TV Girl actually recommended I watch this video earlier today, and I’ll be darned if it wasn’t worth hearing. There’s a definitely 80’s vibe to this song, from the sunny pop melody to the retro clothes and especially in the last shot of the video where they are both singing to each other, but not really, in different planes of the same shot. “Hoop of Love” is great music for this time of the year. Dominant Legs have a full-length album coming out in September.
TV Girl produce very addictive retro-pop with modern beats and are one of my favorite bands of the moment. “Baby You Were There” will take you back to the days when AM radio was king, and this video for the song is just fantastic. There’s some great use of stop-motion animation.
TV Girl have a new EP out now, called ‘Benny and the Jetts’, which I’m pretty sure you can still snag for free just by Liking their Facebook page. You can also pick up their first self-title EP here.
I made a Facebook Fan Page for this blog in the hope that I might get a few new readers, but more importantly, so I can clue my regular and irregular readers into when a new post is up, for those situations when I start posting erratically, as I’m known to do. If I somehow missed you and haven’t sent you an invite already, you can like the page below. Also be sure to tell anyone I’m not already Facebook friends with about this page if you think they might like it. Thanks a lot for your continued support!
[UPDATE: OK, I can’t figure out why I can’t get the Like Box to work. It’s suppose to be right above this, but I’m not seeing it. I’m going to keep trying to get it to work, but if you want to like the page in the meantime, you can go right here.]
[UPDATE 2: OK, apparently LJ isn’t even allowing me to embed a website link at the moment. I have no idea what they are doing, but it’s pissing me off. I’ll put the big, ugly long form link right here: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Cest-Non-Un-Blog/135624769863905 and hope it actually works for once.]
[UPDATE 3: I asked LJ what was going on and apparently they updated the Rich Text editor to get rid of a bunch of issues they were having, and in the process created a whole bunch of new issues. Good job LJ!]
Summer’s almost over folks, something I think deserves a new mixtape. While in my informal poll it seemed no one would be opposed to a Best Of C’est Non Un Blog mixtape, the general consensus so far has been that you’d really rather have a mixtape filled with new music, and I’m happy to oblige. At the moment I am working on two other possible mixtape projects though, so if you were really into the idea of a Best Of Mixtape keep your eyes peeled here because I might have more exciting stuff ready for you guys in the near future.
In the meantime you can download my new Indian Summer Mixtape right here.
Overall this has to be the most current mixtape I’ve ever made. Previous entries in my mixtape series have consisted of a few recent songs mixed in with favorites pulled from my iTunes rotation, while almost all the songs in this mixtape have come out in the last year and a vast majority I’ve acquired in just the last few months alone. This mixtape is a very “now” look into what I’ve been listening to lately.
The theme of this mixtape is entirely focused around the idea of an Indian Summer, that magical time of year right before fall hits when it’s still sunny and nice out but the temperature has started to go down and become more comfortable. The humidity drops off and the days are still long, although in the back of your mind you start to feel night slowly encroaching on your every day. This setlist picks up right where the previous mixtape, Summer Clothes, left off. Where my previous effort was filled with warm songs full of energy, this mixtape has started to slow down a little. There’s still a lot of great beats and summer sounds, but I’ve slowed things down just a little bit to fit the season.
The song I’ve chosen to lead off this mixtape is Pogo’s “Beaver Creek Beats”, a song he was asked to make by the Oregon State Lottery, the proceeds of which go to preserving nature areas like Beaver Creek. I think it’s the perfect song to launch you into the mood I was trying to create, and in a C’est Non Un Blog mixtape first you can actually preview my opening track in video form right here before you download it.
There’s so much good stuff on this mixtape I don’t even really know where to start. Why not begin with Korallreven’s version of Britney Spear’s “Til The World Ends”, possibly one of my favorite remixes of a song ever. It takes the acapella vocal track of the original song and puts it to an epic new set of beats. The song just builds and builds and builds and feels like something you’d hear in a great movie trailer.
Speaking of effective use of a song’s vocal track, wait until you hear the only mashup in this compilation, DJ Bahler’s “Semblance of Sound.” The song includes samples from Marilyn Manson, Lady Gaga, Fergie, Sleigh Bells, The Beatles, Phoenix, and Dead Prez among others, beautifully interwoven to create a song that sounds completely original and more than just the sum of its parts.
Telephoned’s “Hold Me” is actually a song I’ve kicked around putting on a mixtape for a while now. It was probably on an early version of the last two mixtapes before getting bumped because it didn’t really fit with the other songs I was using. Well, it’s bumped no more. I’ve even got a video to embed for your listening pleasure.
Going down the list of songs I’ve included, it’s filled with artists I’m very excited about right now, like Chad Valley, Beat Connection, Disclosure, Blackbird Blackbird, Taragana Pyjarama, Keep Shelly In Athens, jj, SBTRKT, Washed Out and Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs. I hope you enjoy this mixtape as much as I do.
OK, so because I have OCD I had to find out what Girls’ Generation has been up to since ‘Gee’. What can I say? The internet is a seductive mistress. Have Girls’ Generation put out anything as addictive as ‘Gee’ since that song came out in 2009? Unfortunately, the short answer is no. They came close with ‘Oh!’, the single to come out after ‘Gee’. This was the title track off of their first album and still retained a lot of their girly energy. It still wasn’t as good as ‘Gee’ but if you like K-Pop it’s a pretty fun song.
Unfortunately it seems that after that first album the girls tried to go in a more grown up direction, and as a result started to sound like every other pop artist you’ve heard on the radio recently. Substitute the Korean for English and you could have a Britney Spears song (and not one from her surprisingly good last album either). ‘RunDevilRun’ actually samples a Ke$ha song, to give you a good idea of the direction they’ve gone in. Unfortunately most of it is pretty blandsville and not worth talking about. The only video I could find that I found kind of interesting was ‘Tell Me Your Wish (Genie)’, mainly because it sounds like a Kylie song, and ya’ll know how much I love Kylie.
You might remember way back when I posted the video for Girls’ Generation’s wildly addictive K-Pop song “Gee”. Well now a Japanese group calling themselves Shōwa Generation have mocked the video by playing up the fact that “Girls Generation” in Japanese is shojo-jidai, which they’ve changed to showa-jidai – meaning the “Shōwa Generation” (the Shōwa period took place in Japan between 1926 to 1989). They also did a play on the song title “Gee,” by changing it to the Chinese character for an elderly man (爺), which is also read the same (“ji”). So basically, we’ve got a bunch of old Japanese men doing the dance moves to the original video, and it’s pretty hilarious. The only thing that would have made this better is if they actually recreated the whole video instead of just the dance sequences. There are lots of close up insert shots of the individual girls acting cute that would have been hilarious if they were recreated by these old guys.
[8/5/13 This link is dead and I can’t find a replacement 😦 ]
These guys from NYC currently only have two songs in circulation, but already I’m prepared to call them a band to watch. “Older Together” and their other song, “Small Boxes”, are just so good. I want to wrap myself inside of them and cuddle all night until the sun rises. I can’t wait to hear what comes next.
There’s something about this video that’s been nagging at me, something that keeps this really good video from being great. It’s definitely not the song; that’s fantastic. Cee Lo is working with that same retro doo-wop soul sound that made “Fuck You”…I’m sorry, “Forget You”…such a big hit. I love the little bridge part right after the chorus. So good.
And it’s not Jaleel White, aka Steve Urkel from ‘Family Matters’. He’s got a lot of personality in this video and he can dance. Plus, 90’s nostalgia is really in now, so it’s not that.
No, the best I can come up with for why this video isn’t quite a home run is that the color pallet of this video is really bland and muted. Do you see what I’m talking about? All the dancers are wearing these really colorful outfits that are, well, not all that colorful. All that color is either grayed or muted. It’s like when in Wizard of Oz the film goes from black and white to technicolor…except in this video they got stuck halfway inbetween. Plus, the cinematography is so flat and lifeless. It almost feels like the video was made on budget and/or time constraints. “OK people, we only have the light for this much longer, so let’s crank this puppy out!” It’s a shame, because if this was shot a little bit more like a Gap ad it would have really stood out and been a video to remember.
Azari & III finally have a full length self-titled album out and to celebrate they also released a new single and music video for “Manic”. If you’ve liked the other stuff Azari & III have done you are going to feel really good about this propulsive Chicago house track. I love how their music sounds both retro and current at the same time. This would sound just as at home in the early 1990’s as it does today.
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