Wednesday, December 29, 2004

so Christmas has come and gone

I had a pretty good Christmas this year. Got some stuff I wasn't expecting to get. Gave my dad an mp3 player that I kind of wanted to keep for myself. I find that now that I'm an adult it takes me longer to really enjoy the season and get into it. All the commercialism and hype starting from before Thanksgiving has a lot to do with it. I think the thing that really gets me into appreciating Christmas is the music. It's funny that one of the things that stands out in my memory from Christmas as a child is that my parents would always play the same album every Christmas morning. Christmas Jollies by the Salsoul Orchestra. Old school. I think I'm going to start some new traditions when it comes to music now.

A friend told me about about some Christmas ep's from a friend and listened to them most of the day Friday. All Christmas songs by Sufjan Stevens. Absolutely beautiful stuff. I wish there was more Christmas music like this.

Also, I found out this year about Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols from King's College Chapel in Cambridge, England. They've been having this service every Christmas since 1918, and apparently they've been broadcasting it worldwide on the BBC since the 1930's. I wish I had heard of this before. I'm going to have to add this to the list of the things I have to do before I die - spending Christmas eve in that chapel. So serene and reverent. I don't know what it is about accapella choral music that I like so much. The St. Olaf Christmas thing is good too.

Sunday, December 26, 2004

so I've gotten all the cd's...

The Flaming Lips cd is good. There's only one track I didn't like on it. For some reason it wasn't quite what I was expecting. I've heard so much about the band and this is the first I've heard of their stuff. I'm not sure what kind of sound I was expecting, but I enjoyed the cd.

I already talked about the P86 cd.

K-os was great. Even better than I had expected. I'd seen a couple of his videos on Subterranean. This was his first cd that I bought and I'll probably buy the second as well. Very talented individual, a la Lauryn Hill. Many different styles on the cd. I would have liked to hear more straight forward hip hop from him though.

Salif Keita, of course, was great. Only drawback to the cd is that it's a retrospective, so most of the tracks have alot of 80's synthesized instrumentation on it. But if you can get past that, the infectiousness of the melodies and rhythms are there to be savored. I've got Moffou as well, and he's got another version of Ignadjidje on this cd. I didn't like it as much as the one on Moffou, which is acoustic and slower.

Ohio was just beautiful. The whole cd is laid back, wonderfully textured, and flows together well. It'll probably take a while to completely digest all the lyrics and stuff, it's that good. I saw them live last year at Cornerstone FL and loved it. Hopefully they'll come back this way again this year.

Thursday, December 16, 2004

a good time for cd's

So it started with a splurge at BMG. I bought five cd's for $30, including shipping:

The Flaming Lips "Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots"
Project 86 "Songs To Burn Your Bridges By"
K-Os "Exit"
Salif Keita "The Mansa Of Mali...A Retrospective"
Over The Rhine "Ohio"

I love BMG. The selection leaves much to be desired, but when you find some good stuff it's great. And I just love getting new music in the mail. I've only gotten the Project86 cd so far and I've been listening to it all week. It's solid. I wouldn't say it tops 'Drawing Black Lines', but it's a good cd. 'The Spy Hunter',
'The Great Golden Gate Disaster', and 'Solace' are my favorite tracks.

And then I find out this week that three of my favorite groups are all releasing cd's. Soul-Junk released 1937, a cd of remixes. They've posted a couple of the
tracks on their website. Galaxalag is hands down one of the best and most creative lyricists I've ever heard. Pure genius in my book.

Mars Ill sent out some bad news that Pro-Pain is getting pushed back again until next June or something because of our friends at Gotee. Wasn't too happy about that. But Mars Ill made me feel better by announcing that they're selling two cd's, 'Pirate Radio' and 'Sound Methods v.2.0' through Paypal.

And finally, speaking of labels slowing up the release of good music, we finally have a chance to buy LA Symphony's 'Call It What You Want'. This is the cd that was supposed to come out on Squint before Warner shut them down. I'm really happy for LAS that this is finally getting out. But if you want to buy it you better hurry up, because it's only available until the end of the year.

Studio 360

There was an interesting show on NPR this past weekend. On Studio 360 they were talking about art from Christians. They had a lot of interesting things to say about the current state of the Christian culture/market that has been created. You can check it out here.

Sunday, December 05, 2004

a step in the right direction

I usually listen to the speakers on WKES, the local Moody station in Tampa and I often hear David Zanotti do his little shorts on politics and stuff. I was quite surprised to hear his statements this past week. He didn't say everything I would have liked him to say, but it's a step in the right direction.