so. there's this band. called The Heavy. i started writing this review of the album a while back but never finished it. Then I saw them live. and it blew my mind. so, i'll finish the review first and then i'll talk about the show. (also, the album i had before i got the actual CD at the show is in the wrong order. but i got a t-shirt at the show with the track listing of the album i originally had... so i'll keep on this path. i'm assuming the track listing of the t-shirt and the original album i had was a pre-record deal order.)

the review:

Somehow, I stumbled across this band... The Heavy. I think it may have been on somebody's random blog who was raving about them... since I'm a chronic lurker, I can't remember. I'd like to remember though, so I could go back and leave a comment thanking them.

This is a good album. I'm a big fan of it. It doesn't ever get old. I got familiar with the music before I got familiar with the band, so that's how I'll write this review.

The album 'Great Vengeance and Furious Fire' (AH! I just found the original spot [cool hunting] where I first head of them! sorry... back to the review) starts off with a few 70'scopshowesque crushers, adequately living up to the band name. The usage of horns in the first two songs lead you to believe that this is going to be another trendy post-motown lo-fi dap kings link wannabes, but the horns completely dissapear after "Colleen." The cool thing about this album is that every song is very different. There really isn't one style that stays constant. The band has this to say about how they sound: "Picture Tom Waits fostering the RZA while John Bonham and The Parliaments host a garage sale for Chester Burnett, Willie Mitchell and the Stooges...The Heavy reek of lo fi samples, broken down beats, a disgusting but yet compelling delivery on all fronts and more stinky than anything that has ever come out of your back passage."

"That kind of man" is the opening song, and (I would assume) also the first single. The horns and sirens give you a mental picture of car chases and retro-ness, but the video for the song further drives that M.O. home. There is also a lack of horn players in the band when the camera shifts to musicians performing in a club of some sort... So I'm going to go with a well-selected sample. I would be interested to see how this works out live. "Colleen" features a very hip-hop heavy beat with a repeating acoustic guitar sample and ominous horns throughout. The choruses kick in with harmonies that may or may not be female and drums the size of a mac truck.

The next track, "Set me free" has a VERY familiar feel to it. Right from the start, it's as if this drummer and singer took a trip over the pond to record a track with Bret and Jemaine. The bass line is addictive, the stammering acoustic guitar is catchy, the vocal line channels curtis mayfield... in other words, it's really catchy.

It's at this point in the album where it's as if they said "ok let's slow it down a bit.... then we'll squeal the tires as we take a hard left turn after this..."

"You don't know" is a white stripesy kind of slow headbang jam that takes it to another start/stop rock level. vocals are sparse on this one, with a guitar solo dominating the latter half of the song. "Girl" is the midway lighten-up song that starts off with the singer, Kelvin, reminiscing about a girl he saw walking down the street. no new concept, i know, but the way he flips it is entertaining and fun as well. no real song structure here, as the first 2/3 of the song Kelvin is more talking than singing, but he picks up with a soulful melody eventually that finishes things up. At first listen i thought that this was an odd song, but it really grows on you and is a perfect party song.

They slow it up again for "Doing Fine" with an acoustic driven ballad that will have you doing the slow clap halfway through it. not ones for keeping any pace, the next song is a hard rock thumper, "In the Morning" complete with 'whoo hoo hoo' singalong breakdowns. following what is now becoming the fast/hard to slow/mellow transition theme, "Bruk Pocket Lament" is about personal problems and searching for answers. which leads nicely into the faster "Dignity" with a distorted bass riff being the main instrumentation.

the last song "Who Needs the Sunshine" introduces piano for the first and only time, and Kelvin changes his vocal up from the usual falsetto to a raspy almost spoon meets parodical scott stapp impersonation. as dumb as that sounds, it's still a good song.

overall, the album at first listen seems like a big mess, but it grows on you and turns into a beautifully composed work of art.

after listening to the album and loving it, i decided to do some homework on the band, but if this was social studies, i'd be getting a D. there's very little on the 'net about these guys (and girl). their website is very sparse, with nothing but tour dates and a small discography, along with two links. one to their myspace, and one to a very obscure youtube video of what appears to be the ending of a set. (note: i later found out that that's exactly what this is)

there's also a movie called The Heavy, but that has nothing to do with them.

Now, on to the live show:

I was at one of the head designer's desks on a lazy afternoon at work when i saw in a random magazine that the Heavy was playing a little place in brooklyn. I got online right away and ordered tickets... then called my Fiancée who had recently developed a newly found love for the band... and told her that i got us tickets to the show. she almost peed her pants. i haven't seen her that excited since i proposed... anyway, we rolled in around 8:30pm with greg barbone and jon check, and as we were walking in, saw the guys from the band unloading. they were super nice and talked to us for a few minutes. i was happy, it was going to be a good night.

they finally took the stage around 11. the room had since gotten packed to capacity. the energy in the room was buzzing, even before the band took the stage. as i suspected, no horns... but there was a cd-j sitting on top of the keyboard, which would be later used to run the samples for that kind of man and colleen. the band came out and rocked a 45 minute set of pure amazingness and energy...
Kelvin working the crowd like it was all made up of his best friends. at one point he began saying "you know, when you got this kinda girl that just..." and i said "GIRL" (in the same tone that he uses in the song 'girl') and he stops and says "No, not that kind of girl, hahaha."


when they had finished playing and left the stage, the crowd was going crazy. I decided that i had to be the guy to start the "one more song" chant, and the crowd quickly picked up on it... to which the band came back out and played another new song. it was fantastic. they finished and left a guitar feedbacking on the stage... some random girl got up on stage and moved it, then got on the mic and started pumping the crowd up to show appreciation for the band once again, to which they responded whole-heartedly. she got down and the guitar was still feeding so i went over and hit the stage tuner on the pedalboard silencing it. ha. anyway, this band is killer and i highly recommend seeing them. we were lucky enough to see them on what was the last stop of their US tour, but they'll be back in the the states in september.

we finished the night off with jon check's roof, which looks like this:

the "blog" of "unnecessary" quotation marks.

as you may or may not know, i'm a huge stickler for proper punctuation and grammar. [although i couldn't care less about capitalization, unless it's denoting proper respect]
this blog made me laugh a great deal.

the most viral music video EVER.

quote of the (past 22 days) courtesy of mike sauer:

mike: chris, you know what's funny? every cool or interesting thing you have to talk about, i already know about because i read your blog...

more coming, i promise...

for those of you who don't know, yojimbo is the best thing ever... ryan turned me on to it a while ago, it's now crucial to my life.

the whole reason i wrote this is because i was going to say how i have all this stuff saved up in a yojimbo entry that's waiting to be blogged. this weekend, i promise.

need to post new stuff.

this is a blog i've been enjoying greatly today... mainly because the writer says things like this:

M83 - Skin of the Night
No idea if the rest of the album is any good because I just keep listening to this one song.

okayplayer shows us some love (again)!

oh snap.

my man El Keter shouted us out AGAIN(once previously) in OkayPlayer's blog. Apparently The Blakes Have Got New Faces (vampire weekend remix) has been getting some airplay on El Keter's radio show(wed. nights, 12-3am).

Mark Ronson also emailed me and told me that he liked the song. haha.

and they keep it comin....

just another amazing video from Gnarls Barkley. these guys are, in my opinion, one of the freshest acts out right now. they keep it real innovative.

directed by wendy morgan.

cd records and cctv music videos.

make your cds into 45's! crazy!

also, this band made a music video using the security cameras that are everywhere in the UK, for free under the Freedom of Information act.

show me what you workin wit...

this just showed up in the mail for me today:

it's gonna be a busy saturday!

BARACK OBAMA MADE YOU A MIXTAPE

really simple, chuck-norris-facts-esque funny website about what Barack Obama did for you.

one of my favorites:

hint: click on the purple text to change what it says.

why i haven't been posting too much lately...

it's a Moog/Realistic Concertmate MG-1... it doesn't work right now, but i'm working on it. sorry for the rubbish pic, but it'll be real nice when i'm done with it.

in the studio with scratch track.

i recorded scratch track a while back when they were thinking about having me record them. due to locational difficulties, they went with someone else... but we still had fun tracking two songs with a ridiculous amount of vintage microphones. check it out here.

quote of the day, courtesy of Jared Venezia:

jrod: i was thinking of when you unplugged the sub in the burg
jrod: and it reminded me of a method man rap
jrod: roll on the set/kick a hole in the speaker/pull the plug and then jet

low headroom!!! HA!

for all my geeks:
"This sign should be in more places, like on most of the cheap audio gear they sell at guitar center. And on joemeek outboard eq's."

from ryan

writing on the go.

get it?

this is awesome... now if only it included staff paper in it as well.

(now, why when i searched wikipedia for "musical staff paper" did NME come up? ew.)

good news for firefox lovers...

i've fixed my page so you guys can view it without it crashing your computers. at least i think i did. let me know.

don't forget what it's really called:

dear charles manson...

Radar asked Bill Geerhart to send follow-up notes to the serial killers he wrote in the late 1990s, posing as a 10-year-old. The killers promptly replied (both in 1998, and recently).

in the late '90s, pop-culture historian Bill Geerhart had a little too much time on his hands and a surfeit of stamps. So, for his own entertainment, the then-unemployed thirtysomething launched a letter-writing campaign to some of the most powerful and infamous figures in the country, posing as a curious 10-year-old named Billy.

As it turns out, no group hates to disappoint a child more than convicted killers, all of whom responded promptly to Billy's questions about dropping out of school. Their letters, published here for the first time, range from criminally insane to downright sensible, offering snapshots of the personalities behind some of America's most hideous crimes. Recently, Radar asked Billy to follow up with his mentors as a college student.(Link)

from boingboing

my favorite part of this whole thing, manson's reply to the kid:

Hay Lo Soul,
Good To Too Two 2 here from you. I thought things got so good for you that you just 4 GOT WHAT you could of remembered or could remember what you don't forgit. Where is your mind—must you watch TV all day to go to night school to be a D.A. JUST to forgit I didn't take your money when I had ALL your credit cards locked up in my dreams—Rife with Con Va Lution due 2 subjewgashen. My spelling got better—see when you go to school you learn to spell—oh well I'm just playing clown words to say I didn't forgit Hellbilly—Bill we always had good days + I'm glad your gonna be a D.A. Be one who works for justice + not one who wants to win win + and don't care if people didn't do rong—anyway be as good as you are when you git a job + don't let the job make you bad you make the JOB good.
Easy, Charles Manson

google maps street view.

so google maps has this thing called street view... it's made from a bunch of pictures taken from a camera on top of a car that cruises around and stuff... anyway, check out what happens to this guy on his bike as the googlemapsmobile rolls by... (play with the original view here)

randomness inspired by nyc and leffe brown.

So here i am in new york city. The village. Vol De Nuit to be exact. The best place in the city. A little gem tucked away on west 4th between new york's version of a diner and a myriad of apartment buildings, the red hallway identified only by a red light bulb on either side leads to what is considered a treasure by those that discover it by raw coincidence or wod of mouth. They will return often. And tell their close friends. But not the kind of friends who get really drunk and cause scenes, the kind who enjoy a good beer and like to relax and talk amongst themselves. I know I just started two sentances improperly, one with 'and' and one with 'but' but I don't care. Correct grammar should not get in the way of inspired writing. Proper punctuation, however, should always be used.

When I used to blog a lot, or in those days, it was called xanga... So, when I used xanga a lot, I used to do random posts where I'd just write. Sometimes it was a list of things I liked and things I didn't, other times it was just random thoughts. Thus this. Taking it back. Like the new craze of retro 60's soul that is so popular in music that I like right now. (Baby Charles! I'll explain later.) There's something about writting with no goal in mind that is so liberating. Writing with no boundaries : writing with a purpose :: going commando : boxer briefs. Analogies are so much more fun that similies. It's even more fun when you pronounce the colon  "squirrel colon flying squirrel colon colon horse colon pegasus."

Uh oh. Writer's block just hit. I'm writing this from my phone and I stopped to talk for a minute. Lost my random train of thought. Ok it's back... I'm here with my beautiful fiancee and her best friend. Her best friend lives in the city and can't wait for us to get married and move to the city. It works because my two best friends just moved to the city. So we'll move to the city once we get married. We'll never do it if we don't do it soon, so why wait? You're only young once. Y.O.Y.O. Speaking of yoyo, LOVE is right around the corner... I wonder when Mark Ronson is gonna throw another one of his parties. (if you watch that, look closely at 0:17, you can see my yellow and blue hat next to the huge bald guy with the camera on the stage) It's been a while, he used to do them quite regularly.

I need to stop looking around at people. It kills my thought process. "Oh look at that guy. He has a dog on his lap." "I wonder if that girl looked in the mirror before she went out. Prolly not." "You can see the sky from here, but no stars." "I wonder if she's gonna be upset that I was writing on my phone instead of talking. It's ok she doesn't read my blog anyway. Hahaha."

The guy with the dog on his lap just pulled out a laser pointer. The dog jumped off his lap and rolled into a chair trying to get the sporatic red dot. It made me lol. Ryan is uptown at Quad studios babysitting the place while people film a movie about 2pac and biggie there. In case you aren't familiar with the plight of the two biggest hip-hop acts of the 90's, Quad studios in times square is where 2pac got shot... One of several times, not the one that killed him, but one of the times none the less. Greg's at home making music. I tried to get him to come out but he's a (fill in the blank.) Ok I'm done for now. More randomness to follow.

why i love my job.

this is an email from me to my boss about what kind of wire to use for a music system installation project:

From: Chris Renne
To: John E
Sent: Wed Apr 23 10:26:51 2008
Subject: Re:

Which wire are we using for the speaker system? The Cat5e? Or the Cat6? People been hounding me for days bout this ish


and my Boss' reply:

Remind them that we have a server down, a scheduled deployment of CS3 within a few weeks, a laptop user data project in testing, you moved half a dozen computers and phones at the end of last week, several green initiatives that need to get done this week, Chrissy is out Friday and you need to get her system rebuilt. We will get it done before the party but would they really prefer to sit and listen to music while they can't work because you don't have time to work on higher priority items? Cat5e.

something is wrong.

this is the picture that comes up when something goes wrong on twitter. i love it.

why to kill the parasites?

this is ridiculous. it's some random japanese site poorly translated to english, with plenty of randomness... this girl Holly Hostess has these little parasite friends because she has no people friends (except for the one who loaned her a comb and gave her head lice) and there's plenty of merchandise for sale on the site. enjoy.

whoooooaaaaaa.

this is amazing. i promise.

backwards gnarls barkley album! for freeeeeee!

Gnarls Barkley (which, after watching this video, I am convinced is the best band out right now...) has decided to release a FREE $youremailaddress.name download of their album, The Odd Couple. go here to get the reverse 38:45 long mp3.


this is kind of funny to me, because after my little fiasco (no lupe) with distributing gnarls barkley songs before they were released, i then posted a zip file of the album named "yelkrab slrang.zip" on my idisk for download... giving it a backwards name to fool whatever 'net creeping bots that are out there searching idisks for illegal unreleased music.

wow....

check this out over on my video page...

as if singers weren't divas already...

...this is just ridiculous.

twitter saves lives.

When a Berkeley grad student was jailed in Egypt for taking photos of a demonstration, he Twittered the word "ARRESTED." His Twitter followers (Egyptian bloggers and American friends) called the college, the US Embassy, and the international press, and the police soon released him. Of course theoretically he could have just called someone, but that wouldn't be much of a story...

via gawker

CAT PLAYS THEREMIN!

and here we have an amazing video of a cat playing with a theremin.

cross-country time!

just got back from a trip to the midwest... which is why there were no updates. hang tight and i'll post stuff tomorrow...

alone backwards!!!!

real gangstas.

check this guy out. wow.

kinda reminds me of this:

wow, the internet works.

ok... so i read this blog called musicsnobbery fairly often... the guy's entertaining and whatnot... so he's having a 3rd anniversary party at maxwell's in hoboken. he had scheduled 3 bands to play: the teeth, la laque, and salt & samovar. well, the teeth broke up... so here's this guy, Chris, scrambling to find a replacement headlining act. he was denied by 61 local bands. so then, he comes up with this hair-brained brilliant idea.

so, a few days go by... and then he posts this a few hours ago, and a link to moby's blog, which reads:

ok, so on friday i saw a video link from musicsnobbery.com
in said link mr. music snobbery. com admitted that he was having a party at maxwells and his
headliner had cancelled.
he then asked a few people(me being one of them)to play at his party.
so, as i spend way too much time on the aforementioned internet and i have free time on april 10th and i love to play if there's an audience and/or beer involved, saw his
request and i emailed him and said, 'i'd be happy to play at your party'.
then he wrote back and, to paraphrase, said, 'great'.
so i'm playing at his party.
at maxwells.
in new jersey.
the april 10th musicsnobbery.com 3rd year anniversary.
i'll be doing drunken cover songs of my own songs and drunken cover songs of other
people's songs.
i'm particularly excited to play a cover of 'new dawn fades'.
which i rarely(and/or 'often')play.
see you thursday, i hope.
it's the only live show i have scheduled in the u.s of/and a this year.
hopefully see you thursday night w/ salt&samovar and la laque.
moby

p.s-the bars in new jersey close early, so i'm not sure what we'll be doing after the show.
but we'll be up late, as both me and my bandmates are, for lack of a better term, "alcoholics". we're open to post 1:45 a.m suggestions. thanks.

-moby



wow. just goes to show you that the internet is a mighty and powerful thing. i wonder if moby reads my blog. i wish i could go, but i'll be halfway across the country at that time. yall should go, get your tickets here or here before they sell out.

oh yeah, tickets are $8.

John Mayer, drunk and faux-scratching his vocals.

go here for the video.

thoughts on sleep, or a lack thereof.

As I am in the middle of my 11 hour day of running sound, having awoke at 4:50am, I will now discuss sleep and some things that I don't understand about it. What tells your body that you didn't get enough sleep? How does your body know that you got up really early, rather than went to bed really late?

I'll explain. I went to bed at about 11:30pm last night. I got up at 4:50am That's a solid 5 hours. Now, I can go to bed at 3:30am and get up at 8am and be absolutely fine at work or whatever. But I'm so tired right now, I don't understand it. More tired than I've been on less sleep. I think there's something in the air at churches... Not to mention that I'm mixing 4 services in a row here. I love doing it, I just wish I was more awake!

On the way here this morning, I was hoping to see the sunrise... But the sun didn't get up during my travel time... It was still dark when I rolled up to church.

Oh well. Anyway, if anyone knows how your body knows the difference between getting up early and going to bed late... Get at me. I'm interested in this.

the new two dollar bill.

get it?

akon calls t-pain.

new Busta Rhymes track.

as you may or may not know, my best friend Ryan Gilligan was on the road with Busta Rhymes as his recording engineer for some time. He's not anymore, as of last month... anyway, here's a link to the new Busta Rhymes single, "Don't Touch Me"* on which Ryan recorded all of b-dog's vocals.

and here's a picture of Ryan holding $10,000.**

*song courtesy of thefader.com

**this money is not ryan's. it's a funny picture because we're giving music out for free and ryan won't see any money from the release of this single or any future releases that he had something to do with.

new Flight of the Conchords tracks.

go here to get 2 songs from FOTC's upcoming Sub Pop release... coming on April 22nd. also, as US tour is rumored to be happening...

Ladies of the World, Business Time

hypocrisy, the leaven of Sony/BMG.

The major labels are very outspoken about the evils of piracy, and aggressively pursue those who chose to download music and not pay for it. That being the case, it is quite amusing that up to 47% of Sony-BMG’s software is pirated.

Recently, a tech support call for a program called Ideal Migration (a Windows server management tool) was made by a Sony BMG employee, and the product code given was pirated.

The ensuing drama included a seizure of some of Sony-BMG’s assets. Paul Henry, The CEO of the maker of the software, was quoted as saying “I think piracy is linked to the policy of a company. If the employee has the necessary funding to buy the software he needs, he will. If this is not the case, he will find alternative ways, as the work must be done in one way or another.”

Bottom Line: A company that is using pirated software should not be surprised when their products are pirated.

from ars technica.

strangest / creepiest ebay feedback ever....

check this guy out.... here's some of my favorites:

*This person saved my life. he is everything I hope to be.

*This man represents everything I aspire to be. My sun, stars, and everything.

*When I recieved my HP power supply, it was the happiest day of my life. Thanks.

*Finally I can melt lead. What would I do without athomemarket? Not soldier.
(think he may have meant solder there...)

not sure how i'd feel if he left me feedback like that...

digg this

john blake on the mic.

bet you didn't know john blake wore glasses. or sang.

go here for the video.

you can hear the finished version here.

muxtapes.

so this is really cool. click on the tape. it's a virtual mixtape community. all you can do is upload songs, re-arrange them, and name them. then share your muxtape. here, this is what i came up with:

Envy: next big thing.

this girl will be huge. just you wait. we hooked up with her and are working on a remix of her single, Tongue Twister. the Tongue Twister single drops on april 28th, but we didn't get wind of it in time to get the remix on it. oh well. you'll be able to get it here when it's ready.

here's
greg killin' it.

vintage.

and here's a little bit of the geek in me creeping out: