the best band you never heard of.

Seriously.

Jetpack were a band in Providence in the late 90s. They released one 7" single called Investigator Man (on clear vinyl with accompanying comic book), and one self-titled full-length cd, on their short-lived label Sampson Recordings. I saw them play a few times, including opening for Don Caballero and on their own at the very hip AS220. Then they lost their drummer, and the remaining two guys became Hya Kcha, playing drums and bass-with-many-pedals. I also have a two-track cd of Hya Kcha's, cleverly titled "A Demonstration," which I will happily dig out and share if anyone's interested.

But back to the point: the self-titled Jetpack cd is one of my top 10, maybe top 5 favorite albums of all time and ever, bar none, and I absolutely pull it out and listen to it with much regularness. Simply put, it ROCKS. To be a little more descriptive, this is very much in the Math Rock vein, with off-kilter syncopations and odd-length phrasings and so on, but with a firm emphasis on the Rock part as well. To contrast, I never got into Don Caballero that much because their stuff can be too focused on the math part, and end up feeling almost clinical. Unwound, one of my other very favorite bands, might be a better comparison except that Jetpack is less dark and grungy/metally (metallic?). Not that Jetpack would ever jam, heavens no. Every riff is repeated exactly as many times as necessary for you to get your head around it, and then the song moves on. The volume or tempo shifts in that way that I love, building and falling and building again so you can barely sit still, like good early Mogwai but without the feedback, if that makes any sense. And I almost forgot to mention - these guys were fucking tight as tupperware. Unbelievable.

Okay, enough talk. No guilt about sharing these tracks since the guys have made them available on the Sampson site, and I'm sure the cd is essentially impossible to buy. (The Jetpack on Amazon is a different one.) So get the tracks from them, or over at Multiply, or zipped up, and let me know what you think.

turntable music

The very decent music blog debaser recently posted a link to a large (3 cds) and apparently rare collection of turntable wizardry from Ninjatune, called Xen Cuts. The label's tenth anniversary compilation, from 2000, includes tracks from Kid Koala, Z-Trip, Coldcut, and DJ Food (subject of an upcoming post), along with many others. If you like turntable music or, even better, aren't a fan yet and want a good sampling of some of the best the genre has to offer, definitely grab this while you can.

Xen Cuts, from Ninjatune.

Stranger Than Fiction soundtrack

Apologies to all three of my readers (LALOL!) for the extended absence.

We finally saw Stranger Than Fiction this weekend. In addition to being a really super duper movie, it's one of those films that makes great use of an excellent pop music soundtrack. Coincidently, considering I'll be seeing them at Toad's this very Thursday night (all right!), the soundtrack was compiled by Britt Daniel and Brian Reitzell of Spoon, and includes instrumental sections written by them in addition to several Spoon songs, including one previously unreleased (The Book I Write).

Grab it here. Enjoy!

more lazy post

this is awesome. Here comes the marching band of The Future! make sure to check the videos.

via here.

lazy post

i'm busy. just to fill the void:



via here.

and I'm listening to rjd2.

Last.fm is quite okay.

Last.fm stations can now pop out to a separate window, or be embedded elsewhere. Are you underwhelmed?

Bands similar to The Crownhate Ruin:



Music tagged with "mash-up":



Geek note: blogger complains about the sloppy html provided by last.fm, so you have to add </embed> right before </object> for it to work.

must! buy! music!

My recent bender continued at CD Spins on Newbury St. this weekend. More in keeping with my usual habits, I managed to pick out 5 used cds for $30. The highlights were definitely the Rodan cd (Rusty, their only album, which I've been looking for for a while), and June of 44's Tropics and Meridians, which is in a similar vein (not surprisingly).

Jungle Jim - Rodan (Rusty)
June Leaf - June of 44 (Tropics and Meridians)

I also came across the second cd from Creeper Lagoon, which on first listen is pretty similar to, if a little less adventurous than (i.e. more radio-friendly, i.e. crappier than) their first album. Nonetheless a decent find for $6, and for the special place they hold in my heart from years ago.

Chance of a Lifetime - Creeper Lagoon (Take Back the Universe and Give Me Yesterday)

Then I found a single called Bang the Drum by Railroad Jerk, a mid-90s Matador band. I had one cassette of theirs in high school, and one track of theirs appears on the What's Up Matador compilation that I have. I'm no big fan or anything, but I had to buy it just to hear this cover.

Why Don't We Do It In The Road - Railroad Jerk

To top it off, my order from Dischord - Fugazi, The Argument cd and Furniture 7" - was waiting for me in the mailbox when I got back Monday morning. I feel like Cookie Monster these days. MUUUUUZIIIIIC!!! RA RA RA RA RA!!!!!

I promise more computer-web-music related stuff, as soon as I find the time. Preview: Musicast is asking for money, but still works great. Streampad is busted, but there are other options I hope to try out soon.

Forget Cassettes - The Catch cd single

New Royalty Rates Would End Internet Radio

If you like Last.fm, Pandora, Finetune, or any of the other streaming music services, you may soon be out of luck, as newly announced royalty rates would likely put them out of business. Interestingly, this could end up indirectly hurting the merger bid of satellite radio providers Sirius and XM, who argued the merger wouldn't create a monopoly in part because they were competing against internet radio as well as traditional radio.

Rather than regurgitate, I direct you to the following sources:

Consumer Affairs has an article, as does the LA Times. The latter points out in passing that this will put a huge damper on the diversity of music available to listen to online (obviously).

The Radio and Internet Newsletter has details in this post among others.
A legal perspective.
Save Internet Radio
Musick in the Head blog (more informative links)

2 other places to hang out on teh internets

I've been spending a little time at a couple of other sites lately. First, multiply.com is a community site that makes it really easy to share music & photos, keep a blog/journal, etc. It amazingly offers unlimited storage of your mp3s and everything else, which you can upload and organize into playlists. Then other users (everyone, or just your contacts) can listen and comment. My new page is here.

The other new (to me) hangout is Rate Your Music (RYM). I've been looking around for an easy and useful way to catalog my physical music collection (cds and vinyl). RYM is like a wiki for music, in that anyone can add or edit information on artists and albums. Plus, you can write reviews, rate albums, and most importantly, register which releases you own, and on what format. It looks like there are other features that could be cool, but that I haven't looked into yet, like compatibility with other users' ratings, etc. (Presumably like last.fm's neighbors.) If you want to see what I've entered so far from my collection (definitely a skewed sample), my user page is here.

If anyone has other suggestions on ways to catalog my music collection, please let me know. Delicious Library of course looks awesome, but I don't have an isight or barcode scanner and a lot of my vinyl albums don't even have bar codes anyway. Plus it costs money.