2006 part 1

I'll have something to say later.

For now, here's a mix of some of my favorite 2006 tracks.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs "Phenomena"
Clipse "Wamp Wamp (What It Do)" (Feat. Slim Thug)
Cansei De Ser Sexy "Music is My Hot, Hot Sex"
Mogwai "Glasgow Mega-Snake"
Joanna Newsom "Only Skin"
Beck "Nausea"
Nas "Hip Hop is Dead" (Feat. Will.I.Am)
Cold War Kids "Saint John"
Deerhoof "+81"
Girl Talk "Peak Out"
Madonna "Hung Up"

Download Stoplight Sleep's 2006v1 Mix

I'd really appreciate feedback from anyone who listens to this. I've just got into to mixing, and I love some criticism.

Thanks till next time.

Hide & SeeqPod

One of my New Year's resolutions was to get back to updating this site more often. I plan on posting some new mixes, reviews, etc. soon, but here's a new site for now.

For awhile elbo.ws and The Hype Machine have dominated the music-blog-aggregator market, but SeeqPod may change all that. SeeqPod's design includes a streaming list of new mp3s posted on various sites. Click on a track and it's added to a playlist on the right side of the screen. You can move tracks around, skip them, and play them again, just like on your favorite music program, such as iTunes or winamp. There are also links to the site, recommendations (which don't seem to be working just yet), and artists info.

The site is still beta testing, so you'll notice some bugs, mainly in the form of poorly labeled tracks, which is sometimes a problem for even Hype Machine and elbo.ws. The site may never gain popularity, but the idea is sure to cross-over to other sites/programs. If anyone makes an iTunes plugin or something similar, you'll be sure to hear about it here.

Read about SeeqPod on Wired
The SeeqPod Music site

The Fountain of Batman. Soundtrack by Mogwai.

In the November issue of Wired, Steve Silberman discusses director Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain, his third film (after π and Requiem for a Dream). The Fountain is also a graphic novel from Vertigo featuring artwork by Kent Williams, but the story didn’t begin that way. As Silberman explains, Aronofsky hired Williams to create the book after his attempts to film the movie were thwarted by a wishy-washy Brad Pitt and a bloated budget. The big-budget sci-fi flick eventually reincarnated as a pawn-shop art film, fueled by Aronofsky’s guerrilla-filmmaking background. The film might lose money, even after DVD sales, etc., but D.A. has proven himself once again.

What we’ll never see is Aronofsky’s “gritty take on” Batman. Silberman cites Aronofsky’s vision of Batman “battling switchblade-toting pimps” as being too racy for mainstream audiences. This reminds me of why most superhero films are doomed to fall beneath my expectations. Many comic books are acceptable for a general audience, but those I’ve loved either couldn’t be loyally translated to the big screen without an R rating (Miller’s Dark Knight series, in the case of Batman) or would be too convoluted for a casual viewer (e.g. Kingdom Come).

Batman takes out a WB executive.

Consider my favorite comic-based movies: Sin City, Ghost World, and Hellblazer. Each has an R rating. With the general exception of Sin City, these aren’t verbatim stories put in motion, but--Keanu aside--they are loyal to the original spirit, tone, and maturity of the books they come from.

I swear not to let Schumacher touch this.

Rachel Wise’s, who co-starred in Hellblazer and is married to Aronofsky, performance in The Fountain struck me as saccharine, especially next to Hugh Jackman’s stoic coolness. In all three time periods in which the film takes place, all the characters are basically static. As with many films that aim for meaning and high-art, The Fountain is at times heavy-handed, but it’s consistently beautiful, visually and sonically.

Hey Jack, I think you've wandered into Apocalypto.

Clint Mansell, who scored Requiem for Kronos Quartet, also enlisted the help of Scottish post-rockers Mogwai on The Fountain soundtrack. The result is a score strong enough to stand on its own.

Kronos Quartet & Mogwai – “Death is the Road to Awe”

The Fountain official site


November’s Wired also features great articles on atheism, prosopagnosia, and six-word stories by Margret Atwood, Alan Moore, Frank Miller, Neil Gaiman, Kevin Smith, Mark Millar, Howard Chaykin, Neal Stephenson (my fav story), and Ronald D. Moore.

For now

Here's a quick review of the Rasputina show I attended last night.

http://www.last.fm/user/jarretlgreen/journal/2006/12/6/284527/

The Wolf's Back

I’ve been gone for a long time while I moved and worked on other projects, including today’s mix. Much has been made of the popularity of band names featuring wolf or wolves. I’ve included a couple less popular ones in today’s mix.

I wanted to focus on songs related to wolves. Some of these tracks are from 2006’s best metal/hardcore albums (Converge’s No Heroes, The Sword’s Age of Winters) and a few more are from recent releases from similar artists (Dillinger and Queens, respectively). The seemingly random wolf reference seems fitting for bands who find at least part of their inspiration in 70s hard rock, when having a growling wolf airbrushed on the side of your van would have been the height of coolness.

Some of the more mellow tracks seem to use the wolf as an archetypal figure. In Magnolia Electric’s “Talk to Me Devil, Again,” Jason Molina croons, “I talked to the wolf in the mountain.” Molina has used the wolf figure throughout his career to refer to a sage-like authority figure, his pagan god. TV on the Radio use the wolf as a symbol humanity’s careless or destructive side. Queens of the Stone Age play with the wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing cliché.

Regardless of their approach to the noun, each song—perhaps with the exception of Wolf & Cubs’s “This Mess”—in the mix is somehow chilling, whether fast and cutting (We Are Wolves’s “Little Biros”), or slow and creeping (Devendra Banhart’s “Hey Mama Wolf”). References to wolves or, in the case of The Sword and Banhart, actual wolf howls add to this effect.

Someone’s into Wolves Mix

1. The Sword “Winter’s Wolves”


2. TV on the Radio “Wolf Like Me”


3. Cat Power “Werewolf”


4. Wolf & Cub “This Mess”


5. Mastodon “The Wolf is Loose”


6. Converge “Lonewolves”


7. Cocteau Twins “Wolf in the Breast”


8. Magnolia Electric Co. “Talk to Me Devil, Again”


9. We Are Wolves “Little Biros”


10. The Dillinger Escape Plan “Sunshine the Werewolf”


11. Queens of the Stone Age “Someone’s in the Wolf”


12. Devendra Banhart “Hey Mama Wolf"

Remember, if you enjoy any of the songs here, please learn more. Buy an album or digital track, or better yet, go to a show. It’s important to support good music.