I finished Run River last night, and have now officially exhausted Joan Didion’s fiction. A sad day is upon us, friends!
Where else can I turn for snappy, dispassionate appraisals of broken California rich folk? Please write me some more novels, Joan. No one does it like you.
Also, she was kind of a fox back in the day, in the Ice Queen mold.
Which I have no problem with.
In addition to Yellow Magic Orchestra, Haruomi Hosono (bass), Yukihiro Takahashi (drums and vocals) and Ryuichi Sakamoto (keyboards) have made a lot of really interesting music and influenced whole movements of Japanese pop music.
One of my favorites is drummer Takahashi’s 1981 solo album, Neuromantic. Sci Fi synth pop at its eeriest, with Takahashi’s out-of-body vocals hovering over the whole like a slightly ugly angel on your shoulder.
Takahashi and Hosono reunited in the late 90’s to form the electronic duo SKETCH SHOW. Their minimalist glitchy pop blends robotic discipline with human emotion in a truly elegant way. The music is patient and mature, yet infused with their great sense of humor and absurdity. The blend of acoustic and electronic sounds influenced many artists such as Towa Tei, Cornelius, Takako Minekawa, and many others from the Shibuya Kei movement as well as western artists like Psapp, Tunng, and the Books.
So we have a track in Tap Tap Revenge 2, the next-gen edition of the #1 free iPhone game of 2008. Apparently it’s kind of like guitar hero? Is that right? It’s all free to download and play – all you need is an iPhone or iPod Touch.
Download Tap Tap Revenge 2 free from the iTunes store, get more info on the Tapulous blog .
“The all new Tap Tap Revenge 2 features enhanced gameplay, extreme graphics, and over 150 new songs. Challenge your friends, or anyone around the world through the online gaming arena. With tons of music and new tracks added each week, Tap Tap Revenge 2 will take your rhythm to the max.”
If you’re out there with an iPod touch or iPhone, let us know what you think of the game!
I am only slightly ashamed to say that I’ve become obsessed with the TV show “Friday Night Lights.” It’s a TV show, which is based on a 2004 movie, which is based on a 1990 book about the high school football obsessed town of Odessa, Texas.
I haven’t seen the film or read the book, but the show is super emotional and intense. Every episode, there are at least two or three moments when a character is about to cry, and the music swells up, and Dillon, TX becomes the most heartbreak-iest, emo-ist little town in the world.
Speaking of the music, the Austin, TX band Explosions In The Sky scored the film, and their music was used in the show’s pilot. We actually played a random show with them years ago. It’s interesting how well their music works on the show, since their grand, guitar-y post-rock is pretty far off from Linkin Park or DJ Screw or whatever might actually get played in a typical Texas high school football locker room. Though who knows, maybe they listen to this now instead of “Let The Bodies Hit The Floor.”
The funny thing is that the show’s theme song - which sounds a lot like Explosions In The Sky - was actually written by W.G. “Snuffy” Walden (great name), the same guy who scored My So Called Life, thirtysomething, Roseanne, The West Wing, and all kinds of other big TV shows. You can hear it here (though it is inexplicably “mashed up” with the intro to some show called “Coach,” which I don’t remember.) It’s actually a well done homage, though one way you can tell that the theme song is NOT by a “real post-rock band” is that there’s a wooow-wooow-ing fretless bass playing, which is near the top of the list of indie-rock stylistic no-no’s.
But what this means is that the lineage of post-rock bands, from Explosions In The Sky to Mogwai to Godspeed and all the way back to Slint, is somehow represented now in a major network TV drama, usually the final outpost of outdated aesthetics. Kind of strange.
That said, the show can’t seem to find an audience and might get canceled after this season anyway. (At which point I will shrivel up and die.) So maybe their theme should sound more like this.
This guy did an amazing job of cutting together different youtube clips to make new songs. Very very cool.
I saw this on everyone’s favorite circuit bending blog get lofi
This song is not great, but it sure is good. More in the satirical vein of “welfare mothers” or “piece of crap”.
But you gotta love Neil’s ability to let his ideas and opinions flow free, responding reflexively to the world around him, quickly and naturally.
I especially enjoy his air guitar during the solo.
Neil Young - Fork In The Road
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