made of win!

It seems to me that almost every blog out there is full of their own content, or they’re a warehouse of other blogs. I don’t want to be a warehouse of other people’s posts.. so here we go!

(This is the pat where you CTRL+D and bookmark the page!)

It’s Friday, I have had a week! It’s time for Courtney Love doing Olympia – it’s such a great song!

Damn it brings back some memories, but it also gets me in the mood to make some new ones

Oh England, what a glorious revival you had in the mid-ninties. Spearheaded by Blur’s second album ‘Modern Life is Rubbish‘ and then perfected by their third ‘Park Life’, the musical genre called BritPop was born. The lingering dregs of Madchester, the loose and plotless (albeit GORGEOUS) genre of Shoegazing, aka ‘the scene that celebrates itself’ and a small revival of classic rock were nothing compared to the sweep of renewed British nationalism that BritPop incurred. It all went to shit, quite horribly actually, within 2 years – but oh what times!

It was more than Blur and Oasis, and their idiotic and (supposedly manufactured) feud. it was more than the few hanger-ons that got some cred, it was a huge, and I mean HUGE sea of imitators and poachers. Here are a few I liked:

Shed Seven:
You’d read about them here and there in Select, or Q. Maybe you’d even get a track on a mix tape from a friend that was more than willing to part with $14 for their CD, holding only 2 good tracks and a bunch of filler. They only lasted 3 albums, had a ‘fight’ with their label, and then broke up – the ‘best of’ is of course, 6 good tracks with a shit load of filler.

The Sea Horses:
When the Stone Roses finally landed back on the scene with their 2nd album, 5 years too late and full of… well, crap actually, it was obvious that they were over. So John Squire up and quits, eventually, and starts The Sea Horses. They would have been a fine band too, if the John had only realized that his guitar was not more important than the singer. Again, an album of 2 good tracks, and a shit ton of filler.

The Bluetones:
Darlings of Select, I only ever bought 1 single. All four tracks were good. I dared not test fate. Later on I did buy another album in a $1 bin, and should have left well enough alone!

Gene:
Heralded by some as a fitting replacement for the Smiths but never quite getting there – they did manage to pull off one or two really good singles. Still… they stuck around for a while, even reinventing themselves when the deluge unfolded and Britpop was dead.

I would still put any of these songs on a mix CD now though.

Well what a shock, the Chemical Brothers have released a new singles collection (didn’t they just release on of these like… two albums ago?) BUT the catch here is the bonus CD! I’m not really too too big a fan of their vocal songs – like “The Golden Path” and the new single “Keep My Composure” with Spank Rock, don’t get me wrong, they’re OK, but I think the Bros really shine on non-singing heavy tracks like “Saturate” and “Leave Home”. Sadly though the singles are almost all vocal songs… but not ones that I really like, but oh well. There’s a new song called Midnight Madness that is unfucking believably good, so i still am glad to have the first CD.

Anyways the bonus CD is really the whole point of the collection – Electronic Battle Weapons 1-10. They’re really DJ only white labels that the Bros put out every now and then, and this is the first time they’re all collected together for us – and trust me, they make the whole CD worth it!

Here’s the video for Midnight Madness… it’s such a great song – ugh!

I can’t believe that I missed this for like 3 freakin months, but the fan subs of the first Evangelion rebuilds are out! Grab it now as the interweb blog mills seem to be buzzing that ADV has secured the rights from StarChild… although, considering how much of a financial mess ADV is rumored to be in right now, I kind of doubt that.

The movies (4 in all are planned) are really just a retelling and reinterpretation of the original TV series and the final two movies, suppossedly to make them more cohesive and accessible to non-hardcore fans. I couldn’t help but get the feeling though, that this is really just a “wow if we could only go back… and do it right”.

It seems that more than 1/2 of the clips are right from the TV show, re-shot, higher frame count, and better quality (the show was notorious for having blown most of it’s budget on frame count anyway, so that they ran out of cash by the end – and it seems that only the best clips were used). One particular thing to note is how much better it all looks! Although the original pieces look great, the new pieces look great too! The last 1/3 of the movie is pretty much all new, featuring the battle with the Angel Ramiel – visually, it’s astounding!

Anyways, I could go on forever, but it was a great flick – even if you don’t know anything about Eva! The story is much tighter than before, all the teen angst and emo stuff is still very much there (it is an Anno film anyways!) but the ‘next episode’ at the end seems to show that the story is going to drastically verge from the original TV series in some ways, Kowaru comes in, gets his own EVA…whoa! – CAN’T WAIT!!!

I’ve always loved this video for “You’re in a bad way”! I remember seeing it on MTV’s 120 Minutes once, and then rushing the next day to get the album cause I liked the video so much – something about the colors, the look, the props and staging, I took a shine to it all.

Let’s not also forget one of my favorite songs from them as well, the remix and video of “Like a motorway”

they are releasing a new compilation album soon, as well as a proper release for ‘Burnt Out Car’ finally. God I hope they tour!

So this guy Travors – that’s about all I could get, is taking old Garfield comics, and removing all but Jon Arbuckle. The result is kind of disturbing, and a little bizarre, but the gestalt is amazing!

Enjoy more here: http://garfieldminusgarfield.net/

I’m not that big of a fan of Radiohead anymore, don’t get me wrong – they’re a GOOD band, I’m just not that into what they’re doing. Anyways though, I did like this song, and I did like this video – which used no camera’s, but instead captured all of the data via lasers and then recompiled that into a 3D moedlling environment. Radiohead has released all that modeling information for people to do what they want, and so this guy made one of the coolest uses of legos for a music video since this one!

So Rough Trade announced that Emilliana Torrini will be releasing her new album Sept 8th, with the title track being offered via iTunes August 19th.

They also released the first track as an MP3 at her MySpace page. It’s a rather cheery departure stylistically from her first album, the electro-infused “Love in the Time of Science” and her follow-up, the very mellow and minimal “Fisherman’s Woman”. I for one can’t wait, as I think he voice is rather amazing and love her work.

Here’s a link to one of my favorite remixes of her: Heartstopper (Stop Hearting Remix)

This video was seriously hysterical. I really want to go drinking with the hostess, she’s the type that you would die laughing all night.