EBRAHIM Swims Good

This song will make your entire weekend, guaranteed.

Love is a Wicked Game

Sometimes I thought what I was doing was all for the better. But there are universal occurrences words cannot describe nor can we predict. Love is one of them.

Washed Out - Wicked Game (Chris Isaak cover) (MP3)

All Walls Will Fall

Been in this strange slow pop-dubsteppy-coastal music mood for about a month now. I feel like coasting is a bad way to go through life, but for now, I'm kinda feelin' it.

Mr. Little Jeans – The Suburbs (Arcade Fire Cover) (MP3)

Press Play

Careful. It's hot.

Sex Beet – Dirty Boots (Sonic Youth cover) (MP3)

Sunsets are Wonderful

And I think I've finally found something to love about my capstone project. It's time to celebrate with some new wave disco. Slam!

Strange Talk - Climbing Walls (MP3)
Strange Talk - Eskimo Boy (MP3)

Girl Talk's All Day Review

What can I say? I love this guy. People have tried to bite off his style for years now, but none can execute it with such finesse as the maker himself. All Day brings you back to the days of Black Sabbath, Ludacris, The Ramones, California Swag District, Missy Elliot, Dorrough, and more. It's undoubtedly the best workout music out there. 8.3/10.

Girl Talk - All Day (FREE 256kbps MP3 Album)

Does It Make You Feel Alive?

I think I've just stumbled upon my audio crack of choice for the week.

Local Natives - World News (Labyrinth Ear Remix) by Labyrinth Ear

Alex Winston - Choice Notes (Labyrinth Ear Remix) by Labyrinth Ear

Lithium by Labyrinth Ear

Snow White by Labyrinth Ear

Hearts in Malaysia Mixtape #1

Cymbals swing. Knowing quietly that we felt fine all this time. Bruised by the knees, dodging the venom, we'll eventually find our peace somewhere in this messy world of self, finding self, and extradited emotions. Dedicated to Louie Vuitton eating munchies somewhere in Southeast Asia. 

Buena Vista Social Club Vs Kanye West - Two Chan Words (KMT Mix)
Jay-Z vs. Coldplay - One Ruler (Produced by Max Tannone)
The Xx - Infinity (Flufftronix Remix)
Monarchy - Love Get Out Of My Way (Treasure Fingers Remix)
LUSHUS – HO FO SHO
Chromeo - Don't Walk Away
Wishing Wars - Beach
Soft Powers - Just Like Tropica-L
LCD Soundsystem - Dance Yrself Clean
Yeasayer - Wait For the Summer
The Smiths - Bigmouth Strikes Again
M. Ward - Let’s Dance 

Download: Hearts in Malaysia Mixtape #1 (ZShare)

Funkism Amplified

This is the perfect. Utterly serene. Feels like sleeping in a pile of mud getting my eyebrows laced with gold. It also brings me a few ideas on using (or providing) designer music blogs with something new to play with. Maybe something tangible to all the great work they do finding these jams I eat up on Hype Machine on the daily like a delicious bowl of Lucky Charms.

Drake - Forever (Nosaj Thing Remix) (320 kbps)
Oh Land - Son of a Gun (Yuksek Remix) (160 kbps)

The Smiths: A Modern Study in Music Acquirement

A few days ago, I decided to do a quick study in music acquirement, specifically that of the modern age today. The topic of the choice: The Smiths.

I really hadn't explored The Smiths much until this point, so I felt it was the perfect way to jump-start my capstone research. Because I needed a slightly older band with history. A band that have had experience releasing vinyls in the past. A band with a large following. With a lead that girls would kill over. YouTube videos. Past massive success.

I needed a band that would heavily contrast to up-and-coming artists (I know a couple in Brooklyn and Chicago), due to budget constraints or by choice, have chosen to release completely digital records to the Internet for consumption. More on that later.

For now, it's all about The Smiths and how I naturally searched the Webosphere for their material. It started with an MP3 given to me by a friend about 2 years ago. The song? "I Know It's Over." I hadn't heard the song in ages. It was dreary, full of pent up angst, and beautifully crafted like an origami boat. It sparked excitement in me. I had to find out more.

Being a poor graduate student, my next step on the Internet was clear: Google, YouTube, and Soulseek. Google would provide me with 50 best recommendations. YouTube would give visual stimulation in addition to playlists by members. Soulseek would give me the highest bitrate MP3 for free. All of this seemed natural and satisfyingly procedural knowing that it was a fail-safe method of acquiring the information I needed to further my understanding of The Smiths. Seeing as this method had worked time and time again, I saw no need for an alternative process.

The next few songs were the hit singles: "How Soon Is Now?," "Bigmouth Strikes Again," and "The Boy With The Thorn In His Side." I found these songs by rating via Google. There was also a Yelp post asking, "What are your top 5 Smiths songs?" dated back in 2007. There were over 100 responses. I read through them all and listened to all of the songs the members suggested, first by YouTubing for an initial skim, followed by a search in Soulseek, then downloading the highest bitrate MP3 I could find. I never settle for anything 192kbps or less.

 

I continued by downloading an entire "The Smiths Hit Singles" set on Soulseek after finding a user who had all 320kbps MP3s. While listening to "Panic," I gleefully watched my downloads go from 16 KB/sec to 100 KB/sec to slowly fill up my "impossible to fill" 2TB hard drive on my desktop PC. Never once did I question the legality of my process. It seemed too natural and intuitive. Just the next step after another. The passing of an idea.

Before I realized, I had about 33 curated and tested songs by The Smiths sitting in my Downloads folder. I had renamed them all to have a consistent naming convention. That was my OCD at work. It was 3AM. My headphones had been blasting for over 4 hours straight. I listened to "There Is A Light That Never Goes Out" again.

It's been about a week since this process and my new MP3 collection consisting of my current top songs by The Smiths patiently sit in my Downloads folder, awaiting some sort of sorting process before it finally goes into my MP3 folder. Seeing as I've already acquired about 20 more songs over the past week from various music blogs and recommendations by friends, The Smiths - along with half of its album art missing) - starts to lose its priority.

And that's okay. Because these MP3s won't degrade. They don't take up much physical room. They'll just sit on my hard drive. Like a Word document. Like any other multimedia I collect on my hard drive.

"Stop Me If You Think You've Heard This One Before," I ask. I think many of us take a similar, if not identical, approach to music discovery today. Sure, some may prefer Pandora, HypeMachine, and Rhapsody over others, but the real problem lies in the lack of nostalgia/emotional connection tied to the music we acquire today.

No longer are the "memories of Dad putting on the record player for all of us to listen" - it's "Dad connected the iPod into the sound system." And that's just fine with me. What does bother me is the modern day lack of consideration for music and movies as a form of collectible art. Perhaps due to the fact that there is no longer a piece of art associated with mediums (digital album art itself has its own set of negative connotations to being easily replicated), the end result is a medium that feels unfinished compared to its predecessors. Technology-centric. Lacking something that makes us feel human.

My only hope is that digital music could one day be experienced a little differently. Collected differently. To one day be held and valued as much as the records we collected back in the day, but feel just as warm, nostalgic, and satisfying to keep as the books and vinyls seen in our fathers' den.

Design vs. Art vs. Synthesizers

Design has a client. In art, you are your own client. But nevermind art, let's fuckin' play with synthesizers baby. Here's some tunes for all you delirious insomniacs out there. 

Chemical Brothers - Dissolve (Bloody Beeroots Remix) (MP3)
CocoRosie - Werewolf (Omega Remix) (MP3) 
Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Maps (TGIK Remix) (MP3)
Sufjan Stevens - I Walked (MP3)

What's Next? The Upcoming Digital Paradigm

Physical media is dead. It's wasteful, impractical, and losing traction day by day. So why do people continue to hold onto their vinyl collections? Is it a generation thing? Or is there something about digital media that simply doesn't "feel the same"?

Why do dated digital photos elicit such a poor emotion response compared to photos made from film? Do we value it less because it requires less work? Are we exposed to so much of it these days that we start to care less? Is if Facebook's fault? Are memories more or less accessible now that it's so easy to record our lives?

Gut reaction. Two words. Tangibility and sacrifice. Tangibility speaks for itself. I believe the simple act of owning a physical object easily builds the relationship of collectivism between owner and artifact. Vinyls, CDs, DVDs, and physical photo albums made this tangible collectivism easily approachable for the mainstream consumer. When it all went digital, the shit hit the fan. People don't view or understand digital artifacts the same way as real items in the world. Why?

In fact, it's quite simple. We make space for the things we cherish. If something takes up room in our world, it probably has more value to us than something that doesn't. Let's take for example: food. Food takes up room. A lot of it. But does so in a way that it stays localized to the refrigerator (well, for most of us clean folks anyway). Then, there are the chefs. For chefs, food is their world. They'd gladly tear down a wall for more space for food preparation and storage. Now, picture food that can get compressed into miniature balls, where you can easily fit a year's worth of meals into a small container, with no refrigeration needed. Would food be valued the same then? Probably not. Enthusiasts, my guess, would probably still try buy all-natural organic. You know, because they want to illustrate to others how much they love (and appreciate) food.

The same metaphor works for compressed audio and other digital media today. Because everything can be crammed into 1TB hard drives, we naturally feel our music, photos, and movies innately have less value because they're so easily transportable. Replicable. Replaceable. Enthusiasts will still vie for vinyl because it's the "original." It's what's "the best."

I'd like to see where this notion of "best" comes from. Is it good marketing? Tradition? Technology fads that come and go very much like fashion? How does one in the media production sector secure a strategic advantage in today's digital age where the medium is viewed as an innately inferior, continuously dated, and more importantly, lacking of an emotional response with the people collecting them?

Luckily, I've got an entire school year to attack this messy-ass problem space of a design situation. I'm not here to save the RIAA. I'm not here to help the MPAA make more 3D movies. I want to recreate that personal experience and joy of collecting the music, photos, and movies we love. These digital records of our lives, despite how fragile and easily replaceable they are, and they exist as a reflection of how we think, live, and understand the world around us. I feel it's important that we never forget that.

For the time being, please enjoy the music.

Lotte Kestner - Temperature (MP3)
Sunday Girl - Self Control (Azari & III Remix) (MP3)

You Know You Owe Me Mixtape #2

Chillwave power. To the max. Hi-yak! Get your disco workout on!

1. Dunian - All Intros (mp3)
2. Blackbird Blackbird - Modern Disbelief (mp3)
3. Palmbomen - Myself (mp3)
4. Pepepiano - No Way (mp3)
5. Jeans Wilder - Don’t Wanna Live Forever (mp3)
6. THE BIRd DAY - Thirsty (mp3)
7. Total Warr - I Don’t Need Your Friendship (mp3)
8. Love Inks - Wave Goodbye (mp3)
9. Golden Eye - In Turn (mp3)
10. Machu Picchu - Hollow Your Heart (mp3)
11. Dream Cop - Daily Mirage (mp3)
12. Algodón Egipcio - Weird Feelings (Male Bonding cover) (mp3)
13. Phantom Power - Hashish (mp3)
14. Pandit - Scotch (mp3)
15. Evenings - Babe (Prizes remix) (mp3)
16. Yellow Ostrich - Morgan Freeman’s Automobile Accident (mp3)
17. Warm Waves - Drifter (mp3)

Bonus: The Pharcyde – Runnin’ (Philippians Remix) (mp3)  

Unstoppable Cool

Yeah, that's right. There's no stoppin' this train of unstoppable cool. Feel the funk. Get jiggy. This is what one's 2nd year as a masters student should be like. Superstar.


Aeroplane - Superstar (The Krays Remix) (MP3)

Words of Wisdom

Now, this is hot. No, not the girl. Well, maybe the girl too. But this track from Hoodie Allen is what I'm talking about. Not only has it been on my playlist all day long, but it's one of the smoothest tracks I've heard in a long time. Baby bottom smooth. Like Wale. Like Kanye. Like the perfect way to end a glorious summer.

And she spoke words that would melt in your hands,
And she spoke words of wisdom

Hoodie Allen - Words of Wisdom (MP3)

Chillwave on Blast

While some may be complaining about the hackneyed discourse on chillwave - what it is, where it came from, whether it actually exists and what does (or does not) qualify as chillwave - I for one, am just enjoying the hell out of it.


Beat Connection - Sunburn (MP3)

Beat Connection - Theme From Yours Truly (MP3)

Moving Day

Moving is always a strange environmental metamorphosis that inadvertently translates to a transformation of self. It changes the way you live, the way you think, the way you perceive the world around you.

It's also probably one of the most annoying things I must do almost every year living as a college student.


Quadron - Slippin' (Natural Self Remix) (MP3)

Bats for Dubstep

A buddy of mine asked for some extra dubsteppy goodness today. I recommended he check out Mount Eden's remix of Bats for Lashes' Daniel. It is quite the thrillwave.

Wacom Bamboo vs. Abe vs. The 90's

Got my tablet in today. Had to sketch something. Decided Abe Lincoln with a boom box was a good idea. Kinda excited. Makes me want to listen to loud music. Like dubsteps, wah-wah, brrraaap!

DVS - Filth & Funk (MP3)

Easy Weekend for Guilty Pleasures

Nothing to lose, plenty to gain. I like these kinds of situations.

The Library - Nothing to Lose (MP3)