Just a band.

This is amazing.


I found it buried in the Lefsetz letter this week, which, if you are in the music industry and DON'T read, yr missing out. The dude is fearless. Apparently so is Dan Le Sac & Scroobius Pip...what a brilliant bit of slam-dunk electrorap. I love it.

I'm also loving Feist in a huge way this week - the new album drops next Tuesday - don't wait for the hype to catch up with you. BUY IT May 1. I really do predict enormous things for her in the coming years - her voice has this timeless quality to me that evokes Joni Mitchell and Natalie Merchant and many other classic female vocalists that pretty much own. If this record takes off like it should, watch out.

I don't have much to report, unfortunately. I've been broke, but the weather's nice and I went skateboarding TONS last weekend. Leah led the way on two wheels through the windy, just hilly enough streets of Forest Hill, the neighborhood adjacent to ours. Needless to say...it's different there.



$12M homes. No shit.

Toronto has felt like a different place lately. I'm not sure if it's new route to work that plants me in the middle of two million commuters in an endless rush to stand, board, shuffle, run, stop, wait, stumble, run, and walk...or that the sun has shone more days in the last week than it has in the last month. People seem more alive these days, like the city is getting its color back, like the yellow daffodils that appeared overnight in my front yard, or how the last leg of my trip to work is smelling fresher and fresher every day. Last weekend it hit above 20 degrees both days and we had some friends in from out of town, and took advantage of the massive field behind out house for some serious Aerobie sessions.


Yes, my "thrilling game of catch" was totally "super".

I'm looking forward to my weekend...are you? I hope it's great, whatever you do!

Wipeout

I could talk about how busy I've been with work, or how little rest I feel like I've got this week. The sleeplessness is only bound to continue this weekend.

Or I could tell you about this amazing blog that digs on interface design elements, or this band I totally can't stop listening to, or something that's eating my time for breakfast.

I might talk about The Hood Internet, which is the illest shit this week...or how every day brings us closer to skateboard season, or how the young friend Rollie is ownin' the front page of Pitchfork today!

I could do all that, but you might pull an Arnie.


And then I'd feel bad.

So it goes...

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
1922 — 2007

I am bummed the fuck out. My dad first introduced me to his work when I was a kid; we read "Sirens of Titan" together. The sheer level of imagination, humor and biting satire hooked me from a really early age, and it's been a life-long addiction to his work. I was shocked and deeply saddened to hear about his passing.

But as Vonnegut himself would say, "When you're dead, you're dead. Make love when you can. It's good for you."

Profound. Rest in peace, friend.

A preponderance of bass

Ummmm, no.



Much better.

I've had a chest-rattling weekend. The kind of subfrequencies that make your nose hairs stand on end, and make your eyeballs vibrate. 100 hz and lower. Y'know the kind. The kind DJ Craze played last Thursday at Footwork, for his Miami Bass session. I'm not totally familiar with the lingo, but I think the kids these days would call it "totally awesome". Or something like that.

Dancing to his set kind of brought me back to when I was first discovering electronic music, and loving just shaking it to whatever vibrations were pushing out of the speaker boxes - my tastes have refined with age, but I still keep coming back to the root of it all - the warbley backbone, the deep-seated density of a piece of music that gives it shape and texture. They don't call it the RHYTHM section for nothing...but it's what you DO with the bass that counts.


Yeah, funk does it right....

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...and jazz knows what's up.


But really, my favorite kind of bass is that of the mighty island itself...the roots of dub/reggae/rocksteady/dancehall all have a home in the world of bass, and as with most musics, it has had a chance to grow, mutate and become something completely new.



I've talked about dubstep before - for a fantastic lil'history, watch the vid above. The first interviewee, Loefah made his Canadian debut last night at a party called "Time 2 Bass" thrown by the cats at Curbcrawlers. As Mary-Ann Hobbs has proclaimed, "to be at the flashpoint of an emerging scene" is a thrilling prospect indeed. This is NEW music, this is ORIGINAL thinking and doing and acting and dancing. I love it, and am excited to see how each country's take on the dubstep formula will change its shape for the next set of ears to interpret it. I've put together some of my favorite bass-heavy tunes for your perusal.

The first is by ghettotech guru DJ Funk of Detroit, remixing Justice's soon-to-be-classic "Let There Be Light".

Loefah's track "Ruffage" is already a dubstep anthem, and this is pulled direct from the Hatcha mix, "Dubstep Allstars: Vol 4". Absolute sickness.

Digitalism's remix of The Cure's "Fire in Cairo" is an experiment in depth, while the closing track, "Une Bande De Mecs Sympa" by Modeselektor (feat. TTC) is a choppy take on electro-rap with a sharp edge...load this track onto a system with a quality subwoofer, you'll get what I mean.

A selection of bass-centric tunes, from me to you!
05LetThereBeLightDJFunkRemix.mp3
102Ruffage.mp3
FireInCairoDigitalismRemix.mp3
UneBandeDeMecsSympa.mp3
Provided to you by

Enjoy, learn, tell me what you think! THAT'S AN ORDER!

Pity the (april) fool!

Ok so I realize I've been totally bad at blogging with ANY regularity lately. My days start a half-hour earlier, and end a full hour later than they did before my unemployment stint, and after staring at a computer for 9 hours a day, its not something I rush home to do...my apologies. Allow me to catch you up.



April 1, 2007, 10:30 AM. I'm lying in bed and I hear Caitlin's door open, and as she goes out into the living room, I hear her gasp and then RUN to our door and bang on it excitedly. I open it and there is FEAR on her face.

"Oh my god! Oh my god! Look at out place! It's been ransacked! We've been robbed!"

I start to laugh. And laugh. And laugh.

"Nope," I said, "everything is just on its side. It's April Fools Day!"




I had turned almost EVERYTHING in the house on its end. Bikes, DVD players, the couch, our cat's play structure thingy, everything. I don't mean to toot my own horn, but this might be first time I've ever managed to actually pull off an April Fool's joke. It was too good a feeling, so I had to keep it up. I called my sister and left her a message that just said,

"Rhiannon! Hey call me when you get this! I have crazy news! Kyra is pregnant!"

Kyra is our 17-year old, straight-A student / pro-gymnast little sister. Pregnant is something she won't be for years. But sure enough, Rhiannon called me about 2 hours later in a full-on PANIC. "OH MY GOD ELI I'M FREAKING OUT. ARE YOU SURE?! ARE YOU KIDDING?!"

I said calmly, "Of course I'm kidding. It's April Fools day!"

She said, just as calmly, "Eli, you asshole. I'm going." >click!<



Even Google got into it. Class act, that Google. Class. Act. The last of my (semi-)bad deeds was to call my Mom and tell her that I'd been laid off...again. She was obviously upset, and said, "oh no Eli! What are you going to do?" To which I replied, "Nothing, I'm kidding. April Fools!"

She also called me names and then hung up. Such is my awesome and loving family.

Family is something that's always meant a lot to me - I have 3 little sisters, dozens and dozens of first cousins, an awesome set of aunts & uncles and I'm lucky enough to still have both sets of grandparents alive, even if I don't see them very often. This all said, family has been something I've missed a ton out here - I mean, I live with my cousin Caitlin, and Rhiannon lives in Montreal, but one of the nicest things about being in Toronto has been getting to know Leah's uncle Sheldon. He's in his late 40s, sells high-end carpet in a high-end furniture store, lives with his two cats and is one of the nicest, honest and most gentle men I've ever had the pleasure of knowing. So, when he invited us over for Passover dinner, Leah and I jumped at the chance.



Even though I'm not much of a practicing Jew, it did feel really nice to go and stuff my face in the name of tradition and family - but its WHAT we stuffed our face with that is kinda...odd. Some context, perhaps? Sheldon doesn't like to cook, so the prospect of having a half-dozen people over for a Seder dinner provided an impetus to have a nice catered meal, the crowning feature of which was something I'd never had before, Squab. Sheldon told us it was a small game hen, and we'd get one each. It was delicious, moist and a very...fresh tasting meat, and so when Leah emailed me in a panic the next morning with this link, I almost ran to go puke it up.



Sorry, little guy. I didn't know you'd be so gross and delicious at the same time. As good as it was, never again.



I did manage to catch a fucking A MA ZING band this past week...Battles is signed to Warp, and contains members of Don Caballero, Helmet and the avant-garde genius of Tyondai Braxton. Basically, imagine Four Tet's music played by a band that listens to too much Animal Collective, and yet is SO FUCKING ROCK n ROLL, it's mindblowing. Check their myspace (link above) to check zee tunes.


I think that pretty much catches us up! Life is still good, busy as hell, but keeping afloat. How are all of you? COMMENT, DAGNABIT!

takecare.love,Eli.xoxo.