Pretty new and powerful music search engine. You’re able to listen to songs, or download them. Seems to be pretty quick. I’ll still be using 4chan Rapidshares, but this is pretty nice for individual songs. Better interface than Skreemr too. Just wanted to share.
Mmmm…Aphex Twin
(following video was going for contrast of song/images, but ends up making a very calming song kind of distressing)
Oooh…Boards of Canada
Ahhh…Squarepusher
So soothing.
I want to play bass like Squarepusher.
If you have been reading my past few posts you may recall my obsessing over an abandoned shack near my house. Well, I finally got around to investigating it, which turned out to be pretty uneventful. Basically a very small house with a lot of dirt, furniture, and beer bottles in it. Zzzzzz. But the prospect of finding these sort of places really appealed to me. I knew there was a name for this activity, I had heard of it before. So I did a bit of research.
Turns out such an activity is well known as Urban Exploration or Urbex if you want to sound all cool. The definition, according to the great Wikipedia, is as follows:
Urban exploration (often shortened as urbex or UE) is the examination of the normally unseen or off-limits parts of urban areas or industrial facilities.[1] Urban exploration is also commonly referred to as infiltration, although some people consider infiltration to be more closely associated with the exploration of active or inhabited sites. It may also be referred to as “draining” (when exploring drains) “urban spelunking”, “urban caving”, or “building hacking”.
Doesn’t sound too exciting, but I find it really interesting. Some of the stuff people find is fantastic. I went for my first little “Urbex” trip just recently. I got to see some buildings most people don’t even know exist. It started off with a cryptic user-submitted Google Maps location. “Abandoned Crematorium” it said, followed by “Unexplored”. Well this was just too good to resist. We printed out a map, and drove to the location to check it out.
We spied the crematorium, which was a dilapidated old shed, with white paint peeling off and a caved in front door. We were stopped in our tracks by a fence with a nasty looking “No Trespassing” sign posted for all to see. Being the juvenile explorers that we were (actually still are), we abided by the sign, and ended up traipsing down the road in search of other adventures. Sure enough, there was another fenced off location, this time with a less forbidding “Warning: Contamination” sign posted. Don’t ask how that sounds better, but it does. Best of all the fence was cracked open. We went inside to find a large, square brick building. Unfortunately for us, all of it was grated over, impervious to entry. No matter, we walked around, poking our flashlights into the crevices and trying to figure out what it is.We got some weak pictures of a plaque noting the date of construction, and the officials behind it’s existence. The plaque said 1921. Very cool.
Sorry, someone FORGOT to bring a camera.
Anyways, working up our courage to face whatever unknown horrors lurked within the crematorium, we backtracked and decided to check it out. Sure enough there were ovens, and we were a little wary of going in. So we hightailed it out of there.
First Urbex Expedition: Great Job!
Turns out that was just an incinerator, and the large building was an old powerplant that ended up fucking up the surrounding area with cancer causing coal tar. SWEET!
Anyways, if you’re interested here are some cool links. Check out some of the places these people find, it’s crazy.
Podcasts have more or less replaced TV for me. I watch about 3-4 of these internet born programs a week, which is more than I can say for TV. What makes these so much more interesting than TV? They offer something the “old media” cannot. They offer targeted programs, ones that would otherwise not be able to be distributed on cable networks profitably. They offer user feedback and interaction. They talk about stuff I care about. Most of the people I know seem to remain blissfully unaware of their entertainment potential, so I’ve decided to highlight my personal top five.
5.) The All for Nots – I actually found this recently, but it’s pretty entertaining. It’s kind of like…the rock band version of “The Office”, shot in docu-drama/comedy form. Other blogs say it’s like the Monkees circa 2008. I don’t get that reference, so I can’t verify. It’s well made, and usually funny. Worth watching by all means.
4.) Hak 5 – Awesome show for anyone interested in computers and/or hacking. If you ever wanted to create a Yaesager router, learn how to sniff packets, or perform brute force attacks, this is the show for you. I’m not too crazy about the hosts, but they have some interesting features that make this worth watching.
3.) Tiki Bar TV – I don’t even drink, and I love this show. The show is just straight up goofy, and it knows it. Lots of strange characters and events. Who knew everything can be solved by a “prescription”? 
2.) Epic-Fu – This one is sooo close to being my number one. It’s too short to gain that place though, and they recently shortened even more. 
EpicFu is a small weekly podcast, highlighting what’s new in art, music, and tech. The host, Zadi Diaz, feeds you the information in quick little blurbs, flowing effortlessly from one story to another. Oh, and she snaps like a pro too. 
The show follows a pretty set formula from week to week. There’s a news review, “Artist of the Week” art segment (usually very cool artists!), “Shit We Like” music video clip(hit and miss), and usually an interview with some media figure at the end. They also boast a very large and active community called “Mix” which competes in weekly contests and sometimes even contributes to the show!
1.) Diggnation – Two dudes, drinking on a coach, discussing top stories on Digg. How can this formula go wrong? Lot’s of digressions from the actual topics leads to a show that usually clocks in at about 45 minutes to an hour. Alex Albrecht and Kevin Rose are great hosts, though Alex gets annoying sometimes as he likes to talk. Loudly. All the while saying nothing. Sometimes the stuff they pick to talk about is boring, but most of the times it’s pretty interesting stuff. Overall very entertaining, probably moreso for huge geeks (like me) than anyone else. The clip show may be interesting to the uninitiated. Maybe not, actually, because it’s just clips of them bantering back and forth and no content. Oh well. Check it out. It rocks.
/sarcasm
Yes, those are flames.
I saw this driving home one day, had to document it.
So, lately I’ve been listening to an alarming amount of indie pop. Specifically, Los Campesinos! and Of Montreal. I don’t know what to make of this. I suppose it’s an escape from the usual rock/lo-fi/alternative. Oh, and Of Montreal makes excellent car singing music, a big plus for me.
Then I finally checked out Olivia Tremor Control’s Music for the Unrealized Film Script: Dusk at Cubist Castle, which I would wholeheartedly recommend to everyone.
On the electronic front, I found this Japanese..umm…breakbeat? (Wikipedia’d this, you know my feelings about genres…) duo. They call themselves Hifana. I’m not really big into electronic music, aside from Massive Attack and LCD Soundsystem I have hardly anything, but I do like their Asian influenced beats. I haven’t heard anything really like it, and it’s not too repetitive like Daft Punk (all right they’re OK but over hyped in my eyes…). Oh and they have cool videos too. That’s a plus. Take a listen.
Thank you EpicFu for featuring these guys!
Allright, I know I haven’t written anything for a couple of weeks, but I’ve been out of town…life has been hectic…etc. Now I’m back to school and on a regular schedule so expect more frequent postings. That is if I can find something worth posting about. If I can’t, I’ll just post uninteresting stuff like the following:
I just wanted to say that, 6 days in, 2009 is already shaping up to be one of the best years of my life. I compiled a list of awesome things that are happening…and oh man, I’m getting excited just writing about it.
Allright it’s almost perfect save a few things which may or may not be easily rectified in the coming weeks. Either way, for me, it’s going to be a fantastic year. If said things work out, it will be one of the best. Ever, ever.
Oh, and totally unrelated but I found this abandoned shed/house sort of thing a few minutes from my house, and I am freaking out about it. I used to longboard in that area all the time, and I always thought it was an electrical shed. Then I peeked in the window and there was a sink, some furniture, etc. I was so excited I wanted to make it into like a supreme getaway (childish, yes, but you have to admit abandoned buildings are pretty cool….). Then I noticed a bike outside, and heard some rustling within. HOBOS! I thought. That’s the only plausible explanation, I’ve already discounted zombies and serial killers. Which sucks for me, because there is nothing more that I hate than those smelly (or smelly looking, I’ve never allowed one near enough to me to actually take a whiff), change groping, whiskey drinking human beings. Ok, actually I don’t hate them. Secretly I want to befriend a hobo and have him teach me lessons about life. Like in the movies. Unfortunately my hobophobia (seewhatididthar?) gets in between me and any possible transient teachers. So here I am with an irrational fear of homeless people…and a shed that I’m quite certain has homeless people within….and I want that secret getaway dammit!
I will be monitoring the establishment closely over the next few weeks, planning my attack. For some reason, the mystery of the house/shed has become borderline obsessive. Most likely due to boredom. But then again, so was this blog, and things haven’t turned out too bad.
Yet.
Don’t tell me “rap”, “rock”, “electronic”, or any of those other vague descriptions. We musical elitists have progressed far past that primitive stage of musical classification! Nope, now you must delve into every minute detail in the music, and give it an obscure genre of it’s own!
Do you like deathcore? Digital harcore? Epic Metal? Folktronica? Celtic punk? Breakcore? Anarchic Folk Rock? Acid Jazz? Gypsy punk? Happy hardcore? (Is that an oxymoron?) Hard bop? Horrorcore rap? Indietronica? Industrial Musical? Lowercase? (Apparently safety seminars set to music have their own genre) Intelligent dance music? Jazz blues? Jazz rock? Jazz anything? Lo-fi? Lovers rock? Mathcore? Math rock? Melodic deathmetal? (Another oxymoron!) Melodic black metal? Metalcore? Nardcore? Neo-prog? Nerdcore hip-hop? New age? New beat? (As opposed to old beat…) Newgrass? Nintendocore? (Not even fucking kidding…) Noise rock or pop? Nu metal? Nu soul? Oriental metal? Pagan rock? Peace Punk? Pornocore? Post rock? Post metal? Post hardcore? Post grunge? Post minimalism? Post fucking anything? (I wonder where they go from there? Post post metal?), Power electronics? Power pop? Progressive folk, house, metal, rock, or trance? How about progressive acoustic urban math folk? Psychobilly? Queercore? Rapcore? (Not to be confused with rap metal guys!) Riot grrl? Screamo? Sega music? (Not as strange as you think ) Skacore? Slowcore? Sludge metal? Sadcore? Speed garage? (Vroom vroom) Speed metal? Speedcore? (Slowcore’s rival) Super Eurobeat? Technical deathmetal? Thrashcore? Technoid? Tribal house? Twee? Unblack metal? Viking metal? Wizard rock? (A Harry Potter fan’s favorite, no joke)
My point is, it’s gotten to the point of stupidity. Even these subgenres have fucking subgenres. Doom metal alone has “Epic doom metal”, “black doom metal”, ”Drone doom metal”, ”Funeral doom metal”, and more attached to it’s Wikipedia page. (Hells yes I used the Wiki!) What…the…fuck. Why do we have to try and shoehorn everything into a distinct genre?
Also, seems to me you just slap on something before “core” or put a description before or after a major musical genre and you have your own! Recently I’ve seen humorcore and pirate metal mentioned…and I wouldn’t be surprised if sometime in the future people try to justify these as being distinct genres.
So which do you like? I’m more into Unblack Sad Technical Slowcore myself.
Oh the signals you will find!
So I have found a fun little hobby to do when I’m bored. Warwalking with my iPod Touch! It’s easy, it burns calories, I don’t think it’s illegal, and it’s actually somewhat useful!
Here are my tools:
I didn’t bother to take proper wardriving notes like take down all the private networks and MAC addresses, encryption types, etc. I just walk around my neighborhood, keeping WiiFinder on autoscan. It brings up all the reachable access points, in “open” and “locked” categories (nice). Whenever I find an open network, I stop, get on Google maps using their internet, and drop a pin with the wireless SSID. Repeat for about…1.5 – 2 miles…and I come home with 25-30 open networks mapped out for future exploitation.
That estimate is probably low, considering that in some places I was getting signals from 6 different routers, all named “linksys” (poor, ignorant souls). So I just dropped a pin and named it “a shitload of linksys” and called it a day. Same goes for routers with the ubiquitous “default” and “NETGEAR” SSIDs.
I find it interesting, nearly every open AP was the default SSID. It’s clearly just a sign of no technical know-how, I wish I could help them. At the same time though, I’m grateful because it’s people like that which enable me to get wireless almost anywhere. For instance, today I had to look something up while at Goodwill, but there was no wireless. I drove into a shopping center across the street and BAM 3 open wireless points just waiting for me. I love it.
Also, people have some bizarre SSID names. Mine is my last name, as were most that I saw, but I took down some names which I thought were pretty unique.
I guess anything goes. I kind of want to crack the Irishmob one though, just to see what’s on there…
So it’s been a while since I’ve written the weekly music segment of my blog. I know, I didn’t pull through with my promises of regular updates, sorry. To make up for I’m going to mash up a few weeks worth of these silly little blog posts to consolidate my time.
Well, I seem to have been fortunate enough to find a band that I love which ISN’T broken up, defunct, or otherwise at the end of their life. *knock on wood*
Anyways, Why? has quickly pervaded my Last.FM top artists and is showing no sign of stopping. Their albums “Alopecia” and “Elephant Eyelash” are both excellent. It’s hard for me to figure out what genre this is…let’s say…alternative/indie pop/hip-hop…sure that’ll work. Anyways, make your
own ruling:
Highlights
Alopecia:
The Hollows
Good Friday
The Vowels Part 2
These Few Presidents
Elephant Eyelash:
Rubber Traits (love the music video haha)
Act Five
Crushed Bones (Live is all I could find)
Next would be The Flaming Lips “At War With the Mystics”. I loved “Soft Bulletin”, I loved “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots”, and sure enough I love this album too. I don’t believe it’s possible for them to make bad music.
Highlights
Free Radicals
The WAND
Haven’t Got a Clue
Mr. Ambulance Driver
And then we have Xiu Xiu. Err…Last.FM has been recommending them so I said why not and checked out “Fabulous Muscles”. I have since determined that overall Xiu Xiu is garbage. For me, they trespass the music/noise barrier once too often. Yes, I’m aware they are “experimental” but that is no excuse for having just random NOISE everywhere. Experimental well done for me would be Animal Collective, who you can tell are actually making music. Anyhoo, I do like two songs off their album…a lot. The rest could probably be used as some sort of sick torture method.
Highlights
Crank Heart
I Luv the Valley OH!
Lastly there’s Menomena and “Friend and Foe”. It’s an above average album, but it’s not really a standout album for me either. Definitely worth a few listens though.
Highlights
Muscle N’ Flo
Wet and Rusting
Air Aid
Rotten Hell
Boyscout’N
Yep pretty consistent stuff. Which is both good and bad.
