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music

Oh right, music

Oct 12th, 2010
by Gillian.
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A friend asked me today what I was listening to, so here’s my answer. Well, part of my answer, a complete response would take too long and cut into my music appreciation time.

The Phantom Band

This is a Glaswegian band I might have heard about from the Frightened Rabbits twitter feed but I can’t be bothered to check. They’re indie rock but I hear almost a combination of prog rock and electronica, maybe a throwback to synthesized 80s anthems but not in a cheesy way at all. Their latest album “The Wants” just came out and I’m having a hard time listening to much else at the moment. If I could make out with an album, I would be applying the chapstick now.

The Lonely Forest

I mentioned this band a month or so ago, and in the meantime they put out an EP which I can’t buy, not even online, because I live in the foreign country of Canada, so far away from Washington State where the band resides; but I can’t pirate their music either because nobody really knows about them yet. The lead singer, John Van Deusen, is somewhat of a musical prodigy, and probably isn’t old enough to drink, even. As for the selection below, I like the idea of a self-referential song that tells you to stop playing it and get a life, but in a non-insulting way.

Dark Dark Horse

Dark Dark Horse is this solo project that most of the internet hasn’t heard of either, and I don’t even know if you can get the album anywhere, but that’s not my fault. It’s definitely pop/electronica like The Postal Service or Halloween Alaska and has a nice groove to it.

I’ve barely unpacked yet, but there’s beer in the fridge and I blogged. Obviously I have my priorities sorted out.

Give to me miles of tall evergreens

Aug 22nd, 2010
by Gillian.
1 comment

People have been asking me if I’m excited about moving back to Vancouver and starting a new job.

I don’t think I’m excited so much as I’m happy, because I’m going home.

There are those who don’t get why I’d want to move back, since it’s so big and crowded there and the people are mean and it rains a lot. Home means different things to different people, and every time I’ve flown or driven to Vancouver there’s a certain point where I’m standing outside with the cool wet air on my face and I feel like I’m where I should be. That’s what home is for me.

I have three more weeks until the move, but I’ve got this song on my iPod to keep me going. The Lonely Forest‘s newest release is a love song to the Pacific Northwest, called “Live There”.

(Here’s the Stereogum link if you want to download it.)

Music Recommendations: slow covers

Jul 24th, 2010
by Gillian.
2 comments

I’ve been listening to quiet, subdued music this week. I collect songs I can play to calm myself down, to relax, to shush my worrying mind. I’d be curious if a real life music therapist could do a better job, but they probably don’t go around recommending indie rock to their clients.

Here’s a song I’m overplaying this week: Lewis & Clarke‘s very chilled-out cover of The Cure‘s “Disintegration”:

(Compare with the original if inclined.)

Another cover I’ve been digging lately is Elbow doing Peter Gabriel‘s “Mercy Street”:

(Original here.)

I don’t usually like covers, but these are two of my favourite bands, and I think they’ve treated the songs well, putting in their own interpretation rather than just doing karaoke, which is all too common with covers. My opinion is that 95% of covers are complete crap and can only diminish the song, but that’s just me. I know some of you think covers are the shit and you’d rather listen to The Barenaked Ladies’ “Lovers in a Dangerous Time” than Bruce Cockburn’s original. Or you think that The Barenaked Ladies actually wrote that song, because you are 12. Gah, kids today.

I mentioned Elbow to a friend the other week who listened for a bit and then referred to them as something like “Coldplay Wannabes”, which is crap since Elbow’s been around far longer, so if anything Coldplay wanted to be them way back when. And in any case I think Grounds for Divorce is one of the best songs to come out of the past few years. There’s even an orchestral version.

Real life blogging will be returning eventually, honest, but people have been complaining about a lack of music recommendations so here are some.

Wuthering, wuthering, wuthering heights

Mar 31st, 2010
by Gillian.
2 comments

I’ve never actually read Wuthering Heights. I think I tried to back in high school but found the characters a bit too melodramatic. Also Catherine seemed like a real bitch, at least in the movies, which I never saw the point of. From what I gather, the story has these two kids who grow up and fall in love and then for some reason they’re suddenly hating each other and at the very end they’re loving each other again when it’s too late and one of them’s nearly dead. I probably missed out some stuff, but if I don’t see the point in a movie I don’t tend to pay full attention to it.

So I don’t really think about that book much but somehow it ended up in my head today because when I got to work I had a sudden desire to listen to Kate Bush.

I don’t tend to get this urge much as her voice lives in that ethereal realm of being both beautiful and really fucking annoying sometimes, so I prefer to avoid listening to her in case I can only hear the annoying bits that day. Although I will admit that this doesn’t apply to Running Up That Hill, which I can listen to on repeat (but not the inferior Placebo version they seem to like playing in vampire movie trailers), and often do.

Later in the day I brought up semaphore flags in conversation for some reason I’ve since forgotten, and the other person thought I was talking about those found in operating systems and I had to correct him that I actually meant real flags. Monty Python fans might realize where I then went with this: to demonstrate the concept, I sent him this educational Youtube video (please ignore the subtitles):

So I’ve now spent more time today thinking about that book than I really ever wanted to in my life, but there you go. Mind you, it was really wuthering today in Kelowna, enough to riggwelt a sheep. Or something.

Same song, awesomer video

Mar 2nd, 2010
by Gillian.
5 comments

So OK GO put out a second video for their single “This Too Shall Pass”, this time of a Rube Goldberg machine running for the duration of the song, synced with the music, and filmed in one take:

(I blogged about their first video to the song two weeks ago).

Between this sort of stuff and Mythbusters I keep wishing I’d become an engineer instead of a computer scientist. Not that I’d be good at it, I come from a long line of crap engineers (so a great-uncle once told me).

I like, and agree with one of the comments on this video posted at BoingBoing: “shit like this restores my faith in humanity.”

I keep thinking music videos are a dying art

Feb 14th, 2010
by Gillian.
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But then OK Go releases a new album and another fun choreographed video, this time with marching band:

OK Go – This Too Shall Pass from OK Go on Vimeo.

If you can recall, these guys got internet famous in 2006 with music videos of them dancing in a backyard, and again on treadmills. Their new album, entitled “Of the Blue Colour of the Sky”, is out now (for once I mention an album that’s already released). I’m really digging the lo-fi videos from the indie music scene, another one being the semi-deconstructed Cousins by Vampire Weekend.

Many of you don’t know this, but I got into music via marching band. My first instrument was the glockenspiel. Believe me, it’s hard to aim for the right key when you’re stomping around. Also when you have bad aim to begin with. The clarinet was easier, it stayed still.

Beat the night

Jan 28th, 2010
by Gillian.
1 comment

I pulled an all-nighter last night, for work. It’s pretty rare for me these days, since as I get older, the more it really fucking sucks to recover from it. I think it’s been years since I stopped working when it got light outside.

Disregarding eating, going to the bathroom, and commuting, I was working 23 out of 24 hours. Someone should give me a medal. And a pillow.

Back in high school, when I first did all-nighters (unlike many people, my later high school courses were university-level, except I had to take 7 academic classes at a time instead of university’s 5, which was fine since I wasn’t having any sex yet anyways) I would spend the day in a daze, drinking herbal tea. Don’t know why; that barely has any caffeine. But somehow I managed it.

In university, specifically near the end when I was finishing my computer science degree, I started having strange sleep-deprivation-induced hallucinations. These were often spiders or insects (either one large one, or a flying swarm of something) but strangely also severed heads. I don’t know about the severed heads, but the insect stuff is supposedly documented as being common. It’s trippy once you realize you’re just imagining it.

Last night’s work resulted in my afternoon nap including a really detailed lesbian dream. So now sleep deprivation is making me gay, great. The other chick in the dream was really hot, but I didn’t really know what to do, since she didn’t have a penis. It was a real cock-tease of a dream, especially since it didn’t contain any cock whatsoever.

The local radio station that wakes me up every morning (well, except this morning when I was just putting my head down when it went off) seems to be playing a lot of my Grade 5 soundtrack this week, to remind me of a time when I got my 8-9 hours every night:

(Interesting to Dad, the guy above is from Sheffield.)

(Songs about Americans always seem to be written or sung by Canadians.)

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