Hey everyone. Sorry for the inactivity. My power supply fried on my computer and midterms came around simultaneously, which led to little free time for me. However, I should be more active now that both those aforementioned issues have been handled.

At my university, we have an independent student radio station that broadcasts a 24/7 stream of music and streams student radio shows. The website has been recently updated with a great new media player and I recommend everyone go check it out and let me know what you think. I am one of the producers for the station (The University Pulse), essentially, one of the people who coordinates all the music played on the streams and my own personal 30 minute show, which is updated every week. I’ll keep everyone posted on when those updates occur.

http://bsupulse.com/listen/

My show is “Static Control”. Scroll down a bit and just click the title of the show. The player should pop out and start right away. Feel free to have a look around, listen, and as always, I will accept requests if you have an electronic track you’d like to hear on the show! All feedback is greatly considered and appreciated. Most of all, enjoy the music!

Hope everyone is having a nice Autumn season. =]

I’ll be on vacation through Wednesday so I apologize for any lack of activity on my part until then.

Should be back in full swing by Wednesday afternoon.  Until then, have an enjoyable Columbus Day weekend!

Vampire Weekend are at it again and have announced a new song – Horchata along with a new fall tour that spans the West Coast, Canada, and Japan.

The song, Horchata, is a track off of their new album, Contra.  The airly procussions in the music was provided by Bazillion,  Mauro Refosco and add lots of depth to the song.  For those that don’t know, “Horchata” is a sweet Mexican drink made with rice – on obvious tie in to the “Contra” theme of the album.

Check out the song for yourself:

Vampire Weekend has also announced a fall tour, with dates below:

10-06 Montreal, Quebec – Le National
10-08 Toronto, Ontario – Horseshoe Tavern
10-15 London, England – King’s College
10-22 Paris, France – Nouveau Casino
11-02 Long Beach, CA – The Art Theater
11-05 Pioneertown, CA – Pappy and Harriet’s
11-07 Lafayette, CA -  Town Hall Theatre
11-08 Santa Cruz, CA – Catalyst
11-09 Visalia, CA – The Cellar Door
11-10 San Luis Obispo, CA – Downtown Brew
11-12 Bakersfield, CA – Chencho’s
11-14 Lomita, CA – VFW Hall
11-17 Tokyo, Japan – Tokyo Unit
11-21 Sydney, Australia – Oxford Art Factory

So as some of you might or might not know Sunny Day Real Estate (SDRE) has been on a reunion tour these past few weeks.  They just happened to have a stop in DC at the 9:30 club so I figured it was a good idea to see them live.

What a great idea that turned out to be.  They ended up playing just about the entire catalog from Diary and a few from their 7″ LPs.  SDRE ended up playing for just shy of 1.5 hours – impressive for a group whose songs average only 3~5 minutes.  The energy of the show was intense with Jeremy Enigk’s voice sounding just as surreal as it did back in 93.  If they are making a stop at your home town I advise you to see them – you won’t be disappointed.  The only disappointment of the show was not being allowed to bring my camera.  Oh well, at least the show made up for it!

Thom Yorke has unleashed a  video for his new single “The Hollow Earth.”  The video, directed by Raymond Salvatore Harmon.  The single is part of the 12″ LP FeelingPulledApartbyHorses, which was released today.

While the video caused me to experience a seizure, the song is pretty kick ass.  Check it out for yourself!

*Edit* It seems the video has been pulled by Thom Yorke for copyright reasons.

Tis a shame

According to CNET, it seems songwriters, composers, and music publishers are working on a plan to target Apple and other online distribution outlets to increase compensation they receive for their downloads.  Adding more fuel to the fire, they even want to be compensated for 30 second previews found on a lot of sites.

Having already been unsuccessful at negotiating increased fees with distributors such as Apple, the groups, which include the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) and Broadcast Music Inc. (BMI) among others, have begun lobbying the U.S. Congress in order to pass legislation to address their claims.

The groups are targeting what is know as a “performance fee”, a type of licensing fee used to compensate composers and publishers when their work is performed in public.  David Renzer, chairman and CEO of Universal Music Publishing Group, said in interview late last month with entertainment-industry publication, Encore. “(On iTunes) you can stream radio, and you can preview (tracks), things that we should be getting paid performance income for.”

To further complicate the matter, artists are seeking performance fees for songs played in movies and TV shows downloaded.  Typically, when a movie or TV show is played on the air a performance fee is paid to a artist for a song played in the show.  However, no such fees are paid when the movie or TV show is downloaded.

So far Congress, and courts, have sided with digital content distributors claiming  anything downloaded should be considered a private performance and should not be counted as a public broadcast.  I, personally, believe this to be true as well.

So what are your thoughts on this matter?

Well just yesterday I was able to snag a really good deal on a Sigma 18-50 2.8 lens for my SLR.  What that means for this site is I’m going to start taking photos of shows I see.

The lens is slated to arrive tomorrow and if I’m lucky I’ll be able to snag tickets to sold out Matt & Kim show tomorrow night.

Some other shows I have my sights on: Pinback, Datarock, Japandroids, and Sunny Day Real Estate.

Let me know if you dying to see photos of other groups.

Sorry for no posts in such a long time, but I’ve been buried neck deep in school work these past few days.  If someone had only informed me grad school would require so much reading I would have taken the easier route and just gotten a job.

Anyways I wanted to write about my favorite band as of late, Giraffes? Giraffes! (To now be refereed to as G?G!) .  They are this amazing band from the west coast (although according to a recent blog article they are now on the east coast) who only consist of one guitarist and one percussionist  However, if you listen to their music without knowing this you’ll be amazed on how full of a sound they can produce.  They achieve this through looping some of their basic riffs and building on top of this.  While this looping may seem like a cheap trick used in the recording studio, the complexity of doing this during a live show allows G?G! to demonstrate their immense tallent.

You’ll also notice that none of their songs have any lyrics, which requires extra interesting music to entertain the listener.  G?G!’s music is considered “math rock” because of their constantly changing measures that allows the songs to evolve as they are played out.  I’ve included a video below to show just how truly amazing they are.   Let me know your thoughts and if you like them check out their site, where you can download their first album for free.  According to their twitter account, a small tour should happen sometime soon – I can only hope!

Adams’ new website includes a link to an order page. On that page, you can spend $1.49 on two new songs, “Lost and Found” and “Go Ahead and Rain”, which will be released this Friday, Sept 11th.

Alan Palomo’s pet project Neon Indian has announced their debut tour for the fall.  Backed with visuals from video artist Alicia Scardetta, this tour should be an audio visual mind trip.  Catch them starting tonight in Texas.

09-09 Denton, TX – Rubber Gloves
09-11 Springfield, MO – The Outland Ballroom
09-13 Morrison, CO – Red Rocks Amphitheater (Monolith Festival)
09-24 Amsterdam, Netherlands – Westergas Factory
09-25 Antwerp, Belgium – Novylon
09-26 London, England – Cargo
09-28 Sheffield, England – Harley
09-29 London, England – Barfly Camden
10-02 Austin, TX – Emo’s (Austin City Limits afterparty)
10-16 Tallahassee, FL – Club Down Under
10-17 Jacksonville, FL – TSI
10-18 Atlanta, GA – The Earl
10-17 Washington, DC – Rock N Roll Hotel
10-20 Philadelphia, PA – The Barbery
10-24 New York, NY – Music Hall of Williamsburg
10-25 Hartford, CT – La Paloma Sabanera
10-27 Chicago, IL – Lincoln Hall
10-28 Detroit, MI – Magic Stick
10-29 Bloomington, IN – The Bishop
10-30 Madison, WI – University of Wisconsin (Der Rathskeller)
10-31 Dallas, TX – Granada Theater
11-07 Austin, TX – Fun Fun Fun Festival
11-08 Lubbock, TX – Bash Riprock’s
11-11 Salt Lake City, UT – Kilby Court
11-12 Boise, ID – Neurolux
11-13 Guadalajara, Mexico – Lemon Beat
11-14 Mexico City, Mexico – Pasaje América
11-15 Seattle, WA – Nectar Lounge
11-16 Vancouver, British Columbia – Shine Nightclub
11-19 San Francisco, CA – Rickshaw Stop
11-20 Los Angeles, CA – Echoplex
11-21 Tuscon, AZ – Club Congress
12-09 Dublin, Ireland – Academy !
12-10 Cork, Ireland – Savoy !
12-11 Madrid, Spain – Primavera Club
12-12 Barcelona, Spain – Primavera Club
01-02 Melbourne, Australia – Corner Hotel #
01-07 Sydney, Australia – Manning Bar #
01-08 Sydney Australia – Empire
01-09 Melbourne Australia – Chillwave Festival

! with White Lies
# with Chairlift