Concert 10/29 @ElSuperMusic collective

alert to all readers/listeners out in the blogosphere/ interwebs... Highland Park artistic collective El Super (follow on twitter @ElSuperMusic) will be performing a concert at 906 n. Ave 56. Resident artists Xei the Ghost, Supa Ape, Ded Pimpin, and Cozy will be playing an extrachunky combined roundrobin style set, running the gamut from ambient techno, free hiphop, spiritual electronica and noise pop. Surely it will be the best thing you can decide to do at 9pm this coming friday night. refer to the collective's music page for listening pleasures.

http://soundcloud.com/melvinrichardson2011

New Talent: James Blake

With his newest E.P. 'Klavierwerke', Londoner James Blake cemented his young reputation as one of the most muscular and exciting in a new generation of IDM producers. Klavierwerke is a very restrained, almost classically austere group of four songs. The bulk of the material Blake is sampling is his own piano playing and singing; he's blending the line between a sampler like Burial and a singer songwriter. And the effect is tremendous, with earlier E.P.'s Blake proved he can make you dance, now he can make you cry. Klavierwerke is a perfect candidate for the term 'spiritual electronica'. Check out his video for a Feist cover 'Limit to your Love' and expect great things from this boy...He's clearly making moves.

Mumford and Sons 10/18/10 at the Palladium

I have to say it: I think this concert changed my life.

Ok, so maybe that's a little bit dramatic of me, but in all seriousness this concert absolutely blew my mind. I'm still reeling three days later.

Please Note: This song contains the "F" word. If you'd like to listen to the clean version, click here!

"I Got an Attitude"

Guest Speaker

Melina Abdullah
"I Got an Attitude"
Hip Hop and Womanist Resistance


Weds, Oct 27th

12:30pm

Fowler 302

Oxy Alum has Profound Thoughts on the Nature of Music in California

This is a really interesting article I just found on the LA Weekly Music page, written by Romona Gonzalez. Gonzalez is an Oxy alum, and is better known as the performer Nite Jewel. Acclaimed for her hazy expressionism and creative artistry exhibited in her music, Nite Jewel has been gaining popularity throughout the country, and was even reviewed by Pitchfork.com. She also just released her new LP, Am I Real? Check out this rad article she wrote:

Going Coastal
by Ramona Gonzalez

History repeats itself, sort of. In the summer of 1961, the Beach Boys released their first single, "Surfin'," on Candix Records. The deal was brokered in part through a convincing pitch by the young Dennis Wilson that the band would get in on the surfing craze booming in California at the time.

In fact, many bands mined that aesthetic: the Bel-Airs, the Surfaris, the Pyramids, the Marketts, the Honeys, the Challengers and others. It was the Beach Boys, however, who popularized the trend into something national and then global.

All the while, leader Brian Wilson had never touched a surfboard save for promotional use.

It makes sense that Los Angeles would be a place to market an aesthetic of optimism: beaches, good weather, pretty girls, fast cars. And now, once again, the stereotypes of Southland culture have become a global trend. Nowadays not only on the Pacific Coast, but to some degree on the Atlantic as well, we see another rise of a beach craze — not as a real pastime or object, but in the form of "just being coastal."

With the lack of regionalism in the U.S. due to the capacity of the Internet to turn the nation into one big blob — to give kids the idea that their locality is closer to a Facebook wall than any particular town — this concept of "being from someplace" seems particularly novel to the new generation.

Happy Birthday Dizzy Gillespie

Google's logo today honored legendary jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, who wouldbe 93 years old today.

Here's a short biography about him from blackweb20.com:

Google has used their latest Doodle to commemorate the birth of jazz icon Dizzy Gillespie. 93 years ago, a man by the name of John Birks “Dizzy” Gillespie was born. The youngest of nine children, Dizzy was born to James and Lottie Gillespie in South Carolina. His dad, James, was the leader of a band, which gave Dizzy access to all types of musical instruments. By age 12, Dizzy was able to play both the trombone and the trumpet.

Dizzy is considered a pioneer in bebop and jazz music. He’s credited with influencing such greats as Miles Davis and Fats Navarro. Besides being a musical legend, Dizzy is known by two characteristics: his cheeks and his horn. Google has captured both of these in their Doodle, making his cheeks bright yellow and circular and giving his horn an upward bend. FromWikipedia:

According to Gillespie’s autobiography, this was originally the result of accidental damage caused by someone sitting on it during a job on January 6, 1953, but the constriction caused by the bending altered the tone of the instrument, and Gillespie liked the effect. Gillespie’s biographer Alyn Shipton writes that Gillespie likely got the idea when he saw a similar instrument in 1937 in Manchester, England while on tour with the Teddy Hill Orchestra. An English trumpeter was using such an instrument because his vision was poor and the horn made reading music easier. According to this account (from British journalist Pat Brand) Gillespie was able to try out the horn and the experience led him, much later, to commission a similar horn for himself.

Happy Birthday Dizzy!!!

Postal Service Producer Found a Way to Make Ga Ga Bearable

I'm not the biggest Lady Gaga fan. I won't go on a schpiel, but let's just leave it at I think she's pretty much the worst thing ever. SO, I was a little skeptical when someone told me about this remix of "Paparazzi." But I have to say it is actually really good (probably because you can only sort of tell it's Lady Gaga).

This super-chill gem was created by the producer of the Postal Service James Tamborello (also known as Dntel or James Figurine). The LA Weekly called it "an ebullient and masterful work of beat experimentalism and ambient textures." Check it out in this video, which I must warn you is a very weird edit of a clip of a Golden Retriever. Such is art.

Paparazzi from James Tamborello on Vimeo.