Farsong Blog-o-Matic

Rocking in a new year with a 25-year-old song digitised and streamed to a 3-year-old computer. Just comprehend the years of engineering that went into this for a simple song.

This is probably my favourite love song. This is a 12-min long extended promo cut of the music video, and it's as transfixing a video as David Bowie's “Life on Mars.”




I hope that in ten years I'll be in the arms of the one I love, cozy and happy at 33.

Music hasn't been a priority this year. It's been good, but I've discovered a lot more old stuff than new stuff released this year (and a lot of trance and house musics). As per usual, this is a list of the good albums released in this year. Unlike in years previous, there is no ranking. I don't think there are ten, though, but that makes up for the years where there have been like twelve or fifteen.



Fanfarlo — Reservoir
This one has the “Harold T. Wilkins” track.

Röyksopp — Junior
The companion to this, Senior is due out in 2010.

U2 — No Line On The Horizion
Best U2 since Achtung Baby

Franz Ferdinand — Ulysses
Especially disc 2.

Ziggy Stardust Remixed
Bowie remixes with a haunting remix of MGMT's “Kids” that's better than the original.

Fireflies — Butterscotch EP
No, you're probably thinking of Owl City's “Fireflies.” This band is called Fireflies, has no relation to Owl City, and sounds a lot like Polaris.

Jens Lekman — THE SUMMER NEVER ENDS
This is the 49:00 of this year — that is to say, it is both excellent and obscure.


These are not all the new albums I got in 2009. Some of them just weren't amazing. Some simply do not deserve to go on the list. Others were compilation albums. So yeah. And it's not like I can pick any one that's best because they're all different.




And since it's 2009, aka the end of the decade and the start of a new one:
( My favourites of the last 10 years (2000-2009), in which I disagree with Pitchfork a lot )

There's a reason I wait till the end of the year to put together a list of top 10 albums from the past 12 months. No, it's not finals. It's the fact that new and exciting music can come to light even in the last four weeks.

You'll find out what's on the list. But not yet.




In other news, I had a pudding today. Pistachio. In a small plastic cup. Now, it was not the best pudding in the world, but someone had taken the care to make it more than just a pudding in a cup. A dollop of whipped cream and a sprinkle of sliced almonds had been added. The thought made me all warm inside. Little things that people care about make me all gooey.

I've been digging this song ever since @trabant (it seems it was bassplayer1231 who) linked it last week:


I may have to look this one up and put it on the "Watch" list.


--

I've spent most of the past week engaged in group work for Bio and Communications. The former is a real blast, and we're designing experiments to carry out in a group. I'm probably going overboard in work for it, since it's only a 3-credit class.

The other one, I'm not really taking seriously. Well, I'm taking the project seriously, but not the class. It's communications for people who lived in their parents' basements and have never experienced the world or interacted with others. Maybe I have the benefit of age and experience.

Regardless, I (think) have 17 credits this quarter, and am on top of it all. For the first time in years. It feels good.


Other things have happened: I imploded earlier this week and was all like "FFFFFF" at T-mobile because I got bilked for texts this last month. Seriously, don't tweak with your texting plans ever. Unlimited is cheaper than 100% of your phone bill in texts, if you're being stupid. Stupid costs you money out in the real world.

I've also been hanging out with CAs (EWU's Version of RAs) and will probably see about doing that next year, for a jorb. Most of them have been camp counselors in the past. I've also made friends with a short, black CA named Katie. She's seriously like 5' tall and has a huge personality and knows everyone. I've also ended up hanging out with people from clubs. Making new friends is pretty sweet.

TMBG released a new album recently, Here Comes Science, another fun one for kids (their second, after No!). It feels bright and fun; I feel like it's better than their last one, The Else. It's also somewhat educational, with songs about science things and electric cars and outer space; the kind of thing I'd play along with Raffi, if I ever had kids — ie, fun for kids and actually quite enjoyable for grownups. Besides, if there's one thing we need more of, it's people who are excited about science.

NASA's engineering in the 60s, their placing men on the moon directly from earth (we were crazy to go at that time in history, but thank goodness we did!), inspired an entire generation to pursue the sciences — not only astrophysics, but engineering and informatics as well. It inspired the people who started the microcomputer revolution in Silicon Valley — companies like Sun, Apple, and Microsoft. We've been coasting along on the advances of the space race for decades (and in some cases, gone backwards — I'm sure there are people who still believe in a geocentric universe, flat earth, moon landing hoaxes, or other such equally antiquated, nonsensical ideas), and it's been 40 years since man first set foot on the moon. It's time for people to realise, once more, that science is pretty awesome.


SCIENCE! :D


Edit And speaking of science, CERN is cooling down the final sector of the LHC, after the repairs from last year's malfunction!

On my birthday I mentioned that there are some albums I listen to that are timeless; these are the ones I keep coming back to. I'd like to add to that list:

The Youngblood Brass — Center. Level. Roar.
I've probably mentioned them before, but they are a great beat-poetry brass band. I believe they are also out of Kenosha, WI (as are Weezer).

Also:
LCD Soundsystem — Sound of Silver
Particularly resonant. It's the opposite of acts like "Does it Offend You Yeah?*" wherein it is thoughtful, musical, mechanical technorock that resonates within one. Best album of 2007.

And Daft Punk (anything, really) is pretty timeless (with only subtle notes of walking along Pac Ave).


But the albums I keep coming back to are not what this post is about. It's actually about the music that takes me back in time, and to very specific points; it's strongly tied to my memory. It's about a search for some music that is mellow enough to sleep to, but which I know by heart. It's wonderful, loved, and comforting — and known enough it won't be so interesting as to keep me up.

Hopefully.



( Wherein I travel back in time using nothing but my iPod )

I have found a song of the summer.

It is not uncommon for things to slip my review for a week to be again found. Sometimes longer. Sometimes it's something old and familiar, found again (like, say, finding the Dust Brothers' soundtrack to Fight Club that was first found the summer you spent in the heat, in the night, a bottle of soda and Modest Mouse's Good News for People Who Love Bad News; it is always the nights that are alive in the summer — even if everyone else is asleep, you are awake and alive, reborn in the dusk like some kind of urban vampire, drinking deep the dregs of the night, the damp, cool air that brings life and rebirth from the heat of the day when once you were dead, exhausted, passed out in the oppressive bake — but the coolness brings you back to life and you leave to walk around unburdened by outerclothes, unburdened by life; in the dark, cool of the night everything is clear, and you walk around and talk with friends and eat cheap, greasy cheeseburgers and share colorful jokes that are too sharp to be awake in the day and you see cheap movies and laugh with your friends because it was never about the thing you're doing — it was only about sharing time with your friends while you're poor and hot in the summer, but you're all poor together and oh so mad with life). This is always cause for joy. Other times, there are things that are missed initially, put aside while they load, then mislaid until again I find them with that neugerigkeit — that lust for the new.

See, that's what the cool is: it's the ceaseless pursuit of the new. It never rests on its laurels and it never finds what it's looking for, but it finds things along the way — the things that are new and different. The cool is obtained by the pursuit of the cool, and those who call themselves the cool are not the cool — they are the ones following the ones who are cool; those who are a step ahead of everyone else.

Anyway, that is to say that I have found something cool while I was looking for the cool; it escaped notice for a moment, while I exhaled and inhaled; the tick of a watch, the lub-dub of the cardiac muscle in a virile heart of blood and of love; the cycle it takes a computer to read a handful of bits in and out again, almost like a mechanical, artificial breathing silent to all but the smallest of electrons; a pulse like life and the switches flip, and then the register is empty.

I found music, and it is. It's haunting, like the music heard through the window; it is there but not there, and it begs you to listen again. It's a mash of songs. Last year, it was 49:00 (which was 43'55" long; if you have it, you are lucky). It is one of those songs that eats up your headspace and moves your feet without your will, possessed by the Summer That Never Ends. Summer is always coming and always going.

But there is beauty if you pause at night to hear the summer breath in — then out. The Summer Never Ends, a mix from Jens Lekman. Listen to it.

Your ears will like it.



I found it here

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
You fritter and waste the hours in an off hand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way

Dark Side of the Moon is one of those rare albums I keep coming back to. Some albums I listen to and remember a certain place in time. I stumbled across it again in a playlist of mine tonight.

Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun

Good News for People Who Love Bad News is summer, and Funeral is winter of 2004, my senior year (along with Lonesome Crowded West). Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts is almost timeless, but has strong overtones of the mist of winter 2005 in Tacoma, as does OK Cowboy. We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank has strong overtones of the later part of spring 2007 (as does !!!'s Myth Takes which is only just now becoming accessible to the majority of people), and I can't listen to “Dashboard” without being reminded of the hills of the Berkley area outside SF, that spring break (same spring break I found out mum had cancer).

And you run and you run to catch up with the sun, but it's sinking
And racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in a relative way, but you're older
And shorter of breath and one day closer to death

Oddly enough, only The Clash, DEVO (the former two really need to be taken into account as full discographies), Fleet Foxes (they only have one eponymous album out as of my recollection at this point), and Sound of Silver (another album about growing older) are as timeless as Dark Side of the Moon. Perhaps because they're so different from anything else ever. Dark Side of the Moon does not feel like it is speaking to me out of the ages, from some long time ago — it feels like it is speaking to me now and it seems to resonate somewhere deep within me. If I were religious, this would be a spiritual experience. It's a -simply a timeless, ageless album, and it feels fresh today, even though it was recorded 15 years before I was born, in another age.

Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone the song is over, thought I'd something more to say

Perhaps the most resonant track on the album is “Time,” which also happens to stand well on its own. It feels particularly fitting today, on the anniversary of my birth into this great, wide world.

It's surprisingly infrequent when a song captures my attention and gives me shivers. This song did it, complete with some pictures of the voyager craft, old (pre-hubble) nebulae, etc.




It was actually good enough to pull me out of working on getting my server to google a youtube video. I was busy updating software repositories on my server from Debian Lenny/stable to the testing distro (currently named “squeeze”). I needed to switch repositories because the version I had contained older versions of the Bazaar versioning control system and the subversion VCS plugin (bzr-svn) was giving me errors when importing a trunk from a svn server. This error has been fixed in the latest releases, but I didn't have those.

Aptitude is now updating packages for me, so I'll soon be able to download the the trunk for the red5 streaming video server, which was the original intention. I could have probably avoided this by installing subversion too, but I'd rather not have more than one VCS on my machine. I could have probably also avoided this by using Gentoo and simply compiling what I need, but Debian is fairly hassle-free and quite stable — more stable than an Ubuntu LTS release. It's also the only distro that still ships with KDE3.5, as opposed to the new crap that is KDE4. Debian is not cutting edge, but it's rock solid and fast: ergo, perfect for a server.

Ich hätte Deutsche Punk Musik gern.

Required viewing:






The MacBook is finally, once more, in working order. I missed the power this thing has; it's the most powerful of all my machines, and it's surprising that it's already nearly 3 years old.

Germany has some good pop.

Ancient techno:


How much better would the world be if all pop music were this sort of techno? And you can't beat a music video with a robots.

Perhaps "most innocuous band" is a little kind. Coldplay's rather insufferable like musical Ambien or wallpaper.

Coldplay vs Kraftwerk



Coldplay vs Joe Satariani



I'm just glad I'm not the only one to notice it. Especially the Kraftwerk tune.

Finally, since it's the end of the year, I have The List ready. It's changed a little since I posted the beta version, back in October. There has been some shuffling and there are a few new albums present (ergo, others have dropped off, even though they are good). Also, these are not my favourite albums from this year — these are my favourite albums that were released this year. Also, it's really hard to try to organise all these albums, since they're all great and were vying for the top spot, and I'm still over 10.

Someone asked me why I was making a list. I didn't understand the question and only explained it like this: I listen to music like some people play video games.


1) Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes
This album sounds like it was recorded from the bottom of the well. It is beautiful and haunting, and the first time I really listened to it was a cold night alone in my tent as it rained in Glacier National Park. NPR loves them, I love them, and I can't count how many people I've recommended this band to. They are amazing and will go far.

2) The Envelopes - Here Comes the Wind
Light and peppy, but crisp and still thoughtful in a silly way I love, this is a band you should listen to and love. They are Swedish and each track is different, but they are all great and very underappreciated.

3) Los Campesinos - Hold On Now, Youngster ... and We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed
These are actually two separate albums released within one year by the same band (a feat in and of its self, in an age where you wait two years for something new from The Decemberists — let alone two excellent albums), and the latter is an album of all-new tracks, not b-sides. This Welsh band is the reason I have come back to liking indie music once more. They make music that you can move your feet to and still feel good about it. It's okay to dance like a goof if you're enjoying it.

4) Paul Westerberg - 49:00
Exactly 43:55 of music — no tracks or tracklistings — that sounds like a broken radio tuning to successively different channels, jumping into parts of songs. It's a wonderful mix-tape like track that is wonderful in its sincerity. If you have this mix, you're lucky. If not, go find this mix from former The Replacements' frontman.

5) Don't Stop: Recording Tap
A set of never-released recordings from a defunct recording studio in the early 80s, at the end of Disco and the beginning of hip-hop (the kind with thoughtful words and real music). The tracks are a funky, wonderful timecapsule.

6) M83 - Saturdays = Youth

It sounds like the soundtrack to an 80s teen flick that never existed. Throbbing, melodic electronic. It's a carefully controlled static.

7) Audiobytes for Autobots - 2.0
Electro-hip-hop mashup made of other tracks. It seems the second year in a row that I've stuck a mashup in my list. This one is well-made and quite fun. Oh, hey, it's free too.

8) The Fleshtones - Take a Good Look
This album is a sincere, post-indie look at life, ageing, and a world inhabited by a younger generation by a punk band from New York. The songs are lively and peppy without lacking their sincerity and realness.

9) Telekrimen - Resurreción de los Sangre-Zombis del Mas Allá
Psychadellic Mexican space zombie garage surf rock. I got this album because of the awesome cover, and the music doesn't disappoint!

10) Fennesz - Black Sea
I've been getting into ambient music recently. I don't know quite how to describe it, because by its very nature, ambient music is hard to define or focus on. I think it's more described as a sonic soundscape or mood, but without being "tubular bells" sort of stuff. Anyway, this is a really cool bunch of sounds and electronic static. I like it, as I've seem to have this album on repeat in the evenings. So, yes; it eludes description, but I've been listening to it and enjoying it, along with several other albums, but this one sticks out the most.


( A few albums that didn't make The List )