Just what I am listening to...

I have been on a bit of a music binge as of recently, and my obsession has been fixed in two oxymoronic directions. First we have the group The Glitch Mob.

A electronic trio hailing from the West Coast of the United States, ediT, Boreta and Ooah mix some seriously sick beats. I first stumbled upon their music when I found a video one of their fans had created in homage of the group, mixing together snippets of dozens of movie trailers. (I included the vid below.) After watching the thing once I went and checked out their website and was delighted to find that they offer a bunch of music for free. This includes several remixes and half hour mash ups. I also downloaded their debut album Drink The Sea from Amazon and I heartily recommend it to anyone who likes music like Daft Punk.

My second musical obsession of the moment is a french soul & funk prodigy Ben L'Oncle Soul. A frenchman from Tours, Ben L'Onkel actually wanted to call himself Uncle Ben, but changed his nome de plume due to fears of copyright infringement and possibly lawyers.

Taken under contract by Motown France ( I know! O_o), Ben L'Oncle has made it his thing to bring that old school Motown feel back. His music, his clothing even the artwork on his album cover, all of it screams Motown. The music is a mix of French and English, covers and original work. Some of the choices for covers seem odd (Seven Nation Army by The White Stripes, Red Hot Chili Peppers The Other Side) but the guy manages to pull it off, giving each rendition something new and making it fit. I included his Seven Nation Army cover to give you a taste.




BEN L'ONCLE SOUL from yamoy on Vimeo.


Here are the album covers and some additional artwork. Just because I like it and no one seems to be willing to stop me.

The Glitch Mob Drink The Sea

Bem L'Oncle Soul, (Eponymous)

Ohhh Interesting!!

A peninsula ON ANOTHER PENINSULA!

So, I was a little caught off guard when it was announced that Qatar would be hosting the the 2022 World Cup. Now I believe I was ahead of roughly 70% of the Earth's population, given that I knew that Qatar was a country, one of those small oil rich Arab peninsula countries . Oh, and conservative in a way that would give the right wing of the Republican party a three hour erection.

As I am always at least making a token effort to expand my admittedly pitiful base of knowledge before I am flung from this life with the force and disgust of French chef disposing of some low grade American hot dogs that had recently turned, I ventured onto the Wikipedia page for Qatar to give myself at least a superficial idea of what the country is all about.

Okay I also checked CIA Factbook. 

Hey Hey My My

Outta the blue/into the black
You paid for this/they give you that
Once you're gone/you can't come back
Outta the blue/into the black

Doo do do doo do doo do doo dooooo.....

Currently a song apply titled "Barbara Streisand" by Duck Sauce is haunting the airwaves and it is probably one of the most addictive songs I have heard in a good long while simply because it seems to fully embrace how ridiculous it actually should be. That and after hearing it you will be humming "do do do dooo" to yourself for a very, very long time. Then, in a flash of genius inspired procrastination, I went to YouTube and found their video which I present to you hear. I will not break out the "...so much win" emoticon again, as I am not willing ot over use that little chestnut quite yet but it is there in soul. Enjoy!

Strange Things in the World+Television!! = Bizarrovision! Hawaii 5- WHHAAA???

This is my first combination post, and I think the subject is particularly worthy of comment since it is probably the most puzzling thing that has ever crossed my path. Well that is not entirely true. "Female logic", Sarah Palin, Germany's anti-nuclear energy policy, American Conservative policies, Japanese card game based animes and the Winter Olympics are all things that no one has been able to explain to me to any satisfaction but in terms of Us popular culture and television, there is nothing more bewildering than the remake of Hawaii 5-O, which is now called Hawaii Five-0. Cause it's different, see?!

A little history first: Hawaii 5-O, was your grandfathers Law & Order. Spawning on US television for the first time in 1968, the show was the prototype cop show, the one that came up with the phrase "take em away", a dead horse of a cliche so thoroughly beaten that it really is just a slightly damp piece of  ground at this point. The show ran for an eye popping 12 years and featured a multi-ethnic cast with extras that more or less reflected the racial reality of the island. In the 1960's that was nothing less than a Jesus getting drunk and turning a donkey into a Winnebago sized miracle. The show ended in 1980, and as we are currently stuck in the remake epidemic, television producers at CBS decided that this little hallowed piece of US television history had been resting peacefully long enough. So they pillaged the grave and cracked open the coffin to see what leftover pieces of cadaver they could stitch together into something vaguely resembling a show. This may seem I am being incredibly hypocritical in my opinions of the remaking scourge as I am on record as one of the many geeks who would willing sign up for the armed forces if Edward James Olmos made a recruitment video for the Marines wearing his Battlestar Galactica uniform. However, I feel that BSG is the very large exception that proves the rule about remaking old properties instead of taking a risk with new ones. The results often fall into the "intolerable horseshit" category. To be fair, Hawaii Five-0, isn't that bad, but it does carve out it's own niche in the remake paradigm: "bizarre". That word will crop up often.

Self Annihilation

Driving down to Frankfurt from Essen, it was roughly around 5 pm and the sun was setting. Evening comes quickly in the winter, draping everything in a smothering blanket of inky darkness. It makes you feel like a insomniac at 6 pm, a wandering zombie stuck between waking and sleeping. The sunsets however, are...something else. The tell-tale purple fringe was clearly visible over the trees, at this point nothing more than dark skeletons, their bare and dessicated arms scratching at the clouds. Behind them, the sky was on fire, bright yellow fury, held back by a cage of branches. For several minutes, the display was blocked, held at bay by its wooden gaol and the foreboding, quadratic silhouettes of buildings. Then, in a moment, all obstructions disappeared. The sun had set further, turning what was once bright flame into liquid gold. The color filled the sky, it seemed to consume everything in my field of vision.

Seconds and eternity switched places incessantly. There was no thought, no contemplation, no heartache, no happiness, no yearning.  Bathed in the liquid crepusular light, it was blissful obliteration. Nothingness, dissolved and dispersed. I was nothing.

I was violently pulled back to the mundane when trees once more sought to rob me of the view. Realization dawned that  i would have to pay attention to the road. When I was able to glance back, only a sliver of the color was left. The sky had burnt itself out, leaving embers of orange and pink before being overcome by blue and then being swallowed by black.

The Wild Eyed Bibliomaniac - Magic! It's really...boring

Given various events in my life, I have not been writing as much as I like. As a result of lacking this outlet to balance out the misery of my existence, my frustration, bitterness and anger levels have been rising to eye popping heights. That is why I will use this opportunity to release some bile and hopefully get myself into a more Zen place by reviewing Susanne Clarke's heifer of a novel: Johnathan Strange & Mr. Norrell.

I had initially run across this book while browsing io9 looking for procrastination material and stumbled over their list of the 20 Best Science Fiction Books of the Decade. Being a fan of science, fiction and their mating in a literary format, I pushed aside my normal skepticism of any type of list that proclaims some thing to be the greatest of that thing this year/decade/century/epoch and dove right in. In all I was pleasantly surprised by the choices. I had read a good number of the titles in that list and most of them I would have rated as particularly good examples of fiction that just happened to be sci-fi. Johnathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, was smack in the middle of this list and mainly caught my eye because I had never heard of it. The brief description drew the picture of two men bound by fate and arcane knowledge, if not friendship, venturing into a dark world and dabbling with things they did not fully understand. Not necessarily an original story but the fact that it was set during the Napoleonic Era gave it a rather fresh twist. Most hack sci-fi writers would have made them wizards trying to bring down the Nazis as Hitler was trying unleash Cthulhu. After having read the list I almost instantly forgot about the novel until I saw it squatting on the bottom of a friends book shelf. "Hey I heard that was good!" I exclaimed full of unbridled innocence "How did you like it?". "It's shit," he replied, his voice the dull monotone of broken dreams and cynicism. "You can keep it if you want but I warn you, it's really crap."

Oh if only I had listened to him.