s n e a k e r b i k e ¯•¯

dig.it

just digging through some old bookmarks and found a good intro to typography.

enjoy if your into such things!

dig.it

a new feature length film about typography is in the works (too bad helvetica is the face of choice?) and i’m drooling.

dig.it

thanks to mx for passing on a brilliant bit of editing… and a histerical look into the psyche of someone who wants to be someone else..(maybe not, just damn funny.

courtesy of cbc r3.. boycrusher delivering a hot (and personally relevant) track.

this one goes out to solu

This has to be the most un-friday feeling friday I’ve experienced in ages. It probably has to do with the dark clouds outside and that everybody on the bus this morning had faces of steel on. Maybe I overslept and it’s monday already.

Here’s two that I’ve been enjoying for a while now. I would have posted them earlier but I don’t really know much about them. Both are no doubt a case of random blog finds and both are really solid tunes. The first one by Australia’s ‘Muscles’ (can I just say that might be one of the worst band names ever) and when the chorus kicks in it will make you drop everything you’re doing and demand your attention – “drive a one inch badge pin through my heart!”.

The second is a remix that I’m willing to bet sounds way better than the original. I’d put money on it. In fact without hearing it part of me is so completely aware that everything good about this has to do with the remix that only my morbid curiosity will ever cause me to seek out the original…. *about 10 minutes later*… found it and gave it a listen. Not bad but I’m still all about the remix.

Muscles – One Inch Badge Pin

UPDATE: got a nice email from the man that actually remixed black eyes and wanted to post a link to his myspace… dig.it
Snowden – Black Eyes (Le Castle Vania Remix)

Van She are currently blog world darlings and rightly so with tunes like this. They’re from Australia, the country that can do no wrong at the moment and are signed to Modular Records, the label that can do no wrong at the moment. This pop tune is a definite throwback to the 80’s with a great hook and a great video to go with.

Van She – Kelly

I posted a song by The Blow a little while back. They’re a two piece from Portland. Their first full length ‘Paper Television’ is set to drop on October 14th. Just based on the two songs I’ve heard so far I can tell you that I’ll definitely be buying this album, possibly even before I download it (a rare case for me these days). It’s that sweet syrupy voice. I’m hooked.

The Blow – Pile of Gold

Admit you love this… You might have been too cool for it on Monday but this is Friday. Go on, play it again… You know you want to.
God Damn Doo Wop Band – Talk Too Much

P.S. A rule of thumb… Download everything. Buy anything you listen to more than x times where x is an arbitrary number determined by you as an inversely proportional representation of the level at which you give a shit.

apologies for not putting any time whatsoever to this little bloggy lately. the transition to my new spot, and the energy put into my new thing, have left this bloggy a tad malnourished of any substantial goodness. (minus some friday music posts from the big man that has been holding the pillars in place)
the past week has been especially interesting as i was able to participate in this year’s Interactive Screen festival/conference that the BNMI holds every year.
our research team (angus, rupinder, davide, moi) were asked to present our most current mobile experience ideas which brought many needed mixed reactions. there were lots critisism’s and much praise from experts in the field. i’d say more praise which keeps it all worthwhile.

check this link out for intelligent writing on the event’

anne galloway’s blog here:

and here for all the fun pics!

tons of fun flickr goodness here:

(I kid.)

Uplifting. That’s the word I’d use to describe this song if I were only allowed one, but I bill by the word (sneakerbike pays me in love not money) so it’s in my best interest to carry on. The thing I like best about this song is that even though it’s unmistakably a hip hop track by every definition, it’s really the horns soulful singing that carry it and they’re allowed to play alone for over half the track. The best MC’s no when to shutup. Can anyone tell me why the best hip hop track I’ve heard in ages was introduced to me by BBC radio 1. There’s something very not right about that.

Pharoe Monch – Push

This one is begging for a sweaty dance floor and has probably seen it’s share already. It’s from a compilation called F (denoting the 6th annual release) by cocoon records, which was started by Sven Vath and has put out some material by some big names in techno.

Gregor Threshor – Full Range Madness

Brazilian Girls (of which there is only one girl and no Brazilians) are set to release their second full length album. This is going to be the first single and I’m really liking what I’m hearing.

A funny little story about Brazilian Girls. A couple Mother’s days ago my roommates and I had our Mothers over for dinner. My ipod was on shuffle when ‘Pussy’, the catchiest song ever (with a chorus like “pussy pussy pussy marijuana” how could it not be?), came on we noticed immediately but desperately hoped our Moms wouldn’t. The song passed and we thought we were in the clear until one of the unsuspecting Moms started absent mindedly humming it. Bless her. It really is the catchiest song ever.

This one is quite a bit more energetic and rough around the edges than the songs on the previous album which in my mind are lazy hot summer night type songs. This is more like a summer night lots of hot but not much lazy.
Brazilian Girls – Jique

I’ve no idea where I found this track but it been floating around my itunes for a little while now and every time it comes up it grabs my attention. A bit of googling reveals that the band is from Bristol UK which isn’t too surprising. I’m hearing shades of The Police in the chorus which may be why I like it so much. I’m always a bit scared to type a bands name into google these days, especially one from which I know nothing apart from one really great tune. I always hold the naive hope that they’ve got entire albums with songs just as good waiting for me to discover. Unfortunately as is usually the case, and as is apparently the case with You and the Atom Bomb, they usually have a myspace page with three or four other somewhat disappointing songs that don’t come close to matching the flash of brilliance I know I heard.
But at least I have this one and if I want I can put it on repeat and twelve times and maybe I can pretend it’s a whole album by my new favourite band.

You and the Atom Bomb – Mudwig Bahnoff

p.s. Buy the music plz.k.thx

(The second most wonderful thing about long weekends is that short weeks that follow or precede them. The first best thing about long weekends is their longness)

After my trip to the UK I was left feeling a bit Lilyallened out. She’s got loads of talent yes, and I love her cheeky attitude, and it’s cool how she went from myspace-nothing to larger-than-life-something but too much of a good thing can be…. well… not a good thing. It’s not her fault really, it’s just what overexposure does. Those big gold earrings on the other hand are her fault.

That said this remix breathes a bit of new life into her current single ’smile’. It’s got all the right ingredients… Big thump, a crunchy synth, chopped up vocals, and big big thump.

Lily Allen – Smile (gutter mix by Lacrate and Samir)

NWA and Ice Cube were probably the most worn tapes in my early teenage tape collection and provided a great deal of influence on my musical tastes growing up. Cube’s early albums were huge for me. I can’t say I could relate to the lyrics one bit, but they still facinated me. They were clever, daring, funny, and politically charged. They somehow managed to walk the fine line between entirely fictional and very “real”.

I’m not going to offer my opinions on what has become of that long since dead side of Ice Cube. Lots of people have done that already and it doesn’t take a genius to see the decline in artistic merit in his work. How much there was to begin with, I suppose, is also a matter of opinion but I know what I heard and I miss it. The only question that really remains for me is was it inevitable? Could he have gone on writing angry teenager from the streets records forever? It’s when I hear tracks like Killer Mike’s ‘That’s life’ that I wonder what Cube would sound like if only…

Killer Mike – That’s Life

These kids from Newmarket are going to be big. When critics write about the “potential” of certain artists I’m often confused. I think you either like the music you hear right now or you don’t. There’s no point speculating on what it might sound like at some distant point in the future because the fact is that the music in question is already there for you to hear. Here’s where I contradict myself though. When I hear bands like Tokyo Police Club I start wondering what they’re going to sound like in a few years time. Maybe it’s because they’re young and already have such a mature sound. Maybe it’s because there’s so many small elements of their music that I’m able to recognize the brilliance of but somehow find the the whole somewhat less than the sum of it’s parts…. Maybe I’m thinking way too much about this shit.

Tokyo Police Club – Nature of the Experiment

I’m really excited about this one. I’m actually having a little kid on Christmas day moment as I write this. Faithful SB readers may remember a few weeks back when I posted a track by Walter Meego called ‘Romantic’ remixed by Flosstradamus. In that post I called it ‘My desert island song of the moment’. That track got a tonne of Julian love in the weeks to follow but, since that was the remix I always wondered what the original sounded like. Well now I know and it’s a beautiful thing indeed.

Walter Meego have just released the official single and it’s fantastic. It’s slightly busier than the remix with some piano sounds and samples of what might be children laughing (or possibly swearing?). It’s also choppier and more complex but not overcrowded sounding and is definitely aided by cleaner mixing and production work. The really good news is that where there’s a single there’s usually an album and word is that it’s in the works so I may have to postpone my trip the desert island until that drops. If I must go right away though, then this is the tune I’m taking with.

Walter Meego – Romantic

P.S. Money for Music. how novel!