People say “They don’t make ’em like that anymore.” They are wrong.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLPjQCW2Zls
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYAeumfkxxk
Category Archives: Music
Aesop Rock’s new adventure: The Uncluded
This is a good mix of soft singing from Kimya Dawson and the rhyme tornado of Aesop.
Also, catchy as hell.
Do Not Touch – celebrating the death of the pointer
I like music videos that can’t be on MTV. The new web enables new art, and that’s what I’m interested in.
You will interact, you will be part of it. Go now – and I’ll be part of the video with you. We’ll play a game, we’ll be a mask, we’ll fight a boxer, together we will make a smile. One of those pointers is mine!
See you on the internet…
Daler Mehndi – TUNAK TUNAK TUN
Oh, I laughed at it the first time I saw this video.
Some sort of captain-planet style arrangement of Daler Mehndi meteorite brothers dancing in a CGI hellscape?
Years later, I’m still listening to the damn thing. It was my first Pandora station.
Not just me. Here’s a metal version.
And here’s your soundtrack for your lunch hour: 1 hour and 30 minutes of Tunak Tunak Tun.
We walk behind you
We went to the Nick Cave concert Friday night with Rob and Sleep Goblin. You know how good he is, how much I like the Mercy Seat. This is his new jam.
The video really reminds me Clayton Cubitt‘s trailer for Warren Ellis’s Gun Machine.
You can keep on calling me Al forever
Broken Road is an SEO optimized music video by Numbers and Letters
I’m gonna brag a little and say I knew Katie Hasty when. She’s rolled with the Old Dirty Barristers and she’s good peeps. I had to share her latest video because it has stepped hard on all my buttons. My buttons might be a little cracked, so hard has she stepped.
This upbeat banger from Numbers and Letters is all about Kittens, Sex, Fail – the most popular search terms on the internet.
From their description:
This lyric video was designed to make use of the three of the most popular SEO-friendly terms: “kitten,” “sex” and “fail.” They are among the internet collective’s favorite things to search for. At times, they are interchangeable, full of meaning and without meaning. Congratulations, us.
This video was made possible through Creative Commons-licensed content and the contributions of Numbers And Letters fans. Cats cats cats
BTW – she does the right thing and cites her sources in the youtube page. GO KATIE! Buy the album when it comes out in APRIL.. WTF?
Manchester Orchestra – Virgin
Manchester Orchestra is really putting it all out there for this version of Virgin, but I think the kids really make it:
I know there are other good songs with kids singing.
Any other suggestions?
Chap Hop & Race
Appropriation and remix is how we make new things. Chap hop is hip hop plus anachronistic victoriana. I first heard Professor Elemental’s “A Cup of Brown Joy” and it blew me away. Great rhymes, great subject, great presentation.
White rappers always face the history of rap music. It started as black music, just like rock. And just like early rockers, most white rappers adopt the poses and styles of black rappers that came before them. I like that chap hop borrows from hip-hop, a black music tradition, and adapts it in a fresh way. They take the structure and the mechanics, but substitute an entirely different culture and origin myth.
Good appropriation and remix cites sources, calls back to the places it came from. I like Mr B the Gentleman Rhymber’s “Straight Out of Surrey”. Totally it’s own thing, but totally tipping a bowler to the origin.
Like most rappers and rockers, these guys are presenting a facade, they are concerned with keeping it straight. But these guys aren’t trying to maintain “authenticity”. They aren’t trying to make their image fool you.
Hey, did you catch that cameo by Mr B? His rough treatment by Professor Elemental is another part of the callback. Rap battles and diss songs aren’t going to be the same in chap hop, but here is the Professor calling out Mr. B for biting his style.
Yeah – the whole battle is a great way for them to generate interest and sell albums… But isn’t that what most of the great rap rivalries turn into?
The thing that irks me about this fun and silly genre is that it takes rap completely from black people. Just like white people who loved black rock eventually turned it into a white only club, these guys have made chap hop representative of the ethnic monoculture of the victorians – white white white. If the whole thing is a laugh and no one is pretending this is really the 1800s, can we welcome in some color? Hopefully its a matter of time till we get some more chap hop performers – and some of them might bring in a different culture.
I’ll leave you with a great rap battle mixdown between the two:
Years of play
I really like this live performance by Grimes. She sits on the floor, twists knobs, taps buttons, and moans into a mic like it was the most casual, natural thing in the world. It looks like you could sit beside her, turn the knobs a bit differently, tap other buttons and you could make a different song.
The years of play, of experimenting and trying are covered in her ease. It’s like watching a great athlete at play on her chosen field.