So it turns out that all the BFF-ing Flaming Lips leader Wayne Coyne did with Miley Cyrus over the past year was actually in service of art. It’s called Miley Cyrus and her Dead Petz.
I just woke up and have nothing more to say about this, other than: it sounds like Miley Cyrus backed by The Flaming Lips. Or rather, it sounds like a particularly fizzy Flaming Lips album with Cyrus on vocals. I’m only a few tracks in and it’s… not bad at all. Enjoy?
I absolutely love Joanna Newsom.
I was just talking with friends the other day, sharing our hopes that Newsom would return possibly after winter, early next year. Her last album, the monumental triple-disc Have One On Me was not only a masterpiece; it sustained enough soul-chilling moments to last us the past half-decade.
So expectations are kind of high for her upcoming album, Divers. Announced today along with this video, it’s coming a week after my birthday: October 23, this year.
Because sometimes it feels like this.
My mom would have been 65 today. She liked Black Moth Super Rainbow, said it often sounded pretty, reminded her of The Beatles, “but way weirder.”
This tune always felt oddly touching. The combination of sweetly nostalgic melodies and an alien vocoder masks the deep sadness of the lyrics. I feel like my mom would wish the singer felt better.
Sitting in the humid blur of the summer, on a day that’s stormed twice between bouts of unflinching sunny splendor, this tune hits the spot in a way nothing else can.
I don’t want to live through winter
I can’t stand to see everything ending
I’ll just stand on the meadow
I’ll be taken by sunbeams
So goodbye
Witness the most cosmic act in hip-hop, Shabazz Palaces, unleashing a hyperdrive tapestry live in the KEXP studio.
The whirlwind performance shuffles tracks from the best album of 2014, Lese Majesty, unfolding fresh aspects of their sound. There’s also a fine interview, discussing the recording process and what it feels to be making music that sounds like absolutely nothing else on earth.
These guys do not fuck around.
I dug this video from my drafts after listening to the groundbreaking album, Blowout Comb, from vocalist Ishmael Butler’s previous group, Digable Planets. In one of the most improbable second acts in music history, an early 90s underground rap hero emerged over a decade later with a new (at first mysteriously anonymous) project, breaking the few remaining rules of hip-hop like some young start up. With the group’s second album, they transcended all genre definitions, creating a sound as pure as it is unique.
Shabazz Palaces have officially joined weird, pioneering heroes like Sun Ra, Captain Beefheart, Aphex Twin, and John Coltrane in truly rarefied space.
This sounds like towering columns of shattered light, the kind of futuristic timbres that I associate with crystalline sky cathedrals in some imagined Final Fantasy game.
“This seems really poppy/upbeat for you. Of course I’m always imagining you listening to weird post breakbeat Croatian footwork jazz with Russian metal and Japanese house influences”
The above works were spoken to me by a friend as I shared this fantastic video for an old CFCF track.
While the artist has evolved into something far more weirdly specific and perfect for my tastes (see his last album and Night Bus mixes, which have obviously influenced my own mixtapes), this is the song that started it all. I was immediately hooked and never looked back.
I don’t really have anything else to say. Ed said it best. Enjoy!
So, in 2007 The Flaming Lips released this “secret” Christmas album under the pseudonym Imagene Peise, a play on John Lennon’s famous adage about peace. It’s called Atlas Eets Christmas. At Last It’s Christmas, get it? All punny thoughts aside, this is a delicate, hazy, gorgeous amalgamation of several classic holiday tunes that even your mom will enjoy.
Oh, and it’s been described as, “A Charlie Brown Christmas on acid,” so there’s that. I think this is more fitting than not. Imagine a handful of old holiday Chestnuts on melted 78’s beamed aboard a passing UFO and you’ll get the idea. Or just fire this up and enjoy. Fire one up and enjoy?
Here’s a formal track listing. Keep in mind that this is a warped mixture of tunes, not a traditional rendition.
1. Winter Wonderland
2. Silver Bells
3. Christmas Laughing Waltz (Jingle Bells)
4. Silent Night
5. Do You Hear What I Hear?
6. Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas
7. White Christmas (Binson Echorec Sleigh Ride)
8. Altas Eets Christmas
Optimistic Underground 