Executive Slacks

There was a rumor going around college that med students were the craziest partyers, so I guess the wackiness doesn't stop once they get real jobs. Bobby sent sent along an email with an mp3 of a song called "London Underground" -- an obscenity laced piano pop ode to public transportation -- which was recorded by Adam Kay and Suman Biswas, doctors both. Check out their site to listen to that as well as some other songs. If you listen to online music at work, this may not be the most appropriate thing. Consider yourself warned.

Also, there's a new link to the right: Tuning

I'm about two years late on this one, but Dizzee Rascal is really good. I've been listening to his songs here and really need to get Boy In Da Corner.

So it's been a while since I listed my most recently purchased music. Here we go. Remember when I said Karol gave me a gift certificate to Other Music for my birthday? I finally cashed it in for a lot of stuff which will, no doubt, annoy her as much as it delights me.
BRIGHT EYES Digital Ash in a Digital Urn (Saddle Creek)
EL CONGRESO s/t (Record Runner)
DEAD MEADOW Feathers (Matador)
ENON Lost Marbles and Exploded Evidence (Touch and Go)
JONNY GREENWOOD Bodysong (Capitol)
SUN RA Nuclear War (Y Records)
V/A Radio India (Sublime Frequencies)

Around the same time I got all of those, Greg from Cake and Polka Parade was nice enough to burn a couple of Math albums for me. I'd never heard of them either until I checked his site a few weeks ago but it's really inspired stuff.

Come out this Thursday for the latest installment of the Archives Listening Project. This month we're featuring electronic music pioneer Delia Derbyshire, followed by an evening of other early electronica. It's free admission and starts at 9pm.

Please note we're at a new location: 12" Bar, 179 Essex St (just below Houston).

I went ahead and set up a MySpace page not too long ago. One of the things that's kind of cool is that you can search bands by location and genre. I lived in West Virginia for a few years and, during that time, felt very isolated musically (thank God for internet and mailorder). Out of curiosity, I ran a search for any West Virginia bands who categorized themselves as experimental and, to my surprise, five pages of search results came back.

Of all the MySpace profiles I've looked at, though, the best new band I've discovered so far actually comes from Alaska: the Moon Knights. Think of a noisier Beat Happening with keyboards and you're on the right track. I like them.

BRIGHT EYES Letting Off The Happinees (Saddle Creek)
The first time I heard Bright Eyes was about five years ago when Magnet did a feature on them. I had recently started playing with Jessica, who was playing a lot of violin at the time, so I was especially parital towards indie bands which incorporated the violin in their sound. The article mentioned a violinist so I went out and bought this album. I was impressed. This album's essentially a collection of home recordings, more experimental than just a guitar and a 4-track, yet more skeletal and less pretentious than his later work. Most important, it's bursting with all the potential of a very talented songwriter.

For more info:
There's the official site, the Saddle Creek website, an AMG entry, and an Epitonic page.

You can also follow the link to hear "If Winter Ends", which opens the album and remains my favorite song he's ever done.

I've hinted at it before, but I'll say it again: Those Norwegians sure love heavy metal.

There will be a proper post one of these days. I promise.

When someone promises a giant sing-a-long about death, you can't ask for much else. I just wish I would've found out about this earlier since I wasn't doing anything terribly important Saturday afternoon and I would've gone, and there's no way I'm going to remember it in time for April. Judging by their website, it looks like it can be pretty cool or kind of creepy. Either way, not a bad afternoon.

Assorted linkage here. Cake & Polka Parade has a post about defunct Chicago band Math. The mp3s he put up are pretty good.

The Motel Creeps have a new single: Leave Without A Sound

My old band used to share a practice space with a band called America's Sweetheart. They filmed a video a few years ago and Mike, Rahul, and I showed up to be in the crowd shots. The video's online and I just watched it for the first time tonight. All three of us (and Rahul's drum kit) made it to the final cut. You can watch it here by following the link for "Lazy Lady."

Flipping through the channels earlier this week, I came across some public access tv show called Women on Fire. No, it's not a feminist issues talk show -- they were playing live hop hop when I turned it on. The thing that was really cool was that there were no pre-recorded beats or anything; it was all live, acoustic instruments accompanied by rapping. But get this: the instrumentation consisted of bass, drums, violin, and trumpet. Put simply, I was blown away and quite anxious to find out who was performing. Turns out the show was a feature on some jam session which takes place somewhere in the city, called either Youngblood's Jazz Jam or Youngblood's Jam Jazz. They played a couple more songs which were more traditional jazzy stuff and it was all really good. I'd like to go check out one of their sessions (the camera panned back to a small audience in one shot) but I have no idea where to find them. I tried googling both variations of the Youngblood name as well as Women on Fire, and I even visited the MNN website. I found nothing. Hopefully the show will be back on tomorrow night and they'll have some sort of contact info for the show's producer.

Here's an unlikely shot, but what the hell. To the five of you who periodically check in, has anyone heard of this before?