Maximize Your Investment.

In the newsletter for the release of I'm New Here, the new record of Gil Scott-Heron ("The Revolution Will Not Be Televised") he described the 'proper procedure' get the maximum out of you CD investment:

Music, for example. Buying a CD is an investment.
To get the maximum you must

LISTEN TO IT FOR THE FIRST TIME UNDER OPTIMUM CONDITIONS.

Not in your car or on a portable player through a headset.
Take it home.
Get rid of all distractions, (even him or her).
Turn off your cell phone.
Turn off everything that rings or beeps or rattles or whistles.
Make yourself comfortable.
Play your CD.
LISTEN all the way through.
Think about what you got.
Think about who would appreciate this investment.
Decide if there is someone to share this with.
Turn it on again.
Enjoy Yourself.

I should go hit the record stores. 

Young Rebel Set.

Young Rebel Set, the new band on the wonderful Grand Hotel van Cleef label, fit right into the musical scope of this blog. Folk. Indie. Alleged Springsteen & Dylan references. Beards. Hailing from Stockton-on-Tees, they're also something for people who listen to Artic Monkeys, Maximo Park etc. 'because of the accent'. Here's the video for a charming litte ditty called "If I Was":

And! - they're coming to Freiburg on 29.01.10
Young Rebel Set might just blow up or fade away - haven't quite made up my mind. But for now, you can believe the hype.

Drain the Blood.

The Rural Alberta Advantage, probably my best discovery this year, released a video to Drain the Blood today. Apparently it's their first official video. Nice!

Top Ten iSongs.

Today is the first day of the last month of the first decade of the new century. So, of course, everyone is doing Top XY of the Noughties lists.
I want(ed) to do that as well. Of course. But since I'm 'working' on it for a month now and still haven't made up my mind how to sort, include, publish the list, or if I want to do it at all, I'll start with a Top 10 of songs that have been scrobbled onto my last.fm profile. I changed the list a bit to include only 1 song/artist. The list is by no means representative, as I only started last.fm in 2006, only started to include songs listend to on my iPod last week and still listen to a lot of music not on my computer. But anyhow, here it is:

1 Bon Iver – Flume
2 Portugal. The Man – AKA M80 the Wolf
3 The Rural Alberta Advantage - In the Summertime
4 Port O'Brien - I Woke Up Today
5 Karo - Schweinfurt
6 Muff Potter - Das Frozen Man Syndrom
7 Why? - The Hollows
8 Jimmy Eat World - Table for Glasses
9 The Joy Formidable - The Greatest Light is the Greatest Shade
10 Popup - Lucy, What You Trying to Say?

Live Disintegration.

I've spend my last night
strung up and pulled tight, holding out
sleeping proud.

Sadly, Disintegration (along with Stay on My Side Tonight companion Closer) is the last really great song Jimmy Eat World wrote since 2005. The album version features Tony Hajjar (Sparta) and producer Mark Trombino on additional percussion. I'm glad to hear that their teaming up with Mark Trombino again.

All Is Love.

So this is the (first) single from the OST of the upcoming Where the Wild Things Are movie.

Charming. Sounds like Tilly and the Wall and Arcade Fire were in the same children's choir conducted by Karen O.

Karen O. & the Kids - All Is Love

A bear wrestles a fiddle..

..in a raw dance of beauty and passion: Chuck Ragan did a daytrotter session. Goddamn amazing.

photo by badjonni

Recession Folk

This recession/global economic crisis is not quite like the Great Depression. Also, the guy I'd like to introduce you to tonight, is no new Woody Guthrie. But his still pretty good: Dan Costello

His new album 'Recession Songs' is available for free ( or as pay-as-you-want). And he did a pretty neat version of Woody's "So Long, It's Been Good To Know You Woody" in a Berlin S-Bahn.

(I found Dan Costello via an achtmilliarden post on exactly the same topic, it's just more eloquent and in German.)

Feels like summer.

Funny thing happened to me the other day. I sat in the sweaty tram, listening to The Hold Steady's "Constructive Summer" and wondered what the summer hit of 2009 might be. Think for the general public it'll be Emilia Torrini's Jungle Drum. Nice, cheery, cute, pretty agreeable. Not a really bad song.. summer-y.
Still, I was looking for something more (and preferably something people by now do not associate with Heidi Klum and Germany's Next Topmodel) And I came home, opened my laptop and tada - a serious contestant for summer hit 2009: Johnny Foreigner - Feels like Summer.

Johnny Foreigner - Feels Like Summer from eds209 on Vimeo.

Really fits this summer in Freiburg. Hot, sweet and sweaty with a dash of thunderstorm. Plus, their EP including this song is available for free download. They sometimes remind me of The Wombats, You Say Party! We Say Die! and especially Los Campesinos!. By the way, Los Campesinos! just taped an amazing daytrotter session.

Runner-up for summer hit '09 so far is The XYZ Affair. Their "2 Summer Jams" are also available for free download and especially "No One That You Love Will Ever Die" is a feel good gem. (At least from my subjective position.)

Plus, stereogum.com compiled a pretty nice 4th of July "Independents Day 2009" compilation.

But the summer record of the year is just coming up: Portugal. the Man's The Satanic Satanist. See more and yeah - it leaked already. But do buy it when it comes out on July 17th - what I heard so far is amazing. Guaranteed sunshine during the thunderstorm.

"Not tonight, not tonight."

The Gaslight Anthem. One of the two reasons why I almost regret not going to the Southside festival.

It is great, all of this
Or just what might have been
Where we could take a seat at the bar with the other broken heroes

We can dance if we want to.

Wanted to post this wicked deep analysis today, to revive the reading journal category.

But that gotta wait until tomorrow, cause the inscrutable ways of the mighty internet have led me to Men Without Hat's "Saftey Dance" video. The opposite of deep. Or good taste. But screw that - it's fun!

Heavy Cross.

While I had an actual, non-music related reason to post The Gossip's Listen Up video last week, today I'm just going to post their new video because it's new. And cool.



A note on horrid commenting on the net: A Stereogum (where I got the video from inicially) commenter posted this gem:

All joking aside, would this girl be remotely popular if it weren't for her obesity and lesbian-ness?

To quote my girlfriend this weekend: Ah, the voice! Sadly enough, he was one of the nicer commenters, even when considering a certain tendency towards (odd) irony.

(Maybe I should introduce a "Gossip Monday" category..)

Don't Be A Fool Like the Rest of Us.

In class today this really cool video by the Gossip was referenced and it was completely appropriate and in context. Sometimes I really like my degree program.

It's shot in Portland, OR, by the way.

All Your Friend Are Smiling.

The next time when it's one of those days and you're feeling completely down and out, go listen to the Loch Lomond EP "Trumpets for Paper Children" you downloaded here and let the tunes pull you out of the dirt.

Loch Lomond - "All Your Friends Are Smiling" from HUSH Records on Vimeo.

Mariokart vs. Kettcar

This is what it would sound like if I was making music at the moment. Adolar's smasher Mariokart vs. Kettcar, full of childhood nostalgia, peer pressure, odd attempts to be different and passion.



Download the song here
Check out their 7" EP Planet Rapidia.

Ólafur Arnalds - 'Found Songs'

Fantastic Icelandic artist Ólafur Arnalds - who I mentioned in the Balmorhae post - is releasing a song a day for 7 days for free:

'The songs will be different from what's on my albums, they will be short, mostly just made up from piano. Something to keep me going. Feel free to send me hatemail if I miss out a day!'

Found Songs (via itstoolong)

Sound for Another Day.

I discovered a fantastic music group via this good sxsw mixtape from Rote Raupe: Balmorhae. The last.fm community tagged them as "post-rock (so post-rock that I hesitate to use the word band), "ambient" and "acoustic" and refers to Olafur Arnalds and Gregor Samsa. Sometimes I think to hear a bit of Sigur Ros as well, though sans the Icelandic and more acoustic. For the lack of a better term I'd tag them as "simply amazing". (Or maybe that is the most apropriate term.) Do yourself a favor, get their "San Solomon" track here, check them out at last.fm, watch this video of a performance of "Night in the Draw" - and put on your headphones.

KEXP live @ SXSW: Balmorhea - Night In The Draw from KEXP RADIO on Vimeo

More beauty.

The Corgan Domain.

When you start a new (artistic) endeavor you run up against a lot of obstacles. You first have to have an idea you actually think worthy of being pursued, then at some point you have to convince others that it's good etc. For Billy Corgan there are other obstacles. In his "manifesto" explaining the future of the Smashing Pumpkins and the Cogan Corp., he announces several other (solo) projects besides the Pumpkins. However

"I would loveto get into more details on those projects but I would like to secure the domain names first because I don't want to have to fight to get them back later"

Too bad, Billy. 'Nother obstacle for future Corgan/Pumpkins genius might be that Tila Tequila of MySpace and MTV Shot at Love fame seems to be his ne muse. See stereogum for details or just enjoy "Today" instead:

Nostalgia, Money and the Global Village.

This should be a wonderfully euphoric, nostalgic post about Rival School's Used for Glue. One of the music video's I literally fell in love with in my teenage years on Viva 2 (rip). It was just that perfect at that time, in that moment. I still like it a lot - both the video and the song. The video made me buy the record just to have that one song. I just digitalized the record and had the sudden urge to see the video again. I was able to see the viedo despite the demise of (German) music televsion thanks to YouTube. I then wanted to write this wonderful nostalgic blog post about the vid and share/embed the video with you. "Nah-ah" said Universal Music*, apparently they don't want people to spread teh word about great videos that will make other people fall for bands anymore (see: the clusterfuck that is (mainstream) music pr and television in Germany and pretty much every other counry).

Instead, you'll just have to click here.

At least YouTube still is a (alright) resource for otherwise long forgotten music videos. That might all change due to the ridiculous demands from YouTube by GEMA.

Yeah, it all boils down to money. Again.



(* Yeah, okay, the mere fact that a Walter Schreifel band is distributed by Universal is... a bummer.)

edit: Maybe this will just ruin YouTube's dominance.
Here we go, thanks to MySpace Video
Rival Schools "Used for glue"

Blitzkredit Bop

Muff Potter debut the video for their new single Blitzkredit Bop from their new record Gute Aussicht today. And like the song, I don't instantly like the video. It's alright and Muff Potter is one of my favorite bands (one of maybe 3 bands I'm a "fan" of) but I feel like this time they just took the wordplay and the imagery too far (or not far enough), it got a bit too... obvious and therefore boring. But after a couple of spins I'm starting to like the song (especially the music, still not so much the lyrics - a muff potter first for me) So I'll give the video another shot (or two, or three..)

muff potter - blitzkredit bop - video