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Best Week Ever
Gizmodo
Brooklyn Vegan
You Ain't No Picasso
Music (For Robots)
videos.antville.org

Nullsleep and Bit Shifter of the 8bit Peoples music collective (made famous by recent remixes for Beck and namedropping by James Kochalka) were ARRESTED by NYC police while posting flyers last week. The two were stripped of their belts and shoelaces before being jailed, but the officers neglected to take Bit Shifter's cameraphone, providing an excellent opportunity to take wacky jail cell photographs and even switch his AIM away message to "I'm in jail."
more info and links at Brooklyn Vegan

Bit Shifter and Nullsleep both compose, record, and perform music on old-school Nintendo Game Boys. they're all kinds of awesome. here are some mp3s:

Nullsleep - Say Its Not The End MP3
Bit Shifter - March of the Nucleotides MP3

from the 8bit Peoples' chistmas EP:
Nullsleep - Silent Night MP3
Bit Shifter - Let It Snow MP3

typefaces from the past fifty years i should look at for my Otl Aicher book
Mrs. Eaves
Silkscreen
Hoefler Text
Sauna
Rotis
Requiem

if you're like me, then you had calculus and even pre-calc in high school, and when you had those, you had a Texas Instruments graphing calculator. personally, i had the hand-me-down TI-82 from my older sister, but alot of my friends had the newer TI-83. as far as classwork went, there was no real difference. in fact, we never did anything with the TI-83s that we couldn't with the TI-82s. we loved the fact that in addition to numbers and mathematical functions, the calculators also had a full alphabet, so we could type out messages and poems and stuff on our calculator and then pass it to somebody else, and the teacher would just think we were doing math rather than passing notes. as productive as the calculators were, our favorite feature was that you could download games people had made specifically for the calculators. i know my friends and i were quite fond of Pimp Quest, a text-based rpg where you were a low-class pimp on the rise. i heard some kids got tetris, but i never saw it.
well, kids nowadays are lucky. not only do the newest TI-83s have USB cords for easy internet downloading, but somebody just made a version of the ever popular Dance Dance Revolution for it.

awesome. totally awesome.
for more info, run on over to TICalc.org

yes, the fact that this excites me does reinforce that i am a geek, especially since i don't even have that calculator anymore.

its good to check up on the websites of the bands you like at random every now and then. that's how i found the new of Montreal video a good week or two before it was posted everywhere else on the internet, and its also how i received this tremendous news today.
over on Ratatat's website, the lone news article reads:
10/10/05 - Ratatat is in the studio finishing work on a new album

WHAT? AWESOME? YES!

between that and MSTRKRFT's debut LP, "The Looks," due in the spring, i think 2006 could be a VERY good year for the electro-rock, laptop-and-guitar, music scene.
MSTRKRFT, by the way, is the new production team made up of JFK, the bassist for Death From Above 1979, and Al-P, the lead programmer for the now defunct girlsareshort. they've done a large handful of remixes in the past year, all of which are GLORIOUS. just check out this MP3 for their remix of Panthers' "Thank Me With Your Hands" for a little sample.
word is, the LP will be all original stuff, no remixes, which would be awesome as i love both DFA79 and gsr.

while i'm VERY busy with school work, and my mind is slightly preoccupied with stuff for the 2006 MoCCA Art Festival, the predominant distraction in my mind for a few weeks now has been my Best-of-2005 list, a sequel to last year's blah blah blah.
2005 was a very important year for music and me, in my opinion. it was the year that the independant music scene seemed to embrace old school garage guitar and dancable pop at the same time, which made me extremely happy. and of course, the folk elements i was raised on finally managed to come to the forefront of the music scene in a few extremely popular releases, and noise pop (shoegaze) seems to be making a comeback.
my list isn't finalized yet, but here's a sneak peak at where my head's at.

very stong nominees:
Bloc Party - Silent Alarm
Sufjan Stevens - Come On, Feel The Illinoise
Architecture In Helsinki - In Case We Die
Neon Blonde - Chandeliers in the Savanna
Thunderbirds Are Now! - Justamustache
Art Brut - Bang Bang Rock And Roll
The Decemberists - Picaresque
13 + God - 13 + God
The Fiery Furnaces - EP
Final Fantasy - Has A Good Home
LCD Soundsystem - LCD Soundsystem
Junior Senior - Hey Hey My My Yo Yo
Spoon - Gimme Fiction
Xiu Xiu - La Foret


albums i enjoy, but not quite enough:
M83 - Before The Dawn Heals Us
of Montreal - The Sunlandic Twins
Out Hud - Let Us Never Speak of it Again
The Most Serene Republic - Underwater Cinamatographer
The Hold Steady - Separation Sunday
Beck - Guero
Low - The Great Destroyer
The Kills - No Wow
Sleater-Kinney - The Woods
Supersystem - Always Never Again
Electric Six - Senor Smoke
Gorillaz - Demon Days
MIA - Arular
Diamond Nights - Popsicle
Russian Futurists - Our Thickness
Doveman - The Acrobat
Tom Vek - We Have Sound
Do Me Bad Things - Yes!
The Fiery Furnaces - Rehearsing My Choir
We Are Scientists - With Love and Squalor
Nada Surf - The Weight Is A Gift
Stars - Set Yourself On Fire
The New Pornographers - Twin Cinema
Sigur Ros - Takk
Broken Social Scene - Broken Social Scene
Metric - Live It Out
Franz Ferdinand - You Could Have It So Much Better...
Bright Eyes - I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning
Bright Eyes - Digital Ash In A Digital Urn
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
Minus The Bear - Menos El Oso
Death Cab For Cutie - Plans


too soon to tell:
Serena Maneesh - Serena Maneesh
Page France - Hello, Dear Wind
American Analog Set - Set Free
Burnside Project - The Finest Example Is You
Wolf Parade - Apologies to Queen Mary
Fiona Apple - Extraordinary Machine (the real version)
Death From Above 1979 - Romance Bloody Romance
Rogue Wave - Descended Like Vultures
Ris Paul Ric - Purple Blaze
Toothfairy - Formative
Morningwood - Morningwood
Holy Fuck - Holy Fuck
Datarock - Datarock
TVOTR - new album (whenever they decide to release it)

no, no, no!:
The Bravery - The Bravery
Ben Folds - Songs For Silverman
Mindless Self Indulgence - You'll Rebel To Anything
Weezer - Make Believe

excellent EPs:
His Name Is Alive - Summer Bird
Ted Leo & the Pharmacists - Sharkbite Sessions
Death From Above 1979 - Live iTunes exclusives
Iron & Wine - Woman King
Colin Meloy - Colin Meloy Sings Morrissey
Cake - Wheels
Thunderbirds Are Now! - Necks
Rahim - Jungles
Be Your Own Pet - Damn, Damn Leash
Beck vs. 8-bit Peoples - GameBoy Variations


as you can tell, i've listened to alot of music this year. i'm think of also doing a standalone singles section.