Stereolab Tour, Moog Says Thanks

Ok, so this is kind of early to be talking about but did you know Stereolab is going in tour in September?!?! I noticed when I bought my Wolf Parade ticket the other night that Stereolab are scheduled to appear at La Zone Rosa on September 24th. Not only that, but Atlas Sound will be opening. So you can catch legends of indie-rock/electronic music with one of the most buzzed about new artists opening!

Apparently Stereolab are releasing a new LP called Chemical Chords it is due out on August 19th via 4AD records. The first single is called Neon Beanbag and can be heard right now at Stereolabs MySpace

Catch some video after the jump...


Stereolab - Live on Jools Holland via YouTube


Stereolab - Wow and Flutter video via YouTube

Cleverly Free Music

I posted a concert from archive.org in that My Morning Jacket post recently and it got me thinking. I bet a lot of people aren't even aware of some unexpected places to find cool free music content.

Warning this post is pretty geeked out you can find the rest after the jump...

So the whole thing with archive.org is they are allegedly archiving the internet. So all of my little musings on flash in the pan bands can be read 50 years from now. Personally I'm pretty skeptical 'cause it seems like trying to bottle the ocean to me. In any case this means they have culled all of those hippy bootleg tapes from all over the internet and collected them in one place.

You won't be able to find just any artists in the archive, if you're looking for Prince, Madonna, Metallica then you're probably not even reading this post. But if you like jam bands, or fringe indie-artists, then this is your site. It can get pretty technical with all of the tape heads arguing about lossy formats. What I do is find a band I like, sort their shows by rating then stream it from the site. I only download if the sound is worthy of hard drive space, which most of it isn't. But if you take the time you can find some gems in the rough.

A more recent find for me is the Hype Machine, which is a meta-blog. It combs blogs and sorts out all of the music in a pretty bad-ass manner. You can stream it direct from the site so again, very work friendly. It can be a bit harder to get to the original posts to download the songs. I usually just read which blog posted the song I want and go directly there rather than using the links on hypem.com.

This last bit of information is a bit shadier, so use at your own discretion and skill-level. You can go to sites like seeqpod.com or Project Playlist and exploit their resources to your own gain. Basically both of those sites created flash players that stream music from all over the internet. So if you have uploaded your favorite Usher track onto your personal webspace then these sites can stream it from there using their flash player. They are not designed to be used for free downloads...HOWEVER, when you search for a song on the site it will give you a link to add it to your playlist, and in that link it shows you where the file is sourced. It can be tricky to try and read the entire URL, usually you have to rest your mouse over the file name and type it in another browser.

There I've given you all of my tricks...or at least three of them. Here's some gems from the archives:

Spoon Live at the Greek Theatre on 2006-08-12

The Black Angels Live at Chop Suey on 2006-02-11

Tom Tom Club Live at The Bayou In Georgetown on 1989-05-15

Ryan Adams Live at Somerville Theatre on 2007-06-29

Jose Gonzalez Live at Belly Up Tavern on 2007-11-26

Andrew Bird Live at Studio 105, Lenoir on 2005-03-21

I'm putting an individual track from that Andrew Bird show you'll know why after you download and listen...it's just so awesome.
Andrew Bird - Measuring Cups VBR Mp3

Post some of your favs in the comments.

Top Songs List '08 Part 1

So I've already mentioned my subjective best of album list for the year to date. Now it's time for the individual songs that have made me crank up the car stereo. These aren't necessarily "the best" anything. They are just songs that have made me happy this year...and hopefully these are all songs that were released in 2008, if not oh well they are still good songs.

10. the Black Keys - Strange Times

The rest of the list after the jump...

9. Jamie Lidell - Another Day
8. Islands - The Arm
7. Crystal Castles VS. HEALTH - Crimewave (Remix)
6. Santogold - Creator
5. Sigur Rós - Gobbledigook
4. Devotchka - Transliterator
3. The Raconteurs - Old Enough
2. MGMT - Time To Pretend
1. Radiohead - House of Cards

Ok, so I know I didn't let Radiohead's In Rainbows make the album list 'cause it was released in 2007 but House of Cards wasn't a single until 2008 so there! And for the Crystal Castles song the opposite is true. The song I listed was released in November of 07 but the Crystal Castles album was an 08 release, so I've taken some liberties.

I've also taken the liberty of making this list into a project playlist...list so you can hear the list songs if you wish:

It should also be noted that some of the songs I've listened to the most this year were released last year. Including Bon Iver and Panda Bear, who both have received a lot of plays this year. I also wanted to mention my love for the song Gone, Gone, Gone by Robert Plant & Alison Krauss but that too was released in 2007.


Panda Bear - Bros (Edit) video via YouTube