It's an understatement to say that I LOOOVED the scottish punk band McLusky. I thought their album "Do Dallas" was one of the best rock albums ever made, up there with the Pixies, Nirvana, the Jesus Lizard and Shellac (and it basically sounded like a cocky bastard conglomerate of all those bands. When McLusky broke up, I was actually made sad. So when members of the band including ridiculously amazing frontman Andy Falkous created Future of the Left, I was pretty effin' happy. The first Future of the Left album was pretty good, but it was also a bit too elliptical, where McLusky's strengths were the fact that they hid their brilliant wit and songwriting abilities behind the musical brute force of being kicked in the balls by an iron foot made of even ballsier balls. But now we have their new album which, I'll admit I didn't know was coming out and FUUUUUCK YES. BALLS!
here's the opening track.

For reasons only part of me understands, here's a movie of the Kikaida theme song with footage from the show:

So I stumbled on this thing that is a month or so old and I don't know why I hadn't seen it before but I do believe it is one of the best, mindblowing, and beautiful pieces of art I've seen in the popdigital age. It's Israeli artist Kutiman's Thru You project.

Basically this guy took a bunch of youtube clips and cut n pasted and mixed them up and made them into songs. It's the kind of thing that you'd find as an interesting gimmick. I know I sent it to some people and I'm sure they saw like the first 10 seconds of a song and were like "Thats cool" but that's NOT what is cool about this. What is cool about this is that these are actual GREAT songs. not just clever ideas. Wonderful building compositions full of great surprises and emotionial moments that are ACTUALLY moving. Besides, if a song seems good after only 5 seconds then odds are it ain't. These things you have to really get to know, watching the whole thing unfold. See how the first song slowly builds kind of innocuously where the viewer is like "I get this. Cute." And then BAM they are hit with the biggest groove ever, and once that seems to be the "trick of the song", it builds up to the big theremin duet with the cheering kids in it. It's all pretty jaw dropping, and that's just first song. Each song has great moments that are not just "hooray, this is awesome" kind of things. The end of the third song "I'm New" is just gorgeous and the video manipulation and pacing enhances how gorgeous it all is.

The added level of beauty here is the bringing together of these people who are just trying to play music on their own for whatever reason. There's a sort of almost sad loneliness to the pieces apart that makes it all teh more beautiful to see them all together and some of the moments here are transcendental stuff. It's like a science fiction movie where people don't realize they belong to something and are all somehow part of a giant pattern they were meant to be in. It's beautiful and moving and this is some good ass stuff. Check this shit out. (There's also a track 8 which shows what this thing is all about and sort of how the guy did it.)

http://thru-you.com/#

Yo yo, does anyone out there actually listen to the band The Tough Alliance? They kinda popped into my existence about two years back with their album A New School which was pretty brilliant. They followed that with the even MORE brilliant A New Chance. Both were awesome albums and well reviewed and stuff, and they are not really hard to get into things, yet nobody I knows even remotely listens to them. Bon Iver exploded, Arcade Fire exploded, and a million other things like that. The remarkably overrated Fleet Foxes exploded too. The only thing I can think of is that instead of playing oh so with it earnest beardo indie music, the Tough Alliance plays music made of elements distinctly out of fashion and not in a cool way. More in a 90's electronic pop ala Saint Etienne way (as opposed to 70's electronic/disco). Whatever. Here's a sweet song. It's blissfully POP.

Last night was a pretty tremendous night of electronic music. I went out with Nick and Co. to go to some dance night his friend Andrew and Lovefingers were DJing (and some other folk... Ari and such). Damn it was some good disco shit. But whatever.

The main thing of the evening is this album Nick and Liz played for me in the car ride there. It was "digitized" from some old vinyl that Nick had bought for a few bucks at what I will assume was True Vine in Hampden and I am probably wrong. The album is "Zoolove" by Jean-Michel Jarre.

Now I don't claim to know everything about music (but I do know a bit) so when Nick first told me "I got this sweet album by Jean-Michel Jarre" I didn't think: "Sweet, I have to hear this. I hear he has some classics." I thought "Oh damn, what the hell. Jean-Michel Jarre is like a lame Vangelis and this is going to be some lame, Mike Oldfield Tubular Bells sounding shit." All I had heard by Jarre was his later Oxygene album (though I hear his first Oxygene album is pretty sweet.) Still, I had no expectations and what I got was one of the more exciting listens I've experienced in a while. On a whole the album resembles a strange lovechild of say... Paul Lansky's Alphabet Book, Brian Eno/David Byrne's "My Life in the Bush with Ghosts", m83, and I don't know.. the soundtrack to Ladyhawke. Does that combination sound exciting to you? It should goddammit! (Oh yeah, Adrian Belew and Laurie Anderson are both on the album, which may explain why it's so sweet.)

I will say this: Apparently Nick "screwed" the whole thing slightly (slowed it down) by 10%. I almost wish he hadn't told me this fact because my OCD nature forces me to dwell on this fact when I listen to it and wonder if it is that slight change that makes the album as intense as it is. Still, the music here is so exciting that I doubt it. Who knows why Nick did that in the first place except that.. it's Nick. That's what he does.

I wish I wasn't sick right now so I could crank this shit in my car and drive around at night, imagining I am a cop in the future, going out to solve exciting futurecrimes.

The new Dan Deacon album, upon a few listens, is making a pretty solid case for one of my albums of this year (it's early but it's really good). As ecstatic as the early m83 albums were apocalyptic sound, both have an odd marriage of claustrophobic and stratospheric vibes that make them intensely personal sounding and also universally huge in beauty. Still, i've only listened to it like twice...

Here's a video for a song called "French Navy" off the upcoming Camera Obscura album. It's a par for the course gorgeous and uplifting yet somehow sad tune from the band. I find the video to be ecstatic and joyous while also bittersweet. Great stuff! Nothing fancy, just great stuff. And isn't that why we love this band so?

I didn't watch the Academy Awards... but my mom did, and she was raving about the guy who won the "Best Animated Short" award, as he was a japanese fellow named Kunio Kato. Either way, his short, "Le Maison En Petits Cubes" is remarkably lovely and calls to mind a mix of Bill Plympton, The Snowman, and just.. a certain European vibe that is really.. lovely.
PEEP DIS SHIT:



Also his acceptance speech was super awesome and charming. Basically this dude doesn't belong in the Academy Awards. If only there was some sort of thing that awarded real art and people.

First off, yes yes, we all love Animal Collective. Their new album is gangbusters, maybe even their best. Still this video rules. Or maybe it's that the song is so gorgeous?



In other news, I woke up today and my hair is ridiculous. Thankfully a pipe burst in my building and so I have no water to take a shower with. Ballllz.

All of a sudden now I am distracted by an advertisement on the side of this page for mimobot style flash drives. I want the one with the mushrooms on its head. If you can see that ad, buy that thing and send it to me post haste.

Now that that bit is done with here's the important bit, or the meat, of this post. I have changed my theme! Oh yeah. Not a post from me in 4 months or so and this is what you get. It may seem like nothing, but I think I really just didn't like the last theme I had for my lj. Not aesthetically. I enjoyed the facts about its look. That it was old fashiony style printing press lookin' art junkx. But aesthetically, I think it kept me at arm's length from my OWN BLOG! It only took me 4 months to realize this. Will this mean I will be blogging more? Maybe, maybe not. Here's a recap since I last posted "Worst birthday ever."
The worst birthday ever was followed by a pretty okay Halloween and a good Thanksgiving and a marginal Christmas. New Years Eve was particularly noteworthy for its badness. Blogworthy? I don't know. Since people blog about their dogs pooping on the carpet or changing their blog theme I suppose anything is blogworthy. Anyways. There u go.

In current news, it is snowing. And by snowing I mean there is ice on the ground. Also our country is entering a crazy new era where it may be possible to be proud to be from here.

Wow, today was probably the worst birthday I've had in a long while. Not that I have more than one a year. I won't go into the whys and wherefores. All I know is that the rest of this weekend better damn well make it up to me.

is my birthday. For this, I am going to work til 9pm. That's about all my plans. EFF WORK!

The title of this post is a lyric, not a statement of emo sadness.
Tonight, Dave and I are going to brave the elements of Hurricane What's-Her-Name to see The Walkmen at the 9:30 Club. I'm pretty excited as they are a pretty great band live and just as I had procured "tickets" to tonight's show I also procured a copy of a their newest album "You & Me" (or is it "Me & You"... now I can't remember) and it is a great one. Probably their best outing since "Bows & Arrows" from years back. It's kind of like emo for older dudes. Dave says he may cry at this show.
If I'm feeling up for it, I may stay at the club for their later show: Tricky. While I did love Tricky back in the day, I'm not sure a) how he is now and b) how he will translate to a live setting. Still, it's something that I feel I owe the dude (especially since the tickets were free through a friend who works at the club.)

Also on the menu for today (before the show) is a trip to wherever I decide to go to get my hair cut. Every time I go to get one it is a heady mix of fear and joy. I only go at the last moments before my hair takes over the top half of my body and I ABSOLUTELY NEED ONE because it just sucks to have all this hair so therein lies the joy. The FEAR is where I don't know how to cut my hair. I rarely, if ever, have found a haircut that I think looks good on myself, though on more honest days I believe that has more to do with just the fact that I'm not Mr. Hot Guy rather than the fact that I can't find a compatible haircut to make me... Mr. Hot Guy. Having longer hair, I ponder getting a much shorter haircut but also fear change. For a good few years, I had a short hair cut and enjoyed it, but getting to that point was an accidental road that went like this:
Hair person: "Do you want it layered?"
Me: "I don't know... yes?"
Hair person: "Okay" Later: "Oh.. that's not looking too good..."
Me: "No.. it's not..."
Hair person: "Let's just chop it all off."
Me: "I guess okay..."
So yeah... FEAR.

And so yeah, my brother's wife gave birth to a baby boy! They have named him Hayato. A very cool japanese name. The only Hayato I can think of though is the character from the old Playstation one game: Plasma Sword.
So lacking a photo of the baby right now, here is what he probably looks like (no I did not draw this):

My brother is a FATHER!

Oh Kanye West. Lousy MC. Good producer. Amazing music video haver:

So I started a little side blog (which I write in more than this one) where I review stuff. The stuff can be music/movies/events/people/art/books/tv/anime/clouds/dogs/WHATEVER. My final grades are the most fair and thought out in the entire industry.
http://newneumunki.blogspot.com

GO TO IT. And learn about the world you're missing.

I love martial arts films. Mostly old school Shaw Brothers movies (a recent development that has engulfed my life.) So it gave me a large dose of "OHHH SNAP!" when i saw this trailer for Ong Bak 2 starring Tony Jaa. Not only is it awesome because Tony Jaa rules. It is also his first time using more than Muay Thai martial arts, weapons, and the story takes place in the past. Hopefully it won't be the convoluted mess that The Protector was. What made the first Ong Bak great was that it was basically a "chase the mcguffin" story, which is basically all you need in an action film (see: Raiders of the Lost Ark) This one seems to built from the good old martial arts revenge tale (which is why it excites me from an old school point of view) ala 36 Chambers. Person needs revenge, meets old master, learns ultimate martial arts (or in this case, all martial arts) in cool training sequence, then fights for the rest of the movie. Apparently on top of elephants. Also the dirtiness reminds me of Conan. Nothing wrong with that.

So for the fourth of July, instead of seeing fireworks, I went to a midnight showing (so technically I could have SEEN fireworks) of The Goonies at the AFI Silver Theater (greatest theater ever.)
I have learned this about the movie. It is NOT GOOD.
It makes little to no sense.
The "adventures" the kids have amount to this: yankin' on pipes, eluding 2 traps, walking over a log. Then they get to the pirate ship where the movie REALLY gets boring. I've revisited some lame movies from my youth, but even KRULL was better than this. KRULL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! A movie whose hero was like some sort of lame cross between Richard Chamberlain and Michael McDonald!




GOB BLUTH: "COME ON!"
The movie was basically things that would catch on with kids loosely strung together with a horrible story. Steven Speilberg is credited with the story and he is pretty good at pacing a thing out, so I guess he was like "This story kinda sucks... have a go at it Richard Donner... you kinda suck!" And suck he did! The final "battle" between the Goonies and the Fratellis (now I know why the band is so meh. The gang they were named after was horribly inept) was merely a display aimed at the fact that kids like seeing people thrown off a ship into a body of water.

Anyways, I still had fun, despite all of this. At least DATA was still glorious.
EDIT: The Cyndi Lauper song is still really awesome.

WTF seriously is Pixar going to do next year that will somehow be better than this year's Wall-E, which has managed to somehow trump last year's seemingly untrumpable Ratatouille? I have no idea if it is possible. It was odd to realize that the first movie by Pixar to really focus on love and be truly a romantic movie was about robots. The opening 20 minutes or so are some of the most poetically beautiful moments I have seen in a movie. The end credits are gorgeous. Go see it 10 times.

Movies and I have been having a good time lately. Yesterday I saw The Manchurian Candidate (the original one) at the Silver Theater in DC. A week before that was Vertigo and a week before was Rear Window. Each movie seemingly better than the last. I didn't expect to enjoy The Manchurian Candidate more than the previous movies, but it was some INTENSE STUFF. I believe I said something about the joys of seeing old, classy, easy to watch movies on the big screen and how I don't even care much about new movies. Then I saw Wall-E.

As with every Pixar movie, I always wish it had come at the end of the summer movie run, sending off summer in a blaze of quality. I guess I'll just have to watch it after every other movie i see this year.

Hey all, I got this little program for my Nintendo DS that lets you basically make little animated movies and save them as AVI files. I've never actually done ANY sort of animation ever before but this was pretty fun to make. I made this for Mandi to cheer her up a bit. I had finished it, but then my DS crashed and i hadn't saved the latter half so i had to redo it and so it's a bit more rushed as it was 4am and I wanted it done again. I am still pretty happy with it. Enjoy!