It's Hard to Admit Sometimes...

/start rather pointless ramble...

nerd;

1.	a stupid, irritating, ineffectual, or unattractive person.

2.	an intelligent but single-minded person obsessed with a nonsocial hobby or pursuit: a computer nerd.

Ok, well, the definition of "nerd" is one that isn't as pleasant as I expected. I was going to write "Hey, look, I'm a nerd." But now, it's hard to justify that title with a definition like that. But alas, I am a nerd, a geek, a gamer and internet whore. I like video games and MMORPGS, I like reading about wormholes and about the possibility of life on other planets. But I also like music. One of the reasons I begun to really listen to whole albums as opposed to single tracks is because when I played World of Warcraft (yes, WoW, I played it. I played it hard.) I would throw on an album and just leave it. By doing this I discovered an untold amount of music by just letting my playlists play or letting shuffle to the work for a couple of hours.

Ok, so now you might be asking, why the fuck is Blaz (which happened to be my name for two years on Azshara/Mug'thol [70 Warlock]) admitting that he is a loser. Well it's because I recently fell in love with a song by the artist known as Datarock.

/end rather pointless ramble...

So I know that Datarock as been around for sometime, their debut album Datarock Datarock was released in 2005 on the bands own label YAP (Young Aspiring Professionals) and was met with generally favorable reviews; the deity's at Pitchfork gave it a 7.8 which isn't so bad. One of my favorite Datarock tracks, and the one that caused all this rambling, is entitled Computer Camp Love and is probably the best pseudo-cover of a song from the movie Grease. Yes you read correctly, it's a pseudo-cover from the movie Grease. It's not a true cover but it uses elements of the song and you can tell it's sort of a tribute to the song Summer Lovin'. Rather brilliant if I can say so myself. So, if you are a self respecting "nerd" I urge you to listen to the track below and have yourself a laugh. Listen, life's alright outside the screen...it's just better inside.

Datarock - Computer Camp Love

Cheers,
MF Blaz

It's Christmas Time!

So it's christmas time and everyone is probably opening presents and getting nice and toasty with their families and bottles of spiced rum.

Spiced rum, Santas favorite. Speaking of favorites, one of my favorite groups, Belle & Sebastian has been a bit quiet since their last record The Life Presuit and they finally have released some new music just in time for the holiday. It's even holiday flavoured! Are You Coming Home From Christmas is avaibable only for the next 24 hours at Belle and Seb's website here and it's a nice little holiday diddy.

Cheers, happy holidays.

Ice Cream is Going to Save the Day...

Lets look back to what I refer to as the golden years of my music listening career. I was young, I was bold and I certainly would never dance at a disco. If you were to hand me tracks from Girl Talk or The Knife I would scoff at you and give you an At the Drive-In record or the DFA '79 (RIP) demo. Fast-forward a few years and I can dance with the best of them. In fact, dancing to the likes of Justice or MSTRKRFT has become a well enjoyed weekend pastime for me. I have no one else to thank but my dance-loving friends from university and little place in Ottawa called Zaphod Beeblebrox. Don't get me wrong bands, like ATDI and DFA still top my favourite artist lists but dance artists have become a mainstay on my ipizzle.

The electroclash/dance artist from Melbourne, Aussieland known as Muscles is the latest addition to my ever-expanding music collection. His late 2007 release Guns Babes Lemonade is an eclectic mix of pop songs and dance floor anthems, all with brilliantly laid out tongue-in-cheek sing-alongs that blur the line between laptop pop and arena chanting. On the album's stand-out track (and my personal favourite, the song that got me hooked) Ice Cream, Muscles juxtaposes club violence "he could have a knife / stab me in the gut / bleeding on the floor / shoulda kept my mouth shut" with dancing with our shirts off " i just wanna dance with my shirt off".

Bloody brilliant. Electro-pop may be on it's way out but it's albums like this that will make me fondly remember the days when I was just another sweaty body in a sea of happy, sweaty people.

Muscles - Ice Cream

Muscles - Sweaty

(orginally posted by moi on Bridging The Atlantic)

Mix Tapes: Best of 07

So I'm sitting here waiting for my university to pick up their effing phones because they somehow obliterated me off their records...even though I was registered by the time of my exams..


ANYWAYS BACK TO THE MUSIC

so this year end stuff is obviously the main topic on anyones mind and i'm no different. recently my merry band of snob friends held our annual "Best of" mix tape party and it was a wild success! everyone came in with their cds and many of them had tracks and artists which even the snobiest of snobs never heard of. Alas, mine was not so snobby as I opted for something that was both underground but accessible at the same time. the result? I donno, I like it..do you?

The Snob Machine Presents: The Best of 07
Hello! - Junior Senior
Hip Hop A Lula - Junior Senior
The Year Before the Year 2000 - Les Savy Fav
Someone Great - LCD Soundsystem
Labyrinthian Pomp - Of Montreal
Ddiamondd - Battles
$20 - M.I.A
Driving Me Wild - Common feat. Lilly Allen
D.A.N.C.E (Mstrkrft Remix) - Justice
Kiss Kiss - Yeah Yeah Yeahs
McFearless - Kings of Leon
Mistaken For Strangers - The National
Don't Make Me A Target - Spoon
Wet and Rusting - Menomena
All I Need - Radiohead
Northern Whale - The Good, the Bad and the Queen
We've Got Everything - Modest Mouse
Hunting for Witches - Bloc Party
Box - Toyko Police Club
Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa - Vampire Weekend
My Body is a Cage - The Arcade Fire

Download the ZIP file here.

Looking Back; Part I of IV.

What...just...happened?
Thats the first thing I'll say when I wake up on Jan. 1st.
What...the fuck...just...happened?
2007 was a year that, at least for me, went by incredibly fast and I could barely keep up. My best of disk is so eclectic that I don't really know what to make of it. So honestly. What happened?

Winter 2007.

To start off this little year end thing we're gonna kick back to January 1977; the year that Gordon Sumner (a.k.a Sting a.k.a douchbag mcdoucherton) and drummer Stewart Copeland formed a little three piece and became one of the most popular bands in the history of Rock n' Roll: The Police. 30 years after they come back. No more fighting, no more greed, no more of Stings ego. The police come back, play a few sold out arenas all of the planet and bask in their glory. But not only do old classics rise from the dead...But in 2007, the new music starts start away. The Shins release their third LP Wincing the Night Away. The Good, the Bad and the Queen release their debut album The Good, the Bad and the Queen. The band is Damion Albarn's newest project after the break up of (and I might cry) the Gorillaz. I guess the break up is somewhat ok though...because they did leave us with the memory of Demon Days. The album carries alot of the ideas and sounds that the Gorillaz were also exploring.

Best Albums

Menomena also released one of the best albums of the year Friend and Foe on the 23rd. Unfortunately I didn't give it a serious spin until the end of spring. The album flows with such an intriguing sound. Parts of it are epic but move into beautiful soundscapes and melodies that blend together so perfectly. On this album the band such us on this album that their not friend to rock out a little (which they do more often then implied.)

Menomena - Wet and Rusting

Menomena - Weird


Depending on how you look it at the next big album that came out was Of Montreal's ecstasy trip: Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destoryer? The first time you listen to it it may be the happiest album you've ever heard. On first listen Kevin Barnes couldn't be happier. It's that first listen that gets you. It's the second that scares. Hissing Fauna is the post-breakup album of all post-breakup albums. Behind the veil of the happy go lucky (but no less phenomenal) music Kevin is a torn and broken man. He was actually prescribed antidepressants during the making of this album. He also spent a few months in Norway. The best part of the album is that after the beautiful "The Past is a Grotesque Animal" Kevin turns into his "glam-rock" alter ego Georgie Fruit.

Georgie Fruit.

Right. Just keep writing them Kevin...we'll keep listening.

Of Montreal - Labyrinthain Pomp

Of Montreal - Heimdalsgate Like a Promethean Curse

In February the kings of the indie scene, Bloc Party, released the follow up to their unreal 2003 debut album Silent Alarm. Silent Alarm being an debut album which probably inspired thousands of people to feel conviction towards the music they listen to. Silent Alarm was almost impossible to follow up and Bloc Party's A Weekend in the City does indeed falls short. But it really was to be expected. What I didn't expect though was how good the album actually would be. Weekend was definitely were we start to see drummer Matt Tong experiment with a computer double. This is one of the problems with the album, where Silent Alarm had furious and passionate drumming, Weekend tends to feel most detached. Alas though, the songs are still written with that Bloc Party magic.

Bloc Party - Hunting for Witches

Bloc Party - The Prayer


No one will deny the power of the Arcade Fire after the turn of the Century. Their debut album Funeral marked the beginning of Canada's domination of the indie airways. Like Bloc Party their second disk was almost set to fail. Again, how could it live up to expectations? And again, it faltered...but only slightly. Neon Bible takes what Funeral started and runs with it. It's not anything fresh or exciting. But it is the Arcade Fire writing Arcade Fire songs. Whats all we wanted and thats all we got. They changed their sound only slightly enough to make the album interesting enough to listen to once and detailed enough to spin it over and over again.

Arcade Fire - No Cars Go

Arcade Fire - My Body is a Cage


The Kings of Leon's third album happens to be their first pop record. And what a bloody record. Listen to it. Pitchfork still hates them but I think that they mature and grow with every record they put out. Their first two disks had a much more southern rock influence but this third one Because of the Times seeks to out grab the mainstream. I can think of no one better to bring "real" rock back to the masses.

Kings of Leon - McFearless

Kings of Leon - My Party/span>

Cratedigger.

Theres a few ways of describing Burial's sound. Maybe it is the sound dark dirty breakbeats with a splash of sex in a dark alleyway... Maybe it sounds like the cosmos whispering sweet nothings into your ear (while having sex in a dark alleyway). If there are two words that I could give to describe the sound of the English producer they would be sexual and spiritual.

And like any sort of spirituality, some people just don't understand it while others do. I'm not talking about understanding in a literal sense but in an almost unconscious sense. I feel the songs will only speak to those who feel them. Who "understand" them.

It's hard to explain. But if you've listened to Portishead's Dummy or Massive Attack's Mezzanine and enjoyed them...then you may "get" this album.

[mp3]Burial - Archangel

[mp3]Burial - Homeless

Look out for Vampires in 2008.

Hailing from New York City with a sound that reckons they've traveled the globe a few times over, the boys from Vampire Weekend managed to slip under this listeners radar until the very end of the year. Their self titled debut starts off with what sounds like show tunes and stumbles into a soundscape full of African influenced guitars and whimsical melodies.

The album drops on the 28th of January but heres a little sneak peek of the new year.

[mp3]Vampire Weekend - A-Punk

[mp3]Vampire Weekend - Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa

THE BATTLE OF THE YEAR!

VS

Diplo vs. M.I.A - Atlas/Boyz

An Airbag Saved My Dub

Sometime in the winter of 2005 a good friend of mine introduced me to the Dub Version of Dark Side of the Moon.

Yes, you heard correctly, the DUB version of Dark Side. Now, if you haven't heard this album by the Easy Star All Stars than you have every right to laugh and say "it must be terrible." Funny thing is though, it's not bad. It's actually kinda amazing. Not as good (obviously) as the original Dark Side but 100% worth checking out. I thought a band covering a pivotal album in music's history was a one off and they would go back and write their own dub jams so I didn't look into the Easy Star All Stars after Dark Side. Sometimes I'm an idiot. Sometime last week a co-worker sent me on a lead to find the DUB VERSION OF OK COMPUTER.

DUB VERSION OF OK COMPUTER.

It was almost more difficult to believe in that than the Dark Side album. And while Dark Side was almost on par with the original album in terms of awesome-ness, Ok Computer falls short. The dub just doesn't work as well on this album as it did on Dark Side. BUT DONT GET ME WRONG. It is DEFINITELY worth looking into.

Easy Star All Stars - Airbag
Easy Star All Stars - Karma Police