À cause des garçons

My favorite new tune is by a singer named Yelle (that's Yeah! and Elle put together).



Look at her. She's incredibly hot. The song I am in love with is called "A Cause Des Garcons" which translates to "Because of the Boys." She is French and thus the song is completely in French. Also it bangs in this slick, buoyant, most non-irritating way! It's a pop / house / electro hybrid with this delightful girl singing. Throw in some synths, a badass breakdown, plenty of attitude, and you have yourself a gem of a tune. Listen to it here:

Yelle MySpace

"A Cause Des Garcons" is the second song down.

Awesome house tune

This is the Thomas Bangalter (of Daft Punk) remix of DJ Mehdi's "Signatune" It sounds fresh and different! Slamming and at first a little bit off putting, but it really sucks you in.

Oh my god

This is from the 1985 animated film The Adventures of Mark Twain.

Look what I made

It's a little Chromeo sound sampler thing.

CLICK HERE PLEASE

Wow that was strange

So my roommates are out having dinner and I, being home, decided to order something in. I called up a Mexican joint and got 1 order of something and 1 order or something else, totaling no more than $ 15.00. When the food arrived there were four (count them, four) orders of my meal. There was also a 2 liter bottle of Orange soda. The bill was $45.00. I paid with a credit card when I called and thus did not have the opportunity to say "I only want one, here is cash for that." It was already paid for! So my quick thinking swayed me to simply take all the food and forget about it. Now I have 3 neatly packaged meals (each the same) in my refrigerator. I hope my roommates want to eat some of that.

Noise canceling headphones are so fucking weird. I am test driving some right now and I feel a little nauseous. When activated, the noise canceling technology fills your head with the opposite frequencies of the ambient noise around you, thus canceling it. This makes me feel like I am either underwater or on bad drugs. There is a weird pressure on my chest. But they sound so damn sweet! The bass is full, the treble is hungry. I listened to the Pendulum remix of the Prodigy's "Voodoo People" and it practically shattered my skull; not because of the volume, but the sheer fullness and intensity of the sound. I don't know if I used a semicolon there correctly. Anyone care to comment and tell me?

Fucking orange soda... I practically drank the whole bottle already. I would never touch that shit if it wasn't right in front of me. I didn't even say anything about soda and there did not seem to be any kind of language / dialect / accent barriers with my telephone transaction! I don't get upset over forty five bucks and it's not like it was wasted, but I just can't really put it all together. Why orange soda?

I think I would like to be an editor. I'll look into that.

Chromeo is probably my favorite music out of all the new music I have heard in the past year. Dave-1 and P-Thugg play music that is the sound of love making and love breaking. 80's house pop funk two step synth rock is what I would call it. Their songs are about girls and momma's boys and dancing and looking fine. A word of advice from their Fancy Footwork album:

Just take her to the movies and you're gonna work it out!

If you like romance, funk, dancing, infectious grooves, and vocoders (those things that make an instrument sing with your voice. Think Peter Frampton but with a 80's synthesizer) then you should give them a listen if you have not already. You can do so here at their myFace page. I particularly like "Needy Girl" and "Bonafied Lovin'" Betsy, you liked that Sam Sparro song, so you should listen to this. Let me know if you like it. I am always trying to spread good tunes.

Most exciting game award

I just played the most exciting, spine-tingling, edge-of-your-seat game of Yahtzee ever. The suspense could have been cut with a knife. I felt like every roll was the last 10 seconds in some career-defining championship match. I kept thinking "this is what bobsledders and gambling addicts feel" as I rolled dice like some crazed voodoo doctor. Dice seem ancient and timeless and should not be fucked with, so when my large straight doesn't come I don't get angry. I don't want the Dice Gods on my ass.

Anyway, I am listening to a lot of Daft Punk's Homework. I think that is their best, most consistent work, but the recent multi-media orgy of bliss that was the 2007 tour is in a close second. Homework still sounds new to me. It's fun and innovative and even the things that are not really "pleasant" (like "Rollin' & Scratchin'") are still interesting. But then the pleasant stuff ("Revolution 909," "Around the World," "Da Funk," "Fresh") just knocks you out. I think Daft Punk achieves this by playing only to the emotional side of things (as opposed to cerebral) through the use of disco samples that remind people of things and make them want to dance. Everyone has heard Chic's "Good Times" and it's about... duh.. good times and dancing. That's the bassline to "Around the World" and it's just all about good times and dancing. I think that when they do try to get all cerebral and proggy and weird (a lot of Human After All) it doesn't work. Their live show infused all those songs with the good times, but on record... I just wanna dance, man.

Hmm.. I missed "KAIJU: A Night of Live Monster Wrestling" at Webster Hall. Someone gave me a flier the other day and "live monster wrestling" sounded very intriguing.

I want some Malaysian beef jerky.

Current music

My two favorite things to listen to right now are Untrue, an album by the anonymous UK producer Burial and "Black and Gold," a song by Sam Sparro, a Los Angeles singer who has yet to release a debut album. Black and Gold is spot on. It's absolutely infectious. Listen to it here:

It doesn't bang, but it doesn't crawl either. Listen to Sam Sparro's voice at the very end of the song. It's pretty ridiculous how tuneful and pleasant it is. It doesn't have that metallic AutoTune tonality of so many other singers' recordings. This shit is bathed in electronic tones, but every tone is beautifully smooth and mellow. It's like velvet robes on bare ass cheeks. Smooth.

The Burial album is a little different, albeit also smooth. It's the most unabashedly emotional music I've heard in a while, but it works. It works because there is no ego attached to it. Burial is completely anonymous for fear of his or her music becoming corrupt. That may seem like a lofty and perhaps pretentious thing to say, but it's true. If no one knows who you are, there is no pressure. Burial is a myth. A story someone made up. That is why it sounds so sincere. The ghostly vocal samples pleading for things lost and loved, undecipherable dialog, beats that start, crackle like sparks only to die down and look around. If you cannot understand a vocal sample, it could be anything, including something personal. Warning: this is not party music. It will totally kill your party, but it's absolutely gorgeous.