One of the reasons I started this blog in the first place was because I thought that Nineteen Ninety Never would be a kick-ass name for a line of t-shirts. I designed and actually made some of them, including the one above. It was a huge stencil, and I regret the fact that I had to abandon it in Australia.
To go with the theme and because they’re coming to Toronto this weekend, here are some absolutely deadly Fake Blood tracks:
Woolcovered recently pointed out that Cadence Weapon has released a mix tape under the “pay-what-you-can” model.
I threw Cadence five bucks for the album, and you should too. I saw him perform in ‘08, and he was pretty entertaining. Here are a couple of tracks to get you started:
I picked up that shirt in the above picture at Capsule (69 Yorkville Avenue, Toronto). I don’t think that a single gun is repeated on the entire shirt, but I bet that the part of you that is stoked for the G.I. Joe movie is trying to name every single one of those guns.
I saw Tiga the other day…then watched the interview he did for his new album. If you haven’t seen it, go to Tiga’s website, and watch it. With lines like “My lyrics basically reveal essentially how interesting how I am” and it gives you a whole new appreciation for the man as an entertainer. Seriously - just watch the interview and prepare to be hilariously blown away. I also really appreciate it when he says “As a child I always believed and dreamed of a glorious, golden, mysterious future. And i feel like I’ve arrived. ”
I’ve been obsessed with this picture of Allison Harvard (aka Creepy Chan) after I first read about her in a Wired.com blog post (just look at that blank look in her eyes). Once the darling of 4chan, she rose to fame by becoming the runner-up on my roommates favorite TV show: America’s Next Top Model. I don’t know if that’s a rags-to-riches story so much as a…you know what? I don’t know what kind of story it is. All I know is that she posted some pretty artsy pictures of herself on 4chan then got sort of normal, disappointing her original fan base.
Read more about Creepy Chan on Encyclopedia Dramatica, then check out these tracks below. They don’t really have anything to do with her, but I’ve been listening to them lately.
PONY PONY RUN RUN - HEY YOU [OFFICIAL VIDEOCLIP] by 3emebureau
Even though its June and slightly rainy here in the T-dot, it still feels like the start of summer, and it feels like a good time to post some warm-weather, good-times music.
The video above is for the track “Hey You” by Pony Pony Run Run, and its got a funny, summery feeling. The band has even dropped their own, dance remix of the track:
The June Soundmen dropped a track in my email the other day (you can too: ultimatecowboy (at) 199x (dot) org), telling me to pay attention because it was going to be “the summer banger.”
I don’t know if it has the staying power to be the banger we’ll be listening to all summer long, but its fun for now.
For a couple of good summer mixes, check out the wonky Sound Pellegrino Team Thermal mix on Curb Crawlers, the MADJAZZ’s Summer Brainstorm on Mad Decent or The Summer Never Ends mix by Jens Lekman. All three should be good for bumpin’ on the patio with a case of beer on a warm evening.
I just finished reading House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds. In the book, two shatterlings named Campion and Purslane (the galaxy-wandering, six-million year old clones of a woman named Abigail Gentian) fall in love with each other, befriend a golden robot (Hesperus, of the Machine People) and arrive decades late for the gathering of shatterlings that happens approximately once every 32,000 years.
I absolutely loved the book, and the fact that parts of it span tens of thousands of years. Reynolds writes sci-fi on an enormous time scale. As Charlie Jane Anders writes:
“House Of Suns is one of those novels that assumes a shape after you’re done reading it. All of the elements that seemed purely random fall into place, and you realize quite what an intricate design you’ve been looking at all this time….This novel has everything: artificial intelligences that become sentient, post-humans, questions of faster-than-light travel and causality, cloning, virtual worlds, a murder mystery and a group of nigh-immortal people dealing with the burden of history in a more personal way than most of us ever do.”
Anyways, that’s not a picture of Hesperus, but of my Halo 3 armor. I was inspired by the book to make him golden and to give him the House of Suns insignia.
Anyways, here are some tracks that I’ve also been coincidentally listening to these days. I really feel like they flow with the book. The Empire of the Sun track makes me think of the love between Campion and Purslane, and the name of the original band and remixers just works with the book as well.
Why this Girl and the Robot? Because at one point in the book, the female shatterling (Purslane) spends a great deal of time with Hesperus (don’t worry, nothing weird happens).
Tiga is going to be playing Toronto’s CiRCA nightclub on June 5th, and I’m definitely going to go. Ever since I heard his first album, Sexor, I’ve loved all of the guy’s music.
Wait..that’s not totally true. Half of Sexor actually sucks, and feels a bit like filler. But the tracks on the album that are good are amazing. 3 Weeks, (Far From) Home and You Gonna Want me are definitely some of my favorite songs from any artist. The Ballad of Sexor is also a hilarious track, and it kinda makes me think Sexor was probably a Fitte Prins.
I haven’t heard much of his new album, Ciao!, but like everyone else I’m totally hooked on the first single, Shoes.
There’s nothing quite as cyberpunk and sci-fi cool as a Bionic Commando, so I guess I should be pretty interested in the new game coming out. However, the description
As a neat little marketing gimmick they’ve gotten some dudes to remix the theme song of the original game and posted them on music blogs. The problem is that whatever cred amongst the music community they might have gained through this move they immediately lost for bragging that the main character in the game is going to be voiced by Mike Patton, former lead singer of Faith No More.
As an aside, the three blogs (DiscoDust, Mad Decent and Big Stereo) where they were originally posted have definitely become go-to music spots for me. Defs check them out.
I’ve been doing a bit of reading about the old RIFTS roleplaying game, and it sounds like Glitter Boy is pretty much the most bad-ass mech around. They’re made out of reflective armor so that beam-weapons can’t hurt them, and they carry around shoulder-mounted rail-guns. You wouldn’t want to mess with that.
Just as a bright, shiny mech like that would stand out on the post-apocalyptic battlefield, Kanye West stands out on the hip-hop war zone of the early 21st Century. I guess you could say he’s the Glitter Boy of rap.
For other Kanye news, recent articles that talk about 50 Cent referring to Kanye as “try-sexual” are pretty hilarious. And speaking of Glitter Boys, it sounds like 50 spent over $60,000 on his teeth.
“Fate has ordained that the men who went to the Moon to explore in peace will stay on the Moon to rest in peace.
These brave men know there is no hope for their recovery but they also know that there is hope for mankind in their sacrifice.
These two men are laying down their lives in mankind’s most noble goal: the search for truth and understanding.
They will be mourned by their families and friends; they will be mourned by their nation; they will be mourned by the people of the world; they will be mourned by a Mother Earth that dared send two of her sons into the unknown.
In their exploration, they stirred the people of the world to feel as one; in their sacrifice, they bind more tightly the brotherhood of man.
In ancient days, men looked at stars and saw their heroes in the constellations. In modern times, we do much the same but our heroes are epic men of flesh and blood. Others will follow and surely find their way home. Man’s search will not be denied but these men were the first and they will remain the foremost in our hearts.”
from the desk of Richard Nixon, via The Daily Express.
And while you’re thinking sobering thoughts of astronauts dying a slow death on the moon while the world helplessly looks upward, here’s some Space Disco courtesy of Edwin van Cleef (via Trash Menagerie). Its a nice long mix, so feel free to download it and listen to it on your own time.
