this week’s TbTotW. other than this track having a hard as hell beat, the video is unreal. i’ve never seen a hiphop vid like this, and i doubt i will – it’s probably one of my favorite music vids evah evah. what happened to rah digga? female mc’s in general?

i’ve sent off my (late) summer mixtape to sunny hawaii, care of my in4mation brosephs justin and zen. 808s check out the ward or lewers stores to see if they got it in stock! i gave em hella stickers too so ask for a couple! and not to fret yall that are not so lucky to live in hawaii, i’ll sell some here off the site. i just need to cop some more blanks and get to burnin.

been in a mix funk lately, but the past few days i’ve been getting some more ideas. stay tuned. (i was told my mailing list shit on the right side is not functioning.. i’ll also fix that once i get some time – shit i’m hittin up the wordpress from work! multitask like what what)

+ sometime in august a wired writer tried to ‘vanish’ and start a new identity, but challenged readers to find him – obviously he was found, and the ‘how’ is a pretty cool story. but i’m more interested in his notion of vanishing, it’s something i’ve had daydreams of. the whole process of assimilating yourself into a new location – not necessarily to avoid people but to just live a whole different life for a little bit. like, what if you move out to a middle of nowhere spot, like a small rest stop kind of community off the 10 somewhere in arizona or texas, and just find a job working at a gas station there, or a restaurant, or something else? just live off of that and have no other aspiration. i just want to observe that kind of life.

+ from a cupcake news piece on npr, i heard about warren buffet‘s 3 i’s, a pretty universal ethos that i can easily adapt to design. of course after that, you’re left thinking which i you want to live up to, and while many strive to be innovators, i think for the most part there are much more of the latter two, both of which have no real positive connotation. i’m content labeling myself an imitator – the sincerest form of flattery!

+ cool collection of disposable vinyls and other antique vinyl ephemera. the cool part in this video was him explaining the public recording booths that would spit out vinyls, meant to be given as gifts or mailed as messages, dude how cool is that? photo booths are still definitely around but it seems like this idea got scrapped way early, so much so that i’d never heard of it till now. what an awesome concept though.

sorta a throwback track of the (it’s been a while since i done this). i remember hearing this the first time i heard a dimitri from paris mix set, and it was/is/will be so damn funky. his compilations and own productions are loaded with disco heat. i’m quite mad at myself for missing out his set at deep earlier in august, but c’est la vie – he’ll be around again next year, surely.

+ i’ve been hitting the la critical mass lately – last months and last last months. these things are a lot of fun, although i’m sure for most it’s an excuse to bike past red lights and generally act like an asshole.. which is of course not helping the plight of the los angelesian cyclist – however, riding en masse through busy streets is much more interesting (and maybe safer) than riding by yourself through busy streets. some pics here – shooting while riding is the business.

+ sasha frere-jones talks about audio quality, a subject of interest.

+ my dude brian releases a podcast via itunes subscription link or mailing list, and i’ve had them chilling in my gmail but didn’t really check out till now – and i’m really all about it. his march podcast is getting rotates, definitely. and i’ll be taking cues (read: jocking) from his setup and i’ve set up a mailing list where i will announce whenever i’ve got something downloadable. hint: you can sign up on the right side.

+ please watch this shit. i rored

i’m usually talking about music that evokes nostalgia, practicing the association of memories to certain songs, but lately – and telling of my current listening tendencies – i’ve been listening to alot of jazz and soundtrack scores. there is a way that a soundtrack can take you to a most vivid daydream where the movie is taking place, or when/where it should take place based on the selection. it’s those kinds of daydreams where stories are written up, plotlines developed, characters chosen, and denouments are finalized. i would always do stuff like this, come up with the movie idea based on the music, but right now it’s in full effect.

i’m a big fan of that typically sixties/early seventies full orchestral sound/spaghetti western sound, built and refined by people like John Barry or Ennio Morricone. however my utmost favoritest artist/composer of the era is Les Baxter. there is something about his exotica-filled production that bring me to a whole other place, trying to put myself into the shoes of the protagonist in a spy movie set in europe. to quote his wiki:

Baxter offered package tours in sound, selling tickets to sedentary tourists who wanted to stroll around some taboo emotions before lunch, view a pagan ceremony, go wild in the sun or conjure a demon, all without leaving home hi-fi comforts in the white suburbs.

just check out a sample track off youtube, voodoo dreams, and close your eyes and try not to be transported. my first thought is that island Syndrome runs all his superhero tests on. which, btw, is one of my favorite pixar movies evah. anyway, a lot of les baxters music is so good that i wonder why the majority of his work was strictly on vinyl and never on its proper intention – an actual soundtrack. however i’m also going to contradict myself and say that it’s better that way, so that listeners can imagine their own cinematic visuals rather than have their thoughts replaced by moving images.

my favorite album by les baxter (tough call, i wanna just say everything? gotta catch em all) is Que Mango, which i believe should be made into a movie immediately, straight up from track one being the introduction sequence to the last track starting the credits, as the main character is sailing into the sunset. he dare not look back; already having the hardest of times fighting away his tears, while she’s longingly looking towards the ship, knowing well that she’ll never see him again. pangs of regret flicker* all around them, yet he has to leave, and she.. well, yeah. i’m already getting lost in it. i’ve already cast the main characters: jude law as the jetsetting debonair yet afflicted spy, and naomi watts as the meek and unwaveringly loyal love interest – hey, it’s the sixties! stereotypes are still okay.

only now has it dawned on me that it would bring me great joy to be a music director on a film, atleast for a period piece that i could use all this music. one can dream.

some youtube selections:
+ Metti, Una Sera a Cena by Ennio Morricone
+ Meglio Stasera (pink panther movies ARE THE BUSINESS.)
+ Dawn Raid at Fort Knox by John Barry
+ Nikki by Burt motherfucking Bacharach (full name because Burt is that dude)

+ nujabes fans and musiq soulchild fans, get blown away by this, as i did.
+ arr matey, find que mango here.
+ other composers tickling my fancy(seems to have an italian slant): Luis Bacalov, Armando Trovaioli, Piero Umiliani.

*fucked up that i wanted to type flickr instead of flicker. fuck you, internet. fuck you.

no throwback here, just a youtube recommendation that is warming my already-warm state this summer day.

+ bEnt or diE does some amazing circuit bending trickery with battery-operated music gadgets. some of these tracks straight up sound like they could easily be a flying lotus track, or something in similar vein.

+ i’ve been thinking about this subject a whole lot lately. what ever did happen to personal websites? mowed down by the facebooks and twitters of the world, it seems. i was looking at the wayback machine to my old old websites(EMBARASS), and the subject matter was always nerdy and mundane, although i don’t believe much has changed in the realm of content – maybe people just figured out that people would read if it was short enough to hold their short attention span, which it seems, is one hundred and forty characters or less. or, and i believe this more to be true: all the content you’d be putting on your personal site is better off on a network/community site, where it has better chances of being seen. if anything, a personal website now might just hold links to other sites that you participate in, your tumblrs, your flickrs, your deliciouses, et al.

and dude, no braggo, but i came up with some fucking rad ways to handle content back in the day. i sorta want to make a cool website again.

+ does the broken windows theory hold online? this makes me wonder about youtube’s design and how it affects, if at all, the general nature of the comments.

+ to be totally hypocritical about more outsourcing of my content away from my site to other sites, i just signed up at mixcloud to upload some of my mixes so i can listen to them there and save my bandwidth ho ho ho. but i don’t want to upload all of them. so tell me which ones you want me to put and i’ll do it. easy enough.

+ fan me on facebook. you know you want to.

+ SUMMER MIX IS LIKE 75% DONE! i originally wanted to make a zine to go along with the mixtape, but time is not on my side as well as printing fees. c’est la vie. however, i think i’ll start doing other design goodies to give out.

this week’s throwback track of the week(TbTotW) brougt to you by alex, this guy i work with. he’s been blasting me from the past the whole time i’ve been here and his audio selections are unsurpassed. he doesn’t dj though – his wife handles that business.

+ more from alex, he’s introduced me to beats in space, a most amazing radio show that has most if not all their mix sets online and available for download. it’s some really good shit. it’s made me want to ditch all my itunes playlists and just listen to (good) radio like this.. more as it develops.

+ the come up this saturday in pasadena, get at it. i’ll be doing a new jack set i’ve been saving up for a long time.

+ i really need to see these glasses on a proper model, because it would probably give me great lolzzz.

+ park chan wook, the man who brought the oh so loved oldboy (i really didn’t like that movie – in comparison to mr vengeance) has a neat looking vampire film called thirst, which will be playing at laemmles sunset next friday. it’s not a korean twilight.

leon ware originally wrote ‘I wanna be where you are’ and then recorded his own version after mj’s; he adds a laidback feel to the track. i enjoy them both. however the intro on the mj one is unstoppamable.

+ “The songs remind us of ourselves–this is why they are important.” among other ruminations during the day of. i like the way he writes. (and i’m not just saying that because.. uh.. well,)

+ summer mixtape work is in progress! still untitled, but it’ll be a full length and for sale with some other goodies in it too. will keep you updated.

+ movies i want to see/will see soon(yes i enjoy reading my movies): moon, the goods, vengeance, ponyo, i corrupt all cops, the shinjuku incident, & omg harry potter!11!

+ interesting, i’d never heard the term monomyth to describe that ever so dependable/formulaic storyline, but makes total sense. i need to add this to some sort of list of tried and true methods of storytelling, along with four american stories(which i earlier referenced in a ‘zine i wrote/designed about political language, it’s good! if i can find the pdf somewhere) and twenty-two frames that always work. is there some kind of list 2.0 site i can blindly sign up for and populate?