The discs || My music and a sample playlist || My disc

Other blogs (they're nice enough to allow for comments, even):
Dorkyspice || Crowboy || Srah

The iTunes swag clearinghouse || Tell us of your swag || View others' swag

The discs:

Added March 13
Okay, it's been a while and frankly, I don't have time to say anything much right now, either. Plus probably everyone has lost interest because you're all at least as busy as I am these days, so there's every chance I'm talking entirely to myself right now. Nothing new in that, and it would certainly be no reason to stop, but the important point is that all the other music blogs seem to have been abandoned, so I'm concerned that's what the cool kids are doing, and therefore I should probably do the same.

I do want to say I'm really enjoying the swap still and I'm hearing some great stuff. The goal is to eventually catch up and give everyone a paragraph. But this isn't going to happen tonight. How's May for you? Because that's when I think it might actually happen. I'm about two weeks behind and the prospects for further time before graduation are pretty much zero. This can be demonstrated by a simple equation which I think you are all familiar with:

where G is equal to the quantity of Graduate-studentness, and FT is the amount of FreeTime. So, as you can see, G is inversely proportional to the amount of FT you can expect to possess. I don't think I'm telling you anything you don't already know.

So, barring the remote possibility that I'm simultaneously hit with both a creative surge and an unexpected free hour, I'm afraid we won't be seeing much of each other in the near future. I'm sorry, but we both knew this couldn't last.

PS. If you're doing the iTunes thing, please participate by adding your downloads to the guestbook. All entries can be made anonymously, or feel free to brag at length of your downloading conquests. Go ahead. We're listening, and are prepared to be very impressed by your musical wit.

Added March 1

What has corporate America done for you lately?

The halls of SI are abuzz with caffeinated excitement from this year's Pepsi/iTunes contest. Buy a specially-marked Pepsi product, win a free iTunes download a cool 33% of the time.

I though it would be fun to compile what we're doing with our valuable free downloads (ignoring the $1.25 spent on sugary carbonated water, but this is of course a sunk cost). Please take advantage of my frighteningly primitive guestbook feature to let us know what song(s) you've downloaded. (All entries can be made anonymously.) So, what did you download?

Added February 19
Almost too much to talk about, and I haven't a clue how to talk about CDs with more than 100 singles on them when everything's kind of different, which accurately describes all four of the recent discs I've heard.

Last week I heard discs from N and CM, both of which I really enjoyed. Lots of punk, rock, alternative, and samplings of other. They have some similarities between the two, so it's not unlike getting 200+ songs with the same feel. But these are the types of discs that I was looking forward to most in the swap, I think. Lots of stuff I haven't heard, but have wanted to. N's music needs a more detailed listen, but it's one of the few that I haven't found myself skipping around on to hear different tunes. There's just a lot of good punk sorts of stuff that I'll have to listen to more. Some favorites: Mates of State cover Nico's "These Days." South's "Paint the Silence." Hard to comment more generally than that, but thanks for a great sampling, N. From CM, more great stuff, and lots that I'd wanted to hear: Apples in Stereo, The Fiery Furnaces, ("Blueberry Boat" is crazy with a capital K and at least two 'r's), the Dead Kennedys. There's a great "Fly me to the Moon" cover, except it sounds like she's singing "Fry me to the moon." But perhaps that's an interpretation.

From this week, J has a ton of interesting music divided into several different broad categories. Some '80s stuff, oldies, punk, hip-hop, and a catch-all "Cool stuff" category. Really liked the variety. Some crazy covers: Pennywise's cover of "Down Under" (terrific), "Seasons in the Sun" (terrifying). A good compendium of '80s one-hit wonders. He also has Trio's "Da-Da-Da" which makes me laugh whenever I hear it. It ended up in a Volkswagon commercial a few years ago and it got into my Dad's head. Whenever I visited home, for like a year, my Dad would be mumbling "Da-Da-Da." When you hear the song, you'll understand how goofy it is, and imagining my 54-year-old father singing this just kills me. Try it at home: think of the stupidest/funniest sort of song you can (if you haven't heard "Da-Da-Da" yet, maybe The Jackson Five's "ABC" has a similar feel). Now picture your father singing it under his breath, like it's frustratingly stuck in his head. It's a bizarre scene, man.

CR has a ton of great oldies, new stuff, folk, Star Wars Imperial Death Marches, everything. A lot of fun. Not a lot that is quite my taste, but much more upbeat than most of my stuff so I'm keeping most of it to have the variety in my collection. Favorites: Pete Yorn, Lou Reed.

Total discs listened to: 11
Total inclusions of "Hey Ya!": 1
"Hey Ya!" percentage, or HYP: 9%

This is starting to seem like a dumb idea. (Starting?) I should have definitely tracked The Violent Femmes' "Blister in the Sun" which has been on probably 7 of the 11 discs.

Added February 10
Speaker fi upgrade!

The promise of future income and the absurd physical degradation of the current crappy laptop has encouraged my investment in a new computer. Hence ordered, hence arrived! But wait...Gateway pulled a fast one on me, shipping me only the accompanying speakers. So while my computer languishes on a factory to-do list somewhere, I am pleased to report an upgrade to my current level of fi, first complained about nearly a month ago in this space.

A thorough investigation of the specifications, however, has revealed no information about these speakers' fi. Given their moderately outrageous price, I can only assume they are hi, and not lo, fi. The specs present me with Hz and dB, which I'm certain is very important given that physicists study these things, but useless to me as applicable knowledge in the speaker realm.

Anyway, because I have a camera and you're clearly seeking refuge from real life merely by reading this, have a look at my new toys, sometimes juxtaposed with my old toys.

Added February 9
Abandoning the weekly headers because updates are failing to correspond to the week in which I'm necessarily hearing the music. Plus its inclusion just means I have to look up what day Monday was. Considering I spent most of today (Wednesday) secretly concerned that it was actually yesterday (Tuesday), and occasionally wondering whether I was falsely adhering to my Wednesday schedule when it was, in fact, Tuesday...well, you can see I'm easily confused. How to explain this? I'm on my way to a master's degree and I struggle to outwit calendars.

Heard only music from M in the last week. And really, I don't have a lot to say about it. Which only engenders questions about why I'm writing. Ignoring these, I press on. The thing was, I didn't get into M's CD too much. Lots of electronica and thumping sorts of things that I'd not heard, and found interesting, but just not the sort of stuff I can listen to regularly. I did like the tunes from Ayumi Hamasaki particularly.

Heard just a smattering of music from N and C so far this week, but really like the variety on these discs. C's disc has a jazz cover of Radiohead's "Paranoid Android" that's really good.

Total discs listened to: 7
Total inclusions of "Hey Ya!": 1
"Hey Ya!" percentage, or HYP: 14%

Hmm. Perhaps I should have tabulated Radiohead inclusions instead... My brief spat with Ned's Atomic Dustbin ended when Air's "Alpha Beta Gaga" forcibly removed them, with help from John Popper and his fellow Blues Travelers. John Popper is on the short list of coolest humans ever, though the top spot is permanently reserved for Louis Armstrong.

Week of January 31

Added February 5
To: Ned's Atomic Dustbin
Re: Eviction Notice

Dear Mr. Ned's Atomic Dustbin:
Your song "Grey Cell Green" has rooted itself rather inconveniently in our head. Please vacate the premises immediately. It's not that we don't like you (because we do, we really really do), it's just that...well, you've been there for days now, and we'd like to think of something else. Please.

Thank you,
J's Brain

Added February 2
Despite my best attempts to thwart it, real life does find me occasionally. This time around it took almost a week to beat it back into submission, during which time I've again become hip-deep in MP3s. Though please allow this paragraph serve as my last apology for being behind in my writing about SI music. The flood will continue and in the long run it's a nice thing, but I won't be able to write in detail about any of it as much as I'd hoped.

I didn't hear exactly what was intended this week, for which cosmic rays and/or god are the only possible entities which can be rightfully blamed. Nonetheless, I boldly press on with the knowledge that you're powerless to stop me from boldy pressing on, discussing music from EE (from last week) and A (from this week), with discussion of ED's music (held over from last week) and M (this week) coming later.

Favorites of the Week: Trainspotting Soundtrack, High Fidelity Dub Sessions (from EE), Baked Potato, Woodstock '94 (courtesy of A)

Didn't expect to like much of EE's global house party mix as I have a pretty low endurance for thumpy dance music, but really took to some of it. I liked the tracks included from the Trainspotting Soundtrack in particular, having never heard them outside the context of the film. I'm fond enough of the movie that I can't listen to them without thinking about their respective visualizations, but I still think they're surprisingly rich for techno-heavy tracks, particularly Underworld's "Born Slippy." Also enjoyed Hi-Fidelity Dub Sessions despite my personal lack of fi... Some terrific singles on the disc, especially Kumar Sanu's "Ek Ladki Ko Dekha" and Ned's Atomic Dustbin's "Grey Cell Green." Also recommended: Tabla Beat Science, Dirty Dozen's Ears to the Wall and, of course, Van Morrison's "Brown-Eyed Girl."

A's disc survives the nearly unforgivable crime of including a Bon Jovi track. Aside from that, the music is a lot of fun. Enjoyed Baked Potato a lot. Had never heard of them before--they're a little like Phish maybe... Hadn't heard any Pearl Jam in a while and A provides a nice live show of theirs. I suspect I'm not alone amongst the massive base of Ten-era fans of Pearl Jam that have lost track of them in the intervening, um, 15 years. What I've heard of theirs since then isn't bad. But it's not Ten, either... Also recommended: the always underappreciated Blues Traveler, G. Love & Special Sauce, Zucchero's "Everybody's Got to Learn Sometime" (later covered by Beck for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which is why it sounded so damn familiar--Beware! The Bon Jovi track comes right after it!). (As an aside, A's disc is in the running for best cover art...)

In other news, the "Hey Ya!" tally officially begins this week with its first inclusion on a swap disc:

Total discs listened to: 4
Total inclusions of "Hey Ya!": 1
"Hey Ya!" percentage, or HYP: 25%

Not sure why I'm picking on it. I happen to like the song, actually. Guess I'm just curious what percentage of SI people would think to include it... I was playing with this weird yeti batting practice flash game when Lenny Kravitz's "Fly Away" came up on EE's disc. I kept hearing this "Woo!" sound and thought it was part of the song. Didn't figure out until the song ended that "Woo!" was actually the sound the the yeti game makes as you swat the penguins. However, the "Woo!" goes surprisingly well with "Fly Away" as well as (I've discovered) many other upbeat songs, including "Hey Ya!" and David Bowie's "Queen Bitch" (which I had handy thanks to the Life Aquatic Soundtrack). Be cautioned that "Woo!" is not always additive. It fares decidedly worse when played against "Brown-Eyed Girl" or, say, U2's "Numb."

Week of January 24

Added January 30
BuriedintheNoise-dot-com's name actually has nothing to do with music, just so's you know. It's just coincidence that the site now harbors my meager ramblings on an inundation of music courtesy of SI's substantial horde of dijaloggers. Seems unlikely that I will have any prayer of consistently keeping up with the flood, and this seems like a typical sentiment amongst fellow swappers. Even last week, when I felt as though I got to listen to both discs thoroughly, I still only heard most everything once. So despite having the lamest graduate student schedule ever, I still presume I'm going to fall hopelessly behind and have to resort to madly copying files and passing the discs along without adequate real time listening and reflecting. This project may become an exercise in archival practice more than anything.

Let this week serve as an immediate example. I was out of town for a bit attempting to become employed. Suddenly realized I'm taking classes again and it turns out I'm expected to prove I'm paying attention. Work deadlines. You know, the regular endless thankless grad student life. Didn't get a chance to listen to anything until yesterday, and still mostly just copying and moving on for now. Expected catch-up time scheduled for later this week...

Highlights thus far: Trainspotting soundtrack, Tabla Beat Science.

Week of January 17

Added January 22 while standing in front of a brick wall looking pensive
To understand a thing, one must also understand its opposite.

Apropos of this wisdom (?) and our swap of (presumably good) music, observe one of the many nadirs of human creativity, really bad band photos. Sometimes the snarky comments subtract from something that really doesn't need commentary to be amusing and make you feel better about yourself. But you'll also be seeking solace after seeing so many people being unique and creative in precisely the same manner.

Favorites of the week: Broken Social Scene, The Unicorns, Curve

Really enjoyed S's disc as a whole. She provides several full indie albums, nearly all of which I immediately liked. Granted, our musical preferences seem to mostly coincide--though I hadn't heard much of her music before, many of the groups were known to me, many even jotted on some of the dozens of paper scraps I have stashed around to remind me of music I want to hear. My favorite of hers was Broken Social Scene, recipients of extra gold stars. Listen to someone flatter it. (In fact, this is not the only disc of hers flattered by Pitchfork. The Arcade Fire get a stratospheric 9.7 out of 10 from them.) Hard to really describe what I liked about BSS. They have all kinds of different styles over the course of the album. Really creative and melodic... Also liked the Unicorns a lot. All kinds of crazy stuff on their record. In your face, verse-chorus-verse!... Other recommended: the Kostars, Mirah.

A's disc is a lot of fun, has plenty of great singles. She provides a huge variety of classic rock/pop/indie/hip-hop, and the tracks are all over the map within these genres. I'm afraid I didn't take to the albums much. I liked most of them when listening, but then nothing really stuck with me. I apparently have something against Coldplay that I can't rightly explain. Just can't seem to like them... Every time I hear Billie Holiday I'm happy. Conclusion: obtain more Billie Holiday. Although "Me, Myself, and I" is a strange tune. The good news is I love you. The bad news is I'm schizophrenic. What are you so upset about? There may be three disparate people in my head, but we all love you!... I did like the tunes by Curve very much (particularly "Something Familiar"), have to get more of them... Tons of great singles on here by The Violent Femmes, The Who, Harry Belafonte. (Harry Belafonte has my favorite lyric of the week: "Somebody help me!" This comes in just ahead of the Unicorns: "We're the Unicorns, we're more than horses." Yeah, we're totally more than horses. There's, like, this horn, and the glitter, and everything.)

Decided to skip the Garden State Soundtrack (on A's collection) pending my viewing of the film, but not sure if this is a good strategy. Perhaps I ought to hear these songs without context first? Then I'll have my own impressions and can see if I like how they're used once I'm familiar with them. Otherwise I risk associating them with stuff from the movie. To be pondered upon...

Apologies for usage of any SI 504 vocabulary in the commentary above, or any other such use as I add to this page this term. Oh, posh, you probably didn't even notice. It's too late to turn back now, we're all hopelessly information scienced.

Added January 19
If most people maxxed out a CD-R with data files, this could be ten hours of music per disc, times two discs a week. Twenty hours of probably mostly new new music per week. This is like two or three new albums worth *per day*. Speaking as an information professional, perhaps this would be a good time to do some reading up on anti-piracy laws. What's the over/under until the RIAA has one of us killed? Like a week?

Also thinking about people's receptiveness to new music, and art in general. I'm usually into anything that's a little weird, and I think this is some combination of the novelty and something about liking ideas that I haven't thought of/experienced before. Feels like mapping out a new part of my brain, which is somehow pleasurable. I read a philosophy of technology book a few years ago by Albert Borgmann where he described this mental realm as one's "possibility space." It can be expanded through reading, reflection, or any exposure to new thoughts. Regarding my possibility space, my goal over the duration of this term is to take music seriously that I have preconceived biases against (hip-hop and pop music leap immediately to mind). After all, someone took the time to select it for a reason (if only because it's funny).

Anyway, I must be excited about this whole project because I'm quasi-blogging about it. Maybe I just like that for a few months I can save the tiny smattering of cash I usually earmark for vaporization by the iTunes music store. I also like that this project gives me another compelling reason to buy a new computer (my current crappy laptop's CD player died for good last summer, and if I'm going to archive 200+ hours of music, perhaps it should be done on a machine I'll still have access to in six months). I mean, if I have to buy a brand new computer and a brand new set of awesome speakers plus hi-fi subwoofer, then I have to. Currently I do not have hi-fi speakers. I believe they are moderately low fi, which is not enough fi.

Back to top

My music and a sample playlist

My music interests are belied by the pretty narrowly-focused disc I'm swapping, but I figured everyone would get to see enough variety that I'd go with specialization over generalization. I'm really fond of Asian (especially Indian, Indonesian) and African music, classic rock, jazz, classical, and new agey postmodern stuff like Philip Glass, Kronos Quartet, Jon Brion (think Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Punch Drunk Love soundtracks). But I still spend most of my time listening to indie music. Some rock, but also a lot of spacey shoegazer stuff. My swap disc is made up of a few of my favorite albums plus a scattershot of extra songs I like of this nature, plus some random stuff.

For a sampler, please make up a playlist of the following (in this order, preferably):

1. Tim Reynolds, Entity
2. Asobi Seksu, The Words Live Longer
3. Thee Heavenly Music Association, Trip Seat
4. Lush, Nothing Natural
5. They Might Be Giants, She's an Angel
6. The Breeders, Invisible Man
7. that dog., Hawthorne
8. Centaur, Thimbles
9. Nick Drake, Northern Sky
10. Ride, Vapour Trail
11. Hum, Apollo
12. Hum, The Scientists
13. Tyko, Saturn 5
14. All Natural Lemon and Lime Flavors, Your Imagination
15. My Bloody Valentine, To Here Knows When
16. Gogol Bordello, Against the Nature

Favorite albums included:
My Bloody Valentine -- Loveless
Hum -- You'd Prefer an Astronaut
Hum -- Downward is Heavenward
Various -- Blisscent I
All Natural Lemon and Lime Flavors -- Turning Into Small

Back to top

Below is commentary on music included on my disc. It's sort of like most DVD commentaries in that it's incomplete, uninsightful, and self-indulgent. I'm no music writer and it shows. But I thought people might be interested in some more information if they like anything in particular.

Josh's spacey indie crap:

Absinthe Blind. "The Break" is one of my favorite tracks from their Rings album. Probably a good sample of the kind of music they make. Also probably a good sample of the kind of spacey music I'm a sucker for.

All Natural Lemon and Lime Flavors. Turning into Small is about the closest to My Bloody Valentine I've been able to find (though there are certainly a lot of poorer imitations). I didn't like this album at first but it started growing on me and now I'm totally obsessed with it, particularly with the second track, “Your Imagination.” It's like audio heroin, turn it up loud!

Blind Melon. "Three is the Magic Number." A track from a Schoolhouse Rock compilation. Proof that songs about numbers are not always bad.

Blisscent I and II. (Included: all of Blisscent 1, but just a sample from Blisscent II.) A pair of compilation albums put out by a small record company over the past few years to promote some indie shoegazer and dream pop stuff. I really love Blisscent I and have collected several discs by individual artists on it as a result. Hence, I am apparently easily marketed to once my tastes are finally isolated.

The Breeders. The Breeders are refugees from my days as a disaffected high school geek watching 120 Minutes late Sunday nights. I like Last Splash on a lot of levels, which has enabled its survival in my musical rotation while compatriots like Green Day languish in the CD rack. Some really unique song structures and styles. Last Splash has five or six terrific pop songs mixed in with several tracks of guitar and noise.

Camper van Beethoven. "Take the Skinheads Bowling" is probably their best-known song, and pretty representative of their eccentricity.

Centaur. When Hum went kaput and the world mourned, the principal creative member of the group resumed playing with a new group called Centaur. So the style is of course quite similar. I've included the last five tracks of In Streams . Really, really like these tunes.

Cornershop. A couple of British Indian guys who manage to make Asian hip-hop tracks. There, now you have "Brimful of Asha" in your collection.

Cracker. Mostly guitar tracks and kind of offbeat weirdness from Camper van Beethoven guys. I've only included "Low" because it's far and away their best song.

Nick Drake. Nick Drake only put out a few albums twenty-some years ago, but has been sort of rediscovered over the last few years because his music has been popping up in Wes Anderson movies and Volkswagon commercials. Bryter Layter is cheery by his standards, though I actually included only some of the drearier tracks. Pink Moon is much more stark folk music.

Flaming Lips. I guess they've actually evolved into a pretty good band, but I confess to only having heard this track ("She Don't Use Jelly"), which is wonderfully weird.

Gogol Bordello. I've actually only heard “Against the Nature” from them, but I love it. Starts off as this droning sort of noise and ends up being a bizarre accordion song about defacing cows. Sort of like They Might Be Giants if they were nutty Croatian gypsies.

Thee Heavenly Music Association. A wonderful album from someone you've never heard of. It's sort of halfway between a rock album and a droning noise album. Please listen to this and like it.

Hum. A really great and underappreciated indie band. There's a decent chance you might have heard “Stars” (“She thinks she missed the train to Mars, she's out back counting stars…”) but otherwise they weren't out there much. I picked up You'd Prefer an Astronaut after hearing “Stars” and it turned out to be this wonderful spacey rock music. Now Hum is among my absolute favorites. Most of their work is very very loud music with soft deadpan vocals lurking somewhere underneath, which gives it this sort of subtle quality that I really like. I'm including their two best albums plus an extra single, which I think are pretty accessible listening. You'd Prefer an Astronaut is the place to start. It's all about stars and space and love, and it's been written elsewhere that their songs occasionally come across like love notes written by the aerospace engineering student to the cute girl sitting in the front of the class. Not that this bears any resemblance to my life whatsoever.

Jane's Addiction. Included some samples from Kettle Whistle, which is mostly live stuff and a good compendium of their music. It's great alternative stuff I like.

Lush. More shoegazer stuff, at least they were until they abandoned it for bubblegum pop (ca. Lovelife) and killed their careers. Spooky is probably their best, lots of dreamy girl songs.

My Bloody Valentine. I've included Loveless and some extra from one of their better EPs, Tremolo. Loveless is pretty much the defining shoegazer album (a genre named for those crazy depressed British kids who'd stare at their feet while they performed). It seems that people either consider Loveless among the beautiful pieces of music they've ever heard in their lifetimes, or they consider it a bunch of screechy white noise. So it's admittedly not for everyone (I lent the disc to my roommate, who subsequently asked if it was deliberately out of tune) but I really adore it. The EPs are good corollaries to Loveless .

The Rentals. I don't know anything about The Rentals except that they really aren't a “they,” they're a “he,” and that “he” is one of the members of Weezer when he wants to rake in some cash, and “The Rentals” when he wants to make his own songs. However, I think “Friends of P” is a pretty fun song.

Tim Reynolds. If you have a chance to see Tim Reynolds live, then it is required attendance. You can't really appreciate what he's doing until you see this guy standing on a stage by himself playing one guitar, while it actually sounds like four or five. He does all this funky stuff with distortion and repeat pedals, and it's just incredible too see. Somehow it also seems much more impressive since I don't think he's taller than like five-six.

Ride. Another member of the shoegazing flock. “Vapour Trail” is as British as its spelling implies, and it's not an exception for them. The Nowhere album is a great example of this blurry, dreamy shoegazing style.

Tarkio. From Missoula, Montana! The singer and songwriter in The Decemberists went to school at my former UM and was in this group for several years. Tarkio is often more country-ish than The Decemberists, but still pretty good. I included a few of my favorite tunes of theirs.

that dog. At their best they capture a sort of restless intellectual alternative thing that I like. “Hawthorne” happens to be one of my favorite songs for some reason.

They Might Be Giants. Some of my all-time favorite music. Weird, funny, sad, catchy. I'm only including Lincoln and a few other tunes of theirs, but there's plenty more where that came from. Lincoln is a pretty good place to get a feel for their older stuff. Their music has shifted away from the do-it-yourself kind of mixes in Lincoln towards a rock-band feel in their last few albums (John Henry and The Spine are good examples), but their sensibility remains about the same.

Back to top

2002-05 BuriedintheNoise.com