Chris De Burgh Performing In Iran: The Has-Been vs. The Gay Band

Iranians will never stop loving Chris De Burgh! A Vast majority don’t even know who he is, but to Iranians, he’s a legend. And now he has traveled to Iran to perform alongside the Persian pop band Arian (OMG! They are so gay!) I’ve successfully avoided listening to Chris De Burgh all through my life and by taking a look at his official website, one can easily observe the fact that he’s an absolute has-been. Now he’s with the no.1 gay act in Iran and how disgusting might that sound. Anyway! I don’t even think he gets permission. I even heard somebody say he left today. So long!

Daft Punk - Human After All: Nothing Human

Yeah this is one of those flashback entries. You can’t just write on the cutting edge music. Sometimes it refreshes your ears to play the past (not too long ago though) and scribble some lines on it. Daft Punk’s Human After All to many fans was a big disappointment. Well, don’t count me in here because back then, I couldn’t stop listening to this “difficult” album. I first wanted to label this album a 5 star, but then I found the label so quirky for such a rough experience. Daft Punk fans, unlike their beloved duet have a very delicate taste. When they were too involved in the lost and found of Home Work, they experienced a candy-pop digital Japanese cartoon-ish pack of new sounds in Discovery. They were quite surprised and shocked to hear their favorite dance duet go pop with a hit like “One More Time” or "Digital Love", this was simply not what they had previously heard from Daft Punk. And then came Human After All and left them all speechless upon the roughness and absurdity of its sound. Some didn’t even believe this was the new Daft Punk album and thought it’s a reckless selection of their unused samples and beats, but they were wrong again. Human After All WAS the new Daft Punk album and how cruel it sounded, indeed. Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter had genuinely transformed into ruthless robots. This is not an album made out of human material, only a robot can produce such repetitive disorientation consisted of harsh guitars and molested drums. And who can truly bear the pressure of a train starting to run and go mad like on “Prime Time Of Your Life”? But you know what? When I go back to 2005 and review this album, I kinda like it! I don’t know what these guys are up to for their forthcoming album but I’m not a Human After All detester. In fact, the roughness of sound is exquisite. You barely hear bridges, there’s no more gay vocals like what was on Discovery and it remains somewhat more loyal to what Daft Punk does usually. But I confess, this was the easiest thing to do for the duet and therefore it took only 6 weeks to accomplish such a thing. More robotic than anytime earlier and harsher than anything done by Daft Punk. But anyway I’m waiting for the 4^th studio thing and I’m optimistic upon it. Beware of the robots!

16 Reasons Why You Should Shuffle Up Your Music Library Once In A While

Sometimes I just put my whole 100 gigabyte mp3 library on shuffle and give it a go. Here are a couple of good reasons why a music listener must do it sometimes.

1. The old mp3s might get rotten with fungus growing on their tails, so we play them to avoid it. Because Lord only knows what’ll happen if an Ozzy Osbourne album rots!
2. It diminishes your pride density down to a normal level once you realize you used to listen to 3 Doors Down and Nickelback without having the slightest idea.
3. When a Billy Idol track pops up, you can exterminate it immediately, therefore you save space for upcoming Beirut albums!
4. You might wonder who the fuck is Ketil Bjornstad and Leonard Cohen and then go “nevermind!”
5. If you’re developing a project while listening to your shuffled library, you might realize how unbearable it can get listening to My Bloody Valentine’s “Loveless” thing but then you remind yourself of the respect this disk has in Pitchfork and go “oh!”
6. You might wanna rename some stuff mistaken previously e.g. “Ariem” to R.E.M and “You, too” to “Marat Safin’s best moments”.
7. Whitney Houston? You listen to Whitney Houston? I thought she was dead.
8. You might cut/paste an album by Theory Of A Dead Man to your movies folder and think this was a Jim Jarmusch film and you never realized it!
9. You may remove all Godspeed! You Black Emperor albums when they put you to sleep and sometimes there’s a possibility you may never wake up! (It’s noteworthy to know that every time you search the word “godspeed” you get two results: “Godspeed! You Black Emperor” and “Godspeed You! Black Emperor” and wonder how similar (identical) they sound)
10. Some music is best heard while you’re on the phone with the voice on mute: Alan Jackson and Barbara Streisand perhaps!
11. Bob Marley songs are impossible to classify and categorize, they’re all discrete and unlabeled but you listen to them “evory day and evory night”.
12. You will never find the correct characters to name your Sigur Ros songs! Don’t Even try!
13. You always thought JJ72 was an 80s hip hop band and PJ Harvey is a man with mustache.
14. Who are these artists? Nokia Music Manager and iTunes? And this “Unknown Artist” band plays an eclectic range of genres!
15. You might wanna delete all your Pink Floyd albums. Wise!
16. Then you eliminate everything containing keywords “boy” and “band” together.

Alright I’m out!

Yahoo! Media Player: Play What's Playable (Not A Revolution!!)

In another not-quite-revolutionary experience, Yahoo! has launched its new media player that has the ability to be embedded on your page and play whatever's playable on it. That can be cool. But for now I have nothing playable on my page, so...
Still in beta!
It appears on the left of your page very semi-transparently and does not occupy that much space. You can stop it anytime and it does not starts shrieking your page out when someone enters your space. They have headlined this mini-player with "A revolutionary and easy to use music player that plays audio on your website.", but hell no it's no revolution. Odiogo plays your whole blog! You might wanna take a look at that. But our new Yahoo! gadget has another cool feature in addition and that's the "play button". You can put a play button next to everything audible on your page. If you're not quite a Yahoo! fan you can try the wordpress player instead: webbier and more customizable! And yes, it DOES work on blogger or elsewhere, you should only modify the code a little bit.

Aimee Mann - @#%&*! Smilers

Aimee Mann, without using a magnifying glass is one of the best contemporary pop songwriters. She could be Elliott Smith’s equivalent in pop for she’s a graceful outcast, too. You don’t see her on MTV exposing her breasts to the camera. Her tunes are measured, mostly mid-tempo and far from eccentric. Her voice stretches out to a standard joyful limit and never exceeds the ear’s threshold and her lyrics are always out of cliché and thoughtful. I guess that’s what a routine pop artist should sound like. But Aimee Mann is a bit more than that. She has now returned after his semi-rock concept work in 2005 The Forgotten Arm and her Christmas album Another Drifter In the Snow with yet another quite Dodo-ish experience. I don’t know if this is another mid-life crisis consequence but Mann has decided to turn everything she has played on The Forgotten Arm down and throw away her electric guitar. So, her new effort called @#%&*! Smilers is a pure pop album, and how fun it can be to a long term Aimee Mann fan, indeed. On an interview with Billboard she has stated: “there's no electric guitar at all, which you weirdly don't miss. It's kind of this all-keyboard situation, which is great. It's an interesting amalgamation of sounds.” And she has apparently altered her band a bit when she explains: “I formed a band that was perfect for this project and stuck with it”. What you hear most on Smilers is synthesizers and piano. It’s also Mann’s most minimal work to date for she’s probably haven’t thought about bringing up a hit like “Save Me” (Magnolia soundtrack) or “Humpty Dumpty” (Lost In Space) but the truth is nothing actually sounds out of place and bad on Smilers. Synthesizers start from the first track (one of the album’s best) “Freeway” as Aimee Mann sings the first chorus “You Got A Lot Of Money But You Can’t Afford the Freeway”, the synths sound even arcade-game on the beautiful “Borrowing Time”. She believes they mostly sound like The Cars but they pretty much sound like Aimee Mann. It all almost goes in the very direction until the marvelous closer “Ballantines”, a wonderful collaboration with Sean Hayes (a San Francisco singer/songwriter) with a cool narrow voice who also takes responsibility of the missing saxophone with his mouth. Despite the short length, it’s easily Smilers’ best to offer. Everybody loves a happy ending, especially when it’s a firm pop songwriter like Aimee Mann. Smilers fails to reach The Bachelor: Or the Last Remains Of Dodo summits and its mostly about mediocre tunes and Mann's indifferent (yet cool) vocals. But at least, she has enough guts to stay where she is. And yes, I'm talking about Madonna! I don't even want to write about her new disaster Hard Candy.
Download Aimee Mann & Sean Hayes - Ballantines (3.01 MB)

TheRockHardTimes.net

There has been various kinds of similar music search engines on the net but TheRockHardTimes.net looks more packaged and more comprehensive. You can also easily add it to your browser's search engines as well. The cool thin about it is that it brings all the open-source information it has into one page. That includes released albums and EPs, tour info, links, photos, review links, lyrics and tabs (not always available) among many other features. They have called it somewhere between IMDB and Wikipedia in music and I found it quite interesting. If you cannot find your favorite artist, you can login and start out from the scratch and create a page yourself. Will do!

Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks - Real Emotional Trash

You can never escape your past, can you? Whether it was glorious or dismal, it’s always like a tight rope around your neck. Stephen Malkmus have walked on Pavement for a while, now he’s driving recklessly in the street. And his band couldn’t make it to something bigger like The E Street Band, The Bad Seeds or The Innocent Criminals, but The Jicks have been good loyal hangouts for him. Malkmus returns in shape with a Real Emotional Trash. Face the Truth was an eclectic plate, full of taste but no direction and it was highly acclaimed. And who could not love a teen alt-rock track like “Baby C’mon” with such a breath taking video? But Malkmus returns big this time and The Jicks have fulfilled the dream of play-what-you-want-to here. There are no limits to where a song should precisely end and when it should go on chorus. There are in fact some real-time shifts in special points of the tracks that act as energy pills all through the album. Like the precious one you hear on “Dragonfly Pie” as Malkmus goes “Can’t Be What You Ought to be, Gotta Be What You Wanna Be, Take It With Pride and Like A Dragonfly, Dragonfly wants a piece of pie, he is so strong, out” which itself is a sweet rotation and then the drums revolves 360 degrees around itself with “shake me off the knife because I want to go home”. Real Emotional Trash is a fine mix of 90s alt-rock and grunge, they’re more in place and in time than they were on Face the Truth. You don’t hear any electronic effects anymore. “Cold Son” is a pure alternative track without a help from anywhere. The cool thing about Stephen Malkmus’ voice is that it’s just so ordinary and indifferent unlike what you mostly hear on rock and roll bands. Closer to all Pavement albums than any other Malkmus solo, more cohesive in production and more melodic in sound, more rock ‘n roll and stylish and braver and more daring than any previous effort, Real Emotional Trash is easily Malkmus’ best work to date. There really is nothing wrong with a track like “Baltimore”. Stephen flutters his feelings indifferently without trying to receive everyone’s attention around, he’s relying on his coolness this time. He’s not in any rush, that’s why the self-titled track “Real Emotional Trash” stretches out for 10 minutes. He’s sparing out all the details more patiently.

Download Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks - Dragonfly Pie (5.89 MB)

Top 10 Elliott Smith Songs

I had to skip too many of my beloved Elliott songs to make this top 10 list. But anyway here are my most beloved ones. (only reflects personal opinion)


10 Everybody Cares, Everybody Understands
09 Division Day
08 Say Yes
07 Between the Bars
06 Happiness
05 Bled White
04 Pretty (Ugly Before)
03 Son Of Sam
02 Stupidity Tries
01 Waltz #2

updated on 13 Oct 2009

Fuck Buttons - Street Horrrsing: The Beginning Of All Things To End

Street Horrrsing is not an easy album to cope with. As a matter of fact, planet earth’s fatal doom in an endless stream of scream and noise cannot have a brighter sound. Fuck Buttons' sound is self-explanatory. Following the media interest in the band’s 7” of “Bright Tomorrow” the Buttons (lol) decidedly took the risk for such a tough choice. I cannot label this 6 piece record new-noise, nor electronic, nor noise-rock, nor anything else, only the phrase “experimental noise” can fit in. It could easily be the soundtrack to an apocalyptic repulsive documentary on the fate of human kind. It starts out with soothing yet enigmatic “Sweet Love And Planet Earth”. The terrifying noise slowly emerges as you still have high hopes this is just an intro to the main complication. Almost 5 minutes into the first track (more than enough time for Madonna and Justin Timberlake to save the world) and the noise aimlessly shatters but never bursts into something else, and then the screams begin: so much more dismal and haunting than what you hear on any black metal album by Cradle of Filth. It travels all the way from the background to a higher layer but never reaches the surface. Honestly, I couldn’t figure out what the man is screaming about, but no, you won’t have to know. Even if he’s singing Nat King Cole’s “When I Fall In Love”, you won’t get a different impression. In fact, the very “apocalypse now” formula stretches out through the whole disk. But that’s not all. When we reach “Ribs Out” the haunted drum-machine starts out its engine for tribal loops that lingers all through the disk, the shortest song on this list contains wild animals effects (or who knows what they are) that echo and then suddenly scream, that was just a break for the noise to return and this module seems to be everlasting, the repeating hooks on guitar, the apocalyptic screams, the tribal drum-machine. When we reach “Bright Tomorrow” aliens re-attack, therefore there’s a get-ready electronic as a siren. Judging by the title, you think the story is finally coming to a happy ending, as you hear the victorious keyboard. Shall we dance the dawn of glory away? Negative! The earth is no place for humans anymore (unless my whole impression turns out to be wrong and we inhabit another planet) it’s exactly on 4:00 that the noise comes back. Too late! Do not underestimate Pitchfork and similar other media’s attention and rating on this work (8.6 out of ten). But, there’s an overwhelming majority that cannot easily deal with Street Horrrsing. They somehow expected something more colorful and rhythmic. Fuck Buttons simply don’t belong to that planet.

Song Surgery: "Waitin' For A Superman" By The Flaming Lips

This song is a fine example of my country’s (Iran) ritual beliefs. And I know the problem is not limited to my country, it’s vaster than anyone imagines. Inside, we all depict a superman for ourselves. Through all the hardships, we try to lay our burdens down on someone. Does this super-human exist? Or is he only in our religious beliefs and comic books? Nietzsche believed in such a tremendous power in his book “Also Spoke Zarathustra” (read about it on my blog) as a human being called “Ubermensch” (or overman, overhuman or superhuman). He brings this creature into the story like: “the lightning that is portended by the silence and raindrops of a travelling storm cloud; or the sun's rise and culmination at its midday zenith; or a man traversing a rope stationed above an abyss, moving away from his uncultivated animality and towards the Ubermensch.” I still don’t believe in such a creature but I hope it exists. He’s probably there all through the way but somehow we’re unable to see it, He might be God himself.

It’s really shocking but fascinating to find out what in reality lies beneath the idea of a song. We sometimes go deep and deeper into a song’s meaning and make something unreachable and intricate it as much as we can (and how some of us really love to do it! Especially all those Tool fans out there, hello!) But when we come to realize the real story behind the song most of us get disappointed. I don’t belong to that galaxy, though. Flaming Lips “Waitin’ for a Superman’” is truly best thing the Lips have done in terms of songwriting and performance (See my Top 10 Flaming Lips songs if you were interested). That’s why you see this song being put in the original tracklisting of The Soft Bulletin twice (just like “Race For The Prize”). There’s one at its place and one remix which to me, the remix makes more sense. With breath-taking orchestration, superb soothing harmonic piano, the normal verse-chorus-verse routine of a typical pop song (yet extraordinary) together with Wayne Coyne’s weary soulful voice, “Waitin’ For A Superman” is bound to become exquisitely addicting and mature. It’s a bit far from the Lips’ general otherworldliness, they’re down on the ground but still there’s always ways to take wings and fly away.
The story behind the song is simple and melancholic, this is the true story written by this user from songmeanings.com: “This song was inspired by a conversation Wayne Coyne had with his brother during the time before his father passed away. His father was very ill and slowly dying and Wayne's brother asked Wayne if he was doing ok, or if things were "getting heavy". Wayne thought things were already "as heavy as they could be" but realized his brother was letting him know that it would get worse when their dad does eventually pass away. A beautiful, beautiful song with a gorgeous melody written by Steven Drozd” See? That’s how the main idea is coming from. The lyrics to all Soft Bulletin songs are labeled philosophical, some truly are (“The Spark that Bled”) and some not necessarily (“Buggin’”) but the album as a whole is one of the 90s decade’s best. Now continuing on “Waitin’ For A Superman” despite that sad story behind the music, everyone can claim to have different conclusions out of it. Obviously the song is NOT about superman, it’s more about human beings themselves when they reach their hands out for help from an outside source. But my personal point is, if God exists and is almighty and needless to all the being, he will not waste his time creating a needy creature that will consequently become desperate to face the world around him and wait for God to solve all his problems. God (which later on this song we’ll realize that he fails to play superman) DOES exist but he has created the nature thus mathematics for his beings to discover and unsolve what they had previously referred to as mystery. But his Superman is not God: “Tell everybody waiting for Superman that they should try to hold on best they can. He hasn't dropped them, forgot them or anything. It's just too heavy for Superman to lift” This superman is unable to lift what people are expecting him to. Maybe he’s as old as Wayne Coyne’s father who seemed to have the weight of the world on his shoulder on his death bed. But is it really the weight of the world Coyne is talking about? “Is it getting heavy?”, “is it overwhelming to use a crane to crush a fly?” or it’s simply the illness pain or is it something more philosophic than that. Should we go that far? Or should we stick to the undeniable fact that Wayne Coyne states: even your dream’s superman is not that tough and strong to vanish all the hardships you’re going to suffer from in your life. When we lay all our burdens down on someone stronger and thus blaming everything on him (God) we’re actually “using a crane to crush a fly” which we could overcome that ourselves and somehow that trauma was not that intricate and every time we encounter those hardships we’re expecting the superman to "lift the sun into the sky" for us so that we can see the right path and select the real solution and that’s not a good recommendation. So all we have to do is “hold on the best we can” because Superman exists and has not forgotten about his people but he’s just unable to what’s not meant to be done: a miracle. I think that’s the general idea behind this magnificent song, that even Superman is limited to this world, therefore he cannot do miracles. And miracles simply don’t exist.
Anyway, if you have a different opinion on this song, feel free to share it with me. This song has depicted an imprecise picture while going a bit deeper into its (somehow) unintentional beauty so enjoyable and sweet, but above it all, it’s only a song and if it was not performed and mixed this beautifully no one would have the tendency towards its meaning. I’m gonna put the remix version for you to download that I think is much better and firmer than the original one.

Download The Flaming Lips - Waitin' For A Superman (5.97 MB)

Winki Roundup: Last Shadow Puppets/No Age/The Microphones/Atlas Sound

Arctic Monkey’s singer and songwriter Alex Turner joins Rascals’ Miles Kane in result of a touring friendship and decides to throw out an album together under the name of Last Shadow Puppets. Well, to me it sounds like an Arctic Monkeys tribute to Zorro. With a little help from the 22-piece London Metropolitan Orchestra, all you get is a horse riding experience Alex Turner style and you don’t even have to be amazed by the model in the cover art, it’s derived from Michelangelo Antonioni’s classic masterpiece Blow Up and it cannot relate to what you hear on The Age Of Understatement under any circumstances. This 12 piece LP despite its obvious potentials is melodically hopeless; I couldn’t even pick a favorite. A genuine must-be-understated!

No Age’s Nouns is simply everything you always wanted to hear about noise but were afraid to buy! Earning a shocking rate of 9.2 from Pitchfork does not come that easy (sometimes) as the Lost Angeles band comes up with their first full length (after their Weirdo Rippers EP that received positive waves and some other EPs) the album gets more melodic and structured as the track numbers increase. If your blood’s Pixies density was lessened during the past years and you were bound to listen to emo (lol) Nouns is the perfect choice for you. According to Pitchfork: “Nouns is a more thoughtful, coherent (and still plenty dirty) version of what No Age began building with all those EPs”.

Download No Age - Teen Creeps (4.99 MB)

Phil Evrum is a man of band names. It’s really hard trying to keep track of what he does while he thinks of a band name e.g. The Microphones starts writing songs and bringing out albums for that name that become widely successful for creative lo-fi songwriting and then thinks about another album under a complete different band name like Mount Eerie and so it goes. The Microphones’ 2001 album The Glow Pt.2 is now remastered with a bonus disk of 20 additional and alternate takes. It’s like a lo-fi analog recorded Neutral Milk Hotel experience that stretches out its psych-pop borders to an extreme experimental level. In case you had missed it 7 years ago, you are now an additional disk rewarded but I think the Glow pt.2 experience is enough itself to be continued by some similar sounds from the very source, but that’s yours.

Download The Microphones - My Roots Are Strong And Deep (2.18 MB)

Deerhunter’s Bradford Cox steps into dream-pop with Atlas Sound. So if you enjoyed Beach House’s Devotion and you’re looking for another ghostly romantic experience, more haunting, less ritual and more textured let the blind lead those who can see but cannot feel. Don’t be confused with the last sentence, that’s just the album title (Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel) The album is somewhere between the soulful yet demon environment of Beach House and haunting Gothic atmosphere of Xiu Xiu but at the same time is heir of none. Let the Blind keeps its distance from Deerhunter’s post-punk and paints it with a more electronic texture. Cox flutters his most colorful inners out, looks like he’s been hallucinating his own realities and nightmares all through his 26 year of unbearable lightness!

Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan - Sunday at Devil Dirt: From the Frying Pan Into the Fire

Mark Lanegan is weary, even wearier than he was two years ago when he collaborated with Isobel Campbell on Ballad Of the Broken Seas. The second Campbell/Lanegan effort is nothing far away from the previous. The good news about such a diverse collaboration is that the music does not have anything to do Belle & Sebastian (Campbell) or Screaming Trees or even Queens Of The Stoneage (Lanegan). Sunday at Devil Dirt sounds more like a Mark Lanegan solo album with Isobel Campbell underground trying desperately to come up the surface. Personally I was so into what they did on 2006’s Ballad Of the Broken Seas, but honestly nothing is happening on Sunday at Devil Dirt. Lanegan’s voice is destined to become Leonard Cohen and sometimes he strikes hard to cover it in dust of ages when he is shivering “Gotta Get Up and Moan” the way Johnny Cash did in his final American recordings. Sunday at Devil Dirt keeps the tranquility of Ballad Of the Broken Seas by eliminating so many melodic elements from it. Maybe the only track that resembles the last album is “Who Built the Road” when their harmonic conjunction is more vivid than anywhere else where Lanegan overcomes Campbell in vocals. Musically, “Come On Over (Turn Me On)” is the best work you hear on Sunday at Devil Dirt, what is not making sense here is the orchestra’s quirky appetite towards making the song a Pierce Brosnan James Bond soundtrack. I still prefer Tina Turner’s “Golden Eye”. No more “Rambling Man” or “Ballad Of Broken Seas” is heard through none of the two’s lungs. When Lanegan is not leaning on Leonard Cohen he becomes an inconvincible Tom Waits. Best is when the two come together hand in hand. “Keep Me In Mind Sweetheart” is a good acoustic example of that. Isobel Campbell fails to sing another “Saturday’s Gone” and falls by the wayside on “Shot Gun Blues”. Even their Pitchfork rates have fallen from 7.2 to 6.3. The reason? Well let me give you my opinion: Just because your exaggerated baritone mouth is so close to the microphone and you’re singing a Beauty and the Beast acoustic love ballad does not mean you’re playing Lee Hazelwood/Nancy Sinatra. You’re simply imitating such a thing, and your first imitation worked out pretty well but you just have risked another time. Singing a simple tune like “Something To Believe” is becoming while it does not add anything up as signature, it’s just a cool acoustic song and if that’s what this duet is about, well-done! A serene breeze that will simply pass your window while you might be cooking in your kitchen or doing something else…

Download Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan - Who Built the Road (3.98 MB)

The Black Keys - Attack & Release: The Keys/Dangermouse Recipe! Fingerlicking & Superb

This common expression of “Saving Rock ‘N Roll” has been used billions of times. By each new rock band emerging, you hear this expression once. Each rock ‘n roll band is saving the rock ‘n roll in their own way. Funny, huh? Remember The Darkness? They were everywhere, they were saving rock ‘n roll, but more visually than anything else. So who’s the murderer here? LCD Soundsystem? Or Britney and Justin Timberlake. A genre simply cannot die unless there’s no one on earth is listening to it. I’m sure there are still people listening to gospel music and how cool is that. So, next! Pete Doherty and Libertines came out and saved punk rock! Sex Pistols’ Johnny Rotten had claimed to have invented it, Blink 182 killed it and Pete Doherty is saving it. Emo is dying everyone, please help! Bullshit. I mean, there should be a label to attach to everything coming out, right? What are Arctic Monkeys saving? Then I heard The Black Keys’ Attack & Release, and now I’m a believer.

Download The Black Keys - Strange Times (5.02 MB)

True rock ‘n roll records are scarce nowadays: with Audioslave R.I.P in mind, Wolfmother was among the few bands who refurnished 70s rock in their own glorious way. This year I have also enjoyed Jack White’s new Raconteurs album Consolers Of the Lonely (read review), and The Black Keys are driving 120mph in the very direction. Collaborating with Danger Mouse (the other half of Gnarls Barkley alongside Cee-Lo), they have also added some trip-hop elements to the project therefore Attack & Release is a complementary to all those innovative rock albums you can easily lay beside your classic Deep Purple vinyl or even Wolfmother and Audioslave. I doubt if I had heard a verse-chorus-verse track as exquisite and heartbreaking as the nostalgic “Oceans And Streams” (probably comes close to Manic Street Preachers “Autumn Song”). At the same time The Black Keys are not trying to stick their head to old school that much, that’s why you hear an alternative rock gem as obscure as “Psychotic Girl”. I think it only takes a jerk-off to stand outcast and wait for Gun ‘N Roses’ new shit. No, Attack & Release is breath taking and unbelievable enough to meet your needs. This is your food, take it and eat it patiently. This is one of those records that do not need repeated listens to get used to and let it grow on you! It’s what RollingStone explains as “A psychedelic hybrid of vintage Southern R&B, brutish British Invasion rock, and country blues that calls to mind race-blurring Seventies badasses like Jim Ford and Tony Joe White”. I hope I can have some high scores on the band website’s game session by killing the nerds but for now my score is hopeless. Again here’s another nomination for This Winki’s 2008 album of the year besides Consolers Of the Lonely. Viva La Black Keys! Forget about the whole Ike Turner / Danger Mouse story you hear almost everywhere. This project is an absolute Keys project with Danger Mouse only in the production line and the background.

The Black Keys Official (very cool design and don't forget to kill all the nerds)
The Black Keys on MySpace

Futurepicenter Is Michael Stipe's Photography Project

Mr. Michael Stipe is not only R.E.M's frontman, he also has an exquisite photography taste and talent. I had visited this website before but I was not aware of its designer until I saw the link on Radiohead's Dead Air Space. Visit Futurepicenter.com for his full archive. The current day's picture is also available for download as wallpapers. I think the spaceman has been too busy for a while to post new photos lately.

Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago: I Am My Mother's Only One. It's Enough

For Emma, Forever Ago is what happens when a musician (particularly a very talented folk one), recently disbanded and depressed locks himself up in a cabin faraway (Wisconsin) for about four months in winter time and starts writing songs in isolation and solitude (Sean Penn’s Into the Wild right?). Justin Vernon went into series of various hallucinations and nostalgias to create some real sound, what you usually don’t hear in Iron & Wine albums. What truly isolates Vernon a.k.a Bon Iver (which as I remember is a false translation of “good winter” in French) is his almost full-time falsetto job that causes sympathetic waves to shiver and harmonize themselves according to Vernon’s voice when he innocently starts out his story with: “I Am My Mother’s Only One, It’s Enough!” For Emma’s work was finished in 2007 but took a little time to come up and make a Pitchfork review and be critically acclaimed.
Sometimes for getting more info on your desired album over the net, you encounter such weird quotes from such trustworthy sources of data. If you go visit allmusic.com’s page for Bon Iver, you’ll be shocked to take a look at the “Influenced by” session: Flaming Lips and Guided By Voices? Alright in a very shady point of view, you can compare Bon Iver to something like Sparklehorse, but Flaming Lips? Yes, Flaming Lips’ Wayne Coyne sometimes sings in his falsetto but they simply inhabit another galaxy(not particularly Milky Way). So if you’re looking for similarities and influences, look elsewhere. MySpace and Virb are better places I guess.

Download Bon Iver - Flume (3.61 MB)

For Emma, Forever Ago is a nine track mixture of innocent sounds, sometimes reminiscent of 70s rock ‘n roll and pop tunes when on low tempo, about isolation, loneliness and sometimes revenge (“The Wolves Act I and II”) with exactly the same moods Justin Vernon has experienced during his cabin stay. In solitude, loved ones look even more far away, so he gently whispers “Someday my pain, someday my pain will mark you, Harness your blame, harness your blame, and walk through” and then reminds himself of the good old memories and beauties by “Can't you find a clue when your eyes are all painted Sinatra blue, What might have been lost”. Most of what you hear on For Emma, Forever Ago is just what he has done in the cabin but some elements have been added later on in a studio in California, no he could not accomplish a track like “For Emma” all alone in his winter shelter!
Bon Iver on Myspace
Bon Iver on Virb

The Kills - Midnight Boom

In almost each band’s career there should be a turning point. Not necessarily to forget about everything they were before, but to bring their sound into a more mature and yet firm structure. Garbage has already done that on their 2002’s Beautifulgarbage! Shirley Manson’s alt-punk attitude suddenly turned into Vibe posters beside Elton John. The Kills are not as huge as Garbage, because all they have ever been and offered was what VV and Hotel have done in their first two post-punk indie works: Keep On Your Mean Side and No Wow. Now what you hear on Midnight Boom is almost what Garbage did on Beautifulgarbage. And the Garbage instances are brought to you only because of the musical similarities between them and The Kills. It’s only that, The Kills are bringing you a better cooler and shorter version of everything. Songs don’t linger on your speakers for more than five minutes urging you to push the “next” button to hear something else. As soon as a song on Midnight Boom stops entertaining, it’s finished. Another advantage over Garbage is that you’re not bound to listen to Shirley Manson’s voice all the time. On the menu, there’s VV and the Hotel, suit yourself. Comparing to previous two, electro vibes is added to the list so that you can enjoy a full electro-punk experience of short and catchy sounds. They have tried to keep everything as minimal and as cool as they can get. I can’t really chose a favorite among the 12 works here, but the more they keep their distance from the past, the better and more cohesive and consistent they become in their sound: “Tape Song”. This innovative and yet experienced approach has proven to be accepted among the fans. The ratings on Amazon shows this perfectly.

Download The Kills - Cheap And Cheerful (3.89 MB)

And yes, sometimes your fans DO want some change, but it’s only when you change according to your own size. That’s when you blend various other elements and genres appropriately to your sound. Midnight Boom mixes pop and art-punk far from something experimental and exaggerated and that’s why they sound becoming. There’s nothing overwhelming about Midnight Boom but the progress and success here lies under immaculate production. In fact, this is one of the main factors that keep this album apart from the other two. Midnight Boom is self explanatory in the title. It’s best heard through midnight parties. Only if the night club can hire a DJ who can extend their songs a little bit to be dance-able for some continual minutes.

MP3Toys: Archive Collectors Are Delighted

Despite its stupid name, MP3Toys can be a magnificent tool for all those music freaks that love to hear music so classified and measured. Everything here is organized and easy to find. Best thing about MP3Toys is the perfect album art collector that finds the best possible related album art to what you’re listening to.

It’s been a week since my Windows Media Player gets sudden strokes at the end of the songs. I have too many other applications on my system so I won't be able to easily refurnish everything right from the scratch. So I turned into some other players like Songbird, iTunes and Winamp. The first two worked extremely slow on my Vista. On Winamp, everything was going fine until the problem with the new skin was revelead, I just couldn’t stand it, and so I searched download.com and found MP3Toys. The drag is the 28 day trial thing. I hope I can get through that some way. Although I was blown away by Winamp’s visualizations and MP3Toys lacks that, the GUI is so easy to use (needs a little getting used to though at the beginning). But it can be a wise choice for all those music listeners.

This Winki's 5 Star Albums: ILLINOISE by SUFJAN STEVENS

60s and 70s were 2 glorious decades for music and everyone is aware of that. But the term “masterpiece” was used more back then. Not because the music quality was somehow better, but because artists were simply fewer! If you decide to start off your music career now in the post-millennium era, there’s a long road to walk and there’s too much you have to put yourself into. Sufjan Stevens has too many positive qualities and quantities all in one place. By having a flexible tuneful voice, playing almost every instrument, exquisite songwriting skills and too many other characteristics, he’s unable to lose! And Illinoise WAS a masterpiece indeed. He started out making an album for each state in America by Greeting From Michigan. Illinoise is the second album in that row covering many historical events from Illinois! (the “E” at the end of the word should remind you of “Noise” which is honestly not what the album is about). Will he accomplish all 50 states or not is not my problem.The album has such scarce artistic references to events such as the UFO case in Highland, The Story of John Wayne Gacy Jr. as well as many others in this long disk that goes on for 74 minutes. I just saw the longest song titles here, I had never heard a song title as long as “The Black Hawk War, or, How to Demolish an Entire Civilization and Still Feel Good About Yourself in the Morning, or, We Apologize for the Inconvenience but You're Going to Have to Leave Now, or, 'I Have Fought the Big Knives and Will Continue to Fight Them Until They Are Off Our Lands!” at least, not for a two minute instrumental track. There was just too much to offer from Illinoise and many songs didn’t make it to the final tracklisting of the album. This made Stevens to release another album later called The Avalanche which only included outtakes and extras from the Illinoise album. There has been too much said on this album and I’m not re-emphasizing on them. But “masterpiece” can be easily labeled on Sufjan Stevens Invites You To: Come On Feel Illinoise. The story behind the cover art is interesting enough. Illinoise stays one of the most loved albums of the millennium decade to me. The concept is mesmerizing , the production is astonishing (many album productions have ruined the work itself, listen to Midlake’s The Trial’s Of Van Occupanther to know what I mean). Illinoise is a triumph as well as an absolute five star and that’s not what I’m saying alone.

Top 10 Stanley Kubrick Films

A man of fewer words and the most eclectic taste in making films. None of Kubrick films looks like another. He has experienced action, romance, comedy, horror, war, violence, epic and he has accomplished them in the best way possible. His collection of films alone is a graceful handpicked selection of both classic and contemporary cinema. There’s still a lot to learn. I have seen all Kubrick films and I thought “Why not write a top 10?” here’s my top 10 Kubrick works, these works probably covers 90% of his whole career.

10 Spartacus (1960) - A memory so far away, an epic tale, still Kubrick style, not a real favorite!
09 Barry Lindon (1975) - An elaborate life depiction rises and falls. Barry Lindon is a man! Or is he?
08 The Killing (1956) - A detective murder story that keeps getting better as it goes. The ending scene is shocking: Gone With the Wind. You are inadvertently on the wrong side. You want the money, too.
07 Lolita (1962) - This wonderful romantic chamber of events on a relationship based and established only as a connection to a better affair is offered without involving in hardcore scenes. Only the spectators who had also seen the version with Jeremy Irons realize the difference (it’s not about Irons, he’s simply brilliant). And Peter Sellers…
06 Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love the Bomb (1964) - If you still don’t believe in Peter Sellers, watch this! Kubrick believed in him, you better just follow.
05 Full Metal Jacket (1987) - War fascism! The first half drives you crazy and keeps you entertained, while the second drags you under an ocean of shit. Vietnam was a mistake! Vietnam in London.
04 Eyes Wide Shut (1999) - There’s only one thing you should do for the rest of your life: FUCK! Kubrick investigates the core and philosophy of a family through the darkest lenses.
03 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) - A philosophical space journey through the depth of limitless universe. Probably a decade ahead of its time in production and visual scenes and spacecraft schemes. This was before E.T and Close Encounter From the Third Kind.
02 The Shining (1980) - America is a hotel, you are invited to discover your inner-ugliness. A timeless masterpiece. Nicholson at his best.
01 A Clockwork Orange (1971) - Best film I have ever seen so far! Kubrick asks a fate-changing question and leaves you alone to answer. He’s not showing you any traces, you have to decide. Out of time and place!

David Byrne Plays the Building!

In an extraordinary experience, Talking Head’s legendary front man David Byrne has come up with such a push-the-music-forward noble idea. Perhaps he’s had enough of all the sounds that come out of guitars and drums and keyboards and saxes! He’s trying to make sounds out of a building, that’s why the project is called “Playing the Building”! According to DavidByrne.com: “Playing the building is a sound installation in which the infrastructure, the physical plant of the building, is converted into a giant musical instrument. Devices are attached to the building structure — to the metal beams and pillars, the heating pipes, the water pipes — and are used to make these things produce sound. The activations are of three types: wind, vibration, striking. The devices do not produce sound themselves, but they cause the building elements to vibrate, resonate and oscillate so that the building itself becomes a very large musical instrument.”

So I guess we already ARE a part of the future. David Byrne collaborated with ambient mastermind Brian Eno (who has worked with Coldplay on their X&Y as well as their new album Viva La Vida) in 2006 on an album called My Life In the Bush Of Ghosts. So, at first glance I had a feeling this is an inspiring project based on that, but then I realized the whole project has been implemented and finalized in 2005 and it blew me away. I need to hear more stuff from Byrne, many people simply know him through his “Like Humans Do” MP3 track for Windows Media Player! (lol)

You can download a three page PDF file on this project here, or perhaps you want to know him better before that. Or perhaps you wanna go have a coffee and read papers.

Songbird 0.5

The open source world! Always had a weakness for this word: open source. I once installed Linux as my primary OS but no way! Back when I worked in a computer company, I wrote programs with PHP and mySQL, all open source. And then came Firefox: the fastest web browser I had experienced, second to none. The race had begun for so long when Mozilla tried to take a further step by introducing an open source media player in the time when Windows Media Player 11 was released and was almost perfect. Except those fellow companions who listen to music through FLAC or OGG files and detest Bill Gates, there were (and still are) two major media players people use: Microsoft’s Windows Media Player and Winamp. The Latter used to be everyone’s favorite just before the big WMP. And I think I’ve forgotten about iTunes, too. Yes let’s put that in the consideration list, I still don’t know how it works on Mac PCs but it works slowly on windows. Okay let’s just skip this.
I just got the new version of Songbird (o.5), it’s been too much time in the experimenting phase I guess, and it’s still slow. I still have no clue if it performs better on Linux systems but that’s how it works on my Vista. Songbird has promised to be the Firefox of all media players. Well, at this stage, it’s a little too far away. But I know they can get through this and the first version is going to be a blast. But for now, I think it’s only its own developers that are urged to use this media player on their systems for testing purposes. I tried hard to get a little taste but the library almost halts on every search (I have a huge music library though, with that in mind). I think the idea of creating Feathers (something like skins elsewhere) at this early stage was a bit dumb but the integration with Hype Machine was a neat thought. I wish them luck and I’m gonna be their first user. Speed it up, guys!

Downlod Songbird 0.5

eBOY - Get Your City LEGOd

I came upon this unbelievable graphic artist called eBoy via a Boing Boing post. If you have the same fantasy as me, check him out. Superb! This is his recent work: LA. He has designed Tokyo, NY, London, Berlin and some other cities as well.

This Winki's Mixtapes vol.1: The Rise Of Hitchhikers

Being too much involved in muxtapes, mixwits and this and that, I just burned out a tape for myself here on This Winki’s. So, guys! Here’s your volume 1. It’s called The Rise Of Hitchhikers! If it tastes good, I’m gonna do more volumes of this stuff. So, Just like any regular mixtape (don’t put it in your cassette player, it might not work. It’s not a rectangle! ) this one has two A and B sides each containing 6 songs. But unfortunately you won’t see any sides here, but anyhow it’s 12 songs! I uploaded them all in one .zip folder! You can burn it, play it on your stereo, drag it on your media player’s library, copy them in your iPod or just send it to recycle bin. They’re all MP3s nothing more. Side A contains more up-beat tunes and side B kinda drags you down, some songs are crazy and some are serious. I used some more feminine material just in case and haha NO you can’t download it track by track! Playing tricky on me, huh? Get out! And Ok, I stop commenting on every track. You had any thought balloons upon your head, share it! No hard feelings if you don’t!

Download: This Winki’s Mixtapes vol.1: The Rise of Hitchhikers (43.78 MB)

Side A:
Spoon “The Way We Get By”
Joanna Newsom “Inflammatory Writ”
Tegan & Sara “I Know I Know I know”
Iron and Wine “The Devil Never Sleeps”
She & Him “Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?”
Devendra Banhart “We All Know”

Side B:
Frente “Pretty Friend”
My Morning Jacket “Sec Walkin’”
Hot Chip “Made In the Dark”
Page France “Pigeons”
Sufjan Stevens “Put the Lights On the Tree”
Billy Bragg ft. Wilco “Ingrid Bergman”

The Offspring's New Single "Hammerhead" Available For Free

They released a 32 min album in 2004 (Splinter) that didn’t do well that much, they even released their greatest hits collection afterwards, so everyone thought they bid farewell. Apparently, The Offspring is coming back with a new album called Rise and Fall, Rage And Grace! Yes. And they have provided you with their latest single “Hammerhead” for free on their official website’s frontpage. By hearing Weezer’s new single “The Greatest Man Alive” on Stereogum and wondering why they have survived this far, listening to a more structural punk-rock band with better guitars and so much louder vocals (Dexter Holland) can be a pain killer to all those punk rock fans. Maybe The Offspring has gone too commercial with their 2001’s Conspiracy Of One but at least they do not suck on the same pipe Weezer does! Now about the song itself, you won’t be surprised at all, it’s just the routine Offspring except for the drums that don’t beat the way they used to. The only thing that surprised me is Dexter Holland’s voice, this guy can still scream like their early days. Offspring fans will be absolutely delighted to know their favorite front man is apparently not getting old at all.

MP3 Download: The Offspring - Hammerhead

Death Cab For Cutie - Narrow Stairs

Yes, I admit I’ve been fooled once more when I got a fake copy of Death Cab For Cutie’s Narrow Stairs. But I think what I have recently got is the real deal. I don’t think the band Velveteen had anything to do with this unfortunate propaganda but inadvertently I started to think about them for a moment: The only thing that makes a band dedicate their whole career working as a band that only sounds like another superior band is money. Velveteen’s both music and their front man’s voice resembles nothing but Death Cab and their front man Benjamin Gibbard, pity I guess. But anyway, the hype is over and I have the real deal in my hands: Narrow Stairs.

Although Death Cab For Cutie has started their career as an indie act, they turned out pretty successful. Their 2005 Plans went platinum and got nominated for a grammy award as well. It was almost by the release of their 2004 Transatlanticism that they took media attention and some fans still recall it as band’s best work to date. Ben Gibbard has proved his superfluous potentials as a leading man both as a songwriter and a vocalist (that includes working for some other projects such as The Postal Service, Figurine and solos). I personally feel so close to him out of nowhere because of his voice resemblance to mine, he pronounces every word precisely (while not stressing on every possible octave the way Rob Thomas does) and his voice reflects uncertainty, tenderness and affection the way the songs urges him to, he’s the right man at the right place.

MP3 Downloads:
Death Cab For Cutie - I Will Possess Your Heart
Death Cab For Cutie - Grapevine Fires

The brave thing about Narrow Stairs is when it does not follow any other previous Death Cab work’s lead. Death Cab is not trying to stack up to anything. The first eight-plus minute single of the album “I Will Possess Your Heart” is a burning proof to that. The 4 minute intro is a warm up to the next big Death Cab thing, I still wish this song was the first track; “Bixby Canyon Bridge” could be placed almost anywhere else. The other tracks simply don’t extend themselves like “I Will Possess Your Heart”. “No Sunlight” is a simple rock song in style of “The Sound Of Settling”, and my other favorites include “Talking Bird” and “Grapevine Fires”, two complete pop works that reach higher picks thanks to Ben Gibbard’s soothing voice that he takes advantage from to picture some vivid lifelines of everyone. According to RollingStone: “Gibbard has sung about an incriminating kiss in a photo booth, discovering forgotten pictures of an ex in his glove compartment, and an especially bleak Kodak moment from a doomed marriage.” But I honestly disagree with RollingStone on the album being “as dark as anything the band has done” in their 4 star review. On Narrow Stairs in general, Death Cab For Cutie plays its own pre-Plans routine, there’s nothing as overwhelming as Plans hits such as “Crooked Teeth”, “Soul Meets Body” and there’s no full-acoustic shaker like “I Will Follow You Into The Dark”, instead they talk on envy and overtaking others in love affairs as Gibbard confesses: “You Look So Defeated Lying There In Your New Twin Sized Bed” or when he denounces his inners more in “Pity And Fear” but still they strike to keep the balance and not let go of everything with a song like “Talking Bird”. You gotta spend some time with Narrow Stairs. Though it’s not a career change for Death Cab, you are not going to yearn for Plans or Transatlanticism or other earlier stuff. Narrow Stair is more bandly than others (lol)!

Microsoft Live SkyDrive

One of the best things Microsoft does is looking for the best solutions around among his fellow rivals, conceiving the idea; simulating and implementing their projects in their own way and then challenging the original think tanks back with such firm advertising. Of course that’s just old news about Microsoft. But the reason I never hated Bill Gates and Microsoft, was that they always kept the end-user happy! Following many others’ lead, SkyDrive is the 5 gigabyte solution for online storage. Like 4shared and MediaFire (already discussed) Microsoft has offered its users an overwhelming place for storing their private, public and shared data. Just like other services, you can create your own folders, upload your files and also give limited accessibility to them. Upload size limit is 50MBs. Comparing to MediaFire, Microsoft still needs to catch up. File Sizes need to be doubled, the uploading progress bar must be shown to the user (instead of offering a game while uploading) and the storage must be unlimited. Still a long way to go but I think it’s a good news for all Windows Live users.

My Morning Jacket - Evil Urges

My Morning Jacket can sound like too many things at the same time. According to their last album Z they can sound like The Flaming Lips (“Wordless Chorus”), or a very noisy rock band (“What A Wonderful Man”), they can bring their songs to an end with a very Pink Floyd-ish method while the main song is kind of reggae (“Off the Record”), or they can even be too psychedelic (“Into the Woods”). But you know what? All along this magnificent album, they were tightly My Morning Jacket, and the album got placed in so many lists, as well as Amazon’s best alternative rock albums of the decade so far. Well, it took three years of Zzzz for all My Morning Jacket Fans to finally hear something new from their Kentucky-based indie act. And I have to say Evil Urges, their 5^th studio effort is by far the most eclectic diverse recording they have accomplished as they step into the second decade of their musical career. Not only the band experiments almost anything they could possibly play, but Jim James is somehow experimenting his own voice, too. He extends out his falsetto to sing the whole self-titled track based on that (the one you only heard at the end of “Wordless Chorus” in Z). I confess I slowly became a fan from Z (It’s still on my iPod in fact) but this album (Evil) needs repeated listens in order to stack up to that, but when it does, it becomes very addicting and pleasing indeed. If Z was My Morning Jacket’s best at their psychedelic pop route, Evil Urges is like a tribute to their songs from other various artists! Sounds more like a mixtape than an album to me. But does it really matter? Hell, no. As long as it’s only quality music being heard through your home stereo, it’s jolly fine. But there has definitely been a great risk upon releasing such a thing: My Morning Jacket may lose some of its fans due to their being nothing like Z-ish current existence.

MP3 Download: My Morning Jacket - I'm Amazed

“Highly Suspicious” sounds like Prince collaborating with Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds and I’m still suspicious whether it’s really Jim James singing in “Sec Walking’”. “Thank You Too” is an R&B song ladies and gentlemen and I found the lyrics so boy band. I think this is the most out-of-nowhere track among the 14, maybe this is an appreciation method for Jim James to someone (who apparently likes Westlife and Back Street Boys). But, anyway the rest of the work is by any surprise what someone expected from a firm band like MMJ. “Librarian” is simply awesome; “Touch Me I’m Going to Scream Pt2” features some great 80s pop drum, therefore extremely nostalgic and pure. I really hate track by track reviews and I think I'm going to stop now. But if you were a real fan of Z and you got disappointed by the first listen to Evil Urges, play it again and don’t even look at the cover art, because unlike Z it has nothing to do with what you hear in Evil Urges (probably only “Highly Suspicious”). Again “I’m Amazed”, MMJ works are such inevitable growers, how is that?

Nine Inch Nails - The Slip: A Band That Keeps On Giving

The countdown had already started when I downloaded the free single “Discipline” and wrote about it right away. For all those not-so-serious fans, if they have looked in the properties of the MP3 file you could see the message “Go to www.nin.com May 5” (and all those real fans know how NIN enjoys playing games). I watched my RSS reader on May 5th hour to hour and saw the countdown go like 6 hours, 4 hours, and 2 hours and then there was Halo 27 and wow! This band has become such a giver, boy! Here you are the new Nine Inch Nails thing absolutely free and Trent Reznor also has appreciated his fans support during all these years with a few lines:” as a thank you to our fans for your continued support, we are giving away the new nine inch nails album one hundred percent free, exclusively via nin.com. The music is available in a variety of formats including high-quality MP3, FLAC or M4A lossless at CD quality and even higher-than-CD quality 24/96 WAVE. Your link will include all options - all free. all downloads include a PDF with artwork and credits. For those of you interested in physical products, fear not. we plan to make a version of this release available on CD and vinyl in July. Details coming soon.”

And how cool it is to be awarded and thanked by downloading a free album. Well, I still have no clue why I am thanked and appreciated but anyway, I got the album in the high quality MP3 format. The Flip is by far the shortest NIN halo ever, ten tracks is all you get as a gift. Please accept it man. “Discipline” was only one in ten. But how does it sound? I decided to skip explaining my impressions and thoughts in sentences format and so I chose words to describe what I hear, OK? By the way if you haven’t downloaded this BIG bonus thing (which is like an EP that goes on a little bit more but God bless Reznor anyhow and why the hell I’m being ungrateful?) go and download it now.

999,999: the intro, serene, pads, ambient, short, rising, get ready, only one less than 1,000,000, Reznor enters and throws a line like “what did I slip into?”; 1,000,000: first two drum beats reminds me of Manic Street Preachers’ “Empty Souls” but so what? Layered, restless, NIN vibes, the guitar adds up, noisy, Reznor feels a million miles away but he doesn’t feel anything at all; Letting You: The starting drum beats a bit resemble “The Collector” only with a higher tempo, vocals old NIN style probably “Burn”, repeating chorus, yeah “The Collector”, noises add up, Reznor grows angrier, so industrial, you couldn’t hear this on Year Zero, no! But maybe With Teeth’s left-out, Reznor and Lord know for sure; Discipline: great single, the vocals start is as innovating as it gets, split into half, goes on high tempo then descends and tries to catch up, Reznor needs your help because once he starts he cannot help himself, piano on the second verse so disturbing and so NIN; Echoplex: Sounds so electronic, the guitar adds up, then the vocals, confessional storytelling, yeah, quite electronic with a cool cool guitar, hey I really like this one, a backing guitar replaces, Reznor weeps; Head Down: what? Sounds quite different and old, so 90s NIN style, Head Down or Like A Hole? The Drums sound greasy and dirty, distortions come haphazardly, destructive, 245kbps but sounds like 64kbps, an ambient background shows up, now it’s a bit Fragile, sinks down, a sudden heart stroke, not a favorite, closing ten seconds are unnecessarily silent; Lights in the Sky: down, piano-driven, tranquil, Reznor almost whispering, he plays the darkest pianos ever, slipping away in peace, heard this stuff before, a warm safe place, Still, a lot of these stuff could be heard on Still – some ten halos earlier, nothing ever happens; Corona Radiata: The longest thing here, instrumental number one, ambient and dark, after a long time an echo adds up, perhaps year zero is coming, a very vague guitar in the background, wait! It’s coming nearer, OMG! Apocalypse now! Flee! A gigantic wave approaches, animals scream, red bats with teeth, haunting, I can hear children cry; The Four of Us are Dying: instrumental number two, in fact the last instrumental thing here, Ghosts? No! Electronic but so apocalyptic, is this the end? Cool I suppose, I like it, rises patiently; Demon Seed: Reznor returns, very catchy drums, the pad adds up, then the guitar, Reznor starts whispering, the thing goes on till 02:00 where he grows verbally, backing vocals, good! A distorted guitar as Reznor keeps on whispering, another heart stroke, the drums in the background resembles Prodigy’s “Narayana”, okay that’s it.

Following Ghosts, the album contains cover arts for each song, only in a more abstract method in a PDF file, make sure to check them out. They look so enigmatic but probably don’t go too deep. Now that you have experienced a completely free album by one of the biggest bands in the world (and you should probably wait for a similar Radiohead thing soon!) you can feel the revolutionary vibes growing even larger as Metallica is talking about releasing their new album the way NIN and Radiohead did. Stay tuned for more interesting news everyday as the music industries are vanishing into thin air. And cool that can be! I'll talk about these stuff later on.

Winki Roundup: M83/Ruby Suns/Drive-By Truckers/Flight Of the Conchords

Drive By Truckers have been simulating and developing Southern rock for a couple of years now, and Brighter Than Creations Dark – their fresh release is no exception. An acoustic start like “Two Daughters And A Beautiful Wife” comes as sterilized as any country and blues thing and then the real deal begins. I personally prefer the country side of Drive By Truckers when then get down on a wonderful 2 minute track as simple as “Bob” but I guess that’s just not what they are about. Their music is better described in “The Righteous Path”, a very Bryan Adams style rock ‘n roll soulful work or a more Mick Jagger-ish tune like“3 Dimes Down”. What’s fun about Brighter Than Creation’s Dark is the duration. The Southern rock ‘n roll goes on for 75 minutes and if you’re attending anything live by the Drive-By's, don’t hesitate because they’re pretty good at it.

MP3 Download: Drive By Truckers - Bob

For all the music folks who enjoyed the way Gruff Rhys (Super Furry Animals) experienced the glory synthesizer years of the 80s earlier this year with Neon Neon, the guys in M83 are continuing that path in their own way. This valuable experience of Saturdays=Youth is a more psychedelic approach to that decade. This album is recorded with Ken Thomas (Sigur Ros, Sugar Cubes, Cocteau Twins, Suede) and according to the product description the front-man Anthony Gonzales tends towards his own youth and brings back his own memories.

MP3 Download: M83 - Up!

The Ruby Suns play Panda Bear’s soul in a more outlandish manner, you can travel outside where you are and experience different sounds and styles, all in a very airy psychedelic fashion. I searched a lot for this album; it was hugely praised by Pitchfork. Of course I was not blown away but I was not disappointed either. At least you travel, but not in an international style you used to hear on Pink Martini, those stuff are just too formal to be compared to the Ruby Suns. Man! These guys are experiencing. Pink Martini were just… performers.

MP3 Download: The Ruby Suns - Adventure Tour

And last but not the list, Flight Of the Conchords come out with their first full-length debut after winning a Grammy award for their first EP, The Distant Future. This is an album for everyone I can easily say. You almost hear anything hear, cool hip-hop, funk, acoustic, humorous lyrics and in general, their self-titled debut is all about entertainment from New Zealand. The whole band is based on a HBO TV series under the very name. The duet has been praised in various awards and other places and all they offer to you is pure fun, comedy music and entertainment. Sexists! Robots! French Rhymes! Booms! And Bowie!

MP3 Download: Flight Of the Conchords - Inner City Pressure

On Pitchfork Rates

Pitchfork Media is not kidding anyone. Since some 10 years ago when they gained control over indie music reviews and took giant media attentions, they are just rocking in their own free world. They brutalize everyone they want and keep their own favorites on high summits according to their editor’s will. Well, I have nothing against that personally. It does not concert anyone or anything if you just like to harshly criticize something or not. It’s all so proper until you start to rate items based on personal ideas. Frankly, I am really pleased with most of the votes and ratings. But there are in fact, ratings that bring surprises and sometimes shocks. You hear some real mediocre albums getting a “9” rate while some of your most loved albums getting a very low rate. Pitchfork is strong enough to alter the way you think about your favorite band’s music. If you still like Tool’s 2001 Lateralus, you better check out its rate on Pitchfork (okay you don’t have to check, it’s 1.9!) and if you still believe there’s at least one guy at Pitchfork who enjoys the music of Jet's Shine On, you better throw your hope away boy! They have just put a youtube video clip of a monkey drinking from his own urine and how can you translate that thing? Zero? Radiohead is the most praised band on Pitchfork I suppose, I saw the ratings on Kid A and OK Computer and I was blown away by the digit 10 I saw there. Well, I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed Kid A and the whole experiment, but 10 means immaculacy! And maybe that’s Radiohead’s real rate there. There are, in fact bands that will never be paid attention to from Pitchfork. They never liked Mars Volta or The Vines or Panic At the Disco. No matter what they have accomplished, they never get a high rate (and that’s okay, lol). I just couldn’t believe Daniel Johns and Paul Mac’s Dissociatives project got only 2.5 while I had chosen that album as my 2005’s album of the year in my previous blog and that was in fact my first virtual award to an album and I got so disappointed, that brilliant album did not deserve that low rate. And so this thing goes on. The Field’s From Here We Go Sublime gets a 9 and my eyes are wide open. Statistics show the rate of 7 is the majority on Pitchfork. Most albums that shook the entertainment world, all those Grammy and VMA winners and multi-platinum sellers like Green Day’s American Idiot and U2’s How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb could not do much good in Pitchfork and Nirvana’s Nevermind couldn’t step further than place no.6 in the best albums of the 90’s list as Sonic Youth’s Daydream Nation gets chosen as the best album of the 80s decade! Some ratings are irrational and out of blues I think. But here are some tricks if you want to get your album a 9 rate on Pitchfork:

Well, Firstly if you have a full load of melodies and guitar/keyboard techniques on your album and you have high hopes based on that, Pitchfork is where you just WON'T fit. Go find yourself somewhere else like Stereogum or RollingStone, k? You can also put your song on Hype Machine but Pitchfork is not about melodies. If you disagree, take a look at how it has rated all albums by The Strokes. Isn’t their First Impressions Of Earth their most melodic record to date? Yes, and thanks but no thanks.

Secondly, be weird but don’t stay weird! Weird is what you hear on Joanna Newsom’s Ys (rated 9.4) and how wonderful that album is (such a grower), I have reviewed this album before and you can read it later on. But I’m sure if Newsom comes up with another even semi-Ys thing, it will be badly brutalized by Pitchfork.

Thirdly, just because you matter too much don’t expect to be someone on Pitchfork, I guess that’s what indie music is just about, the fabulous unknowns. Bono! Go away man, find yourself another joint.

Forth, your sound can remind people of someone else, but don’t you ever let Pitchfork find out you are willing to BE that someone. You think Creed has a place here? No, but Panda Bear does, they DO sound like a very far away Brian Wilson, but are they really playing the Beach Boys? Hell, no.

And Fifth, you have to be lucky to be heard, man! That’s all you gotta do. You might have lots of potentials and stand on your own as an artist, but when you’re not heard and recognized through Pitchfork, you’re merely a citizen of your own country. Hang around or bid farewell, we don’t mind!

And after all this fuss, surfing Pitchfork for your favorite albums and noticing the rates can be lots of fun indeed, you are either blown away or hugely disappointed. In fact, I cannot listen to Tool anymore knowing they are hated by Pitchfork! (Joking of course) But when there are all these great indie bands around, who needs to listen to Tool and who needs to play static and frozen? The funniest part is when they deny one’s existence thoroughly, just go search for Norah Jones on Pitchfork, you’ll get some results but can you find an album review there? Hehe. Does she even exist?