fiction is lying.

I have been writing a little at last.fm, but that’s about it lately.

Oh and watching newsvideo shit’s been pretty slownewsday’d lately. Where be the action?

I have been writing a little at last.fm, but that’s about it lately.

Oh and watching newsvideo shit’s been getting warmed up.

Get to know my one-word descriptions for songs and bands! I’ve been tagging hell of shit as I listen to it lately so there’s a complete digital paper trail of breadcrumb-shaped tags describing the horrible crap I’ve been subjecting myself to lately.

It’s great. It’s been great.

Also, the xbox is great. That’s what my surprise life-ruining baby turned out to be. Check me out on live I’m the same name as somewhere around here. I am pretty bad at games.

Not that I ever stopped tagging; I just figured I should say it into the darkness.

If you haven’t heard about Benn Jordan, The Flashbulb, or how itunes stole and sold his music, here’s that interesting story (which is yet another reason not to patronize Apple or itunes). Long story short: dude gets his music stolen, so he and his label give it away and win from donations; internet works. As far as I know, he is the first artist to work with a private bittorrent site to distribute his music freely.

I’d like to formally recommend the album to anyone interested in film soundtracks or ambient type things in general. “Soundtrack to a Vacant Life” is described basically as it is titled, and while normally a much more aphexy musician, on this album he has toned and tuned everything to the pace of his life. This is a mostly relaxing trip through what I see as a truly grandiose statement of electronic music. This is a project I would do.

This story is a couple weeks old, but I finally finished getting to the album and I really wanted to mention it. This is part of us moving on. Check it out online.

I guess I’ll mirror stuff I write on last.fm about songs here:

I’m intrigued by this phenomenon of a metal band here and there that are brutal as shit, yet end up being from some odd place (France? metal?) and have lyrics and themes out of left field (the environment? whales?).

A good example of how these out-of-nowhere combinations work very well is Gojira. It’s French technical death metal about environmental subjects. Flying Whales sounds like an Earth Day festival being torn down by whales with chainguns. You’d never think this stuff would be so epic, until you consider the big picture.

I am talking about the band Gojira and song Flying Whales. I’d let you hear it right now if Mog hadn’t got nerfed to uselessness by being bought by Rhapsody. You could say they got owned for being so shitty. The one use of the site is now ruin’d.

Oh, and I don’t feel like crawling all over the place looking for a flash mp3 player or something right this second. It’s always GIVE IT NOW with you people.

Also I’ve been working too much so I got no patience and that’s why I’m not entertaining you.

The horrors of Jimmy Buffett are thwarted in the holy-shit-they-really-did-it new episode of Yacht Rock. It was such a goddamn surprise, there was an announcement.

Featuring Vatche Panos as a drug user! JD Ryznar and Hunter Stair live up to the Yacht Rock name. What could happen next? Is it a one shot to tease the masses, or a sign of continuance? Proper link.

Too bad about Jason Lee, especially considering his recent career choices.

May there be many trips to the roof for all this year.

And may all farts be lessened.

No best-ofs this year. No resolutions. No false rebirthing. No bullshit.

Well, this is a goddamned hell of a good way to get the word out about last.fm:

That is the most disgusting code I’ve ever seen on anything that you’re supposed to embed on a webpage, ever. It’s really a damn shame because it’s slick. And I will say this station (Buckethead similar) is the best station I’ve found in a while.

50 Cent made a huge statement in an interview (in Norway, no less), saying file-sharing doesn’t hurt artists:

“…the advances in technology impacts everyone, and we all must adapt…This market consists of individuals embracing innovations faster than the fans of classical and jazz music.”

“What is important for the music industry to understand is that this really doesn’t hurt the artists.

Not sure what the jazz and classical thing is supposed to mean, but he was probably high.

The RIAA and friends say file-sharing is hurtful stealing that kills the blood cells of huge artists and gives them HIV. Why would you believe companies that steal from the very artists they pretend to protect? Everyone knows almost all music contracts are completely one-sided deals that artists hardly benefit from in comparison to the contractor. Fun fact:

50 Cent has engaged in numerous feuds with other rappers including Ja Rule, The Game, and Fat Joe.

THE DUDE IS SERIOUS BUSINESS. He deserves serious respect, even if he was blazed out of his brainhole during the interview; he utters truth. File sharing hurts profits, not artists.

Oregon is sticking up to the RIAA and not taking its bullshit (via).

The Oregon Attorney General, working with the University, has filed a motion in court to quash the legal move by the Recording Industry Association of America, which the University says is trying to force the educational institution to perform a legal investigation for the benefit of a private corporation. The agrieved parties ought to perform their own investigation, the University argues.

A number of the names requested are of students living in University of Oregon dorms, making it impossible to determine which of the students living there downloaded the music, representatives of the school said. The U of O is infamous for its inhumanely cramped dorm rooms, though, making it improbable that one resident could have committed such an act without the other being intimately aware.

What is sad to me about this is that the RIAA continues its tactics of calling out shit for piracy at random when confronted. This isn’t quite as dumb as government officials crying terrorism out of every window, and is certainly no straight McCarthyism, but it’s not far off, either. It’s very obvious that this organization is very frightened, out of ideas, and completely on the defensive.

Finally someone throws it back in their face. High fives to Oregon.

This is hot shit.

This is my listening history (via) from the last two years (November 2005 to 2007) of my last.fm records. If you look at the full size version you can see how my phases shift and mutate, and you can see new huge trends like the introduction of a huge variety of post-punk and yacht rock, as well as the Pendulum/Future Prophecies drum and bass explosion.

For this particular graph, red is old things that I have been listening to for a very long time, and the cooler the colors get, the more recently I’ve been playing it. For example, green and beyond is things I’ve started listening to since May of 2006 (when I got the job), the blue stuff basically starts in 2007 after the promotion, and purple things sprout up a couple months ago.

The internet seems to be caving in on itself in a good way. Eventually I will be able to start my college that specializes in study and manipulation of metadata.