mesmerizing

Tom Waits + Cookie Monster – God’s Away On Business

I’ve been spending almost all my time in Seattle preparing Tony’s things for Burning Man, packing while he’s at work, sifting through the dusty gear and left over supplies tucked away into the storage closet from last year. Now that his stuff has been put in a van, it’s time to look at my own things again.

Re-pack suitcase. Re-pack laptop bag. Double-check camping box. Double-check shelf-stable food box. Freezer-test fruit juice bottle-sicles. Charge all the things! (camera battery, cell-phone, ipod, laptop). Empty the camera card. Get a bag of ice, a hairbrush from the pet store, some bag clips, some terrible road snacks. Pretend I feel ready. Eat all the perishables out of the fridge. Eat some ice-cream for luck. Do all possible laundry. Pack extra batteries. Swap out the purse for the pocket-belt. Fill ipod with new music. Mend Tony’s band jacket. Print out my Burner Map. Download and print Rockstar Librarian’s 2011 Burning Man Music Guide v2.0.

holy crow!

Mike‘s hit it out of the park again:

DJ SPAZ: Eurythmics Vs. Lady Gaga – Bad Dreams

I had completely managed to escape noticing Lady Gaga until William Gibson pointed out that Bad Romance was directed by Francis Lawrence, the man responsible for one of my favourite videos, the Alice in Wonderland couture themed What Are You Waiting For that Antony worked on.

what mash-ups are meant to be, when the medium is partly the message

thru-you.com, by Kutiman

Music + (Video/Sample) x Mash-up = Sexy

“What you are about to see is a mix of unrelated YouTube videos/clips
edited together to make ThruYou. In other words, what you see is what you hear.
Check out the credits for each video – you might find yourself…”


Unbelievable. Kutiman’s ambitious project, to create an astonishing album of meta-song videos slash home-sampled music made up of a ridiculously complicated collection of cleverly layered YouTube videos, is entirely successful. It sounds half-baked, especially given every song is a different genre, like the sort of thing an undergrad would try to throw together for a media studies class because it sounded relevant on paper and they could use words like “synergy” and “interscape” in the artist statement. Instead? It’s amazing and I’m thrilled. The videos are bloody brilliant, super impressive, as unexpected as they are incredible and compelling. As someone on StumbleUpon said, “I can’t favorite this hard enough.”

I’ve actually been trying to post this for days, but the site’s been down. Hit by too many people, Kutiman’s bandwidth went bork. Now that it’s back, set aside twenty minutes, turn up your volume, turn off your power saving screen settings, and expect to have your socks knocked off.

m to the a to the sh it up

Dj Earworm hit it out of the park again with his newly annual end-of-year mash-up, United State of Pop.

This year’s track is distinctly melodic, but just as scathing, tongue-in-cheek impeccable and ultimately addictive as anything. From his site, (where you can directly download any of his music): “Here are bits of the Top 25 hits of the year, according to Billboard Magazine, arranged into a four and a half minute song. This is a follow-up to last year’s mashup of the Top 25 hits of 2007. This year in the charts, we’ve gone all soft. The songs are sexy and defiant, less macho than in previous years. Accordingly, I’ve selected Coldplay as the instrumental track, giving the whole year a sort of symphonic feel. This edit is called “Viva La Pop”, and I hope to post more edits soon.”


Download: United State of Pop 2007

Download: United States of Pop 2008 (Viva La Pop)

We’ve been making our own all week

Miss Cellania found a Washington Post feature called Merge-Matic Books, where two-best-sellers are mixed into one. Here’s some examples, click the link to see them all:

“Machiavelli’s The Little Prince” – Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s classic children’s tale as presented by Machiavelli. The whimsy of human nature is embodied in many delightful and intriguing characters, all of whom are executed.

“Lorna Dune” – An English farmer, Paul Atreides, falls for the daughter of a notorious rival clan, the Harkonnens, and pursues a career as a giant worm jockey in order to impress her.

“Fahrenheit 451 of the Vanities” – An ’80s yuppie is denied books. He does not object, or even notice.

“Planet of the Grapes of Wrath” – Astronaut lands on mysterious planet, only to discover that it is his very own home planet of Earth, which has been taken over by the Joads, a race of dirt-poor corn farmers who miraculously developed rudimentary technology and evolved the ability to speak after exposure to nuclear radiation.

from your eyes to your brain in two easy steps


picture by kenichi hoshine

Vancouver’s outrageous community chorus, The Broadway Chorus, only has two nights left for DON’T MAKE ME LAUGH!, a two-act Broadway extravaganza showing at the Waterfront Theatre on Grandville Island. It’s apparently a fun mix of old classics and new hits from current alt-trendy shows like Spamalot, Urinetown, and Wicked. Adam, who’s in it, used the word “hijinks” in his write-up, which is a pretty good recommendation if you’re into wacky musical theater. Tickets are $16, $11 if reserved in advance from 778.322.7182. As always, doors at 7, show at 8.

If western musical theater isn’t to your taste, allow me to present Koreans sublimely breaking, scratching and beat-boxing a cover of Pachelbel’s Canon in D, (hosted on the always awesome Transbuddha). With thanks to dear Larry for digging it up, I’m wondering if anyone has any leads on whatever else this group has done. I love dignified cultural mash-up’s. I think taking stylistics that evolved from the South Bronx in the 1970s and combining it with a gayageum cover of a baroque german composer is possibly even more brilliant than Dr. Fu Manchu, rocking out on Casio synthesizers.

Similarly beautiful to the Korean clip is the riveting UK promo for the tv show LOST set to Portishead and enchantingly directed by David LaChapelle. (LaChapelle is the man behind Rize, the recent must-see hip-hop documentary). It reminds me of Massive Attack’s video for KarmaComa.

Course, for sheer priceless rock and roll, the winner this week is Superheros. It’s a horrible video with horrible music that with a premise that seems straight out of Spinal Tap, with the band done up like gun-toting soldiers out hunting playboy bunnies. It screams for Women’s History students to set fire to the directors house, but by the end I was laughing too hard to care.

*live streaming video of oysterhead, (Trey Anastasio, Les Claypool, & Stewart Copeland), click now or miss out: link