Sound Bites

Did you know that Franz Ferdinand lead singer and guitarist Alex Kapranos is also an accomplished food critic? Oh, you did, did you?


Well, did you know that he wrote a food column for the Guardian called Soundbites where he reported on his adventures in food while on the road with FF? Yeah, you knew that too. In 2006 he also wrote a book called Sound Bites (get it?) where he...yeah I guess I'm a bit late on this one. Still noteworthy though, right? Ugh.

Justice Jimmy

Anyone else catch Justice "performing" on Jimmy Kimmel last night? I use the term lightly because they really just played an mp3 of the track off their laptop. Really they didn't even need to be there looking all bored and French and stuff.

It would be pretty awesome if the whole world (and by "whole world" I mean "everyone who watched Jimmy Kimmel last night and doesn't really know/care who Justice is") now thinks that Justice is a lame lip syncing band made up of Michael, Rod, Rick, Stevie and Prince look-alikes.

Kanye Kan

First Kanye's house now Kanye's blog. Oh yeah he's got a blog just like you and me. Well, me at least. And also like you and me he posts things like pictures of himself with other celebrities at fashion shows in Paris, shout outs to Daft Punk, videos of himself free styling with Mos Def (sorry Kanye but Mos Def is mos def better than you), super expensive tech toys he buys for himself and interview with himself from various publications. So he pretty much just reads my blog and copies it. Actually I find his posts about himself rather endearing. Somehow I detect an undertone of childlike wonder at his own celebrity status. Not sure why but there's definitely "look at me, ma!" quality about his posts.


And when he's not busy writing about his awesome hip hop self, his main interests seem to lie in fashion, design and Japanese pop art. He also likes to back up his notoriously eclectic music interests by posting videos by Feist, Mark Ronson and Bat For Lashes (!!!). And then there's this gem:

God bless you Kanye.

YouTube Revived The Video Star

Sometimes I forget how fantastic music videos can be but more and more I'm finding that they are the perfect little nugget of entertainment for my YouTube-sized attention span. I've also noticed that artists (or the directors) are exhibiting far more creativity in the medium than before. I'm definitely seeing a lot less of the standard band set up playing for the camera and a lot more storytelling and visual effects. Now that I think about it however, creative music videos probably aren't a new development but more a function of the wider availability of a broader selection of videos. Now that YouTube has effectively rendered MTV even more obsolete than it already was, nearly everything you can imagine is available on-demand. Then again, the neat-o factor that I'm trying to describe could also just be a characteristic specific to certain genres of music. I'm sure the Nickelbacks of the world still have the dullest videos you could imagine.

Anyway, all this blah blah blah is just because I happened to spend the last 45 minutes watching music video and I found some pretty neat ones that I wanted to post. I suppose I could have done just that without all the preamble but I'm not about to go back and delete it all now!

D.A.N.C.E. by Justice

Daft Punk Is Playing At My House by LCD Soundsystem

Boy From School by Hot Chip (you have to watch this one all the way through to the end for the full effect)

Montreal -40°C by Malajube.

Thoughts? Anything else I should be watching? Please share!

Just What The Doctor Ordered

Is it bad to buy things just to make yourself feel better when life gets you down?


Oh well. I'm wearing them now. They're not even plugged in to anything. I love them. And I feel a little better.

Kanye's Krib

I'm not sure how much thought you've given to what the inside of Kanye West's Los Angeles home looks like, actually I'm pretty sure the answers is none. And if you have then 1. that's weird, and 2. you're probably wrong. I mean chances are you didn't come up with this: Andy Warhol? The Jetsons? Giant creepy plush happy face flowers? Yes, yes and definitely. Read the Interior Design article or just skip the words and go right to the slide show.





Via Fimoculous.

Le Daft Punked

So I went to a Daft Punk show on Sunday night and they totally kicked my ass. By far one of the best concerts I've ever been to. A huge part of what made it so good was the extravagant light show they put on. This was unlike anything I'd ever seen before: requisite strobe and spot lights, twenty-foot tall (that's my very rough estimate) illuminated latticework, and a huge pyramid composed of four LCD screens from inside which Les Punks worked their magic decked out in full robot regalia. Totally sweet. Plenty of video and pictures from the tour available online but I wanted to share my very own (low-quality camera-phone) pictures with all of you.

If My Blog Looked This Good...

Not only does artist/illustrator/musician Aaron Jasinski create some good tunes and some refreshingly lovely, playful and surreal paintings (describing visual art has never been my strong suit but I love love love his work), but he also has a clean, creative and extremely well-designed website to showcase all his work. The menus are beautifully designed and the animation looks smooth and effortless. Makes you want to click-clickety-click everywhere!

Via Fubiz.

Musicovery

Musicovery is a pretty little webradio application that allows users to select the music they would like to listen to based on various parameters. Click a point in the “matrix” of the calm/energetic and dark/positive axes to determine the mood of the music you want to listen to. Also select by genre, decade and popularity. A click in the neighborhood of “calm” and “positive” within the “electro” genre spawned a pretty little organic blossom of…wait for it…calm and positive electronic music such as Air, Björk, Thievery Corporation and Massive Attack.


Ever since Pandora ran into “licensing constraints” and stopped offering their service to users outside of the United States, I’ve been looking for a new web-based radio app to play with. I think I just found it! What think ye?

Thanks Jamie!

CDograph

This beautiful phonograph-style CD player designed by yong jieyu + ama is such a pleasure to look at that it might just make me stop illegally downloading music and start buying CDs again. Maybe you should buy it for me so we can find out. Also their website makes my head confused but it's pretty neat.


Via Notcot.org.

Architecture In A City I'm Not From

So I've been noticing this trend lately of bands naming themselves after cities they're not actually from. I decided the only thing I could do about it was make a map to catalog this information. I mean really, what else could I do?

Come on folks! I made you a gosh darn map! The least you could do is say 'awesome.'

Click for biggity.

Hell Ya!

Check out this folk cover of OutKast's Hey Ya by Mat Webble from the Scottsdale, Arizona band Obadiah Parker. I still can't believe how good it sounds.


Via Fosfor.

U2 Opened For Me Last Night

Look! Now you can make your own concert ticket! Just like you've always wanted to! Hurrah! Exclamation point!