Absolute best album of 2009

Hands down, this award goes to The Gossip’s “Music For Men”.

I’ve been a huge fan of the Gossip for quite some time. Ever since I first heard “Standing in the Way of Control” while watching Subterranean back in 2005. After I became obsessed with the album of the same name, I went back and got all of their previous albums as well. I like them all as they’ve always had a certain energy that I love.

Even with all of this knowledge of and experience with the band’s music, Music for Men blew me away.

The band seems like they’ve found a little nook in their genre crossing that works amazingly well for them. It’s tucked snugly somewhere in between hard hitting dance rock and soulful disco of yesteryear.

The album opens with a rhythmic and slightly mysterious “Dime Store Diamond” and follows right into the incredibly energetic “Heavy Cross”. The album continues to be a solid disco dance trip all the way through to the very last track.

Beth Ditto’s vocals are primarily responsible for the soulful disco I mentioned earlier. She has got a set of pipes on her like you wouldn’t believe and her singing really mirrors that of most disco queens. Another amazing addition to the band is the drummer, Hannah Billie. She is pretty much the best drummer I’ve ever heard, based on her understanding of how to form a killer beat that sounds fresh. She is responsible for blending Beth’s disco influence vocals into the dance rock monster that it is. Combine these with awesome synth, keytar, keyboards, and guitar and you’ve got a delicious recipe for success.

Here’s a few of my favorite tracks from the album (I have to use grooveshark’s direct url because my server is being annoying right now. Sorry for this)

- Heavy Cross
- Love Long Distance
- Men in Love

This album continues to get me to groove every single time I listen to it. I can’t remember an album that’s this heavy an impact on my eardrums since Sufjan Stevens’ “Illinois”.

and for added bonus, here’s the promo that they put together for the album:

Most disappointing album of 2009

I hate to say this but this one goes to Calvin Harris’ “Ready For the Weekend”.

I was looking forward to this album like nobody’s business. Every since 2007′s “I created Disco”, I was drooling for more dancetastic fun from Mr. Harris. When I heard his new album was going to be released, I impatiently waited until it’s debut. Unfortunately (and trust me, it pains me to say this), it just wasn’t up to par with what I expected. It didn’t feel like the same Calvin. Some could argue that he further refined and matured his sound but I actually think he took a step backwards.

If I could say one thing about why I really don’t like the album as much as I thought I was going to it would be that the whole thing sounds way too “trancey“… as in the genre of so-called “techno” music. Sure, i created disco has a heavy trance influence but he took the sound and melted in his own flairs and sounds from other influences as well. It was incredibly fun with it’s lyrics and content and also had a heavy disco influence with a strong emphasis on heavy danceable beats. Gone is this formula for “Ready For the Weekend” and, in my opinion, the album falls just outside the realm of any other trance song you’d hear in a generic club. Sure it’s got things that separate it and it’s still a decent album…it just didn’t wow me like his debut did.

I won’t say much more but I will provide examples of what I’m talking about.

Here’s two tracks from his debut “I created Disco”. Notice the fun lyrics and danceable beats.

- Merry Making at My Place
- Acceptable in the 80′s

And here’s one from “Ready For the Weekend”

- I’m Not Alone

All of the tracks on this album have a similar feel. it’s got a few gems on it like the titular track “Ready For the Weekend” and “Stars Come Out” but overall I was pretty let down. Now, don’t get me wrong, this album is still a good one that’s definitely worth a listen, I was just disappointed in the direction that Calvin Harris decided to take his music for this venture.

Bonus Category: Most anticipated of 2010

Definitely either Cake or Scissor Sisters. Seriously…where are they?

Cake last put out their B-Sides and Rarities album that was supposed to hold us over until their next studio album but that was way back in 2007!

And Scissor Sister’s last album “Ta-Dah” dates back to 2006! Let’s get on it!

So tell me, what were your best as most disappointing albums of 2009? If you’re going to take the time, why don’t you tell me which one you’re anticipating the most for release in 2010?

Really, this time it was just to get my blog looking like my freshly redesigned portfolio site. It’s been a few months getting to the right way I want it. When i first did the portfolio split from the blog about 5 months back it felt good but after a few weeks, I wasn’t really satisfied with the design. I played around with a few options and settled on the update I showed you guys 32 days ago (according to textpattern).

All I really did today was update my header image, remove the vertical green picture that sat in-between the content and the header (so I could widen my content area), and create this super slick sidebar. Go ahead and look at it…it’s hot, right?

Blogging

Tiffany keeps getting on my case about updating my blog and she’s totally right. I’ve been super slack lately. I used to update at least twice a week and now I’m lucky if I get one update in two weeks.

That being said, I vow to try and keep providing some regular content for this blog. I say try because promises like these, I don’t always deliver on.

…so I present to you, my first post inside of a post! Enjoy!

Last songs

I was driving around in my car the other day and I got to the last song on whatever album I was listening to and started thinking about how different bands arrange their “last song” on the tracklist.

Do I prefer to be sent off with peace and reflection or am I more of an out-with-a-bang kind of guy?

I decided that I’m more in favor of the latter but that doesn’t mean that I don’t enjoy a cool melody to finish off the ride every now and then.

Here’s some of my favorite “last songs” from albums I’ve been listening to recently:

The Gossip – Four Letter Word

From “Music for Men”

Does It Offend You Yeah? – Epic Last Song

From “Does It Offend You Yeah?”

Cage The Elephant – Free Love

From “Cage The Elephant”

The 1990′s – Situation

From “Cookies”

I learned about them by researching one of my favorite Trip-hop collabs of all time: Lovage. This band was headed by Dan The Automater (of Handsome Boy Modeling School fame) and featured Mike Patton of Mr. Bungle, Jennifer Charles of Elysian Fields, and Kid Koala on the turntables. You might recognize his tunes without even knowing it. He spun most of the tracks on Gorillaz’ debut album.

I started to branch out and see what other bands the members were in. I followed Kid Koala back to his roots and found out that (to my knowledge) Bullfrog was the first band that he was on turntables for. That just means before/after he did solo DJ mixes.

Anyways, that’s about it for now. last music post for a while. I promise I have actual design stuff to show…it’s just not done yet :p

I was working this morning and out of nowhere this song gets stuck in my head. I probably haven’t heard this song since I was about 8 or 9 but I guess it’s just one of those really great songs that never leaves you.

It reminds me of road trips as a kid

This project I decided to do something a little different. Up until now, all of my study projects have told a story in some form or fashion…in a very comic strip kind o f way.

This project centers on Alex and, being the audiophile that he is , I figured the best way to do that would be through a music video type animation. Instead of telling a story, I tried to come up with clever ways to sync animation to audio.

The song is “Shut Up and Let Me Go” by The Ting Tings.

Am I happy with the end result? Yes. Do I think I could have done it better? Definitely. It wasn’t a lack of trying or anything. I just did something new…something I had no experience with and I just need to build up on those skills

All that’s left is Marcus and then DVD-portfolio creation. These are going to take some time so it’s not over yet!

but that’s not the point.

The album is of an amazing songstress, Marie MacGillis and her band, The Model Millionaires. Anyways, there isn’t much in the way of samples of her music so I thought I’d at least check youtube to see if there were any videos of her performances. Well there were just a few but in the related videos was an old, old, Jazz trumpeteer named Bunk Johnson. The video was of a song of his called “Sister Kate” and I thought, “wait… Sister Kate? That’s a song by the equally amazing Ditty Bops. I wonder if they’re the same.”

Turns out they are. The Ditty Bops drew their inspiration for this tune from Bunk Johnson.

Here’s the Ditty Bops’ “Sister Kate” from their first album, The Ditty Bops

And here is Bunk Johnson’s version from way back in the 40′s

Love it when that happens!

*edit

Turns out this thing goes even deeper than that. The song was originally titled “I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate” and was an old New Orleans tune written by Clarence Williams and Armand Piron in the early 1920s. Even deeper than that, the song was believed to be inspired by an even older tune by Louis Armstrong about Kate Townsend, a murdered brothel madam. Either that or transcribed from a version performed by Anna Jones and Fats Waller.

The song has since been recorded dozens of times by a bunch of different people including The Beatles and Shel Silverstein (I didn’t even know he was a songwriter!)

I LOVE Wikipedia.

Since things have really piled up and I’ve got a few topics I could post about, I’m not going to be able to post about everything. Specially considering that it’s 3:45 a.m. right now and I wanna gets me some sleep.

here goes, though:

The Best XKCD strip ever

I’m not sure how many of you are familiar with XKCD; it’s a comic strip that’s really smart with it’s humor. Lots of nerd references and even more jokes about math and coding that go way over my head but it’s funny, regardless. Anyways, I know you guys have heard me go on and on about the House of Leaves and how it’s such an amazing book. Well, I was checking up on XKCD today cause it’s been a long while and the latest strip was a killer one.

You probably won’t get it too much unless you’ve read House of Leaves but if you remember the post I made a few months back, it might make a little more sense. Anyways, the strip is awesome.

iPod

I was always firm about never getting an iPod. I always found them to be overpriced pieces of hipster gear that had much cheaper and equally matched alternatives. My Zen stopped interfacing with the PC. it still played just fine but I could no longer add new music to it which, obviously, presents a problem.

Since the iPod touch’s release, apple showed a pretty good dip in price for the iPod classics, specially refurbished ones. The refurbished ones come with the same warranty as the new ones and they give it a new body so it’s not all nasty and scratched up. Also, the iPod is pretty much the only 80Gb mp3 player out there and I wanted to up my storage limit from my old 60Gb Zen Vision M.

I was able to snag an 80Gb iPod classic for $175 bones which isn’t bad at all considering just a year earlier, I paid close to $300 for my zen (granted, at that time a 60Gb iPod was around $450.)

I got it on the conditions that I would NEVER have to use iTunes and that It wouldn’t cost me way too much money. Well, it’s good because both of those conditions have been met. I use a program called Floola to manage my ‘Pod which is great because it’s incredibly light (just a straight up executable with no install) and I can store it on the iPod itself so I can manage the player from any computer I want to.

All that being said, the iPod’s interface isn’t really intuitive to me. I find it pretty clunky and annoying to tell you the truth…

Dragon*Con ’08

Last weekend was Dragon*Con and it was killer. I only took about 160 pictures this year (and I say “only” because last year I snapped about 3 times that many) but it was a freakin’ blast.

we got 4 day passes and went all 4 days. I got to see a bunch of cool panels and costumes and everything.

My favorite panels include:
• Adult Swim’s Dragon Panel
• Master Tai’s Demo
• Venture Bros Q&A segment (hilarious)
• Comedy Shorts
• Mr. Star Wars (though not as funny as last year)
• Animated shorts (yes, eve that crazy, long annoying one)

I don’t really feel like putting up any pictures right now but I did get some good ones so maybe I’ll take a select few to show you guys at some point.

Independent Study

3 weeks into the semester and I finally get some free time to start working on my Independent Study of motion graphics. My goal is to make a short for each one of m friends that demonstrates the qualities and personality of each person through visuals and animation. I’m starting with D and it’s really exciting so far. I’m coming along with it but it’s a pretty slow process. I put about 7 hours into it today and I’m sitting at about 20 seconds of animation. I’m aiming for at least 30 seconds for each one. I’ll be sure to put it up as soon as it’s done.

here’s 3 songs that I really like that showcase what I’m talking about

Gym Class Heroes – Scandalous Scholastics

Sufjan Stevens – Casimir Pulaski Day

Daft Punk – Digital Love

Alex pitched the first idea: the amazingly awesome Gig Poster . No real restrictions, just have at it.

While I was deciding on what band to focus on, I was listening to Chromeo at the time and thought, “Why not?”. So I got to work. The interesting thing about this poster was that 100% of it was created in photoshop; something I haven’t done for quite some time. Ever since falling in love with the precision and sharpness of Illustrator, And seeing what it could do for my typography and packaging design projects, I haven’t used photoshop from start to completion of a project.

I tried to design my poster in a style that reflected the music of Chromeo even though, not all the time, do gig posters have to make sense…but that’s ok . It’s what makes the gig poster so unique.

Here’s what I came up with.

I learned a few new techniques and was able to broaden my arsenal a bit. I like the way it turned out. Ideally, if you were going to a Chromeo concert, you’d already know what they sounded like so this poster would speak for itself but I’ve decided to include a few tracks of theirs to aid in viewing it.

Then, I decided I wanted to make another one. I wanted to make one that was similar to the Gig Poster that everyone is familiar with. So off I went. Cracking out another one, this time in Illustrator until the “printed” effects at the end. I freehanded all the shapes which is also something I don’t normally do. Usually I’m a rulers, grids, and pen tool kind of guy.

Here’s the second poster:

And here’s some Radio 4 tracks

The Cereal Challenge!

So D came up with a challenge to see if we could go one week (5 days) and eat nothing but cereal for the duration. I was delighted to accept. I love me some cereal.

So it’s 2:00 p.m. on the fourth day and I’m not really even feeling the sting of it. Don’t get me wrong, I can’t wait to eat something else but It hasn’t been a very big deal for me to compete in this challenge.

Anyways, staying in the poster-making spirit, I whipped up this poster for the cereal challenge.

We’ve talked about doing a new challenge at the end of every month and, if we stick with it, I’ll actually design a poster that advertises the event before it actually happens.