I’m really digging this stomp-worthy track from Dr. Dog’s forthcoming new album, Be the Void:
If you dig this too, I recommend heading over to TeamCoco for the full stream of the entire record. Be the Void officially drops on Feb 7th (on Anti Records).
Artist Website: DrDogMusic.com
I picked up Tycho’s latest album Dive at the end of 2011, but I’m still listening to it constantly in 2012. The title track is one of many standout tracks on the album. Check it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IOhGQvdCBg
Tycho’s sound hits on this perfect mellow but moody vibe, and I love the way that the core electronic beats and blips are mixed with more traditional analog guitars and bass.
Support Tycho directly–>TychoMusic.com.
Quick admin note:
“IDEA BLOG” is my new post type for random thoughts, ideas, and musings. If anyone has any suggestions for a better name for these posts, please give me a shout.
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I am super picky about going to the gym when it is too crowded. I hate it. I like to keep my workouts quick and efficient…no waiting. barely any resting. heart-rate up. in and out. done.
But, of course, it’s January and everyone and their mother seems to have joined my local gym in some annual New Year’s resolution ritual. So, the gym has been pretty packed as of late. The other day, I got back from a particularly annoying crowded workout and I turned to Linds and said, “I wish the gym had a webcam up in the workout areas and put a feed on their website so I could check the crowd situation.” That’d be pretty rad, right?
Given some of the sour faces I see when people are waiting for machines, I know I can’t be the only one annoyed by the crowds at the gym. And why stop with the gym…what about grocery stores? Anyone who has spent time at Trader Joe’s in New York could probably relate. So why can’t I just log on to a website to see how crowded it is?
It seems like it wouldn’t be terribly difficult to get this up and running for most gyms and local businesses. Most of them have some kind of website, and most have some kind of cameras already up for security purposes. I think the key questions are 1) how to scale it 2) privacy issues of patrons and 3) whether or not the business actually WANTS potential customers to see how crowded it is. That last one is key, but I could see this being a crowd-pleaser (no pun intended) and, therefore, a business pleaser too.
I think I may be onto something here. Thoughts?
I don’t really do New Year’s Resolutions, but the new year definitely provides a nice breaking point to officially make some changes.
This year will already be a big year for me, as my wife and I are expecting our first baby in May. That’s probably enough reason to think that any big resolution won’t happen, but I am feeling this one come on pretty strongly.
For nearly a year, I have been thinking about the fact that I don’t really know how to code and how, more and more, I am realizing that I really should know the basics. In my latest gig at eMusic, I was basically moving from a pure Marketing Ops role to more of a Product Marketing Manager, and I consistently kept managing projects where having some basic programming and coding skills would have helped me tremendously.
So when I saw this thing that Code Academy set up, called Code Year, it really hit my gut in the sweet spot, and I jumped on it. Now I don’t know if I’ll be able to learn enough on my own with just these online tutorials, or if I’ll even be able to pull off anything meaningful within the next 12 months, but overall I really think 2012 might finally be the year for me to stop talking about learning to code and start actually doing it.
I put this post together a while back when my loop pedal was acting wonky and I had to pull off all the data before bringing it into the shop. In that process I had re-discovered some old loops that actually weren’t too bad. I made a quick attempt at improving the sound quality in an audio editor and then gave each of them a quick name — literally the first words that I thought of when I heard them again. I have no idea why I never posted this, so I figured…why not bust it out in the new year?
Like my previous audio posts, there are definitely some mellow, lullaby-like sounds going on here. But there are also a few other cool themes like a Western/desert thing and other more psychedelic sounds. It certainly ain’t hi-fi but it’s not bad considering the low-budget equipment and that all of these were recorded on-the-fly, completely as improv (the one exception being track #1, the “Drift Away Instrumental,” which was actually my attempt at capturing the groove from the original loop in track #2).
Take a listen… Continue Reading…
I was lucky to see a lot of great live shows this year, and even luckier to be able to shoot most of them with my Nikon D5000. Although I am decidedly an amateur, I think I ended up with some pretty decent shots, so I decided to create a “best of” style compilation to wrap up a great 2011. Continue Reading…
More good stuff from Generationals.
I still like their Trust EP the best, but their full release Astro-Caster is also quite solid. It has been steadily growing on me since I grabbed it a few months back.
Ha, I love this site:
The Bobcats - Chugging Sriracha
For a bit more on why these cats are wearing ties and chugging Sriracha, read the full comic at The Oatmeal.com.
We had our first snowfall of the season here in NYC this past weekend. But even though the weather’s starting to chill out, the live shows are still keeping up the heat. Check out my preview of the week’s shows with some videos of my top picks… Continue Reading…
We were BBQ’ing with my bro-in-law a while back, and as we got started, he asked me what to search for on Pandora for good outdoor party tunes. I immediately spit out the word “funk.” The subsequent Pandora station that we got using that search team definitely queue’d up a few decent grooves, but nothing really caught my ear until this track from one of the funkiest (the?) backing bands ever:
James Brown – “Blind Man Can See It”
While the intro had a nice vamp, what really caught my ear was the groove that kicked in after a minute or two…a nice little jangly guitar riff combined with some soul-stirring keys. The sound literally brought my ears back to the early 90s to what was probably one of my 1st CDs…Das EFX’s Dead Serious. After a couple of measures, I was waiting for that unforgettable opening line to drop in….”bum skiggiddy bum skiggiddy bump!”
Check out the sample in use:
Das EFX – “They Want EFX”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UalV4ThhQQM
Ha, awesome. I liggidy love the lawless early 90s of hip-hop samples.