OMG! It's @ohmgee

SOURCE: @ohmgee

Serendipity, indeed

Hypnotic Brass Ensemble’s sturdy family business.

by Sasha Frere-Jones

The music that Hypnotic Brass Ensemble plays might best be described as highly composed instrumental hip-hop. If it is jazz, it’s closer in spirit to jazz from a hundred years ago: accomplished and energetic music parceled-out in short songs designed for dancing. It stays in key for long stretches, and moves in easy-to-follow periods. In a typical Hypnotic song, the shifts in key and the emergence of themes happen against a sound of massed horn parts that provide a sense of solidity. The music stays rooted to the cycle of the beat and the riff, and the players don’t leave the center behind to leap around as they might in hard bop or free jazz. Unlike the musicians in the avant-garde community that Hypnotic grew up in, these players have no interest in dissonance or “out” passages of squeaking and skronking. They keep their compositions lean and their harmonies broad and varied.
[READ MORE]

SOURCE: SFJ/The New Yorker

If yr in town and around

SOURCE: B&C LLC

Jay Bennett, Ex-Member of Wilco,
Dies at 45

By BEN SISARIO

Jay Bennett, a singer and songwriter who was a former member of the rock band Wilco, died on Sunday in Urbana, Ill. He was 45 and lived in Urbana.
[READ MORE]

SOURCE: NYT.com

Mountains' blissful shoegaze drone

"…Choral sometimes feels staid and a little postcard-y: a pretty gesture that fails to eclipse the experience of actually going somewhere. That's OK: The best parts of Choral — the title track, "Melodica", most of "Add Infinity"— suggest that the band's moniker refers less to the vistas their music may or may not evoke and instead to the shifting strata of sound they create. On Choral, Mountains arrange those layers in ways just subtle and precise enough to shift your headspace."


SOURCE: Pitchfork

Spontaneous show at an IKEA

On February 15th Orange County rocker Will Crum and his band were able to sneak their music equipment (amps, drums, etc.) into a IKEA and performed a 3 song set in one of the kitchen sets before being shut down.



SOURCE: LaughingSquid

Did you feel that?

"We are not here to save the world, we are here to serve an emerging paradigm... [Places and spaces of possibility], they are kind of like midwives, places that are holding the template of what's trying to emerge,... so there can be a birth of the next stage of human evolution."
— Rev. Michael Beckwith, "Serving the Emerging Paradigm" (video)

SOURCE: Crossroad Dispatches

Langerado Festival Cancelled

Looks like the recession just took its first major music festival victim. The 2009 Langerado Music Festival, which was to take place March 6-8 at Miami, Florida's Bicentennial Park, has been cancelled due to poor ticket sales.

SOURCE: Pitchfork

This band will melt yr brain

Franchise is a 5-piece rock band that has just released their finest record! The band (which includes Dan: Vocals, "Gitfiddling pedal operator"; Matt: Guitars and pedals; Keri: Bass and pedals; Waylon: Drums) is described in their own words:

Influences: Anyone who worships the sun, or any other noise source.
Sounds like: Progressive cultural train wreck.
Record label: No Money Music

REVIEW:
This record, simply titled '3,' is all the best music Sonic Youth, The Butthole Surfers, didn't have the talent to make. The multi-layered, at times dense, record rewards on repeat listens. Let it envelope you with feedback, noises, screams. What makes the record work is a very strong musiclal backbone. The band may also draw comparisons to older material from Mercury Rev or The Flamings Lips, but they soar past those references and deliver something unique and stunning in the process.

RATING: 5 STARS
LINK: Franchise on myspace

Introducing…

From Mejo: Digi Graf with a wii remote

SOURCE: Mejo

Documentally: What's The Future Of Social Media?

SOURCE: Documentally

Free! Legal! Download every Beatles song

Oyvind sez, "Some weeks ago, NRK — Norwegian Broadcasting — signed a deal with music rights holder organisation TONO in Norway. The new deal gives NRK right to publish podcasts of all previously broadcasted radio- and tv-programs that contains less then 70% music. Podcast containing music may be up for four weeks, while our podcast without music stay up on our server forever. One result of this deal, is that we now can publish 'Vår daglige Beatles' - 'Our Daily Beatles' in English — as a podcast. In this series from 2001, journalists Finn Tokvam og Bård Ose tells the story of every single Beatles tracks ever made, chronologically. Each episode contains a 3 minute story about each track (sadly for our international visitors - in Norwegian) and the actual Beatles tune. This is — as far as we know — the first time you can download the Beatles’ music legally. Neither iTunes nor Amazon have The Beatles in their music stores." Last ned alt av “The Beatles” - og historien om hver enkelt låt (Thanks, Oyvind!)

SOURCE: BoingBoing

"The craziest science fiction movie ever made."

Liquid Sky (1982)

Invisible aliens in a tiny flying saucer come to Earth looking for heroin. They land on top of a New York apartment inhabited by a drug dealer and her female, androgynous, bisexual nymphomaniac lover, a fashion model. The aliens soon find the human pheromones created in the brain during orgasm preferable to heroin, and the model's casual sex partners begin to disappear. This increasingly bizarre scenario is observed by a lonely woman in the building across the street, a German scientist who is following the aliens, and an equally androgynous, drug-addicted male model. (Both models are played by Anne Carlisle, in a dual role.) Darkly funny and thoroughly weird.

SOURCE: IMDB

Thank you, Brooklyn Vegan

In the spirit of keeping it cheery

"BrooklynVegan is a NYC-centric mostly-music blog that focuses on reporting international music news, live show reviews, pictures, tour dates, gossip, tips, MP3's, videos, and just about anything else a music fan could want. Non-music news finds it's way on to our pages as well, and every post comes with an open exchange of ideas via the public commenting system."

For a perfect example, check out their wonderfully dynamic listing
of FREE shows, movies and other events here.

SOURCE: Brooklyn Vegan

New Year's Eve!

Blonde Redhead
Islands / Elvis Perkins

at Terminal 5
[More Info]

Pelican — Lost in the Headlights

SOURCE: HydraHead

It's AntiPop time again!

November 13-16, 2008
Foundation Presents and Fighting of Orlando, Florida has put together a nice little line-up for Antipop. The most notable acts to me include Conor Oberst, Summerbirds In The Cellar, Black Lips, Pelican, Phosphorescent, The Aquabats, Mike Doughty, plus much more. This is one of those fests that takes place across different venues all in the downtown Orlando area, and you can get a pass that gets you into every show of the 4 days for $45.

SOURCES: Antipop, OhmPark

Little Joy and a whole lotta love…

SOURCE: PitchforkTV

President Barack Obama

SOURCE: CNN