Oh man, I've had Cosmonaut on loop for like a month here, off and on 9_9

The fingerpicked guitar in Mitsuboshi Quartet and Beautiful Glider, especially, have me hooked. The steel string in 66-Gousen, too, for that matter. And I think St. Elmo no Hi is up there with their other feel-good anthems <3

Yeah, this album has really grown on me the more I listen to it. St. Elmo's Fire really has that BoC warm anthemic quality to it Even Happy, which I was sort of dismissive of initially really has a nice vibe to it after I started listening to the lyrics.

And you have to tell me what else you're listening to now that Arcade Fire has gotten all this mainstream grammy recognition now. How dare other people recognize how good they are!

If it helps you dismiss them, Arcade Fire are at least total douchebags. The anecdotes I've heard paint Win Butler as a prima donna par excellence, and their management are legendarily awful as well <3

In terms of stuff coming out of Japan, I've liked Negoto and OGRE YOU ASSHOLE recently. The two tracks I linked to are standouts for them, but there's decent meat to pick at on their respective albums as well. Going back a bit further, Tokumaru Shugo's latest album, Port Entropy was excellent front-to-back. One of my favorites from 2010, really.

As far as music from elsewhere goes, I've been listening to Ramona Falls a good bit recently. One of Menomena's frontmen decided to make music that sounded pretty instead of bizarre, and Ramona Falls was the result <3 Villagers, an Irish band, has kind of a similar vibe going on, though it's decidedly less ornate. And I'm still getting a good bit of play out of Sufjan Stevens's latest EP and LP, which are a pretty significant departure from his previous work, but still enjoyably Sufjan.

I don't know that anything super new has really blown my socks off, though. The last few albums I've taken a chance on have been disappointments, sadly. If you've got anything else to recommend, I'm all ears ^_^

I have a friend who's nuts about Negoto but I never really gave them a chance; they kinda struck me as another standard cute girl j-pop group. >_> Tokumaru Shugo I've never heard of but ... holy crap, Japanese twee! Squee!

I'll have to check out Ramona Falls, but Sufjan Steven's new stuff just didn't click. I haven't really had any new albums grab me either. Rediscovered Stars and my love for Your Ex-Lover is Dead, but the 5 Ghosts album just doesn't have that same spark as Set Yourself On Fire. I suspect it needs more angst

Same friend of mine who loves Negoto is also really into the whole vocaloid thing in Japan now, though it's really more misses than hits for me. Deco*27 does some pretty consistently good stuff like Mosaic Roll and Coward Mont Blanc though. He sounds like he should be scoring anime opening themes, particularly when he can get a non-vocoded voice like in 愛迷エレジー.

Yeah, Negoto certainly isn't an OH GOD FAVORITE. I basically heard ループ and was like "yeah, this is actually a pretty good song." I was expecting them to be another completely generic girl-pop band as well, but they feel a bit more like a real band to me in the writes-and-performs-their-own-music sense.

Oh man, Shugo is great! His latest album is definitely his best, but his older stuff is pretty fun, too. All the toy instruments are cute <3 Rum Hee is a freaking amazing track.

Stars are high on my list, too, and I've actually gone back and listened to their older stuff a couple times this week as well. We're probably both going to have to come to terms with the fact that they will never write another song that is as good as Your Ex-Love Is Dead, but at least they gave us that one, haha. I agree that 5 Ghosts feels pretty anemic. For me, it was the shift to electronic sounds from real instruments that made the whole thing feel flat. Well, that, and I just don't think the songwriting was as good. Up In Your Bedroom After the War had some nice tracks, but you're right in saying that Set Yourself On Fire is their best. Ah, well!

Vocaloid strikes me as an interesting idea, both in the way it's democratized the pop music process (ie, anybody with the software can be responsible for the next Hatsune Miku hit track) and in the general way it's dissociated pop music from celebrity and made it just about the music, because there's no one behind the curtain, as it were. The problem I have with it is that I just don't like the music <3 There's a decent amount of variety, and some tracks are definitely better than others, but the super vocoded pop sound isn't my favorite, and one inevitable consequence of putting the tools of pop music creation in the hands of people who aren't professional music producers is that a lot of it is necessarily going to be amateurish and cliched. Again, that doesn't mean that it's a bad idea, just that I'm not going to want to listen to most of what comes out of it.

As for Sufjan's new stuff, it totally took me a few listens, too. If you haven't heard his All Delighted People EP, I would really recommend starting there. It serves as a nice bridge from his older stuff into Age of Adz. Adz certainly isn't going to be replacing Illinoise any time soon, but after having really given it a few thorough listens, I think it's still a strong album that does a lot of interesting stuff. If nothing else, Impossible Soul is one of the most epic songs in recent memory, and I think it stacks up favorable against anything else he's done.

Plus, as a fun experiment, try listening to All Delighted People and Age of Adz as Sufjan's coming out album. If you read the lyrics as one big, gay confession, it all makes a kind of sense, and I think that adds to my enjoyment of the music as well <3 Honestly, I think that was his intention, too -- I'm not just completely making this up. Listen to All Delighted People (the track) and read the lyrics with the thought in mind that "delighted" is a synonym for "gay," and you've got a pretty compelling case. It's all about standing up and admitting who you are and fighting for love and not caring about the hatred or abuse or pressure put on you by religious people who are misinterpreting scripture. I mean, how else are we supposed to read that? And a number of tracks off of Age of Adz read similarly when you go through them with that idea in mind as well <3

Rum Hee is definitely my favorite from what I've heard of Port Entropy, even though I can't make out what the heck the song is about. >_> There's a lush quality to the piece and how it builds and backs off that reminds me of Sigur Ros/Jonsi. <3 <3 <3

The vocaloid stuff really is just another evolving facet of electronica as far as I can tell. I mean all sorts of people have been producing interesting music through various synthesized means, and a lot of it remains pretty low key (e.g. Post-Foetus Vocaloid is interesting more as a subculture that's developed around subverting and, as you say, democratizing the whole pop-idol paradigm. Musically though, there's some potential here for a broader palette than other forms of electronica (there's only so much you can do with sampling) but I don't think most folks have mastered making that grating synth edge to the vocals work well in what they want. Imogen Heap's Hide and Seek I think exemplifies how that aesthetic can be used really effectively though, so I remain hopeful ...

Sufjan unfortunately falls into the same bucket as the Decemberists for me: fantastic aural fireworks, but just too demanding for repeated listening for me. A lot of it is structurally complex, bombastic even with just enough discordant elements to keep you from getting comfy with it. Probably stuff I would love to see in concert, but it just doesn't work coming out of my tinny computer speakers while I'm coding. Your reading of All Delighted People though had me going:



I think you broke me.

Rum Hee is definitely the standout single, of Port Entropy, and of his entire catalogue, really. It's a pretty awesome track. His lyrical sensibility is pretty abstract, yeah (and frankly he doesn't enunciate very clearly either), but the lyrics are here if you're curious. It's named for a parakeet-lookin' bird (although parakeets are usually インコ, so I'm not really sure what the distinction is), and the lyrics are all basically about getting out of the cage and spreading your wings and doing your thing, even if it means leaving your safety zone. That was my interpretation, anyway -- like I say, it's pretty abstract <3 And I think your comparison to Jonsi is right on the mark. Despite it being a bit lower energy, I see a lot in common between Port Entropy and Go Do.

Speaking of songs about birds in cages, do you know this one? It's one of my favorites of his.

Also, your comment about there only being so much you can do with sampling makes me think of the Books -- you listen to them at all? I'm totally in love with this video (and the song <3), and I think the way they play with cadence in the vocals and rhythm is really hypnotic and fresh. The clearest example of that is probably this track, at about the 2:25 mark. But yeah, I think they do a really amazing job of working with samples and found sounds in away that really pushes the boundaries of the genre. I mean, I guess they're an electronic band? But they're also totally not? Bands that defy easy categorization are always fun <3

Hide and Seek continues to be the gold standard for autotuned tracks, I think. In a lot of ways, that track probably had a lot to do with kicking off the pop music obsession with autotune in the last couple of years. It's like people had been using it as a crutch in production studios for years, and then a couple of tracks (Cher's Believe, cheezy as it is, the techno opera from the Fifth Element, and Hide and Seek) came along and were like "what if we crank this up and use it as an intentional effect?" Now it's become totally ubiquitous. That said, I think that talented artists are still using it effectively. Bon Iver's Woods and (yes) Sufjan's Impossible Soul (just past the 10 minute mark if you don't feel like sitting through the entire epic 25 minutes, haha) are two examples <3 I think in those cases, it's the arrangement, harmonies, and context that makes it work. They're also both songs/segments about transition and confusion and unsure feelings, so the wildly vacillating pitch helps reinforce that theme, rather than just being like "hey, check it out, we autotuned the shit out of our shit for kicks."

I can totally understand Sufjan being heavy for casual listening purposes, though. There are totally bands that I feel that way about (Radiohead). I tend to like rich, textural music when I'm working, though (Sigur Ros, Joanna Newsom, Sufjan, Tokumaru Shugo, etc.) for whatever reason. Just personal preference ^_^ And for what it's worth, Sufjan was amazing in concert. It was an 11-piece band @_@

Also, you should save up and splurge on some decent headphones! I was a skeptic at first, but I bought some nice ones on Amazon that were on super sale and I seriously could never go back <3 For like a week, I just went back through my library of music with my jaw hanging open thinking, "Wow, so this is what this song is supposed to sound like!"

And I stand by my reading of All Delighted People <3 I've always had my suspicions, but I think seeing him live put those to bed for good. At one point (halfway through Impossible Soul), he had a "costume change" where he put short-shorts on over his pants, stuck a super 80's headband on, and slid these blow-up wing things up his arms. After the song was done, he giggled and said he felt like Olivia Newton-John. Those are not the words of a boy who likes girls <3

My massive boy crush on Sufjan probably doesn't help my objectivity in assessing his musical ouvre, but what can I say?

Ooo, yeah, I've heard Big Bird in a Small Cage! I came across that after discovering Patrick Watson through Beijing. He's really the sort of the artist that really grows on me; I'd dismissed the rest of that album as being a bit sedate (relative to Beijing) but the more I listened to it, the more I noticed how clever his layering of instrumentation is. It's really brilliant stuff. Wooden Arms is just one of those albums I would have never discovered or eventually bought without the ability to have listened to it repeatedly through things like YouTube and Lala (rest in peace) Thank you, Intertubes!

I agree that sampling has come a long way since the early days, and it's great that folks have used the maturation of that technique in all these new stylistic ways (technically, Fifth Element's Diva Dance was sampled rather than autotuned, well, each note was autotuned I suppose, but boy does that take me back!) It's kind of funny that no one except the really hardcore niche audiences really attempt to label new music genres anymore. After punk and grunge everything since then that's not been mainstream pop has been basically "Indie" whatever that means. The new generation of music is just so post-modern (post-post-modern?) and syncretic that there's about a subgenre for just about anything. Case in point: electro-swing It's a great time to be a lover of eclectic music!

I am totally tempted to get a pair of decent headphones, but finding one with a gaming mic is impossible. Also, I do have a friend who's an audiophile and I'm fairly convinced that's a slippery slope that leads to vacuum tube powered external soundcards and $2000 per speaker set-ups >_> Computer speakers and bluetooth headsets are fine for listening to the NPR SXSW coverage anyway.

But headphones are still tempting though. Just not purple ones. I'm not sufficiently secure in my manhood. <_<


P/S: I think your boy crush on Sufjan is totally understandable, but I'll call dibs on Owen Pallett while you're busy pondering Sufjan's musical love babies.

Haha, I was listening to Owen Pallett while reading this ^_^ Great minds!

And yeah, I find that more and more, I need to give albums/artists a few good listens before they really "catch." I guess that's a natural result of listening to more complex or individual music -- it can be different and challenging! If I wanted to be able to sit down to every new track and have it fit my every expectation without demanding anything new of me, I'd listen to Top 40, I guess. It's always funny then, after the seventh listen, when something is suddenly my new favorite album in the world, thinking back and trying to figure out how I could have missed how awesome it was when I first heard it. I should endeavor to be so patient in forming my judgments in other areas as well!

It's definitely a great time for music, though. The internet has been kind to wacky niches of all sorts (hi, furries), people making new and bizarre music definitely among them. Though I agree the "indie" label is pretty limp. It doesn't even pretend to describe the sound, and half the time even the label status doesn't apply (like, if you're signed to Warner Bros., you're not an indie band. I'm sorry.). It's just the new word for "alternative," really. But that said, I do think that the genre spectrum is broader now than it was a decade ago, which is cool.

Yeah, I think you'd probably be best off getting headphones for listening to music and then a headset with a mic for gaming. Audio quality only really matters for one of those though, past a point (unless your gaming buddies have really sexy voices), so you wouldn't have to super splurge on both. And yeah, I've got a couple of audiophile friends, too, and they'll go on and on about their latest speakers that are made from Okinawan cherry wood and unicorn fetuses and I can definitely hear the difference, and I'm happy for them, buuuut I just don't care that much <3 For me, the price-performance curve peaked at about 100 bucks on headphones. That bought me a pair of cans that retail for about three times that, and the general rule is that it costs 1/10th as much to get the same audio quality in headphones as opposed to standing speakers, so it's basically the aural equivalent of a 2500~3000 dollar sound setup. That sounds like a good deal to me <3

They are pretty purple though, huh? I guess when it comes to fashion, I'm pretty bold. I've got a decent amount of purple in my wardrobe at this point ^_^

And Owen is definitely dreamy! I think what tips the scales for me is that while Owen is artsy and clever and ironic and erudite, Sufjan is sweet and incredibly, achingly sincere. Owen makes me want to sit down and have a long discussion about his process and his outlook. Sufjan mostly just makes me want to hug him.

Actually, I think you were the one who turned me on to Owen Pallett first. <3 To be honest, I imagine Owen to be way out of my hipster league, somewhere in the realm of ironic-beatnik Abercrombie & Fitch model smoking a fag. That's right. A fag. Not some crass American cigarette, but a homoerotically crass British cigarette. He is totally funny and self-deprecating in interviews though. I think I get what you mean about Sufjan though, I always thought he had this odd Droopy the dog puppy-eyed look to him, just enough awkward and earnestness. He's the Neville Longbottom of Indie.

Speaking of the internet being kind to all kinds of wacky niches, a friend recently turned me on to the addiction that is The Legion of Extraordinary Dancers. Dancing + super heroes is something only the Internet could have brought to fruition (although I suppose Michael Jackson did develop a very similar aesthetic way back in the 80's now that I think about it). It's a good time to be a creative individual of any kind really (furries included!)

The search for headphones continues I guess; beyond the sound response, gaming headsets also tend to emphasize 5.1/7.1 decoding, which is really handy for locating things aurally while gaming. Obvious answer: buy different dedicated headphones! My mortgage begs to differ unfortunately. Funnily enough, I do have a gaming ... acquaintance (I hesitate to call him buddy because he's kind of an immature douchebag) but he totally sounds like Clint Eastwood if he spoke at a normal pace. Regardless, speech communication in games are just total immersion killers so sexy or otherwise, I tend to want to mute the crap out of most people. ("I don't care if we need to coordinate! Your 3rd grade level English and advanced PhD in cussing make my ears bleed!") Eh, we'll see if woot ever gets anything reasonable in this category. A coworker of mine is trying to get me hooked on Grados now and I'm like all "BACK! BACK TEMPTRESS AND YOUR LUSCIOUS CUPS OF LEATHER AND CRISP CLARION VOICE! I am immune to your wiles because you pinch my misshappened noggin!"

If I ever see you at a con again though, I totally expect you to wear purple. And a turtleneck.

Haha, re: LXD what did I just watch? I don't know that I followed what just happened, but I am mightily pleased that such a thing exists just the same.

Also, I laughed at your Sufjan:Neville comparison. My god, I can totally see it!

I feel you on the Grados, too. One of my friends is into music production, and he's got a pair of Grado studio headphones, and while the quality is nothing to shake a stick at, I just can't wear them for more than an hour or so without them hurting. More than having a misshapen head, mine's just large, plus I've got pretty big ears which stick out a good bit, so any headphones that rest on top of the ears are going to hurt. That's why I'm so in love with these Audio-Technicas, really (well, that and they sound glorious. In the same tier as the Grados, certainly.) -- they're oversized over-the-ear cans, so they rest against my head instead of my ears. The cushions are pillowy soft, and the headphones have a suspension system built in that puts most of the weight (which isn't much to start with) on the top of your head instead of the sides, so I can basically put them on and forget they're even there. They're extremely comfy <3

I can definitely see how the channel separation would be key to gaming headphones, now that you mention it. Especially with games like Dead Space where you have to rely on a lot of spatial audio cues in order to not die. Your mention of Clint Eastwood's voice-double with the foul mouth just makes me think of Gran Turino <3 I'm still amazed that like 80% of his dialogue in that movie is racial slurs and non-stop profanity, and yet somehow he manages to be a really endearing character.

You may well see me in purple, but you will not see me in a turtleneck <3 I've always been weird about things that constrict my neck and my wrists for some reason. Turtlenecks and wristwatches are right out, I'm afraid. If it's chilly enough to warrant neck protection, I've got a whole collection of scarves to do the trick ^_^

LXD is just totally a wild ride, less plausible than a summer blockbuster and simultaneously far more culturally sophisticated. Season 2, if you didn't get that far, starts setting up the super villains for the series and a big showdown. Hey, West Side Story was doing dance battles way before these new fangled styles of dance, so why not? :) The musical score is pretty sweet too, it's a shame it's not available yet.

It's kinda weird the the only pair of headphones I've ever really found comfy have been a pair of Sony earclip style ones. Maybe it's just that I'm used to wearing glasses, so having them perched on my ears doesn't really bother me. The over-the-ear headphones tend to make my ears really hot, though I suppose I've never owned a really good pair. Apparently the next big gimmick is going to be memory foam on headphones so ... yeah. <_< >_>

And Clint Eastwood totally introduced me to racial slurs I never even knew existed. Zipperhead? That doesn't even make sense! Of course, I had to smack the BF upside the head after we watched it ... yeesh. And I don't suppose you'll ever have to worry about scarves, seeing as how the only (furry) con I seem to attend is AC. But like the current Doctor Who says, "Scarves! Scarves are cool, right?"

LXD is certainly sumptuous to watch, in that it's basically just one big choreographed action sequence. And like I say, any criticisms aside, it makes me super happy to think that a show like this can and does exist. That said, it scans more as dance porn than as a narrative drama, or even as a supernatural action show to me. I actually typed out like four paragraphs of analysis before coming to the conclusion that it totally doesn't matter, so you got spared that. (You're welcome <3)

I had a pair of clip-ons that I really liked, too, actually. I wound up accidentally leaving them (and the iPod they were plugged into 9_9) in the post office a few months back. Expensive mistake.

I know what you mean about over-the-ear cans feeling hot. I remember this ancient pair of hard-shell headphones my parents had growing up that felt like a freaking helmet when you put them on. The pair I have now are way lighter in general, the cups are a velvety cloth instead of all stiff leather, and the cups themselves are an open-back design, which means they can actually breathe. None of that weird, sweaty, cave-against-your-ears feeling. The open-back design affects the sound properties, too, obviously. In general, they don't hold in sound as well as closed-back cans do, so other people can hear what you're listening to if you're playing it at a decent volume (which isn't a problem for me because I mostly use them at night while other folks are asleep and also I have really good taste in music so people should probably thank me for using leaky headphones yes you're welcome <3), but the flip-side of that is that the sound stage is huuuuge. Like, most headphones make it sound like the music is coming from inside your head, which can be kind of cool when you're out walking around and you want to feel like you have your own personal soundtrack, but for listening at home, the open-back cans make it sound like the music is being played around you, like the band is in same room. There's a wider spatial separation between instruments and tracks, too, which really helps the sound feel crisp and defined. It's fun <3

Clint's character totally gets a gold star for creativity, yes. Haha, do I want to know what the BF was doing to deserve a smack? Repeating one too many lines, or maybe smiling a bit too wide as he did?

And I'm not too proud to admit that I actually have different weight scarves for different seasons and occasions. I could wear one of my summer scarves at AC, where FC usually demands more of an autumn. And an umbrella 9_9 It's raining here now, actually.

Actually, I probably wouldn't have mind reading it; used to date a lit major so I've been taught to appreciate how anything and everything can be analyzed. LXD is more than just action sequences though; the short episodic nature of the series gives them plenty of room to play with different genres including romance and comedy. I actually much prefer the episodes when they have that "What did I just watch?!" quality to them, it makes it art in the sense of the maxim that "Good art is interpreted; good design is understood". I think the series stumbles more in the second season when it tries to play up the expository and plot element (which is all kinds of corny), but like Cirque du Soleil, all the drama serves to contextualize the spectacle. Oh, and the numerous totally buff topless guys that show up regularly have nothing to do with my liking it at all. Nope. >_>

Sorry to hear about how you lost the iPod man! I wore out the covers my old pair of clip-ons and they're so old I can't get replacements for them that fit anymore. Traded up to a similar bluetooth set only to discover that they recompress the stream even more, so they sound flat even to my untrained ears. Phooey. It's funny how true what you say about leaky headphones is though ... the coworker who tried to get me on Grados listens to flamenco guitar riffs quite a bit (at least I think that's what they are) and I'd always be humming it after a while.

Clint Eastwood needs to make a movie that isn't a total bawlfest at the end. That man is a cynical and twisted emotional blackmailer is what he is. *sniffle* And yeah, the BF was being a bit too smarmy quoting Clint from the movie afterwards. Also his fault for ignoring the Death Squint. He was warned.

Oh, and I must see what qualifies for a summer scarf now. O_O Oh, you crazy californians! Just avoid the fate of Isadora Duncan!

It was a big screed on the importance of a consistent internal logic to a fantasy world setting, mostly. Like, everybody gets one gimme. Star Wars has the Force, Dune has crazy spice powers, superheroes have their various incredibly specific mutations, etc. The audience will accept that more or less without question provided the rest of the world is built logically around that core device.

An extreme example is Stephen Chow's God of Gamblers III, in which a guy with magical kung fu and assorted "gambling powers" gets sent back through time to 1937 Shanghai. There, he discovers that his kung fu no longer works. Eventually, he happens to punch a dude on the other side of a wooden post, and the dude goes flying. Without missing a beat, Chow is like "Of course! The lost Kung Fu of In-Between!" and he runs with it from there. No justification or further context whatsoever is given.

Now, that is a convoluted chain of incredibly goofy premises, BUT the viewer can follow it without a problem because once the Kung Fu of In-Between is established as a gimme, we know that while direct punches and kicks are ineffectual, blows delivered through some intermediate object are powerful. The larger the object between fist and target, the stronger the blow. (Somehow?) We don't question that, because it makes a bizarre but internally consistent sense. We can anticipate the results of his actions, and then when the on-screen results match our anticipation, we accept it and move on.

As far as I can tell, LXD has no such internal logic. They're all sort of telekinetic, but they're not. Some dance moves do special things, but others don't. Some are powerful, some are weak. They'll do five flips and nothing will happen, then they'll do a sixth and something will blow up. People will make blocking motions and be totally fine, or not. There is no clear relationship between the action and the consequence, and that makes it both difficult to follow, and difficult to feel invested in the action. Kind of like how even the most intense, technically brilliant football game ever played still just looks like a bunch of burly dudes running around chasing a ball if you don't know the rules of the game.

Also, on a less structural level, I'm impressed at how brazenly the director embraced the Magical Negro trope with those opening narration bits <3

So yeah, the tl;dr version is that I think it succeeds as dance porn, but falters as narrative storytelling. As you say, it is certainly a spectacle!

</rant>

Sucks about the bluetooth headphones -- I wonder if that's a systemic constraint of bluetooth, or if it's just that particular set's design, or what.

I can totally understand wanting Grados if he's big into flamenco guitar <3 Rich acoustic stuff definitely benefits from high-end speakers more than other genres (electronic stuff is more forgiving, etc.). More to the point, it's nice of him to at least listen to pleasant music if he's going to be subjecting the whole office to it, haha.

Oh man, I remember I was living in Tokyo in spring of...'06, I want to say? And reaaaally long scarves were the new "in" thing. I think about three chicks got yanked off the back of their boyfriends' motorcycles in the span of about three months 9_9 As a city kid, I have the luxury of walking to most of the places I go, and it would take a pretty impressive scarf and a lot of determination to get it caught in the wheels of a bus <3

Well, the LXD certainly isn't going to be winning any writing awards soon! I totally see what you mean, but I think the issue is broader than logical consistency; it's a problem of mixed metaphors. In the world of LXD, dance can be just dance (as with the fanboyz and the magic sneakers) and the ability to do crazy dance moves is treated as a power in and of itself (antigravity, tricking, breaking), or they can be metaphors (duet and the dark doctor's possession dance), or they can empower metaphors (the wave and specimen mime battles, the whole crazy channeling of chi thing). It's sloppy from that perspective, but it gives the show that weird latitude to go where ever it wants. Season 2 ends in a Western showdown with magic dance-powered guns at one point. It's hilarious it a good way. Like I said, I think it really burns itself when it tries to take the drama and the sci-fi aspect seriously ... it's like George Lucas trying to explain that the Force comes from midichlorians or whatnot.

Not all bluetooth headsets are created equal apparently, and it seems like I should have done more homework reading up reviews and such; the gist of it is that bluetooth bandwidth is limited and the vast majority use the crappy SBC codec. There are apparently some receivers that understand loseless compression codecs, which may not have issues I'm experiencing, but I haven't come across any yet that are for portable use. :(

The sound leaking from the Grados really isn't all that bad, as long as you're not sitting right next to the person (not great for commuting I suppose). I haven't felt the need for headphones, though I suspect the urge will arise to buy a new toy once I get another album to obsess over.

Yeah, I think we're on the same page ^_^ And I also don't mean to suggest that dance porn isn't worthwhile in its own right, too. I've got a couple of b-boy friends who are glued to that stuff 24/7 on the youtubes (though I haven't heard what any of them think of LXD, specifically).

And hey, when you do find the next album to obsess over, let me know ^_^ It sounds like we've got pretty similar tastes, so I'm sure I'd dig anything that really grabbed you.

On the topic of autotuned indie boys, are you up on this James Blake business? Here's another, though the live version is significantly than the album cut (the sound engineering is really nicely done on the studio version -- there are a number of garbled/sourish notes in the live version...)

I have to agree with the YouTube comment on the second video: "This music can cause a cancer and an abortion in pregnant women" Oh man. There's just something intensely cringe-inducing about his compositions for me, though not necessarily the choice of AutoTune. (The Wilhelm Scream and Klavierwerke much more so than Lindisfarne)

I think I'm rebounding from too much Deco*27 and I'm all about lushly acoustic sound with big space right now. Son Lux's War and Weapon V and Rising are currently on my YouTube loop. :3