CraveTV Guiness World Record Attempt

Hey, check out this short doc that I may have mixed:

Also, check out that view count! WOW!

Final episode of Serial

Can't wait!

Tried to embed the video here but it was too wide for the column.

The top 10 Toronto music videos of 2014

The top 10 Toronto music videos of 2014

Pretty good list, I might even watch these at some point

Axel F

I keep going back and forth as to whether this should be three or four stars. Thoughts?

About Dolby Atmos

About Dolby Atmos from Dolby Laboratories on Vimeo.

I have been neglecting my sound engineer duties and have yet to see something in Atmos. Yes, shame, I know. I think I've seen two movies in the last two years and they weren't the kind of movies that would have benefited from the pan-through array.

DJ Earworm Mashup - United State of Pop 2014 (Do What You Wanna Do)

Annual pop mashup greatness

Steve Albini on the surprisingly sturdy state of the music industry

Great long read, from a keynote address

T-Pain: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert

"WHAT? He can sing?" - most people

AV Club - Set List with Danny Elfman

What a great interview. Some interesting bits re: his songwriting process.

Danny Elfman on Oingo Boingo, film scores, and the Beatles almost ruining Batman

Exploring The Epic Chess Match Of Our Time

Great short doc about Garry Kasparov vs. Deep Blue

Some N64 link bait from Vice

THE WEIRD, WEIRD GAMES OF THE NINTENDO 64

N64 article? I'm hooked!

Tanya Tagaq wins Polaris Prize

The gala was a total shit show, I turned it off after about 30 minutes. The performances I watched weren't great and the host was awful.

Here's something nice though - Tanya Tagaq won the prize. Check this out, it's mind blowing.

There is a nice wrap on blogto. Great piece.

Bowie, Eno and Visconti record Warszawa

This is the greatest video of all time. Lots going on here if you're familiar with Low.

Footage of Bowie, Eno & Visconti recording "Warszawa" (well, sort of) h/t @andyzax https://t.co/vykwsEAKnX

— Bowiesongs (@bowiesongs) September 9, 2014

The End of Gatekeeping: The Extinction Burst of Gaming Culture

Great analysis of the recent unpleasantness in the "gamer" community:

The End of Gatekeeping: The Extinction Burst of Gaming Culture

Jessy Lanza / Majid Jordan

I completely missed this Jessy Lanza record last year. Co-written with the Junior Boys' Jeremy Greenspan, it's a great addition to the Canadian electro-R&B boom we're currently experiencing:

Production duo Majid Jordan have also caught my attention... They co-produced that hot Drake track and now have an EP of their own. Also recommended.

Blogger app

This app only seems to let me share to Google+.

I'm not really interested in doing that regularly so I'm not sure how long I'll be using this.

Can't seem to link anything either.

Spoon - They Want My Soul

I am very excited about the forthcoming Spoon album.  Produced by Dave Fridmann. 

I haven't figure out how to link stuff on this app yet so this serves partly as a test post.

Star Trek stabilized mashup

I don't think I will ever not watch any sort of Star Trek mashup video.

Also check out this subreddit.

[via boingboing]

Saint Pepsi - Fiona Coyne

Adam recommended this one to me just last week. Great tune. This one is more Chillwave than Vaporwave. Neither of those are real genres though right?

2014 Polaris Short List announced

List here.

I see a list like this and I think - how could it be anything but Arcade Fire? Then they go and pick something else entirely. I dunno. It's one of the best records of the past few years. I'll have to listen to the bunch of them again or for the first time and compare, but it's a tall order.

Weird Al's eight days of videos

Yep, I have 8 brand new music videos, and I’ll be premiering one EVERY SINGLE DAY starting July 14! #8videos8days #MandatoryFun

— Al Yankovic (@alyankovic) June 29, 2014

Sort of like Hanukkah for Comedy! This is going to be great. His last album for his major label contract, which I think I read somewhere. I wonder if this will make it tougher for him to secure the rights for parodies. Or will it be easier since he can now live off the brand he's built up and he will be freed from some of the major label politics.

Being lazy & busy & lazy

Well, not actually being lazy.

Just busy, very busy.

That and also this: a couple months ago I added some extra security to my Google account. Surprisingly this has made me lazier in cases of dashing off quick posts about videos etc. at work.

Also this: I love NewsBlur. It's a great replacement for Google Reader, I've become quite attached to it. But it's a bit tougher to share links from there, as it requires an extra step. See the pattern here?

Is the Blogger format out of date? I keep thinking maybe I should switch platforms, but that strikes me as a lot of work. More laziness.

What I miss about frequently posting is getting thoughts on music down in some form. I've broadened the subject matter on the blog over the years - over seven years! - to give myself an opportunity to write about other stuff… but then again… laziness.

Get this though: I'm still listening to as much music as I ever have, but I'm just not bothering to post and share all this killer stuff. Lazy. Not necessarily new music, because I can feel myself reaching this "I likes what I likes" stage, which I'm enjoying more than I thought I ever would.

So I'm going to get back into more posting - I have a back log of ideas and great stuff you gotta hear.

Marlins Will Soar

It's practically an SNL skit... This one still makes me laugh. Scott Stapp doing a song for the MLB team the Marlins... I just... yeah.

Cut Copy - Free Your Mind

Finally got around to listening to the newest Cut Copy album... I guess I really have been busy if I haven't had time to catch the latest from one of my fav bands.

First few listens, it's not immediately blowing me away like previous efforts. Definitely feels like a grower. I love the Madchester throwback sound though.

St. Vincent - Digital Witness

Really liking this album. Been too busy to keep up with a lot of new music, so I've mostly been keeping up with artists I already know and love.

Feeling a lot of David Byrne on this album but I might be reading in to that too much, what with their recent collaboration.

Some reading material on Pono

Some reading material on Pono

Lots of interesting articles linked-to in this post, including some of the usual insane audiophile stuff.

What You Learn in Your 40s

Article here.

[via]

The Daily Swarm - Watch: The Worst DJ Set in the History of Humanity...

The Daily Swarm - Watch: The Worst DJ Set in the History of Humanity...

Maybe a slight exaggeration, but the crowd's reaction is priceless.

Evolution of the Warner Bros logo

Well this is pretty awesome.

Time for a graphic design nerd-out.

Drake ~ Hold On, We're Going Home feat. Majid Jordan

The rest of his album is pretty much unlistenable, but this track is a career maker, so sick:

Tight, solid drum sound, crazy good hook, and the best thing: Drake largely checks his ego at the door. Great song.

Autre Ne Veut - Play by Play

Been playing this a lot:

Jay-Z - Holy Grail

What a piece of garbage:

Indie 88

Toronto's new "indie" radio station bills itself as '32 Flavours of Not Vanilla', then lists a pretty vanilla bunch of artists. I can't find a pic online but you can see it in plenty of bus shelters around the city.

The fact that "indie" as a genre has reached a level commercial viability negates the core idea upon which the station markets itself. Indie has evolved from its origins as an anti-mainstream term into a vague genre into a mainstream radio format.

Apparently the station is eating the other so-called alternative station's lunch (CFNY/The Edge). I suppose if this continues then CFNY will have to dump their brand in a box and go with something else.

Here's a classic CFNY fan page, doesn't look like it's been updated in some time.

Northern Army Preservation Society of Canada

Vintage and current Canadian logos, cool stuff. Plenty of nostalgia.

The 2011 Jays logo is wrong though, unless they're counting the November release. They didn't use it until the 2012 season.

Bell is a weird choice, I would have thought a classic logo would have been the go-to.

[via]

High Anxiety: Behind The Scenes Of Fucked Up’s Fourth Album

Nice profile here.

I'm not a huge fan of the music but I do find the band interesting.

Brian Eno - Music For Airports

Deep analysis of the Beatles

Just going through some of my music bookmarks today... Here's a scathing takedown of the Beatles by Piero Scaruffi.

It's an interesting read because a lot of what he writes about isn't ever discussed. It's especially interesting in the context of the anniversary of the Beatles appearance on the Ed Sullivan show... that this particular milestone is celebrated proves the notion that the group was style and marketing over substance.

The Beatles sold a lot of records not because they were the greatest musicians but simply because their music was easy to sell to the masses: it had no difficult content, it had no technical innovations, it had no creative depth. They wrote a bunch of catchy 3-minute ditties and they were photogenic. If somebody had not invented "beatlemania" in 1963, you would not have wasted five minutes of your time to read a page about such a trivial band.

I don't entirely agree with the analysis, but it is refreshing to read a piece that isn't anything but glowing about the Beatles. It's an example the worst kind of critical elitism - that the group has no merit because objective truth about what is 'good music' has no room for this pre-fab construction of a group.

He doesn't care much for Bowie either.

Thirty Years of Mac

Nice bit of Mac propaganda on the Apple website leading up to pitch for the new Mac Pro this year. Autoplay video.

I've been using Macs almost exclusively for about five years, and I wouldn't go back.

In November I switched to an iPhone from a Blackberry... I still dislike the touchscreen keyboard, but again, there's no reason to get any other device. You do sacrifice some level of customization vs. Android, but when the devices are pretty almost always stable and have rare bugs that's the price you pay.

The Daily Swarm - Ghostwriting Examples That Will Make You Question Everything You Know...

The Daily Swarm - Ghostwriting Examples That Will Make You Question Everything You Know...