I FINALLY GOT ANTICS!!!!! HAHAHAHA.
although it only appeared in singapore 2 days after the original release date.

but i don't mind - it's brilliant, and ample proof that interpol are not just a flash in the pan.
this is substance we're talking about.
potential great.
not a rehash of totbl - as pitchfork put it:
"Where Interpol were once synonymous with emotive desolation, they here opt for an atmosphere of poignant resignation, and in doing so, they finally shake off every Joy Division comparison that's ever haunted them, easing up on the forboding atmospherics while frontman Paul Banks relaxes his declarative vocals."

thank goodness they didn't touch the reverb.
excuse me while i go indulge myself :]

new song down there - powder blue by elbow.

first time in ages i got home before 5pm and guess what i do? this.
sigh i need a life. and i need to start mugging.
(claud stop smirking.)

Thirteen random THINGS you like:
01 my cds (technically that's 70+ things but ah heck =p)
02 qoo (white grape)
03 my wallet ("There is money; spend it; spend more; spend all!")
04 my md walkman
05 the glow-in-the-dark star beside my bed
06 my this-is-anfield poster
07 this computer
08 my already-falling-apart-though-it's-only-been-9-months bag
09 the x-files tee i'm wearing now (though i'm not an x-files fan)
10 the panasonic fx-7 digicam
11 my grandma's chicken curry
12 the photo i took of the sun shining through the trees in west yorkshire
13 my anorexic-looking orange mechanical pencil

Twelve movies that you like watching:
01 goodbye! lenin
02 the man on the train (some french movie i watched on the flight back from the uk)
03 the two towers
04 school of rock
05 memento
06 gattaca
07 eternal sunshine of the spotless mind
08 meeting people is easy (if you count it as a movie)
09 finding forrester
10 taxi 2
11 messengers (jap movie)
12 house of sand and fog

Eleven good bands/artists:
01 radiohead
02 sigur ros
03 muse
04 the arcade fire
05 coldplay
06 beck
07 interpol
08 doves
09 elbow
10 franz ferdinand
11 the go! team

Five things about you:
01 need to start mugging
02 am addicted to music
03 thinks too much
04 need a haircut
05 support liverpool

Eight favourite foods/drinks:
01 teh-o
02 caramel macchiato
03 qoo white grape
04 the mee pok dry at the bedok reservoir road hawker centre
05 hokkien mee at golden mile food centre
06 sambal kangkong (hopefully w/o cuttlefish)
07 pork omelette
08 frogs' legs porridge

Six things that annoy you:
01 cigarette smoke
02 excess noise. or noise in general.
03 fingerprints on my cds
04 choosing the wrong captain for my fantasy premiership team
05 temperamental soulseek sessions when it crashes every 3 minutes
06 the new paper reporters

Five things you touch everyday:
01 the door to my cupboard where the cds are
02 my handphone
03 the computer
04 the fridge door
05 my bed


lalala

http://www.submarinechannel.com/channel/content/pause/musicvideos/mainMusicVideos.html

oh my goodness
this is such a wonderful site

videos on display include:

radiohead
karma police, knives out, pyramid song, street spirit

bjork
hyperballad, bachelorette, human behaviour, big time sensuality

fatboy slim
praise you, ya mama, weapon of choice, star guitar

plus lots of spike jonze and michael gondry


ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

pw survey

tolong tolong. thanks lots.
you will accrue 46 units of good karma for doing this survey.

took a break from maths to do this:

You are a Siberian Dwarf Hamster!


What Breed of Hamster Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

heh. fits me to a t. i think.

by the way - new song scrolling down there is lost cause by beck. wonderfully sad.

oh-kayyyy.
non-music fans please bear with me for this post. indulge me in responding to an article i have just read in today's copy of st life!.

REAL KEANE - Catchy, hummable, antics-free by Jill Alphonso

i don't know how much research life! writers go through when they write articles.
judging from this article, they do abit, but not enough.

first and foremost - traversty - she has put radiohead and travis and keane in the same bracket!
my goodness.
radiohead and travis - comparisons vaguely VAGUELY there - but rh and keane?
a 3-piece band without a guitarist, which has verbal battles with the darkness, and produces poppy soppy piano ballads?

nothing against their music - i have 2 mp3s by them and i quite like them (i think) - but to compare them with groundbreakers like radiohead. bah.
they don't even make the same sort of music, and that has to be apparent by just listening to one of keane's songs (because they all sound more or less the same) and one of radiohead's songs (because if you're hardpressed to come up with an overdue article to cover what are the new darlings of part-time pop music critics, you won't have time to discover radiohead's sound, really).
or you could just compare the lyrics.
in short - radiohead and keane - and travis and coldplay for that matter - do not "sport a similarly melancholy sound". not similar at all. at all.

"Groundbreaking as Radiohead is, Thom Yorke makes headlines mostly by granting the occasional good-natured interview."

hah. i wonder what nme has to say to that.

"Kid A, their fourth studio album full of eerie, moody sounds, debuted at No. 1 on the US and British charts. "

kid a is NOT "full of eerie, moody sounds". and okc is NOT "chock-full of angst-filled electronic rock".

"...And these bands can thank their music, which is easy on the ear and catchily hummable, for their success."

can anyone here hum radiohead, easily?
(ok i can. but anyone else?)


not to put life! down but when you are dealing with niche music you have to be careful what you say - and not approach it with a pop mindset. radiohead and keane do NOT sound similar. period.


though it was interesting to know that p.diddy was a fan of coldplay.

Your political compass
Economic Left/Right: -5.25
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -3.23

my ears are reeling in bliss at the moment.

first was this new band i found out about from pitchfork - the arcade fire -
they are absolutely brilliant.
i cannot stop raving about them.
(claudia can testify to that.)
everytime i listen to it i get sent on a high. 9.7 out of 10 from pitchfork obviously means something bloody good. and even turn on the bright lights got 9.5 only(!).
emotive lead vox, reverb-filled guitars, pianos, very good songcraft -
plus they use glockenspiels and accordions!
simply amazing. ahhhhhhhhhhh.
bandsite.
pitchfork review.
magazine article.
they sound as powerful as modest mouse, as refreshing as broken social scene, and as emotive as the walkmen.

then les choristes.
the choir was really good, at least to the classically untrained ear (like mine).
and morhange!
boyish good looks and great voice.
if i were gay i'd already have a crush on him.

and now arcade fire again.
=]

montreal seems to be a good place to make music.
the unicorns, broken social scene and now arcade fire.

lyrics scrolling in status bar - transatlanticism by death cab for cutie.

hmm soundtracking sports events can be fun!

early this morning i was watching the live telecast of the usopen ladies semis between davenport and kuznetsova. it was 2+ am and my parents and brother were all sound asleep, so i put the tv on mute and listened to music instead -

near the end of the first set when davenport was annihilating kuznetsova with her blistering backhands and pinpoint passes the song playing was 'the creature' by elf power... oddly fitting (you'll know what i mean if you watched the match.)

like:

i am the creature and i roam
(whack)
i've lived (whack) a thousand times before
(whack - game, set)

ah well.

the last few days has seen my mp3 collection ballooning by a behemoth figure of 62 files.
(could be more.)
from the usual suspects - pitchfork, soulseek, assorted label sites, kelly and bao.

(hopefully the riaa won't find us. they don't raid blogger databases, do they...?)
and i am feeling prolific!
i have crafted what i think is a damn nice album. something relatively quiet (no wonder claud doesn't take to it). 22 tracks long. featuring death cab for cutie, eisley, interpol, the flaming lips, the shins among others. people who want it (i dono why, but if, given people like boof practically glued himself to my cd walkman today - or could it have been because he didn't bring his own md walkman?) can go to aps and ask her to burn for you after monday. i've run out of cd-rs again. after burning lots and lots of compilations for myself. and i have yet to burn lysis stuff.

ok i am rambling. i really need to go to sleep earlier. but not before another dose of my own music medicine haha.

had a sudden urge to go and look for bill brandt's picture of stonehenge under snow that i saw and loved at the v&a during the lit trip.
so i trawled the net and googled for it, but to no avail.

too bad, then, for all of you. :p

nevertheless, bill brandt's photos are mostly brilliant.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/gallery/0,8542,1152806,00.html
http://www.billbrandt.com/Gallery/platinumgallery.html
http://www.focusgallery.co.uk/photographers/portfolio.jsp?id=1
http://www.elangelcaido.org/fotografos/bbrandt/bbrandt01.html

enjoy.
i shall go to bed once i finish sending stuff to bao.

=D

it's been so bloody long since i managed to enjoy 10 hours of sleep.
slept at 1 last night after federer defeated santoro, then slept all the way until 10.30am.
then i put on earphones and listened to half of the aforementioned 'depressing' mix, and promptly fell asleep again once it ended. woke up at 12.30.

just returned from a farewell dinner for my cousin who's going to manchester to study engineering for two years. as with most extended family gatherings nowadays it was full of formalities among the younger generation, while the adults cuaght up on each other's lives.
dinner involved a highly odd situation where we sat in front of the tv watching alaskan bears fight and mate on ngc while helping ourselves to fried rice and other assorted food you find at catered buffets. ah well.

i love drizzles - until someone decides to close all the windows...

miguel torga rocks.
the translated version is already so good with words, what more the original?

anyhow
am extremely chuffed with myself for making what i reckon is my best compilation ever.
better than the kitson one or the one i made for baoen.

1. Max Richter - On The Nature of Daylight (6:11)
2. Lovedrug - Blackout (5:40)
3. The Departure - All Mapped Out (3:00)
4. The Race - If You Can (4:09)
5. The Perishers - When I Wake Up Tomorrow (3:11)
6. Iron and Wine - Naked As We Came (2:32)
7. U2 - The Ground Beneath Her Feet (3:45)
8. Asobi Seksu - Walk on the Moon (4:34)
9. Radiohead - Punchdrunk Lovesick Singalong (4:39)
10. The Monolith - Ruby Dear (4:49)
11. We Ragazzi - Walking Before Shadows (3:21)
12. The Album Leaf - On Your Way (4:31)
13. Hope Of The States - The Black Amnesias (5:08)
14. The (International) Noise Conspiracy - Baby Doll (5:17)
15. The Six Parts Seven - This One Or That One? (6:38)
16. Mogwai - Nick Drake (3:14)
17. Interpol - Specialist (6:40)
18. Guided by Voices - Learning To Hunt (2:25)

like something to listen to when your world starts to fall apart; something that acknowledges your feeling now while gently caressing your head in its bosom...
something to cradle your heart as it turns to dust.
nice mix of instrumentals with songs that undergo soothing catharsis, filled out with spacey reverb and sweet riffs.
plus the transitions are near perfect.
and it crosses musical boundaries (to a certain extent) - there is ambient pop, classical, post-rock, indie rock, folk, shoegazer etc.

i think i could sell this. =]

sigh.
i wanna try my hand at producing music.
as in, bands.
imagine, if you can do for a local band what nigel godrich and john leckie did for radiohead. or what eno did for u2.
thing is, there seems to be little/no market/space in singapore for that type of production. it's all chinese pop and disney songs.

ah well.
need money to pay kelly for class funds, pay anjali for ra exco farewell gathering, and to satisfy my craving for cds.
interpol's antics coming out at the end of the month.
plus i want bjork's medulla.
arg~~~

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

finished tor age bringsvaerd's "the glass mountain" last night - absolutely brilliant, almost like a modern ibsen play.
8 actors/actresses allowed, 6 of which play strategically assigned double roles, and it involves the prompter as part of the plot.
and it scares me the same way ibsen's "the wild duck" does. which is great.

scandinavian/norden people are such good playwrights. maybe near-utopian societies breed good angsty playwrights.


compiled a few cds of songs recently.

this one originally burnt for bao en - but i love it myself so much that i made one for myself.

1. Beck - Deadweight (6:12)
2. R.E.M. - How the West Was Won and Where It Got Us (4:31)
3. The Caribbean - William of Orange (3:12)
4. Ted Leoand the Pharmacists - Where Have All The Rude Boys Gone? (5:04)
5. A.C. Newman - Miracle Drug (2:19)
6. Spoon - Jonathon Fisk (3:15)
7. Yo La Tengo - Dr. Crash (2:40)
8. Placebo - The Bitter End (3:10)
9. Ambulance LTD - Stay Where You Are (5:52)
10. Blur - Money Makes Me Crazy (2:50)
11. My Morning Jacket - Can You See The Hard Helmet On My Head (3:43)
12. Radiohead - Permanent Daylight (2:48)
13. Clinic - Walking With Thee (2:35)
14. Doves - Valley (4:26)
15. The Walkmen - Wake Up (4:13)
16. Enon - Starcastic (2:54)
17. Interpol - PDA (Live) (5:35)
18. Sea Ray - Quiver (3:41)
19. Xiu Xiu - I Luv the Valley OH (2:59)
20. Pulp - This Is Hardcore (6:25)

this one contains the most unsettling first five tracks i probably ever will fit together - they flow perfectly, but then right after that i go and put a sweet cheerful song which spoils the mood for good. bah.

1. Mclusky - She Will Only Bring You Happiness (3:27)
2. M83 - America (3:06)
3. Mirah - Jerusalem (2:21)
4. The Cure - A Forest (4:44)
5. Sufjan Stevens - A Good Man Is Hard to Find (3:16)
6. Rogue Wave - Be Kind + Remind (2:37)
7. Badly Drawn Boy - All Possibilities (3:54)
8. Mogwai - Hunted by A Freak (4:18)
9. Guided By Voices - Gonna Never Have To Die (2:17)
10. Muse - Nature 1 (3:39)
11. Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - White Palms (4:55)
12. Joy Division - She's Lost Control (3:58)
13. The Helio Sequence - Harmonica Song (5:50)
14. The Coral - Bill McCai (2:36)
15. Elf Power - The Creature (3:30)
16. Elbow - Scattered Black and Whites (5:33)
17. Coldplay - I Ran Away (4:26)
18. Secret Machines - Nowhere Again (4:16)
19. The Smiths - There is a Light That Neverz Goes Out (4:02)
20. Travis - The Sea (3:50)

this one as my farewell gift for kitson - made some changes to the playlist and burnt one for myself.

1. The Stone Roses - I Wanna Be Adored (4:52)
2. The Kinks - The Village Green Preservation Society (2:47)
3. Pink Floyd - Money (6:22)
4. Supergrass - Pumping On Your Stereo (3:21)
5. The Cure - A Forest (4:44)
6. Coldplay - Trouble (4:30)
7. Fairport Convention - Come All Ye (5:01)
8. David Bowie - 1984 (3:28)
9. Joy Division - Transmission (3:34)
10. Pulp - Common People (5:51)
11. The Beatles - Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds (3:28)
12. Blur - Coffee & TV (5:18)
13. Belle and Sebastian - Like Dylan in the Movies (4:14)
14. The Coral - Dreaming of You (2:21)
15. The Smiths - There is a Light That Never Goes Out (4:02)
16. Radiohead - Karma Police (4:21)
17. The Rolling Stones - Street Fighting Man (3:18)
18. Doves - Caught by the River (5:55)

i am so proud of myself. =D