music
favs of 2008 – albums
Dec 12th
approximate order, give or take:
crystal castles – crystal castles
[myspace] [torrent]
fleet foxes – sun giant ep & fleet foxes
[myspace] [torrent] [torrent]
no age – nouns
[myspace] [torrent]
portishead – the third
[myspace] [torrent]
be your own pet (rip) – get awkward
[myspace] [torrent]
erykah badu – new amerykah part one (4th world war)
[myspace] [torrent]
times new viking – rip it off
[myspace] [torrent]
land of talk – some are lakes
[myspace] [torrent]
hercules and love affair – hercules and love affair
[myspace] [torrent]
hold steady – stay positive
[myspace] [torrent]
tokyo police club – elephant shell
[myspace] [torrent]
hayden – in field & town
[myspace] [torrent]
the raconteurs – consolers of the lonely
[myspace] [torrent]
cut copy – in ghost colours
[myspace] [torrent]
the vivian girls – the vivian girls
[myspace] [torrent]
beck – modern guilt
[myspace] [torrent]
el guincho – Alegranza
[myspace] [torrent]
lil wayne – tha carter 3
[myspace] [torrent]
quiet village – silent movie
[myspace] [torrent]
broken social scene presents brendan canning - something for all of us
[myspace]
flying lotus – los angeles
[myspace] [torrent]
tv on the radio – dear science
[myspace] [torrent]
girl talk - feed the animal
[myspace] [pay what you want]
crystal castles finally gave birth to the sublimated unconscious of my 8 bit ninja gaiden youth… no age and times new viking and the vivian girls found the brian wilson in fuzz… fleet foxes brought me back to folky pussy shit (a continual flee and return process)… portishead defied the rules of comeback… be your own pet finally made it across the border for my third attempt to see them live. jemma cursed at the audience and left early. they broke up soon after. i wouldn’t want it any other way… tokyo police club and land of talk couldn’t live up to the un-live-up-to-able quality of their debut eps, but their debut albums are all too solid… hercules and love affair replaced the field for my go-to doin it album… the hold steady kept up the sing-a-long songs as scripture… hayden piled on the proof that his ‘lush’ era (from skyscraper on) far outweighs his lo-fi era… jack white is still god, but he’s jesus in the desert, lost and tempted by satan. 2k9er should be a stripes year… cut copy made us dance and beck made us remember why we love beck… broken social scene, a project based on continual renewal, continued to renew. liz powell from land of talk singing on 2 tracks certainly didn’t hurt… quiet village and flying lotus and el guincho chopped and mashed with finesse, while girl talk continued to impress…
favs of 2008 – songs
Dec 12th
fav of the year: erykah badu – soldier
a simple drum beat, an even simpler flute sample, i don’t quite understand how she can much manage such warmth and righteous indignation at the exact same time. enmeshing the personal with the political, it touches on 9/11, iraq and katrina, while celebrating a new history that she couldn’t even have imagined at the time (the album came out in february, only two weeks after obama announced his candidacy). soldier marks the end of one era and the beginning of another, a new amerykah indeed.
in addition to that squeal that joanna newsom lets out before a big note, particularly on cosmia, my favourite female vocal sound ever is erykah badu’s ‘eeeeha’ at the 2:01 mark…
the rest, in alphabetical order, give or take:
air france – collapsing at your doorstep
beck – gamma ray
be your own pet – becky
brazilian girls – good time
css – ratt is dead
crystal castles – crimewave
crystal castles – Xxzcuzx Me
cut copy – midnight runner
deerhunter – nothing ever happened
fleet foxes – mykonos
fleet foxes – english house
girl talk – let me see you
hayden – where and when
Hercules and Love Affair – Blind
land of talk – some are lakes
lykke li – little bit
M83 – kim and jessie
no age – brain burner
portishead – nylon smile
santogold – shove it
times new viking – (my head)
times new viking – call & respond
the hold steady – slapped actress
the raconteurs – top yourself
tv on the radio – red dress
vivian girls – tell the world
here’s a zip with all of them
favs of 2008 – videos
Dec 12th
along with crystal castles, this year was all about the technostalgia. here, a plucky young lad from scotland remixes radiohead’s “nude” to create a four-part audio-visual symphony: an 8-bit home computer that came out the year i was born, a scanner, a dot matrix printer, and a bunch of hard drive speakers.
another year
Sep 2nd
in what was supposed to be my first september without school, it is now the night before school starts. for which will be grade 21? is that math right? wow, i am a lifer. and lookin at another 4 or 5 for a phd? though now i’m actually in more of a limbo than another proper year of school. my department was in need of another teaching assistant, and my supervisor wanted me to be his research assistant, copy writing for his book series, and my thesis was coming along, but it would have been hell to finish it by august, so i’m a ubc’er for another term (maybe two, i kind of really like being a TA so why not). once i decided i was staying on, the thesis work became almost non-existent. instead, the priority shifted to poutine. figured i would use my magical free flying powers (meg i luv youu) to go to montreal and home again, and since i was checking out mcgill and concordia as potential phd schools, i can rationalize 8 days of visiting friends and boozing as a ‘working holiday’. bri and dal showed me around their envious school and city, despite all their own thesis prep/stress. much thanks..
my battery charger was lost, so i didn’t take my camera, but dallas was there to capture all of the beer-hotdog-and-poutine-fueled sacrilegious, picnic-in-the-park good times.
photo credit: dallas @ rationalpassion.blogspot.com
and then i went to ontario, mostly for paige’s party for mobilemoment.ca, which she booked annie to dj. my favourite part was when she played flat beats.
and annie has a new album, “don’t stop,” which is really good. the indie world has its kylie minogue.
high but not dry
Aug 21st
RAD IO H EAD_ CO/N C ER_T!!
last time i saw the mighty rhead live was in new jersey, and a full day of rain couldn’t get us down (elliott smith, liz phair, beth orton, spiritualized, underworld, and the beastie boys helped thom and co in that regard). when radiohead sang ’stand up sit down,’ with its 46 “the raindrops,” i think everyone in the crowd was having a shawshank redemption moment, arms outreached into the rain for the aerial camera shot. this time the rain came down again, but a vancouver crowd isn’t exactly in any position to complain. fittingly, the rain didn’t start until just before the band came on, giving a certain pre-storm energy to the pre-show beer tent (or maybe i need to ease up on the red bulls).
from rvnix on flickr
25 songs and 3 shirts & a jacket soaked thru later, it’s hard to pick any definitive highlight… either ‘you used to be alright, what happened?’ from 15 step (and my ‘new’ 40 dollar tshirt made from plastic bottles liberated from landfills)… or thom saying “we know its raining and that’s a bummer, but fuck it this is Optimistic”… or “i’ll be waiting with a gun and a pack of sandwiches” from talk show host… or you and whose army… or every song from in rainbows… or thom telling the crowd surfers “Take it easy guys, Its not fucking Rage Against The Machine”… or the opening notes of everything in its right place (and the greatest album of our generation?*)… or the hacksaw buzz of ‘exit music for a film’… or thom telling someone, mid-sentence, to “Shut the fuck up, you’re not funny you just don’t get out much”… or the shuffle start of reckoner, my favourite tune from in rainbows, to start the second encore…
or the rainbow spectrum lights/video for planet telex…
(50 seconds in)
or the communion of ‘This is what you’ll get when you mess with us’ during karma police
or the finale of paranoid android’s ‘come on rain down on me / from a great height’ while the rain picked up one last time…
* i used to always say it was ok computer (fuck nevermind), but maybe that’s just nostalgia. i think kid a is the money melon. either way, it’s radiohead vs radiohead.
edit: AHHH! my favourite neil young song!
Radiohead :: “Tell Me Why” (neil young cover) from gorilla vs. bear on Vimeo.
photo week 2/7: broken social scene
Aug 3rd
me and ian drove down to detroit, and met my oldest buddy dan (who will soon feature as the groom in a set of wedding photos), for the free broken social scene show, part of the comerica cityfest, which is a sweet festival the city puts on, with a whack of tasters food vendors and free shows on 3 stages for like 4 days over the july 4th long weekend. we celebrated the american day of independence with an obama-praising canadian indie band.
kevin drew had apparently thrown his back out and nearly called off the show, so he played sitting down, with an obus form backrest…
…until the valium kicked in, presumably, and he got up for a few numbers. seemingly in a bit of a haze, he would debut a new song (which the other dudes in the band didn’t seem to know they were gonna be playing) and then end the show with an impromptu solo version of almost crimes.
photo week 1/7: pemby
Jul 30th
and i’m back. hadn’t taken a photo since vegas, but i took more than 500 in the last month, including canada day (or cannabis day as it is also known here in vancouver), broken social scene in detroit, wedding #1, cottage, wedding #2, and the most stressful and high pressure “photo shoot” i’ve ever done and probably ever will. so it’s photo week (probably month by the time i get around to it), starting with pemberton fest this past weekend.
the golden horseshoe wedged up my ass is still very much in place, as we somehow managed to avoid almost all of the traffic, shuttle lineups, and security checks that were the only downside to the first pemberton festival. we got there just as interpol was starting their set, rushed to find an empty spot to pitch our tent, threw our shit down and rushed to the stage. incendiary might be a good description, rest my chemistry was the perfect slowburn to accompany a sunset in the mountains. the rest of the weekend involved jay-z, nin, my morning jacket, the hip, black mountain, fiery furnaces, tom petty, and coldplay (i didn’t get any pictures of any of them though, oops)
terra is not a camper
sam roberts
flaming lips
hacky sack!
May 4th
yeesh, what a bad post to leave on for that long. but how long ago was rudolph guiliani? seems like ages ago. i feel like i’m tired of the whole election thing, what a carnival it’s become already. i’m just gonna tune in to the thrilling final 2 minutes like it was a basketball game. these have been my feelings toward the election as of late, which you can listen to below:
we think you’re a joke, shove your hope where it don’t shine.
- santogold, “shove it”
Oh, give us your vote
Give us your vote
If you know what’s good for you
- tokyo police club, “your english is good”
complete misinterpretations, both of them, but that’s my favourite kind of interpretation.
“where has andrew been?” you probably didn’t ask, but i’ll give you the answer anyhow. you see, because i’m in the midst of writing my thesis, there’s really nothing exciting for me to talk about unless you’re one of the 7 people, like me, who thinks intermediality is like, totally rad. so i have to wait quite awhile to gather up enough stuff to “report.” it’s like george costanza: “You know if you take everything I’ve ever done in my entire life and condense it down into one day, it looks decent.”
which reminds me, i’m reliving the seinfeld days from start to finish as i fall asleep, so i have some seinfeld theories. like that its the root of self-indulgent reality tv. it was the first show about nothing, but now it seems like every show is about nothing, except it’s called “reality”. seinfeld was scripted of course, and transformed the sitcom genre, but it’s spirit was in the minutia of life in late capitalism, with its urban malaise, petty exchange, semantic bickering, endless repetition, and decadent selfishness. and in the fourth season they make “jerry,” the show-within-a-show starring jerry as his himself (to the third remove), which solidified it. this would have been a great theory had “the real world” not premiered till after this episode, but wikipedia tells me it started in 1992, while the “jerry” subplot wasn’t until 1993. damn. still, i bet the people who came up with “the real world” stole the idea from the spirit of seinfeld, which started in 1989. aanyhoo.
i’ve been spelling that word as “anywho” for the longest time, but “anyhoo” is way better.
i went to vegas a whiles back, bit of an adventure. i only ended up with about a dozen pictures, and half of them were of us drinking tallboys and playing wall-ball in the airport parking lot because our flight was delayed.
there was limited time between waking up mid-afternoon and then getting back on the red bull and booze, so i only managed 2 pictures outside
staring contest, you and me, right now.
the lizard wins, he always does.
and we spent an inordinate amount of time drinking and wrestling before heading out, as we tend to do, in our hotel room (which was awesome at least, at the mgm grand, thanks to craig)
so we didn’t end up seeing cirque to solee or the bellagio or old vegas or anything we planned on doing, but no one really cared. highlight was probably the grand finale on sunday morn: beyond-drunk last-minute craps & hooters buffet followed by rapid packing and jumping in a taxi and passing thru security at the airport at 9am. worst flight of my entire life. “entire” includes the rest of my life too, because there is no possible way, barring any oceanic flight 815 type-disaster, that i will ever experience such a flight of death again. i was praying for a hijacking just to stop the throbbing in my head.
don left (hence the vegas trip), which was sad. three is a good number for peer pressure, because the other two can gang up and harass the other until he or she gives in. it doesn’t work with just two obviously, and anymore than three is ganging up, plus you just leave the whiner behind if you already have three or more people. but with two pressuring one, it’s just the right amount of guilt/pressure. and thus the three amigos were born, so as long as two of us wanted to go out, the third would inevitably join/be dragged along. actually, don was never that third person, he was always on board, which is probably why we loved him. now he’s in australia and having way too much fun, so he’s dead to us!
and i was wrong to say music videos were dying: whoa, fuck. and did you know it was bjork’s birthday today? happy bjorkday.
Santogold (feat. Spank Rock) - Shove it: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download Tokyo Police Club - Your English Is Good: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
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