Insomnia

Sometimes, I don't sleep. It's not that I can't sleep or that I'm not tired, but that I choose to stay awake. I guess that's not quite the same thing as insomnia, but that's the only word I know to label it.

It's 1:11 AM as I write this sentence. I am wide awake. It's like I get on a plateau and my mind is racing in a million different directions. I start to discuss things with myself. Usually I talk about music, art, God, or women. Tonight, I'm writing this.

It is amazing how much you can find out about yourself if you just sit and discuss things alone. Something about the night is surreal to me. It's one of the few times I feel like I'm just me. I'm Marcus. No masks or labels. This is where I find out who I really am. The door is shut and the cameras are off.

Tonight, I'm a lonely boy. Tomorrow, I'll be an artist.

Sorry for rambling.

-Marcus

BAND OF THE WEEK #1: DIRTY PROJECTORS

In an interview with Pitchfork Ed Droste of the band Grizzly Bear said this about the Dirty Projectors:

Someone was asking me about what I was listening to and I was saying "Oh, Dirty Projectors, I love the new album," and they were like, "Well what kind of music is it?" and I just stopped dead in my tracks and literally didn't know how to describe it.
At first I was embarrassed because I didn't know how to describe it, but then I was like, this is what's so amazing about a lot of music now. There are so many different things and there's so much going on and Bitte Orca is so distinctly Dirty Projectors that I didn't even know how to begin to describe what genre it is, you know? What would one categorize it as? So I find it hard lately to label things as indie or pop or folk or give it some sort of categorization.

The last question is one I found myself asking quite a bit last friday when I challenged myself with a daunting quest: Listen to every Dirty Projectors album non-consecutively. But where are my manners? I'd guess that a bit of background on this band would be more than appropriate.

Dirty Projectors was founded in 2002 by frontman Dave Longstereth, their first release The Graceful Fallen Mango was released on the Western Vinyl label under his name. For their second album they adopted the name Dirty Projectors and have made 5-7 (if you count EPs) more albums and counting.
My first contact with Dirty Projectors was in 2005 when I got The Graceful Fallen Mango out of curiosity. I honestly couldn't wrap my head around it at first. It was mostly acoustic tracks performed by Longstereth. They lacked organization and often sounded like a child attempting to make up a song on the spot. I listened once and only made it about halfway through the album before I made up an excuse to listen to something else. Even though I could never put my finger on anything that was genuinely likable about that album, I found myself going back and listening to it in small parts from time to time.

Fast forward to 2009, Dirty Projectors have just released their well-received album, Bitte Orca and I have some XM radio station playing in the background. The new Dirty Projectors single "Stillness is the Move" comes on and I stop what I was doing to listen to it. There's a structure, the vocalist was a female, I honestly couldn't believe that I was listening to the same band, but there was definitely something familiar about it. As if my radio knew that I had doubts, something happened and the station played the song again. It was definitely the same band but they had grown up.
I did some research and found out that in the time I had been ignoring their other albums the band had switched labels and filled out with Longstereth still at the helm. I began catching up on what I had missed. There's a lot of experimentation in their music and I'll admit that not all of the songs that make up their discography are very good, in fact I find some entirely unlistenable.

Last week I decided to see if I could make it through the bands full catalogue in one sitting, I won't lie and say I didn't fall short of my goal because I did, I took a small break to listen to Yeasayer and I skipped a few songs that I personally cannot stand, but nonetheless I felt like I had accomplished something at the end of it all.
What that was I am still not sure.

These guys are really worth checking out, I still have no idea what genre to even think about categorizing them as and I feel like that's the way they want it.

Myspace

Random Curiosity #1: Mycology

I have this tendency to become interested in incredibly bizarre things. Usually these eccentricities wear off after a brief period in time but they leave me with a solid grounding on the topic (via reading the entire wikipedia entry several times) and about $20 less in my bank account.
Recently I have taken an interest in Mycology which, for all you normal people out there, is the study of fungi. I decided about a month ago that I desperately wanted to go mushroom hunting (no not those mushrooms, the legal ones), so I hit up Barnes & Nobel for a field guide to identify the various species of edible fungi (as well as the poisonous ones so as not to get them confused with each other) and set about reading it. After carefully perusing the pages of Simon and Schuster's Guide to Mushrooms I felt confident enough to set about on a foray into the woods behind my house in search of a feast of delicious fungus. I had a blast picking handfuls of what appeared to be a variety of edible mushrooms. After about an hour I returned to my house covered in mosquito bites to set about sorting my spoils and double checking with my handy book to see if they would kill me or not.
I may have read the identification key incorrectly but I could not find one of the fungi that I picked within the pages of the book. There were several that were very similar looking to the pictures in the book but, being afraid of accidently poisoning myself, I threw the whole lot out. There's really no conclusion to this story yet, someday I plan on going back out for round two but at the moment I'm too much of a wimp to eat my spoils, and that's probably best.
How was that for random and uninteresting? It's fungus for christsake.

-Kevin

Tara McPherson

I wanted to share one of my favorite (and quite possibly favorite) artists with you guys, Tara McPherson. My dad randomly surprised me with her book "Lost Constellations" a while back and her work pretty much captivated me instantly.

check out some of her awesome poster art...

Her red-headed girls are probably my favorite.
(prepare to see some boobies..)




go here to check out more of her work:
http://www.taramcpherson.com/

Hopefully her work will inspire you guys just as much as it inspired me, and hopefully this blog post won't show up to be too terribly long.

xoxo,
Sarah

(500) Days of Soundtracks

First off, let me start by telling you I rarely connect to movies in a meaningful way. This isn't because film doesn't have to capacity to move me, but that most films are cookie-cutter, shallow presentations of defined genres. For this movie, that was not the case.

(500) Days of Summer, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt (that kid from Angels in the Outfield!) and Zooey Deschanel (one of the most beautiful women on the earth IMO), is a romantic-comedy from a guy's perspective. That last part is very important.

A quick summary of this movie is Boy meets Girl, Boy falls in love with Girl, Girl breaks Boy's heart, and somewhat of a resolution. I don't want to give too much away for those who plan on seeing this movie. This film uses very creative transitions and filler scenes to convey the wide array of emotions that the main character, Tom, experiences. On top of the creative non-linear progression of the movie and the fact it is from a guy's perspective, the movie also has a great soundtrack.

What I've noticed recently is that most good soundtracks within movies do not translate nearly as well outside of the context of the scenes they were intended for. Examples of this include Garden State, Juno, and more recently, Where The Wild Things Are. Now don't get me wrong; all of these movies have some great artists and songs on their soundtracks. However, without the constant driving of the plot and dialogue of the movie, the songs seem to lose their connection to each other.

Regardless, the movie has become one of my favorites of all time and should not be thought of as a chick flick before further investigation. If you would rather watch movies that can help you escape from reality rather than reflecting it back onto you, this movie may not be your type.

FINAL RATING FOR (500) Days of Summer: 5/5 Stars

-Marcus

PLAYLIST #1 Morning Tea, Snooze Control

Sometimes I get bored and make playlists for different things, The following is a crop of tracks that I have been waking up and driving to school with. Light, Nutty Flavor, goes well with Chai Lattes and Bagels (if you like that sort of thing).

#1 Yalira - The Very Best
#2 Lover - Devendra Banhart
#3 Can You Tell - Ra Ra Riot
#4 One Big Holiday - My Morning Jacket
#5 Queen Bitch - David Bowie
#6 I Want You Back - Jackson Five
#7 Osaka Loop Line - Discovery
#8 Light Powered - Deastro
#9 Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger - Daft Punk
#10 Road to Joy - Bright Eyes
#11 West Coast - Coconut Records
#12 Walking on a Dream - Empire of the Sun
#13 Campus - Vampire Weekend
#14 Daylight - Matt & Kim
#15 Brothersport - Animal Collective
#16 Smash Lies - Matisyahu

I'm sure that most of you are resourceful enough to get your mitts on these songs if you don't already have them handy...

MUSIC POST #1 YEASAYER - AMBLING ALP

And as the very first addition to the heap I present Yeasayer's new song "Ambling Alp"
It's being offered for free at Their Website. The track is from their forthcoming album Odd Blood, which, if Ambling Alp is any indication, should be an auditory feast.

This is a Blog. This will be a heap.

Okay, so at the moment this place is pretty much empty. I hope that isn't the case for very long.
Basically I created this blog with these goals in mind:
1. pile as much information about interesting stuff in one area as I can.
- Stuff can be defined as follows: Music, Films, Books, Poetry, Creative Projects, Cool Events and Random Curiosities
2. Build a collective of collaborators who bring a variety of nifty skills and ideas to the table.
3. Allow new artists (musicians, filmmakers, writers etc.) to shamelessly self promote.
4. Build a powerful new media corporation which controls massive shares in energy companies and also influences governmental decisions through the use of lobbyists.

so basically this is a one man show at the moment, hopefully that will change soon, regardless I hope you, whoever is reading this, enjoy what you find here.