"My favourite colour is gold"

Alright I know a lot of you have seen this, but i need to post it. Its the best thing I have ever seen and the entire reason I play music; just to give amazing answers to stupid questions!

Lana Crooks - Crazy Tentical Plush!

Whoa... go over to TOR.COM and check out the art from Lana Crooks. These octopus plushes are really great. As I said in another post I love the idea of having a plush stuffed head on the wall. Especialy something weird and different - like an octopus! Plush wall hangings are my new favorite thing. Now all i need is a stuffed mobile or other kinetic sculpture.


Reminds me of this...

Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark - Dazzle Ships (1983)

The thing about OMD that gets me is they have an amazing ability to balance experimental elements and pop elements within their albums. The thing i like about "Dazzle Ships" is how some songs fit nicely within the synth-pop 1980's and some songs sound like they belong in Radiohead's - "OK Computer" era. and somehow the album flow between these two ideas really well. From the first song "Radio Prague" and its single triumphant horn line over short wave radio propaganda. The album then goes in to the first single "Genetic Engineering"; opening with the sounds of an automatic telegraph on top of the best guy/girl spoken vocal intro ever. Alright I'm really going over this a bit too much, so I'll let you Download the album and watch my favorite song off it "Telegraph" live in 1985 - why this song was not a hit, I'll never know

Cleaners From Venus - Midnight Cleaners (1982)

Its incredible to think that such musical genius can go unnoticed. The Cleaners From Venus were the main incarnation of Martin Newell, Who wrote and sang and recorded and probably played everything in these songs. The precursor to DIY musical genius contemporaries like Ariel Pink; Martin Newell wrote beautifully composed pop songs recorded on a home tape recorder in the mid and late eighty's, and has continued to write songs since. Interestingly Newells contemporaries now mimic the "low-fi" home tape sound as an aesthetic choice rather than a necessity of home recording. Well regardless of how it sounds the songs are fantastic, and I will be posting more Cleaners From Venus Stuff very soon, I would have posted more but i have to re-record some of the records on to my computer. Download the album here:Track 1Track 2 and go to my friends blog Biannual Haircut and download two amazing and rare Cleaners From Venus albums. Sorry for the way the file is broken up, (Track 1 is all of Side 1, Track two is all of side two)
Track list:
Pop Side (A)

1. This Rainy Day
2. Time In Vain
3. Only A Shadow
4. Corridor Of Dreams
5. Wivenhoe Bells II

Art Side (B)
6. Midnight Cleaners
7. Factory Boy
8. A Wretched Street
9. Don't You Worry About The Ads

I'm Back.. Time for a Blog Meme

Hello Everyone, sorry I have been absent from writing anything for almost a month now. Everything has been crazy, playing shows, going to shows, planning shows, then getting really really sick. But it's cool because I'm back now and I have some good ideas of things I'm going to post, and talk about.
To celebrate my return from blog hibernation *cough* real life *cough* I will be posting a really dumb Meme thats been going around a lot of the music blogs I frequent. Basically you write down all the years you have been alive and from that, you choose your most influential album that was released that year. Yeah its lame, but I forgot to bring the music I wanted to post today.


Some things to note:

1. A lot of the early stuff I was not listening to at the time, but has become very influential to me in the future. (I wasn't listening to Jesus & Mary Chain's - Psychocandy when I was 2, but I played the shit out of that album later on.)

2. The list isn't accurate of what I was listening to until '93 when I turned 10 and bought Bjork's - Debut. Everything after is fairly accurate.

3. This is really hard and has been very time consuming for something so very, very stupid. And I could not choose a single album on some of these dates, like I said it's difficult... Also, I have realized that I stopped buying major label stuff around '03, the list became really difficult then. Ok, whatever, lets get this over with...





1983: Aztec Camera - High Land, Hard Rain

1984: The Smiths - The Smiths

1985: The Jesus & Mary Chain - Phychocandy

1986: Slayer - Reign In Blood
Paul Simon - Graceland

1987: New Order - Substance

1988: Go-Betweens - 16 Lovers Lane
Sonic Youth - Daydream Nation

1989: The Pastels - Sittin' Pretty

1990: Cocteau Twins - Heaven Or Las Vegas

1991: My Bloody Valentine - Loveless

1992: The Vaselines - Way Of The Vaselines
The Lemonheads - It's A Shame About Ray

1993: Bjork - Debut
Smashing Pumpkins - Siamese Dream

1994: Weezer - Blue Album

1995: Bjork - Post
Smashing Pumpkins - Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness

1996: Weezer - Pinkerton

1997: Belle & Sebastian - If Your Feeling Sinister

1998: Cat Power - Moon Pix

1999: Magnetic Fields - 69 Love Songs
Old Dirty Bastard - Nigga' Please

2000: Air - Virgin Suicide soundtrack
Queens Of The Stone Age - Rated "R"

2001: Kylie Minouge - Fever
Ladytron - 604
The Strokes - Is This It

2002: Interpol - Turn On The Bright Lights
Jesus & Mary Chain - 21 Singles

2003: The Microphones - Mt.Eerie

2004: Bart Davenport - Game Preserve

2005: Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti - Worn Copy

2006: Joanna Newsome - Y's

2007: Black Lips - Good Bad Not Evil

2008: Girls - Lust For Life 7" (so far...)

Ugh.. alright, I want all you out there to do the same thing so I don't feel alone in being boring (Robbie, I'm talking to you!)

The Go-Betweens - 16 Lovers Lane

Definetly my favorite Go-betweens record, maybe even one of my favorite records of all time. I have been trying to write about how wonderful this album is, but I can top all music's review:

"16 Lovers Lane is simply breathtaking; it is a deeply moving, aurally sensual collection of songs about relationships and the broken side of love that never lapses into cheap sentimentality or cynicism. Songwriters Robert Forster and Grant McLennan had always been visionary when it came to charting personal and relational melancholy and heartbreak, but here, their resolve focused on charting the depths of the romantic's soul when it has been disillusioned or crestfallen, is simply and convincingly taut. While it's true that the group was going through its own version of a soap opera-styled romantic saga, that emotional quagmire seemingly fueled its energies and focus, resulting in an album so texturally rich, lyrically sharp, and musically honest, its effect is nothing less than searing on an any listener who doesn't have sawdust instead of blood in his or her veins."

This album is an example of pop perfection. Download it here.
Sorry for the rapidshare, linked from blogdoedmilson

Ceiling Cat Papercraft!!1!

ZOMG! I love papercraft (It's the only way I can craft at work), and this has to be one of the cutest Papercraft cut-outs I have ever seen! Fun blog Tubbypaws designed this. Now we can keep caturday as lazy as ever
... click to make bigger.



Oh, Yeah...

Tiger Trap - Tiger Trap

Innocent and awesome indie-pop from K records. Cute like Beat Happening but a bit more pop influenced. Rose Melberg's first band before she went on to do the Softies and Go Sailor. really fun and exciting indie-pop. This is the type of music I meant to post all along - cute, right? OK, download it and dance around your room in your socks. Hopefully I will get back to posting on some cute things soon and not just music. Nothing has been catching my eye lately.

Link from Take The Pills

Orange Juice - The Glasgow School

Orange Juice was one of those bands that really took me a long time to get into, and I really don't know why. Of course I always really like the song "Rip It Up" but their early stuff rubbed me the wrong way. Maybe it was Edwyn Collins voice, or maybe the weird way they where recorded. I don't know, I just know that I love them now and you should too. Here is a breif description of this compilation from allmusic:

"The Glasgow School, released in 2005 by Domino, contains the band's four singles for Postcard, the bulk of Ostrich Churchyard (a disc released in 1992, containing early versions of what would become 1982's You Can't Hide Your Love Forever), a Stars on 45-style version of "Simply Thrilled Honey," and a crude cover of the Ramones' "I Don't Care." For a lot of people, the material here (dating no later than 1981) is where Orange Juice begins and ends."

Ok, download the album here...

The Hit Parade

If you know me you know i love the bourgeois, snobs, new money. Not pretentious per se (i'll save that for another post... oh! it'll be good) but just good old fashioned bourgeois. Which leads me to todays musical posting; The Hit Parade. There is something very innocent and honest to there music. Something that reveals a very basic love for fun pop melodies. I think there is something about the fun they have found that reminds me of the modern bourgeois. Its the adult party kind of fun. (not adult like naked but mature) A type of fun that is refined, the type of fun you can find in a good aged cheese!

Alright, it's a little ridiculous comparing pop music to cheese, but if you listen to these two album, you will find a level of maturity and class that does not exist in pop music these days. I know I'm throwing using a lot of terminology that would make most people cringe, (the adjective "mature" to describe music usually puts up a red flag for me) but embrace it, let the melodies take you away... To a cocktail party at a private beach on a warm summers day, eating foie gras and watching the sunset. doesn't that sounds rad!

The Hit Parade - "With Love From The Hit Parde"

This is a collection of singles origonaly released in 1988 and then re-issued in 1990. My favorite of theirs. Guest vocals by Cath Carroll. click to download

The Hit Parade - "More Pop Songs"

First real LP by the Hit Parade. A very good album! click to download

Check out their Myspace to listen to more songs (might I recommend the "Queen Of Mousehole")

Links taken from Take The Pills