reviews for you

thom yorke - The Eraser: For fans, this is certainly an adequate appetiser for the main course which should be served up some time next year. Essentially a bare bones electronic-y radiohead album, these could easily have graduated to b-side status if they were beefed up with some more bass, guitron, and drums. As exciting as this release could have been, it is easily eclipsed by the 10 new actual radiohead tracks I've heard so far from their recent european jaunt.

mason jennings - Bone Child: Hyped up 5th release, due mainly to being on isaac brock's new imprint doesn't quite live up to the hype. Pretty bland, nothing grabs hold of me to suggest I should listen again.

camera obscura - Let's Get Out of this Country: Belle & Sebastian meet the Concretes on their third release. Breezy, harmless, whimsical, and occasionally cynical twee.

peeping tom - s/t: Mike Patton is back with this 11 part collaborative effort which varies stylistically from song to song, though never straying too far from standard patton since its held together by his alternately soulful croon and menacing yowl. We have some of the usual suspects (rahzel, dan the automator), making appearances along side more unlikely pairings (bebel gilberto, norah jones). There are also contributions from massive attack and dub trio (both of which have/will have slightly different versions found on their own albums as well). I've warmed up to the variations on a theme, and expect this to get more frequently repeated listens in the days to come.

the minders - It's a Bright and Guilty World: Elephant 6's answer to the Shins. Former members have included folks of such pedigree as Apples in Stereo, Dressy Bessy, and the Jicks. Here, as with their 2003 release, we are back down to a core of three (Martyn Leaper, his wife Rebecca, and Joel Burrows). This has been in my regular breakfast rotation.

russian futurist

It all started simply enough when me, jacq & dylan met up for some rooftop food & drink action on top of the lazy dog saturday. Soon after our early dinner we sunk up with ken at his new hut. Ken clued us in on mateo where rachel served up some heavy handed rounds of goose, splash of soda. Mateo, more of a wine bar, apparently doesn't stock much in the way of mixers. Already slightly derailed, we opted to venture to trilogy instead of sticking to the original 'final round of OC' plan. Got there early enough to where we were able to saddle right on up to the bar which is where we met this ever so intriguing woman from moscow. Only stateside for a few years, she was visiting c-rado from the atl of all places. I took her under my wing for the rest of the eve, which was the least I could do since she had generously sported us all with several rounds on the night.

Over the course of the next few days, things gradually downgraded from russia with love to russian roulette as my new found house guest became more and more high maintenance. This could have been due to her bizarre whim to suddenly begin fasting, depriving her brain of the nourishment required to be, how shall we say, level-headed. After she went through most all of my clean socks (she insisted on changing them several times per day), coupled with a slew of other tiresome and increasingly erratic habits, I decided it was time for her to become acquainted with the luxuries of the university inn on my way to work earlier this morning.

-До свидания Спасибо за звонок-

mollusk my lego

Do you speaketh of the trinity?

leggo my logo

Earlier this year, CBS and Waner Bros decided to join forces to create the CW, a new joint venture network that will replace the WB and UPN. Today they announced their fall line-up and unveiled their flashy new logo:



That got me to thinking what the logo for my new network (the MP) should be:



And however in the world would the logo for the poop smith's new network would look:

trippin on

One of those pleasantly surprising days. Went running up mount sanitas, and was chased by rain all the way down. My pursuer was nice enough to provide a vibrant rainbow all the way home, however.





-sunshine-

weighing in

daniel johnston - Welcome to my World: And what a scary world it is my friends. After watching Junebug recently, I now totally understand the appeal in daniel's work. It's not strictly based on artistic achievement, but the bizarre allure in 'outsider art'. Hailed as a prolifically influentally songwriter (paul leary of the butthole surfers pushed his career into the main-er stream years back, and he has had his work covered by many), I would prefer to soak in the influenced, and keep this creepy weirdness at bay with a long pointy stick.

beirut - Gulag Orkestar: Zacahary Condon enlists the help of Jeremy Barnes and Heather Trost (of neautral milk hotel and hack and a hacksaw fame) to channel the vibes of Devotchka and the Black Heart Procession attending a funeral together somewhere in the ukraine.

dj sneak - MOS Sessions: Mixes associated with Ministry of Sound are suspect because they almost always are completely eurotrashed out in the cheesiest of ways. Of course they are usually mixed by cheesey eurotrash dj's in the first place, so you wouldn't really expect anything less. Sir sneak does a fine job here of mixing up two discs worth of some nice housey house. Gets a little techy in spots, but overall a good listen. Party people, we gotta keep this thing going.

josh wink - MOS Sessions: Same synopsis as above, but with josh's minimal house sound at work. Both discs start off kind of heady, but progress into more playful territory towards their ends. Includes his stellar remix of 'everything in its right place' which is a nice bonus. I first heard him spin this at a liquified affair in midtown years back, but had no idea it was his doing. Also contains the obligatory umpteenth remix of 'higher state of consciousness'. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

gnarls barkley - St. Elsewhere: Bizarro soul stylings in an outkast-y vein from danger mouse and cee-lo. Perfect for becoming the life of the party induced moments. Random note: 'gone daddy gone' by the femmes is quite masterfully covered about 4 tracks in.

kimya dawson - Remember That I Love You: Wicked cutesy songs from a not nearly as cute looking chick, formerly one half of the moldy peaches. Enjoyable naratives which thrive mainly off her well-timed cadence, "you were on my mind at least nine tenths of yesterday / it seemed as if perhaps I'd gone insane / what is it about you that has commandeered my brain..."

and it was blue

They weren't robin's eggs, but they were just as cool. The nest was made by some finches (or something smallish) in a hanging pot outside of hillside. I figured it was a fitting mother's day photo. We had a (pv) "successful barbeque, good burgs, brats, and brewskis".



The day prior was ripe with another Q, this one over at jacq & dylan's. We still had the nicer bottle of tequila left over from the cinquo, so we marg'ed it up. The sun was fierce, and the kodak moment was me tooling around in the beetle with the soundtrack to your life at full blast on a quest for red bulls. The day was almost headed for disaster with dylan's multiple trips to ace (the place...) before we got the new regulator for the grillonator.

A relaxing saturday was a welcome transition from my forray into clubland friday evening. It was a subtle forray, mind you, but a forray nonetheless. It came about fairly last minute when jake informed me that he had some guest spots to burn for kimball collins at the vinyl. It was somewhat unexpected especially since the club failed to promote the night, even on their own website. Sparse crowd, but ran into kevin and his lady celebrating what was surely her latest birthday.

-crushed to bits-

never cry chillout

-panacea gonna rock you-

what floats?

School districts in georgia are voting today on whether to remove the Harry Potter books from school libraries because they encourage witchcraft. I whole heartedly agree with pulling the books when earlier this week I saw a child, around 8 years old, turn a fire hydrant into a tuba. And fire hydrants are important, where as tubas are not so important.

-very small rocks-

arpeggi

The new radiohead tune is pretty cool.

bauer vs. striker

-we have clearance, clarence-

cinquo de jenno

Jenn was nice enough to host a cinquo de party on friday. If there was a record player, it would have made that scratching sound that happens in movies when something shocking happens right as we walked in. It was hard to tell if we were about to become the life of the party or had just killed it. Either way it didn't matter, as we came armed with plenty of tequila, longside my nifty new blender, and immediately took control of the boombox. The random hand grenade crew were swimming in a mess of who knows what as they lavished in what seemed like hours of sippy cup competition - theriously. Luckily we bailed just in time to escape from becoming the target of the nutter stealing rims off parked cars out front. Somehow a hangover was avoided thanks largely to a few of the tasty rice, queso, pepper dealios featured below.



We all reconvened saturday afternoon for a stroll along pearl street, hitting up rhumba, then taking some in kentucky derby regalia at the newly renovated west end rooftop. After napping vigorously, I joined the gang as we headed back to denver to visit derr at cru.

Sunday was all about the siesta.

-olé-

up and away

Finally hit up my first rockies game this season with a bunch of folks from the office wednesday night. Although the weather was cold & rainy, it was a great game. We blanked the reds for the first time ever, and it was also our first shut out of the season. The idiots manning the out-of town scoreboard left me hanging, though. They never put up the winning run for the boston game (even though they lost, it would have been nice to know).





-play ball-

tune time

AFX - Chosen Lords: Compilation of the better tracks from the Analord 12" series released over the past year and a half. AFX, of course being a pseudynom for Aphex Twin, made all the tracks with good ol' fashioned analog gear, which I whole heartedly support and enjoy thoroughly. This comp is slightly less frenetic than aphex of late, and checks in with a groovier sound not unlike earlier orbital works. My computer deleted one of the tracks during a virus scan, because it was named after a trojan virus.

frank black - Fastman Raiderman: Franky's solo work never fails to utterly disapoint. It also continuously reminds me that I'd rather be reviewing a new breeders disc, which are unfortunately released at a fraction of the frequency to which we are subjected to mr. black's constant and uninspired bile.

be your own pet - Summer Sensations: Newest EP from this bunch of nashvillian teenagers. Being released on thurston moore's long running imprint, Ecstatic Peace, adds cred and/or hype as they rework two songs from their debut album, and add three new ones including 'take that walk' which sounds eerily similar to recent YYY's material.

massive attack - Collected: A two disc retrospective of sorts. The first part selects tunes from their four albums and tacks on their most recent single, 'live with me'. If you already have the first four afforementioned classics, the second part of Collected is far more interesting. It starts off with the mike meyers-ish piano menace of 'false flags', and winds it's way through other previously scattered gems & colabs from the likes of madonna and mos def. Despite being a hodge podge of tunes, it flows decently enough to tide us over until their next proper studio effort, Weather Underground, which is slated for a feb '07 release.

red hot chili peppers - Stadium Arcadium: Boring schmoring. 'Dani California' a conceptual character from the last two albums makes his reprise on the lead off single? Give me a break. They may as well put the tube socks back on their dicks.

the black angels - Passover: This austin band's debut serves up a nice helping of chuggy dirge rock, reminiscent of the Chrome Cranks. I picture a bunch of dusty gothed out cowboys with guitars slung around their shoulders drinking whiskey straight and cussing. Unfortunately, there is a secret track slipped in at the end about the iraq war, which is a fairly trite end to an otherwise decent disc.

jacked

this time this year

Started off the day of saturn with a visit to stella's (my foster neighborhood coffee shop) before the search for jacq's b-day gift began. Thanks to angie's dilligent and thorough research, it was pretty smooth sailing. I spent the rest of the afternoon exploring establishments along the broadway corridor, my fave of which was indyink. With my shopping duties behind me, I headed back to logan to spend some down time with p&b. On my way to sync up with dylan and the ladies for the rest of the evening's festivities, I stopped by robert's and witnessed the beginning stages of what I expect to be the horseshoe pit of the summer. After a round of aps at steph's new pad, we dined at via and capped off jacq's b-day at the 9th door.

the ladies, the ladies:


-hoo rah-