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Tuesday, May 03, 2005


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glisten: The Kropotkins

The Kropotkins - "Crazy Hannah"

The Kropotkins - "Truckstop Girls"

The Kropotkins music is a wonderful mish-mash of classical, bluegrass, punk and downright WEIRD that sounds far better than it has any right to. These two tracks hail from the Kropotkins' second album "Five Points Crawl", released in '00 as the followup to their self-titled '96 disc.

"Crazy Hannah" is great party music, best accompanied with a cold PBR; "Truckstop Girls" is a bit darker and may cut you if you get too close or too far. Both are indicative of the quality of the whole album, which I wholeheartedly recommend you snag ASAP.

Buy "Five Points Crawl" direct from the band's label, Mulatta Records.
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Listen to "Sissy Wa Wa", another ace track from the Kropotkins.
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Read various bits of trivia about Kropotkins lead singer and guitarist, "legendary girl" Lorette Velvette.
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Visit the website of Kropotkin's (and ex-Velvet Underground) drummer, Maureen Tucker.
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Explore any of the dozens of side projects of the Kropotkin's lead violin/banjo/svengali, Dave Soldier.

Dave is a singular character; a neuroscientist who moonlights as a composer, producer and performer. Take a peek at one of his more recent projects, "Da Hip Hop Rascals":

"Elana Langer and I have been working with a group of six to nine year olds in East Harlem at the Amber Charter Grade School at East 106th St, teaching them to play and write hip-hop. They do it extremely well... We mix and coach, but they play and sing all the parts and write all the words.

You can hear some of their songs if you scroll down on the link given above; don't miss the spectacular "Chicken Wing"!

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triumphant return of the long-lost spiffy

Swimming Jesus
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"We feel that Scandinavian Noise is among the best in the world. With Noise we mean Harsh Noise, Power Electronics, Guitar-Noise, Free Jazz and any genre that use noise ('unpleasant sounds') as a part of its identity."
Several audio samples within.
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Zachary Allen has only one question for you:
"What Kind of Candy Do You Want?"
(NB: autoloading movie file; The Tofu Hut is not responsible for any spontaneous regurgitation or imploding frontal lobes suffered by the viewer)
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622 Music Videos
Unsurprisingly, more than a few are down; there's still lots of fun stuff to watch. Check out Spike Jonze's "Root Down", Gondry's "Army of Me", a live Marley performance, Shynola take on Blur... and that's just a few of the "B's"!
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The Random Popeye Generator
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The DubCNN Vault is an excellent source of production info and artist's credits for thousands of hip hop and rnb albums.
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The Frog Watches Lobster Listen To Hall and Oates Show
This shouldn't amuse me so much.
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Save ten bucks and read an ALL SPOILER REVIEW of the New Star Wars from (shudder) Kevin Smith.
The unpleasant Smith tells all; not as if there were really any surprises left.

You'll have to excuse me; I'm a bitter and scorned man when it comes to George Lucas; fatboy will get no more of my money.
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An oldie, but a goodie: reconceptualizing 70's and 80's cartoon characters.
The work on He-Man and Inhumanoids alone is just stunning.
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Moistworks is BACK and back STRONG; today's post of mostly unreleased Stax vocals, demos and promos is great stuff.
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This HALF HOUR flash video entitled "Sega Fantasy" held me rapt and virtually weeping with nostalgia and nerdiness; skip it if you aren't a video-game geek in your late twenties/early thirties, but if you ARE... oh, we have such sights to show you...
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Infoshare, the blog of the Reference and Public Services Committee of the Music Library Association, talks at length about the role of the newly burgeoning musicblog in the life of the music scholar in this heavily hypertext-laden essay before arriving at the conclusion that it's simply too soon in the revolution to see much more than the way the path is leading; I imagine the establishment will come around afore too long.

They also offer a brief (but very funny) note about the audioblogging explosion. I can certainly concur that the movement is in full bloom; I'll have another seventy or so audioblogs to add to the revision-in-progress sidebar. Sheer bulk (and, to be honest, a surprising degree of quality) aside, don't go thinkin' we've jumped the shark yet. Hell, we ain't even yet got a genre-specific musicblog for modern country, showtunes, spoken word, gospel...

The future's so bright, but first we're gonna have to deprogram kids from the retarded brainwashing they're being force-fed.

(Incidentally, as far as "Clicky" goes, what do you want to bet that they didn't pay for the rights to that interpolation of "Rapper's Delight" that they lift for this sickly and transparently pro-corporate propaganda?)
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"MaP3 will give you the best driving route to take between any two addresses in the United States and Canada as spoken directions, delivered in MP3 format to your email inbox! Instead of reading your directions as you drive, you'll be listening to them on your MP3 player or, by burning them to a CD, in your car's stereo deck!"

I can only hope that they're performed by today's top artists. I, for one, would pay top dollar to hear Pitbull tell me how to get to the carwash or Modest Mouse's cover of the classic "Jimmy's Deli is On the Corner of Washington and Third".
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Great Kyle Baker interview up over at the Comics Reporter:

"When you make Wonder Woman a book that appeals to grown men, what the hell are you doing? Supergirl, same thing. I keep looking up Supergirl's skirt. I shouldn't know about Supergirl's panties, I really shouldn't. But I do. And so do you. What's that about? I've seen Supergirl's ass. She's like fourteen."

Kyle's brilliant; I highly recommend his retelling of the King David story.
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Clublife is an excellent counterpoint to the equally fascinating Waiterrant; the anonymous "Doorman" of Clublife details his experiences as a NYC bouncer. The resulting litany of obnoxious drunks and violent assholism provides a thinking man's portrait of an evening's roughhousing gone forever awry. Serves to remind me why I'm generally better off as a computer nerd than a barfly.
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BBC put up a fairly lengthy interview with Autechre, providing some rare insight (the boys don't often talk much on the record) and more than a few tunes from their recently released new album. Cop that.
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If you haven't yet, why don't you draw a pig already?
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Cubee.
I wannit. Anybody seen these in stores?
Somewhat related: Needies Need YOU.
The Needy theme songs kill me.
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My new UK Singles reviews are up over at Stylus magazine.
I really don't like Weezer.
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Buffo is the World's Strongest Clown.

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