmentalist inside me is quite happy. There will always be that worry that someone is going to score just the wax and leave the sleeve behind, but that is just years of working in customer service talking.
I had a friend who died for something he really loved I had a friend who stood for none of the above I had a friend whose experience was riddled with scars who got drunk one night in the trunk of Louie P.'s car I had a friend who would love to scare you as was his affection and tremble you did, cuz you weren't worthy of his friendship I had a friend, but now he's stranded on the Mesa St. exit and sometimes I'm jealous cuz I'm still at the intersection I had a friend whose heart was too heavy to hold...
At The Drive-In - Relationship of Command
AHAHAHAHAHAHA I GOT IT! I was kind of worried it wouldn't happen. I also just got notice from a buddy of mine that he picked up the Cure LP I wanted, but more on that next week. Limited reissue on the biggest album of ATDI's career? I think it will come back, but maybe on black vinyl instead of yellow. In the mean time, I'm going to play the paranoid record store guy and assume that I will never see it again as long as I live. It sounds great and feels great and my god One Arm Scissor is such a wicked tune.
At The Drive-In - Vaya
What? I talked about the other two I have and I'm missing In Casino/Out, so Yes: I am going to type about my favorite album that they ever released. White ten inch. I hate white. I think ten inch records are pretty, but impractical. Other than that, great fucking album. Ok, on to that other one I picked up durring the week.
Emily Haines and The Soft Skeleton - Knives Don't Have Your Back
One of the most beautiful albums to be released in Canada, not to mention one of the most beautiful solo attempts I have ever heard. Emily Haines of Metric really shows how diverse her vocal ranges can be and just how great of a song writer she is. Yes, it is apparent that she ripped most of the subject matter from the pages of Margret Attwood's Handmaid's Tale (which is a terrible book, by the way), but she used it in a very modern and good way. Did I mention that the album is incredibly pretty?
Sunday 28 April 2013
Sunday 21 April 2013
9) Long Time No See
Hi. I already took a week off.
What have I been doing? Well:
Yep. At it again. Recording stuff. It turned out ok, considering. Of course, the song itself won't be available for a good while still. We are still trying to figure out how to get the time to do the rest. It's been pretty interesting, and a lot of fun. I'm hoping to spend my Sunday doing another song. Maybe with more microphones. Probably not. If I get asked enough, I'll update and have a link around. In the mean time, I just can't be bothered to do that much uploading for all two or three people who might only care to look into it.
I actually had my first gig since November last night. It was at the Coreia household in Galt. What a way to spend 4/20! (A very sober 4/20 mind you. It's what I do best!)
Just to tease me, the Beat Goes On I manage got the three Record Store Day items I really wanted. The Cure - Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me, At The Drive-In - Relationship of Command, and a rare Pulp single on a 12". I'm not aloud to purchase them until Monday, but here is hoping they are still around. Kiss Me (etc.) has been the album I have wanted on vinyl since I first started collecting records in 2005: it is both my favorite Cure album and my favorite album from the '80s.
UPDATE :: The Cure was one of the first albums for me to sell on Saturday. The Pulp was there when I left and we have so many At The Drive-In releases right now, I'm not worried.
Until Monday, here is what I have picked up in the last few weeks:
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Push the Sky Away
Oh Nick Cave, how I love your ways with words and situations. This is actually my first Bad Seeds album I have picked up; I've always been a bigger Grinderman fan due to how ridiculous it is. This album is as beautiful and haunting as the picture on the front would lead you to believe.
Beastie Boys - Ill Communication
HardXCore, funk, jazz and hip-hop all at it's finest. Fuck yes I love this album. Plus Q-Tip!
Beach House - Teen Dream
Admittedly, I need to give this album another listen. It is far from bad, but I feel like I would have enjoyed it more if I had not heard the amazing Bloom first. I'll come back to this one...
Low - The Invisible Way
When I read that Low's sixteenth album was produced by Wilco's Jeff Tweedy, I was nervous. Though Wilco is not known for being happy and go-lucky, they are far more upbeat that Low has ever been. I can't tell if this album turned out so well because he is a huge Low fan, or if he just made sure the band stayed together though the making of, but this album turned out brilliantly. Still just as depressing as low should be! Plus my copy came with a disc of demo stuff. NEAT!
What have I been doing? Well:
Yep. At it again. Recording stuff. It turned out ok, considering. Of course, the song itself won't be available for a good while still. We are still trying to figure out how to get the time to do the rest. It's been pretty interesting, and a lot of fun. I'm hoping to spend my Sunday doing another song. Maybe with more microphones. Probably not. If I get asked enough, I'll update and have a link around. In the mean time, I just can't be bothered to do that much uploading for all two or three people who might only care to look into it.
I actually had my first gig since November last night. It was at the Coreia household in Galt. What a way to spend 4/20! (A very sober 4/20 mind you. It's what I do best!)
Just to tease me, the Beat Goes On I manage got the three Record Store Day items I really wanted. The Cure - Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me, At The Drive-In - Relationship of Command, and a rare Pulp single on a 12". I'm not aloud to purchase them until Monday, but here is hoping they are still around. Kiss Me (etc.) has been the album I have wanted on vinyl since I first started collecting records in 2005: it is both my favorite Cure album and my favorite album from the '80s.
UPDATE :: The Cure was one of the first albums for me to sell on Saturday. The Pulp was there when I left and we have so many At The Drive-In releases right now, I'm not worried.
Until Monday, here is what I have picked up in the last few weeks:
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Push the Sky Away
Oh Nick Cave, how I love your ways with words and situations. This is actually my first Bad Seeds album I have picked up; I've always been a bigger Grinderman fan due to how ridiculous it is. This album is as beautiful and haunting as the picture on the front would lead you to believe.
Beastie Boys - Ill Communication
HardXCore, funk, jazz and hip-hop all at it's finest. Fuck yes I love this album. Plus Q-Tip!
Beach House - Teen Dream
Admittedly, I need to give this album another listen. It is far from bad, but I feel like I would have enjoyed it more if I had not heard the amazing Bloom first. I'll come back to this one...
Low - The Invisible Way
When I read that Low's sixteenth album was produced by Wilco's Jeff Tweedy, I was nervous. Though Wilco is not known for being happy and go-lucky, they are far more upbeat that Low has ever been. I can't tell if this album turned out so well because he is a huge Low fan, or if he just made sure the band stayed together though the making of, but this album turned out brilliantly. Still just as depressing as low should be! Plus my copy came with a disc of demo stuff. NEAT!
Thursday 11 April 2013
8) Three games that ruined my life.
Well, I shit the bed this week. Forgot to post stuff. Uhhhhhh... due to not having a clue what to post for yesterday a day late, here are three reviews of games that I can't talk too much about because it would ruin everything if they get spoiled. YEAH! That'll do!
Video games and I have been strangers for the last couple of years. It seems like I always have one on the go, but I never finish a damn thing. In the last two months, I have actually beaten three of my new favourite triple A titles. Are theses the best games of all time? No; Mass Effect 2, The Legend of Zelda, Limbo and FTL are going to stay strong in my heart for a long time, me thinks. These are just the three games that either caught me off guard with how great they really are, or they came out of nowhere and blew me away.
Far Cry 3
Never have I seen a game pull off the idea of a character loosing their sense of being so honestly as in Far Cry 3. You watch your brother die in the first twenty minuets of the game, and not even 200 paces later you are murdering some poor sod. Your character then proceeds to freak out and panic, writhing in terror over what he has just done. A lot of people claimed that the new Tomb Raider game did a better job of showing this loss of insanity, but riddle me this; did Tomb Raider have a segment where Laura was confiding in a recently saved friend that she is starting to love the power that comes with taking a life? Jason, our lead protagonist, begins explaining to a comrade how great it has begun to feel to squeeze the last breath from another human being. You hear the voice actor change his voice from terror at the idea of pulling the trigger, to laughing hardily while burning people alive with a flame thrower. Great voice cast, and even better controls. This game is a must play for any FPS fan.
Persona 4 Golden
Persona 4 is probably one of the most Japanese games I have ever played. The basic premise is that you are just some high school kid who gets lodged into some small town because your parents have taken off for a year or two to work in the states or something like that. When you arrive, you get unpacked, you go to school, and you make friends. Then you find out that someone is using an alternate world that is within the television to murder people in horrendous ways and, for some unknown reason, your misfit collective is the only humans on the planet who can stop the killings. I know this sounds terrible, BUT MY GOD IT'S SO ADDICTIVE! This is one of those games that you play when no one is around but for some reason you still feel obligated to wear headphones. It's touching, coy and surprisingly realistic. I found myself either agreeing with characters or comparing them to friends that I either have or did have at one time. There isn't much else to say about this game: so much of it is in the execution. All I can say is that if you enjoy Anime and JRPG's, please play this game. It's fantastic.
Bioshock Infinite
The hardest game to give any information on without giving something away. It was beautiful, exciting, intelligent and graceful. The characters are beautifully written and the world is brilliantly conceived. The combat is a bit clunky in its frenetic pacing, but I feel like it almost works with the bizarre animation and motion capture. The voice acting is Godly (per usual with the series) and a couple of the twists actually caught me off guard. However, through all this praise, I cannot say that this game is better than Bioshock one. Back in 2007, Bioshock literally destroyed my expectation on story delivery in both video games AND movies. Half the time I actually forgot that the main character was silent. It flowed with mostly due to its almost horror pacing mixed with very cut throat fighting. This game set the bar so high in my mind that few, if any, games could compare.
I'm a horrible person
Video games and I have been strangers for the last couple of years. It seems like I always have one on the go, but I never finish a damn thing. In the last two months, I have actually beaten three of my new favourite triple A titles. Are theses the best games of all time? No; Mass Effect 2, The Legend of Zelda, Limbo and FTL are going to stay strong in my heart for a long time, me thinks. These are just the three games that either caught me off guard with how great they really are, or they came out of nowhere and blew me away.
Far Cry 3
Never have I seen a game pull off the idea of a character loosing their sense of being so honestly as in Far Cry 3. You watch your brother die in the first twenty minuets of the game, and not even 200 paces later you are murdering some poor sod. Your character then proceeds to freak out and panic, writhing in terror over what he has just done. A lot of people claimed that the new Tomb Raider game did a better job of showing this loss of insanity, but riddle me this; did Tomb Raider have a segment where Laura was confiding in a recently saved friend that she is starting to love the power that comes with taking a life? Jason, our lead protagonist, begins explaining to a comrade how great it has begun to feel to squeeze the last breath from another human being. You hear the voice actor change his voice from terror at the idea of pulling the trigger, to laughing hardily while burning people alive with a flame thrower. Great voice cast, and even better controls. This game is a must play for any FPS fan.
Persona 4 Golden
Persona 4 is probably one of the most Japanese games I have ever played. The basic premise is that you are just some high school kid who gets lodged into some small town because your parents have taken off for a year or two to work in the states or something like that. When you arrive, you get unpacked, you go to school, and you make friends. Then you find out that someone is using an alternate world that is within the television to murder people in horrendous ways and, for some unknown reason, your misfit collective is the only humans on the planet who can stop the killings. I know this sounds terrible, BUT MY GOD IT'S SO ADDICTIVE! This is one of those games that you play when no one is around but for some reason you still feel obligated to wear headphones. It's touching, coy and surprisingly realistic. I found myself either agreeing with characters or comparing them to friends that I either have or did have at one time. There isn't much else to say about this game: so much of it is in the execution. All I can say is that if you enjoy Anime and JRPG's, please play this game. It's fantastic.
Bioshock Infinite
The hardest game to give any information on without giving something away. It was beautiful, exciting, intelligent and graceful. The characters are beautifully written and the world is brilliantly conceived. The combat is a bit clunky in its frenetic pacing, but I feel like it almost works with the bizarre animation and motion capture. The voice acting is Godly (per usual with the series) and a couple of the twists actually caught me off guard. However, through all this praise, I cannot say that this game is better than Bioshock one. Back in 2007, Bioshock literally destroyed my expectation on story delivery in both video games AND movies. Half the time I actually forgot that the main character was silent. It flowed with mostly due to its almost horror pacing mixed with very cut throat fighting. This game set the bar so high in my mind that few, if any, games could compare.
Sunday 7 April 2013
7) Yep
Well, this blog is going to have a couple of parts to it. It has been a busy week in my head, and in person, not a whole lot has happened.
First off, I spent very little time at home researching things to blog about for Wednesday, thus the no show. I wanted to have an interview done, in all honesty. It's something I think would be neat because I have never done one before. So, on Tuesday morning, I realized that I was 3 days behind in prep, let alone in actual work. Life goes on.
I purchased myself a new laptop this week! By new, I mean my first laptop ever. I picked up the acer Chromebook. It's pretty in it's simplicity. So far I have used it for browsing, a thrilling round of Angry Birds, and now this blog post into starting bit. It is kind of strange; I feel like I'm using an oversized tablet. The screen is small (11.5 inches) and the keyboard is bizarre, but I'm enjoying its company all the same. I think I'm going to name him Ace. Every piece of electronics need a name. Except consoles: They do not have a soul.
Since I haven't pushed this thing yet, I'm not sure of it's processing power. It is hard to push a PC that is a web browser and, therefore, you have to go out of your way to find games.
EVERYONE MUST REMEMBER THAT RECORD STORE DAY IS APRIL 20TH. GO FIND A LOCAL RECORD STORE AND LET THEM KNOW YOU APRECIATE THEM.
Yes, there will be a lot of links to allmusic.com for this next bit. Mostly because I feel like they have some solid information. Partially because I like links.
I have had a few conversations about where the music industry is going this week. I see it either crashing and going the way of the late '80s/early '90s, or the more early '80s. Early '80s being a world of happy people being happy about the everything they think they have, and the early '90s being a world of "fuck the mainstream." Right now it appears to be something along the line of an over saturation of bands who all either sound the same or use the same ideas to convey the popular sound. The underground is starting to swell again to the same capacity like the early 2000s when we had the emo invasion happening beside the semi hip-hop British Invasion-Inspired sounds by bands like The Gorillaz and Danger Mouse making huge waves. Along the sides of all of that, Jack White was getting his start with The White Stripes and Weezer made a come back. All of a sudden, it seemed like those bands started to become background to acts that used those ideas and made them accessible to everyone. Even bands that had been around forever changed their sound just enough to fit in. The prime examples being Kings of Leon having a single (and album) which barely resembled the previous albums.
My personal hope is for the industry to change in every way. We already have had a major upset with things like home recording and self distribution becoming incredibly easy and cheap. This has caused a massive over saturation of sounds and ideas which has a major up (new music always popping up and around) and major downs (a million to one odds to find anything to enjoy). The way I would like to see everything go is either a movement or a community in popular music. From what I have seen, there hasn't been a real mass community built around a band since Death Cab For Cutie circa 2005. Back then, it was rare to know someone who wasn't either gushing over how great Plans was, or how Transatlanticism was better. Regardless of your views, it felt like everyone had some sort of tie to that band. Now it feels like there is a greater segregation between cliques. I will admit, this may be an age thing: although I work at a music store, I haven't been a part of a community that wasn't metal in years. Please, for the love of all that is Holy, let this paragraph be my absence from something amazing, then let me know how to get in.
A movement is something I feel like I have always missed out on. I came in late for the early 2000s punk uprising, but too early for the Emo brigade. I jumped ship from metal just before the death metal revival of 2005 (I say that because Cephalic Carnage had just released Anomalies), and I hated the people jumping into the post-post-hardcore. I only really got into math rock in the last few years and this fucking country has always had shit electro.
I would like to conclude with what I think this current music industry is doing right from my perspective and where they could improve. I think bringing vinyl back to the forefront was a brilliant move. Though I do not have exact numbers (hook ups?), I know that new music sales at my work have increased exponentially since we started carrying vinyl. I sell (on average) a record a day with one record a week being a new release.
Digital distribution is probably a new market standard for top twenty groups thanks to the reinstatement of the single buying ability: it is quite nice to grab that one song if the rest of the album sucks. I do not think iTunes will reign supreme for another decade, but they will try.
BandCamp.com has made everything so beautiful for the independent musician and label. With free download readily available for those who want to do so, plus the introduction of the supplied online store, TuneCore and iTunes actually have a true competitor on the field. I just hope they can keep it up without corruption.
First off, I spent very little time at home researching things to blog about for Wednesday, thus the no show. I wanted to have an interview done, in all honesty. It's something I think would be neat because I have never done one before. So, on Tuesday morning, I realized that I was 3 days behind in prep, let alone in actual work. Life goes on.
I purchased myself a new laptop this week! By new, I mean my first laptop ever. I picked up the acer Chromebook. It's pretty in it's simplicity. So far I have used it for browsing, a thrilling round of Angry Birds, and now this blog post into starting bit. It is kind of strange; I feel like I'm using an oversized tablet. The screen is small (11.5 inches) and the keyboard is bizarre, but I'm enjoying its company all the same. I think I'm going to name him Ace. Every piece of electronics need a name. Except consoles: They do not have a soul.
Since I haven't pushed this thing yet, I'm not sure of it's processing power. It is hard to push a PC that is a web browser and, therefore, you have to go out of your way to find games.
{Please be kind to the following opinion piece about the music industry}
EVERYONE MUST REMEMBER THAT RECORD STORE DAY IS APRIL 20TH. GO FIND A LOCAL RECORD STORE AND LET THEM KNOW YOU APRECIATE THEM.
Yes, there will be a lot of links to allmusic.com for this next bit. Mostly because I feel like they have some solid information. Partially because I like links.
I have had a few conversations about where the music industry is going this week. I see it either crashing and going the way of the late '80s/early '90s, or the more early '80s. Early '80s being a world of happy people being happy about the everything they think they have, and the early '90s being a world of "fuck the mainstream." Right now it appears to be something along the line of an over saturation of bands who all either sound the same or use the same ideas to convey the popular sound. The underground is starting to swell again to the same capacity like the early 2000s when we had the emo invasion happening beside the semi hip-hop British Invasion-Inspired sounds by bands like The Gorillaz and Danger Mouse making huge waves. Along the sides of all of that, Jack White was getting his start with The White Stripes and Weezer made a come back. All of a sudden, it seemed like those bands started to become background to acts that used those ideas and made them accessible to everyone. Even bands that had been around forever changed their sound just enough to fit in. The prime examples being Kings of Leon having a single (and album) which barely resembled the previous albums.
My personal hope is for the industry to change in every way. We already have had a major upset with things like home recording and self distribution becoming incredibly easy and cheap. This has caused a massive over saturation of sounds and ideas which has a major up (new music always popping up and around) and major downs (a million to one odds to find anything to enjoy). The way I would like to see everything go is either a movement or a community in popular music. From what I have seen, there hasn't been a real mass community built around a band since Death Cab For Cutie circa 2005. Back then, it was rare to know someone who wasn't either gushing over how great Plans was, or how Transatlanticism was better. Regardless of your views, it felt like everyone had some sort of tie to that band. Now it feels like there is a greater segregation between cliques. I will admit, this may be an age thing: although I work at a music store, I haven't been a part of a community that wasn't metal in years. Please, for the love of all that is Holy, let this paragraph be my absence from something amazing, then let me know how to get in.
A movement is something I feel like I have always missed out on. I came in late for the early 2000s punk uprising, but too early for the Emo brigade. I jumped ship from metal just before the death metal revival of 2005 (I say that because Cephalic Carnage had just released Anomalies), and I hated the people jumping into the post-post-hardcore. I only really got into math rock in the last few years and this fucking country has always had shit electro.
I would like to conclude with what I think this current music industry is doing right from my perspective and where they could improve. I think bringing vinyl back to the forefront was a brilliant move. Though I do not have exact numbers (hook ups?), I know that new music sales at my work have increased exponentially since we started carrying vinyl. I sell (on average) a record a day with one record a week being a new release.
Digital distribution is probably a new market standard for top twenty groups thanks to the reinstatement of the single buying ability: it is quite nice to grab that one song if the rest of the album sucks. I do not think iTunes will reign supreme for another decade, but they will try.
BandCamp.com has made everything so beautiful for the independent musician and label. With free download readily available for those who want to do so, plus the introduction of the supplied online store, TuneCore and iTunes actually have a true competitor on the field. I just hope they can keep it up without corruption.
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