day the fourth

one minute i'm standing outside the postmaster's office waiting for my passport picture to be taken. the next minute i'm watching my mom eat smartfood through the sideview mirror.
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the shirt i'm wearing right now:

how i feel about wearing this shirt:

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i'm starting up a collab channel with a couple of friends (rob bennett, rob mant). we're called 3kewldoods. http://youtube.com/3kewldoods robert just posted the first video, and it came out great. ch-ch-ch-check it!!

it's basically going to be a channel where we challenge each other to do various things. we determine which challenges we do by rolling a die and then they're performed on camera. it's nothing jackass-esque, it's just like 'make the whole video using subtitles while using appropriate hand gestures'. stuff like that. if it keeps going, it should be fun. although video making + blogging + school + track is bound to be a little much. we'll see how i handle it.
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after writing that little bit o' blog, i went downstairs and worked on this song that's been bugging me for a while. it won't get written. but the music was developed a little more, and i have a couple ideas for lyrics. they're a little too dark for me though, so i'm probably gonna reconsider. it feels good to start formulating music again. i want to put out an EP this summer. a little ambitious, but i'd certainly like to try.
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i feel like i have more to say, but nothing's popping out at me. so here comes the album review. *jet plane noises*
Atlas Sound's 2009 LP Logos
7.2

This album really frustrated me, because I failed to see why the album was so critically acclaimed. it's certainly a good album, and i certainly enjoyed listening to it. but there's something that prevents me from giving it a particularly high rating.

the album starts off quite well with the etheral "The Light That Failed." An acoustic guitar plays over several layers of noise as Bradford simply croons "the light that failed...". the latter part of the song hangs on to one chord just giving way to 'An Orchid'. I have a problem with this song as well as a couple of others on the album, because they just seem to meander and just end before they really amount to anything.

THE WORST point at which this happens is on the title track, the last song, Logos. The song's catchy, the song's rolling along, it goes off on a tangent and then it resolves and when you think you're about to get hit hard with something good, a great ending to sum up the album and go out with a bang, it... fades. rather suddenly. i understand that it's different, but it's gotta be one of the most disappointing album closers i've heard.

I do love the content on here though. Bradford has created some great music and even on the songs where the inevitable anticlimax feels overbearing, I find myself bobbing my head and enjoying every second. The songs where he has guest stars (Walkabout, Quick Canal) are the two standouts on the album. Walkabout with its light 60s feel-good aura and Quick Canal with its seemingly never-ending drone that immerses you as it builds and builds and builds. Kid Klimax features a nifty little loop while the song swells over Bradford's crunchy vocal as he croaks "oh my, god. oh my, god." it's a song that effectively haunts.

so this gets a 7.2, which is the equivalent of 8/11, which is how many songs i dig on the album. easy enough.
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THIS WAS SUCH A LONG BLOG. SEE YOU TOMORROW.

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Woes

so someone (ben, he's pretty awesome. just saying) just gifted me an album on iTunes. but in order to download the album he gifted me, i had to update to iTunes 9. after a little hesitation, i downloaded. after the 20 minutes it took to download, i opened up the music store page to get my album. this is one of the first things i saw.

and then this:


it's like they're assuming that every album and every song is under 10 characters. and the worst part is that you can't adjust the size of the boxes so that you can see the whole title. it's an extreme inconvenience that i just can't get over. on top of this, if you're on an album page, you can't click to see all of the songs by the artist. you either have to do a search of the band and then click on 'all songs' or go to the artists page and then click all songs. and on top of this, gone are the days of personalized album and artist pages. why they would consciously change these things is beyond me.

this has probably already been brought up 1000 times before by other people, but this should be changed. i can live with most internet related changes after awhile (SEE YOUTUBE), but this is just poorly executed.

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on top of this, my passport for my trip to canada is due in to my french teacher next week. and i haven't even started the application process. this hit me like 3000 tons of bricks the other day and now i'm panicking. we'll hopefully get things taken care of tomorrow so i can at least tell my teacher that my passport's being processed. *fingers crossed that everything works out*

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as for music, i've been mulling over a song for a while but i still haven't mustered (mustard, colonel mustard, kernel, popcorn, movies, blu-ray, stingray, Sting, the Police, the SS, Adolf Hitler. /stream of consciousness) up any lyrics for it yet. i might do that today after i take care of all of the homework i haven't been arsed to do over vacation.

no album review today, i've been at this for some time now. i might do Logos by Atlas Sound tomorrow.

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lava love

my friends made a band called the honest abes. they wrote a love song about a lava lamp. you can hear it here: http://myspace.com/thehonestabes

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this is lame. i was planning on going to my track meet and then playing a show at Border's in Concord with Dumbledore's Army. Both of those things were canceled due to snow.

So now I'm sitting here, waiting to confirm plans to see Avatar. Not in 3D hopefully, because 3D hurts my eyes, it's a cheap gimmick to make more money, and if the movie's good, it should be fine in 2D anyways. (Edit. I saw it in 3D [didn't get that bad of a headache], and I didn't really like it. It was very well made, but the story took from almost every action movie ever made.)

here is ANOTHER picture! just to spice up life a little more! this doesn't happen very often.

YEAH!
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animal collective's 2000 LP "Spirit They're Gone, Spirit They've Vanished"
8.8/10
The long songs on this album are great. They all have these fanciful, Peter Pan vibes created by the skittering drums and the everpresent keyboard. All of these songs have a similar sound, but they all have different structures. On top of that, they all have elements that make them their own. The whiteboy funk breakdown on Bat You'll Fly, the sad acoustic outro of La Rapet, the freakouts on April and the Phantom. And the lyrics on these songs are beyond psychedelic. On La Rapet: "Meat was on the bone, but the children huddled and devoured/Keep them in the home let their minds go where their bikes cant take them."

I of course have to bring up the closer, Alvin Row. This is a pure epic 12 minutes. This song has a frantic intro, a roaring, uplifting climax in the middle that made me jump the first time I heard it, and a sample of a child's voice at the end, all sandwiched between what we've been hearing for almost an hour. this song sums up the sound created on the album to a T.

This album fails in its shorter songs. 'Everyone Whistling', 'Untitled', and 'Someday...' all feel far too much like filler. They're listenable if you're listening through the whole album, and they actually help to break up the sameness of the other longer tracks, but they're skipworthy if you're listening to your music on shuffle.

Any fan of Animal Collective should probably consider owning this. It's surprisingly accessible and I've written way too much about this. So I shall stop there.

Ademain.

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BED2010

or Blog Every Day 2010 or, Futile Attempt at Improving Life (FAIL) or, the time I got bored and decided to start a project that i won't finish.
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yes, for some reason, i have a strong urge to blog every day this year. i think the reason's the fact that i blogged a mere 36 times in 2009. which is pretty poor.

i know i will not accomplish this, but i like the idea of at least starting it. seeing how far i get. it could very well end tomorrow or next week. but i feel like it's possible. it's a lot more of a reasonable goal than nanowrimo. i got like 2000 words into that last year. but there's no word limit on blogs, so it seems far more... feasible's the word.

and i know that people blog every day in the first place, so this is no big feat. but meh. that's all i say to that.

meh.

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i've been buying a lot of music recently. so i figure a good way to start bed2010 would be to review some of those albums briefly. and here we go.

broken social scene's 2002 LP 'you forgot it in people'.
9.5/10
i fell in love with this album pretty quickly. although no two songs really sound alike (what do you expect. there's a billion people in the band.), there's this overall relaxed mood set by it that you can really get into. the only time the album gets crazy energetic is with the crash-cymbal triggerhappy songs 'KC Accidental' and 'Almost Crimes'. From there, it just coasts, taking you through these soundscapes that are at times smooth and tropical and at other times downtempo and melancholy. One of the best albums of the last decade, any music lover should own this, blah blah blah. GET IT.

and that's it for today.
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|a story|

it's fuckin' cold outside today.

i walked over to track practice and when i arrived, i saw that the backdoor to the gym was open. in desperate need of warmth, i walked inside to see several people from the basketball team. no one from the track team. this was awkward. not feeling like i had a place inside, i walked back outside. there were a few cars out there. i walked past them, looking inside of them to see if there were any people from the track team inside. not one. and i kept walking and looking. all of them were basketball players sitting in their cars waiting for the bus to show up. and i got stares in return. no one was going to let me in.

and for this brief instant, i felt like i didn't belong anywhere in the world. like i was just a soulless, destinationless entity wandering in the universe aimlessly, without purpose. this is what being homeless must feel like. looking through windows to see people living comfortably, eating dinner, watching TV, being happy. while you're outside on the street in -7 degree weather, looking for somewhere to go, for someone to warmly receive you.

it doesn't happen.

i finally found asylum in a friend(who i've been friends with for ages, also on the basketball team)'s car. i was no longer homeless. we talked for a few minutes and then the rest of my track team showed up and his bus showed up and life instantly returned back to normal. but i felt as though i had to document this particular moment in my life where i felt that i didn't truly belong. anywhere. i just existed. and it was horrible.

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Apartment 1, Christmas Eve

Hello. it's time for a reality check.

If I was a few years younger at this very moment, I would certainly be asleep by now, anxiously awaiting Santa's arrival. But I'm not. I can make an analogy to the feeling when you finish a shower but you still have water dripping off your fingers. it's like my childhood's dripping off my fingers... slower and slower until it finally stops. we've almost arrived at the stopping point, the point where you stop staring at your fingers in awe at the dripping, dry off, and move on with your day.

My uncle's staying overnight. He's going through a rough patch so we're taking him in. My dad said that my uncle and I had a lot in common, we're both jobless. i feel bad that i don't have a job, because i could if i wanted to. but i don't have enough time in my day, and i'm still convinced that if i promote my music enough, i could use that as a job sometime. i think i'm crazy right now for thinking that, the album's only been downloaded 11 times. but i'm gonna start making more videos, finding more ways to promote, maybe start looking at some shows.

but i genuinely feel as though i'm running out of time. where i'll be at a point where i'll have to get a job in order to sustain myself. college. that point's arriving in one and a half years. and i can't stand the thought of working in the gloomy kingdoms of food service or retail. but what else am i gonna do? there's nothing else a kid can do. we're helpless. we're sheep. slaves. we do as we're told. and that's that. that is, if we want the almighty dollar, or pound, or euro. yen. peso.

it's not that i'm lazy. it's just that i'm confused about my future. am i capable of living the life i dream of living?

drip... drip........... drip.............. drip........................drip..............................................

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ENDO FANERA

HERE'S THE ALBUM, ALL 59.5 MINUTES OF ITT:

http://videosforpictures.bandcamp.com

ALL THE LYRICS ARE POSTED. GO CHECK IT THE FRICK OUT.

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EDIT: OR YOU CAN LISTEN RIGHT HERE:

WHY AM I STILL TYPING IN CAPS? I HONESTLY DO NOT KNOW. K BAI?!

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update on the album that's not called exo pamela

Hey Zane, I would love to do another show with you sometime soon! and I completely forgot about that song! and i'm giving you credit for the songs you produced on the album as i remember you asked for that sometime ago. good to hear from you again.

anyways, the album:
turns out that bandcamp only takes ridiculously large files, so the uploading process is taking a lot longer than imagined. i have 11/16 songs up, and I'm working on getting the 5 others up right now.

brb phone... k back.

anywho, that's where i'm at right now. i also decked out the site with various colors and a banner so it's not just all white and bleh. i'm excited to make it open to the public, should be a party and a half.

that's all i have time to say, i'm in the midst of typing up an unnecessarily long lab report and i don't have much time to waste. not that this is wasting time really K I GOTTA GO EXPECT videosforpictures.bandcamp.com TO BE UP FOR YOUR VIEWING BY THE END OF THE WEEK BAI

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exo pamela

The above title is not the name of the compilation that I'm releasing via Bandcamp this weekend.

(stream only. alas).

The songs were recorded between 2007-2009, and there are 16 of them, just under an hour long.

As follows:

Cougar Crossing
Three Neighbors
Internal Clock
Adding to An Echo Chamber
Wake Up Your Eyes
Gargling Mouthwash
Mystery Jesus and the Wonder Wheel
Family
Several Continuations of a Theme
All Day Long
East
The LHC
Crossing II/Nacimiento
In Boxes
Apartment
The Wanderer

Oh yes. It happens.

Link will follow by Sunday.

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news:news:dissolve

i have three new songs going on. they're titled "Slow Clap for Dunz", "Nightmare (see post prior to this one)", and an untitled one that I'm thinking of calling "Paper Plate". Slow Clap was the original end of Nightmare, but I since got rid of it because I couldn't fit it in right. Paper Plate has a lyrical structure similar to that of Three Neighbors in that there's a common theme among all three verse/stories,. but there are far more lyrics, and it's a lot darker.

my dad finally wants to get around to tuning my piano. he was saving up extra money for oil over the winter i guess, and now that he's done with that, he's willing to tune my extraordinarily flat piano. a piano this flat is the equivalent of a broken arm to me.

in other news, i saw the documentary 'the devil and daniel johnston' and was extraordinarily inspired and awe-struck. His story is so unique and sometimes disturbing, and i recommend that anyone who's a musician gets to watching it.

musical wishlist taim (inb4 holy shit you're a gigantic hipster. [i know.]):

animal collective - fall be kind
interpol - antics
weezer - blue album/pinkerton
blueskies - the blackout sessions
daniel johnston - welcome to my world
mimas - hands will carry/the worries
del tha funky homosapien/tame one - parallel universes
wu-tang clan - Enter The Wu-Tang (36 chambers)
maps and atlases - trees,swallows,houses
broken social scene - you forgot it in people
wolf parade - apologies to the queen and mary
dan deacon - bromst
atlas sound - logos
built to spill - perfect from now on/keep it like a secret
grandaddy - under the western freeway

maybe some stuff by great lake swimmers and prefuse 73.

and empire state of mind by jay-z.

ttfn.

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