Archive for the ‘Music’ Category

Shogazer Sunday: Mirage In The Water’s “Is It Real?”

Sunday, May 12th, 2013

Another does of Mirage in the Water, this time with “Is It Real?”

Evidently the movie scenes are from a 1970s Japanese film on transvestites. I doubt that’s going in my to-be-viewed queue anytime soon…

Shoegazer Sunday: Kyte’s “Planet”

Sunday, May 5th, 2013

Kyte hails from Leicestershire, UK. Here’s “Planet,” which sounds a bit like M83 with a dash of Sigur Ros thrown in.

Shoegazer Sunday: Slowdive’s “Summer Daze”

Sunday, April 28th, 2013

Better late than never, here’s the mellow Slowdive demo “Summer Daze.”

Shoegazer Sunday: Lúna’s “Leggöng Tunglsins”

Sunday, April 21st, 2013

It’s been an eventful week out in the real world, so here’s some pretty, mellow, noodly Shoegaze in the form of Lúna’s “Leggöng Tunglsins.” I think they’re Icelandic.

Real Norwegian Satanic Metal Band, or Amazing Parody of Same?

Monday, April 15th, 2013

Sometimes the line between the genuine article and inspired parody is so thin as to be non-existent. Here’s The Black Satans with “The Satan of Hell.”

Nothing says “Dangerous Minions of Hell” quite like tossing snowballs, or banging a tree with a stick. But I bet if they tried harder, they could work in a few more Satans…

Shoegazer Sunday: Alcest’s “Souvenirs D’un Autre Monde”

Sunday, April 14th, 2013

Alcest, a French shoegazer band that sounds a little bit like M83 by way of Sigur Ros and Midsummer, offers up the compelling “Souvenirs D’un Autre Monde” (“Memories of Another World).

Japanese Pop Punk Band SpecialThanks

Wednesday, April 10th, 2013

While plumbing the depths and breadths of YouTube for suitable Shoegazer Sunday entries, sometimes I stumble across something interesting that doesn’t fit in the Shoegaze label. Today let’s take a look at Japanese band SpecialThanks.

The first 20 seconds of silence is just to mess with you.

So a pop-punk band with a deadly cute female lead who sings in English that sounds like a cross between Blink-182 and [Insert Current Teenage Female Pop Sensation Here]. This is the sort of Japanese cross-cultural pop artifact that Bruce Sterling circa 1992 would have been all over. As it stands, I’m pretty sure some canny American record label would make millions signing them over here…

Shoegazer Sunday: Clams’ “Sundae Bird”

Sunday, April 7th, 2013

From Japan comes Clams with “Sundae Bird.” The first 48 seconds are space music drone, but after that the catchy dreampop tune kicks in.

XKCD’s Time

Sunday, March 31st, 2013

It’s easy to assume that everyone in the world follows Randall Munroe’s geeky online stickman webcomic XKCD, since it seems all my friends do. For those that don’t, last Monday he put up a strip called “Time.” This strip, like his uber-large “Click-and-Drag”, plays with the conventions of the form. “Time” started out with a static, non-gag image with the hover-over label “wait for it.” Since then, he’s updated the image every half-hour to an hour, even though he’s done new strips on the usual M-W-F schedule. If you follow the images in order, “Time” shows two people (which XKCD devotees have dubbed “Cueball” and “Megan”) building a sand castle.

Here’s an animated gif of the images so far:

Here’s a quicker version, which you can also step through, speed up, slow down, etc.

Here’s the explanation page for it, as well as its own Wikia. We now have a real-life version of those people obsessively tracking online image snippets from Pattern Recognition, except we actually know who they’re from.

The obvious metaphor is how time continues to flow and things change when you’re not watching.

As of this writing, the images are still being updated. Munroe could keep updating that one comic for a long, long, er, time, especially if he decreases the update rate.

Conceivably, “Time” could be a long-running conceptual art project and keep updating for the rest of our lives, and beyond, like that German church playing John Cage’s “As Slowly as Possibly” for 629 years…

Shoegazer Sunday: Pastel Blue’s “Ariel”

Sunday, March 31st, 2013

Another Sunday, another obscure Japanese Shoegaze band. This time it’s Pastel Blue with “Ariel.”

A lot of people compare them to Slowdive, and this songs tells you way.