Sean Daily is an English major from New Jersey now living in Las Vegas, the Other City of Lights. "I consider 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas' to be comfort reading, I like the al pastor tacos at Tacos Mexico and I count among my literary influences the Chainsaw from 'Doom'. 'RRRRRR! You don't like that, do you, Mr. Undead Marine! RRRRRR!'"
Shanoah Alkire is our Discordian at large. "Born in Santa Cruz, I grew up in Grass Valley and the Bay Area, and now lurk in Las Vegas. My literary influences include Ray Bradbury,
Lewis Carroll, and Douglas Adams. I also program as a hobby,
and currently maintain the Gtk port of Angband. You can find
a rather old bio of me here."
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.
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… 🙂
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.
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…
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.
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.
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.
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…
