Grifting my way through the interweb wilderness with a bindle and a lightning bolt

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

My Favorite Albums of 2010

10. A tie between Vampire Weekend's "Contra" and Gorillaz's "Plastic Beach"





9. Delorean - Subiza

"Real Love" is one of my favorite songs of 2010.




8. Caribou - Swim

The best track on the album is free on the Merge Records 2010 Digital Sampler.



7. Shearwater - The Golden Archipelago

Free mp3 of The Golden Archipelago track "Castaways" from Matador.  It is a beautiful song. Give this one a listen.



Saturday, December 25, 2010

DM Stith's "Riverbody Chorus" Is Good For Slow-dancing in The Clouds on Christmas Night

Asthmatic Kitty, thank you for the wonderful new tune from DM Stith.  This track comes from his new limited edition Spirit Ditch, EP.  If you like this one there are more free songs available here and here.  DM Stith is one of my favorite song writers.  His faerie spirit soul jams, swelling with eerie falsetto harmonies, are perfect dance music for the disembodied.  This song is no exception; it takes me down my particular river to the universal sea.

Thursday, December 23, 2010

More Free Amazon Mp3 credits = More Hastily Conceived 2 Buck Chuck Metaphors

Amazon has two free Mp3 credit codes you can enter for a total of $3.29 of credit.  With 1,000 albums at $5, and some even cheaper, there are many great albums to choose from for less than $2, making for another round of bad two buck chuck image metaphors.  Enter GIVEMP3S for a $2 credit, and give Bing your email here: http://www.discoverbing.com/celebrate/index2.html for an additional code that will give you $1.29.  You can enter both codes here. Simply click the "enter code" button on that page. [More info at Slickdeals]

There are way too many good options to give an exhaustive list, but here are some gems:


$2 = 

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$2 = 


$2 = 

$2 = 

$2 = 

Monday, December 20, 2010

Roots.Run.Deep. Legit Indie Hip Hop from God

Roots.Run.Deep. is hip hop anointed by God and refined by fire. Philip H. simply writes the most refreshing hip-hop lyrics I have ever heard.  He takes a genre over-saturated in tired self-congratulation and braggadocio, and imbues it with real truth and humility.  This is not mainstream Christian Hip Hop (if there is such a thing)--this is Kingdom Hip Hop--music for a generation called to walk with God and change the Earth.

Here is a video he made with a few of his friends; they shot it in three hours and edited it in a few nights on a budget of zero dollars.  Now that is indie-core. The Holy Ghost makes good music.

Friday, December 17, 2010

Happy Indie Christmas--A Bandcamp Selection

I went holiday song fishing at bandcamp, and here is my Christmas catch.


By Half-handed Cloud--the label is Sounds Familyre.






Legit worship music.

Monday, December 13, 2010

December 2010 Playlist--Don't Lose The Chill

Here are some *chill* songs I've been sober-living to this month.

1. Glasser - "Home"
2. The National - "Bloodbuzz Ohio" [Mp3 via Pitchfork]
3. CEO - "Come With Me"
4. Crystal Castles -"Not In Love ft. Robert Smith"
5. The Russian Futurists - "Let's Get Ready to Crumble"
6. Fleet Foxes - "Mykonos"
7. Wild Nothing - "China Town"
8. Twin Shadow - "Castles in the Snow" [Mp3 via Pitchfork]
9. Passion Pit - "The Reeling"
10. Neon Indian - "Terminally Chill"
11. Washed Out - "Feel it All Around" [Mp3 via Pitchfork]
12. Gorillaz - "On Melancholy Hill"

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Tron Sequel Soundtrack--Daft Punk are the New Vangelis

The sequel Tron soundtrack by Daft Punk sounds a lot like some of Vangelis' work to my ears--not always but often.  It is a much toned down Daft Punk from what I am used to hearing, but makes perfect sense for a movie soundtrack; you cannot have every moment accompanied by a hype dance tune.  If you were hoping for a bunch of danceable pop songs, adjust your expectations.  This is Blade Runner and Lord of the Rings fog horn mash-up with a helping of a Daft Punk.  It is big studio money + Daft Punk as the album cover suggests.


























Even a movie-soundtrack version of Daft Punk still sounds good to me.
The digital soundtrack is $4 at Amazon today.


I hope this guy is in the sequel as a sweet easter egg.

Headless Horseman!!!!1111

The Headless Horsemen have created a very enjoyable five-song ep and posted it over at Bandcamp.com. You should really listen to this if you like experimental pop music that is more pop than experiment. The songs have enough sonic novelty to keep me really engaged, and the bit of drone and glitch here make for a great contrast. The twee high-pitched vocals work for me but may not for others.



You can also download their associates' 'radio "SAMPLER"' on their bandcamp page for free ya'll. I'm not quite sure what this sampler is exactly or how the HDLSS HRSMN are involved. As best I can tell, they produced remixes of songs that were played on a radio show. I do enjoy the first four tracks on it.

Friday, December 3, 2010

Merry Yacht-Rocking Michael McDonald Christmas


Michael McDonald has one of the most famous voices on the planet. He has been in the biz for thirty-years and he still has the pipes.  Just check out that discography.  McDonald has had a resurgence of popularity among some young people today because of the internet comedy show Yacht Rock that originally aired in June 2005 on Channel 101, a film festival put on by Dan Harmon--the creator of the best comedy on television.  I like to imagine that this fantastic web comedy was in part responsible for the epic 2009 McDonald collab with indie-rockers Grizzly Bear.


So, if you have not seen Yacht Rock yet now is as good a time as any.  Here are the two first episodes.  Episode two is one of my favorites:

And here is a link to the others. They are also on YouTube.


And now for the Christmas music.  Amazon has two free McDonald tunes you can sincerely or ironically rock at your Christmas party; your friends will have fun guessing which.


Michael McDonald - "Come, O Come Emanuel/ What Month Was Jesus Born"


Michael McDonald - "Wexford Carol"

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Free and Legal Download of the Week: Paleo - "The King James Fakebook"

I like free digital copies of music.  I also love being legitimate. So I am going to post links to free digital downloads on a semi-regular weekly-ish basis that will not get me in trouble with these guys.

I am loving Paleo's "The King James Fakebook."  He sounds like some of my favorite low-fi heroes, Daniel Johnston and June Panic.  This dude wrote and recorded a song every day for a year while traveling around the United States.  That makes him a pretty legit troubadour in my book.  I did not listen to them all, but here is one I enjoyed titled, "February 22nd, 2009" [legit].  I especially enjoyed his heart as six-sided die metaphor: "whose own six-sided heart he throws upon her even plane it rolls and rolls."



Here is the link to "The King James Fakebook" at Amazon.  4/5

Amazon decides $2 is a magic number; I agree. We become friends.

[OH SO SAD--ALREADY DEAD]
Amazon is really impressing me with its holiday specials.  I hope these sales are really successful and continue for a long time because $2 for a digital album is a hell of a price point.

Here are some of the $2 dollar goodies that are still available:
Arcade Fire's The Suburbs!  My favorite album of the year from my favorite band of the 2ks.











Mavis Staples You Are Not Alone. 8.0 on Metacritic.











The National's High Violet. 8.4 on Metacritic.

Sarah Bareilles' Kaleidoscope Heart. She seems to enjoy it.











LCD Soundsystem's This Is Happening.  8.4 on Metacritic.  Short samples on Amazon won't do this justice--find them on YouTube.






Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon.





Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

My Top Ten "The Mountain" T-shirt picks

Wear your totem animal on your chest as the ultimate metaphor for those nuanced emotional states you have been struggling to signal with normal clothing, overlooked actions, and ineffectual words.  Yes, "The Mountain" t-shirts will make you look sweet.  The real challenge here is to pick the shirt that will express your identity and not merely craft a persona. Choose wisely.



10.  "Bark At The Moon" is "Three Wolf Moon" with range.  This shirt lets people know that you can express your emo side with more than moon-howling.  You are also good at staring introspectively at the vast, empty wilderness, and being silently bummed out before bedtime.  This shirt, like its more famous cousin, is an analog for our animal natures, which are passionate and yet vulnerable. This combination of power and sensitivity worn "on the sleeve" seems to confer uncanny competitive advantage.









9.  The overly dramatic "Werewolf Transformation" is a more obvious metaphor for "The Mountain" patron's seething beast, rabid with chesty muscles and lust, just underneath the surface of this cotton-thin t-shirt and his gentlemen-like persona. Gentlemen-wearers (were/wear homophone ftw) will intrigue the ladies with the promise that they are one full-moon away from careening madness, and ladies who don this can properly identify themselves as receptive to savagery.  Oh yeah, vampires drool; werewolves rule.







8.  "Breakthrough Deer"--Same as above except this time it is a deer and not a man-beast just underneath the surface of thinly concealing decorum.  This is good for the "I may be shy, but I also have a horny stag in my chest"-look.















7.  "Lightning Rex" may seem like a children's shirt, but there is nothing like staring extinction in the face, especially such a toothy one, to sober you from the draughts of childhood fantasy.  Though this shirt appeals to any crowd's inherent affinity for dinos and lightning bolts, it is also a shirt for the buzz-kill realist, awakening party-goers to an appropriate humility.











6.  "The Pegacorn" is so rare that it may exist only in the myths told "from the lips of a ghost in the shadow of a unicorn's dream."  Yet even in these thrice removed meta-myths their existence is dubious.  Is it even possible for a unicorn and pegasus to breed? How was the artist able to add wings and a horn to a horse?  Yet there it is before you.  Wear it and bewilder everyone.











5.  "10 Kittens" is an obvious choice for hairy bearded guys.  Through the power of suggestion your bearded face will attract cute-hunting stares and friendly chin pets.














4.  "The Cow";Cows are noble and delicious beasts.  Wear this and people's subconscious desire to eat you will hopefully translate into goodwill--a plausible scenario given the West's vast accumulation of gratitude and guilt for the hamburger, which its citizens will freely express when presented with a cow that they cannot immediately eat (yes, even the mere image of one on your person).










3.   "The Mountain Yeti" inspires me to stay indoors.  He looks cold, lonely, and monstrous.  His particular suffering is sure to express my tortured soul.  Plus, check out that groin-area back-lighting!














2.  "His Divine Presence" features the white buffalo.  These are by far the coolest animals in God's creation since they prefigure the second coming of Christ.














1.  "Loving Wolves" is my number one pick because it is purple and these wolves are clearly in love.  I wonder how many successful marriages this shirt is responsible for?  These wolfies mate for life.