on a permanent basis, i apologise...

so yesterday one of my all time favorite bands, blur, released two (!) new songs, 'under the westway' and 'the puritan'; playing them live on a rooftop in london and streaming it over twitter. both songs are wonderful, but 'under the westway' is truly beautiful and a real treat; a longing, celebratory anthem to a city the way only blur can write them. its things like this that make me hold out hope for a new blur album sometime in the hopefully near future. if anything it will be great to see them play these during the closing ceremony concert at the olympics. good morning, indeed.





be sure to check out their rooftop performance of these two beauties at http://www.blur.co.uk/livestream/ . there is an advert for their new boxset at the beginning of the video, so skip to 1:29 for the goodness.


the baron 

k-pop jam #1

i've also decided that this re-fitted and re-polished version of 'el baron...' should include one of my new obsessions: k-pop. so every so often (or very often) i will share some of my favorite pop coming out of korea. we begin with wonder girl's new summer jam 'like this.' killer moves, yo...

remember when people thought the world was round?

i'm back! it's been many moons but i just wanted to say hello to all and let you know that i am going to give this another shot for real this time (for reels for reels!). the past six months have been a pretty stellar time in my life and now that my daily world is falling into a routine for the summer, i thought that this would be the perfect time to let the world once again bask in the glory of my intermittent posts about things that i currently dig. or something. 

for starters, i want to share with you an album that i currently can't get enough of: hot chip's new lp 'in our heads.' i've been a big fan of the band for awhile and in my humble opinion this is their strongest overall album yet. not a dud in the whole bunch. the first two singles, flutes and night and day, are rock solid but right now my favorite track is the opener, motion sickness. everything works and works wonderfully. layer upon layers of slowly growing, bouncing, syrupy synths. and one of the best opening lines of an album ever. and so i will leave you this song as a welcome back present; have a listen, won't you?

2011: five music videos i have loved

its getting to be that time again; but while i'm working on my favorite albums, i will leave you with something short and oh so sweet. five great videos that i have enjoyed over and over again this year:

fun fact: this cut copy video was inspired by this photo.

love it.

i wish i had one iota of the moves that these guys do. incredible.

probably my favorite song of the year. complimented by the perfect video; who knew super powered children would fit so well?

this video! i myself probably account for a million of its current (almost) 2 million views. it just makes me feel so HAPPY!

just thought i'd share

so one of my favorite tracks of the year, M83's 'Midnight City,' just got a pretty awesome video to go along with it. let's here it for glow-y eyed sci-fi children! enjoy:

back to work.

work was pretty good today. i suppose it makes a big difference approaching it after a week of straight relaxing; but for what it is worth, i pretty much had a great time. just chill day. had blur on loop at work which always helps to make things better. tonight's jam before i head off to bed is a live version of one of my favorite blur/albarn tunes ever (with quite a sweaty damon); from their 2009 reunion:

vacation.

so its the last night of vacation and it has been pretty splendid. i didn't realize how much i needed a break until i was actually here at the beach with my wife and family. relaxing. reading. playing games. and eating and drinking WAY too much. it was stelar and all good things come to an end; back to the real world tomorrow. so i'll leave you with the new justice single from the album of the same name; i wasn't all about the first single, 'civilization,' but this new one and the video have me re-excited about the new album. finger's crossed!