(Photo = Sound of Music…if you don’t understand the connection, you obviously weren’t a soprano in your jr. high choir)
I’ve wanted to do something like this for quite some time now, but it’s been much harder than I expected. I probably have at least 10 different drafts with some sort of “favorites” list that are just collecting digital dust. Why so hard? I guess it’s because my favorites keep changing. For example, it seems like every time I hear my new “favorite album of 2010”, a newer album comes out and trumps my old favorite (disclaimer: this really isn’t a complaint, I love the fact that I keep falling in love with new music).
But you know what? I’m tired of my favorites never seeing the light of day. So consider this my (late) New Years resolution—I promise to share my favorites with the masses…even if they might change 15 minutes after I publish this post.
To start things off, here are my 5 favorite remixes (for at least the next 15 minutes):
I’m super excited about the upcoming LCD Soundsystem, Hot Chip, & Sleigh Bells show at the Hollywood Bowl, so for the last couple of days I’ve been listening to their music and watching videos on youtube. Last week, Sleigh Bells released their first official music video, and I absolutely love it! Without further ado, here’s Infinity Guitars from Sleigh Bells. Enjoy!
Definitely one of my all time favorite artists, Yann Tiersen (Amelie, Goodbye Lenin, Tabarly), is set to release his latest album, Dust Lane, October 11th in Europe (via MUTE) and October 12th in the US (via ANTI). He’s also about to set out on a European tour with more dates promised. I was lucky enough to see Mr. Tiersen live awhile back (w/ Asobi Seksu…so good), so hopefully the tour makes it’s way to the US, this is a show you don’t want to to miss.
(yann tiersen @ the el rey theatre w/ asobi seksu, may 2, 2009)
Dust Lane is the sixth studio album by Yann Tiersen. Two years in the making, it was largely recorded on Tiersen’s current home of Ouessant, a small island off the coast of West Britanny, with further parts recorded on an island in the south Philippines and last touches and final mix at The Chairworks Studio in Castelford with producer Ken Thomas (Sigur Rós, M83, Dave Gahan).
Dust Lane is, inescapably, an album preoccupied with mortality. During its recording, Tiersen lost his mother and a close friend, and the music within embodies what it is to be bereaved. It is also an album about life not as something lost, but something to be lived. “Not a sad thing, but a colourful thing – an experience sometimes painful, but also joyful,” says Tiersen.
Head on over to the official site and you can stream his entire show at La Route du Rock Festival (for a limited time)
While I shuffling through hype machine for the latest blogosphere offerings last week, I stumbled upon this hip hop duo.
Rapdragons is Nick Often and Greg Ward. Hailing from Baltimore, the duo released their debut record, Ten Stories High, in 2009 to local, regional, and bloggable acclaim. The duo just followed up that release with the much-anticipated mixtape album, Featuring Baltimore — a collection of hip hop tracks each sampling a different band from baltimore, including Beach House and Future Islands.
Jump on over to their site, RAPDRAGONS, where you can download all three records (the third is a Ten Stories High remix album). If you’d rather taste test before taking the jump, check out the track below.
