2-28-09 Zion I with Brother Ali – Caged Bird Part 1

Well, I’m out of town visiting my brother this weekend, so I won’t be able to offer up hot, fresh, buttery blog goodness. All I can offer is the canned stuff. So here it is!

I’m going to be on a bit of a hip hop kick this weekend after listening to Billy Jam’s Put the Needle on the Record on WFMU yesterday. This is one of the best of Friday’s bunch, Caged Bird Part 1 by Zion I with Brother Ali off The Take Over, which came out last week.

Courtesy of PDTantisocial.

“Every day that you hold me in bars is another day I can’t teach your soul to soar.” Preach it.

Bunalımlar

Well, after hearing that neat Arabic music you posted, I felt I should follow suit. And as it happens, I had a Turkish piece stashed away I don’t believe I ever posted. So here we go:

Başak Saçlım – Bunalımlar (1971)

Bunalımlar is a Turkish heavy-acid ethno-rock group. More then that, I don’t really know. This is a fairly enjoyable instrumental piece, though.  Wish I had more to say about this, really, but it’s hard finding info on the band that’s not in Turkish… 🙂

2-27-09 Rachid Taha – Ya Rayah

Okay, here’s probably the most egregious example of namedropping, linkifying overload you’ll ever see in one sentence on this blog: “I heard a pretty good remix by U-Cef (MySpace here) of Ya Rayah by Rachid Taha Wednesday on DJ/Rupture‘s show yesterday on WFMU.”

Whew.

Anyway, I couldn’t find U-Cef’s remix. It’s pretty simple, or at least it seems that way to my untrained ears – just some hip-hop scratching between lyrics – but it fills in the holes in the song nicely. Not that there’s anything wrong with Rachid Taha’s original raï song. Observe thusly.

Courtesy of vincenzoh598.

Ar tonelico II

Well, if the system’s down, it’s time to whip out the PS2 for a bit, and play some games while waiting for it to come back up!

Actually, I haven’t played much of Ar tonelico II yet, but it came with a soundtrack cd, and the music on it is really good, so I thought I’d play some of it today.

Legend of Ar tonelico II ~The 2nd Tower

I occassionally do like listening to game music when it’s good. And this game’s magic system involves music, so a good sound track was a must. Love the hook on this song. The same musical theme runs through some of the other songs on the track. Of course, this is also the song that plays if you go to the official website.

Sky Port Girl

Another nice song from the game. Of course, while I don’t have the first game of the series, it seems to have nice music as well..

Voice of Life

Makes me think about picking up the first game at some point. I like games by Gust, anyways…

2-26-09 Strong Bad – The System Is Down

The Device Has Been Modified? But what if… The System Is Down?

Yes, this Strong Bad reference is too easy. It’s also too easy to pass up.

Thanks to Marie for turning me on to Strong Bad.

Courtesy of trogdoor17.

This Post Has Been Modified

Klingon funeral dirges with J-pop, Sean? Sounds interesting, but hven’t seen any of them on youtube. Perhaps if William Shatner joined a J-pop band… I could post a Kingon opera here if you want, though.

For the moment, though, lets go with electronica:

The Device Has Been Modified – (music by Victims of Science; video by Baron Soosdon)

This claims to be what happens if GLaDOS was installed into a Mechanostrider.  I can’t really say one way or another, but I thought the music was pretty cool. But then, I’m a sucker for songs involving sentiant AIs. Especially if they go insane. Victims of Science appears to actually be an alias for Gxp, who  released the song originally as a joke, then polished it up and rereleased it when it turned out to be popular.

2-25-09 PixelToy

So we’re back to musical grazing, huh? (“Klingon funeral dirges mashed with bubblegum J-pop and the Crystal Method! My favorite!”)

This one is fairly old, but one I’m glad I’ve gotten back to. I first heard Hong Kong’s PixelToy (Myspace here, site here) on Liz Berg‘s Oct. 18, 2005 show on WFMU. The song I heard, off 2005’s Science of Love, was very upbeat, very electronic and sounded like something off a video game soundtrack. But it turns out that PixelToy’s a bit deeper than just bleeps and bloops.

This one, which YouTube translates as Writing a Poem, appears to be from the opening credits for a movie. Very nice music. Very nice graphics. Very nice overall.

Courtesy of Pixeltoy’s label, People Mountain People Sea (site here).

Culture

You know, I was going to keep on the topic of War, and then one youtube video led to another, and another, and somehow my precious war theme had turned into Boy George. Doen’t you hate it when that happens?

The Church of the Poison Mind – Culture Club (1984)

Actually, Boy George did do a song called “The War Song” about war. I just liked this song better. For those unfamiliar with Culture Club, Boy George is the one with the bow in his hair. He’s backed by Helen Terry here. I just find the phrase “the church of the poison mind” very evocative. And Helen does great backup on this song.

2-24-09 Chris Rock – The War in Iraq, the War on Terror, the war for your mind and other related subjects

Speaking of Not Work Safe Political Commentary, Shanoah, here’s something Chris Rock had to say about Iraq War: First Blood, Part Two.

Courtesy of Alikante.

But wait a minute! Surely the war has gotten better since this was aired, right? To which I respond: oh yeah! The war was, like, totally worth it! I’m not sure if the 90,000 Iraqi war casualties, 4,251 U. S. war dead (176 by self-inflicted wounds) and 31,010 U. S. war wounded wounded would agree. But hey, can’t make an omelet without breaking a couple thousand eggs… or spending $600 billion (but hey, that’s, like, not even one bank bailout – chump change, really).

On War

Now that we’ve been through both the Marx Brothers and Charlie Chaplin’s takes on war, I thought I’d post George Carlins take on the subject:

On War – George Carlin (Comedy Central)

And it gets the automatic “Not Work Safe” for being George Carlin. By now you should know that I agree with several of the things he’s saying here (though not everything). I’ve pondered the significance of having a president/vp combo of Bush/Dick before, too…