Category: Music

Your Robert Smith fix for the day decade

—==|||| ATTENTION OSAKA BILL, PARIS SOPHIE, COSTA RICA SOPHIA, ADAM(s) AND OTHER ASSORTED CURE FANS, PAST AND PRESENT |||==—

An incredible Crystal Castles cover of Platinum Blonde’s “Not in Love” with Robert Smith vocals: Right click to download

This is currently playing on loop on my deck as a full-scale molam concert is going off at the entrance to our hood. I walked out a few minutes ago to see what was happening and decided I’d rather listen to this again and again, which is saying a lot.

(thx attica)

Tool’s 9-8-7 on the Koto


This is Tool’s song Lateralus (originally titled 9-8-7) played on kotos and bass kotos. It’s also surely the ultimate traditional Japanese music/Fibonacci sequence nerd jam of all time.
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I’d like to mention here that the new YouTube layout is absolute crap and apparently I’m not alone in thinking so. And changing the five-star system to a like/dislike one is pretty much the worst user feedback decision I’ve seen in recent times. I guess the user testing groups were firmly set in the Keewl It’s Just Like Facebook demographic.

Stevie on Sunday


…because it’s our day to chill and listen to YouTube music. Max got to see twenty vids, now it’s my turn for one. Actually, there is a version with an actual music video here, but the audio sucks.
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It’s funny, I played this song a few months back when we were setting up a PA, and my coworker Bruce suddenly stood up and announced he hadn’t “heard this since it came out!”

Getting Musical (Thai Ranat Xylophone & Toy Snare)

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The Doraemon snare is a $5 cheapie we bought at the bicycle/toy store in Kalasin where we went to buy a baby seat for the nanny’s bicycle a month ago. The wooden xylophone is called a ranat (or more specifically, a ranat ek) which was donated to the Yoshida Instrument Collection by Tanaka-sensei, a close friend who is leaving Sarakham at the end of the month. The ranat is tuned by placing wax lumps along the underside of each wooden slab; all of these have fallen off and we need to find somebody who knows how to tune it. Hopefully there will be someone at Nam’s university since they have a big music department.
His majesty’s wooden throne was obtained separately but it’s like the coolest chair I’ve ever seen. I really want a bigger one since my big ass won’t fit in this one.

Tasty Media Links for 9/1

Ursula K. Le Guin reviews Margaret Atwood’s semi-sequel to Oryx and Crake, The Year of the Flood. Oryx and Crake was just some of the freshest writing I’d seen for quite some time and some scenes were kind of reminiscent of the Earthsea novels now that I think about it. But was it Science Fiction? Aside from Atwood’s protestations, I sure think it was – and it was SF of the best kind: The kind enjoyable by people who don’t read SF.
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Roxanne Shante, the first really popular female rapper, gets a doctorate and gets Warner Music to pay for it. It’s not hard to see what they were thinking when they wrote they would fund her education for life in her contract back in the early 80’s – they thought it would never come about. Haha, suckaz! At my department, we would make the joke that she should now study for her post-doc, post-post-doc, and that other degree with platinum olive leaf clusters and tri-ringed shiny tassels.
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“A federal warning to beware of campers in national forests who eat tortillas, drink Tecate beer and play Spanish music because they could be armed marijuana growers is racial profiling.”