Deere

"Everything is matter." -Dave

[ohdeereohmy]

This is hands down one of the greatest blues recordings I’ve ever heard. It incorporates microtones, an odd meter that drags the melody along like a car with its engine giving out. 

And despite all this, it’s so catchy. Unbelievably catchy and hard-hitting. And whoever made the decision to pan the whistle-sound to the left (whether it be producer/engineer/the musicians) was a genius.

[ohdeereohmy]

Tarantino’s thoughts on one of my favorite movies.

[ohdeereohmy]

Björk - Bastards (2012) Full Album [HQ]

I got this album for Christmas and I have to say that it's really interesting to see how these ten tracks (from Biophilia) have been interpreted by different...

Some great remixes on here.

[archatlas]

[archatlas]

The Monuments That Were Never Built

Imagine Washington D.C. as it could have been, here are some of the monuments, bridges, museums and other buildings were never executed—at least not according to plan.

From the top:

Proposed Mothers’ Memorial, by John Geddes, 1922-30

Preliminary Proposal for the National Cultural Center (later Kennedy Center) by Edward Durrell Stone, 1959

Lincoln Memorial Proposal by John Russell Pope, 1912

Proposed Executive Mansion on Meridian Hill by Paul J. Pelz, 1898

Proposed Memorial Bridge in honor of Gen. U.S. Grant by Smithmeyer and Pelz, 1887

Projected Improvements to the Washington Monument and National Mall by B.F. Smith, 1852

Main elevation of Capitol competition entry by James Diamond, 1792

“Plan for the Completion of Washington, D.C,” by Léon Krier, 1984-85

Design for National Galleries of History and Art by Franklin Webster Smith, 1900

Original design of National Cathedral by Ernest Flagg, 1896

Images and text via

[ohdeereohmy]

“I’m so fucked up.”

[ohdeereohmy]

Portishead - Wandering Star

Dir. by Christopher Neil

[ohdeereohmy]

White Rabbit, Red Rabbit is a theater piece written by Iranian playwright Nassim Soleimanpour. Nassim is forbidden to leave Iran for refusing to join the Iranian military. In response to his punishment, he created this play, which requires no director and no set, and a different performer/actor per performance. The actor is not allowed to view the script until the performance.

This play is in my city from October 8th-25th, and I’m very excited to see it.

[ohdeereohmy]

Refused are Fucking Dead from Refused’s classic hardcore album, The Shape of Punk to Come. The intro riff is so sludgy and grimy that it hardly has harmonic content. When the verse riff comes in, it disorients the listener with a danceable array of slingy guitar notes.

Another favorable moment is the dirty wah bassline that comes in before the last chorus. This song is only the tip of the iceberg in terms of the sonic experimentation on this album, but it is definitely super danceable and fun, while lyrically haunting (the latter is the usual with Refused).

[ohdeereohmy]

Waldspirale is a German residential building, located in Darmstadt. It was designed by Austrian painter and architect, Friedensreich Hundertwasser, implemented by architect, Heinz M. Springmann, and built by the Bauverein Darmstadt company. The building contains over one hundred apartments, a courtyard, a cafe, and a bar. It was completed in the year of Hundertwasser’s death. 

A little information about the designer: Friedensreich Hundertwasser was an Austrian-born painter and architect, known for his environmentally-friendly, Utopian forms, and rejection of the straight line in architecture. Over a dozen of his designs have been built.

[ohdeereohmy]

Tractor Rape Chain from Guided by Voices’s album Bee Thousand. My personal favorite thing about this song is how the acoustic half of the intro is slightly tuned lower than the electric and live performance that follows. I’m unsure whether this was intentional, but something about it works, and makes the second half the intro surprising and dynamic.

[ohdeereohmy]

Now this is a very interesting concept. Steve’s Reich’s Pendulum Music. The microphone pendulums swing over amplifiers, creating feedback. Different cable lengths determine the pitch of the feedback and swing of the pendulum. 

[ohdeereohmy]

This is an excerpt from Steve Reich’s Drumming performed by the Portland Percussion Group. I have seen this same excerpt performed live by the Ethos Percussion Group. It was quite an experience to hear the sounds phase in the small auditorium. 

[ohdeereohmy]

The music that this quintet made was idiosyncratic, to say in the very least. The slide guitarist sounds like they had absolutely no method or theory behind their performance, it almost “academically” amounts to a four-year-old banging on a piano keyboard. So why does it sound so good and so tight?

Chance’s vocals sound so natural and unpretentious. This sounds like how someone would yell and shout in real life, out of excitement or anger. At the same time, he is a character, and presents a melodic and catchy narrative that’s fascinating to follow. 

[ohdeereohmy]

Jimmy Scott, jazz singer hailing from my hometown Cleveland, performs a segment of “Sycamore Trees” in the finale of Twin Peaks.

I really like this motif that David Lynch uses in many of his films (and in his series, Twin Peaks, of course), of an intimate and intense vocal performance, with dazzling stage lighting and extreme ambiance. 

[ohdeereohmy]

This is a very addicting app, especially when used with a touch screen. From James Fenn.

[ohdeereohmy]

Harry Partch’s take on the cithara, a Greek lyre instrument. His version takes twelve guitar headstocks lined up horizontally, so that they could be struck as full, six-note chords.

Partch on his “kithara”:

“The lyre of Orpheus had three strings. The traditional number of strings was eight, but lyres were experimented with, of course. One of the very famous experimenters was Timotheus from Sparta, of all places, who increased the number of cathara strings from eight to twelve. For the crime of twelve strings, the Spartans drove the immoral Timotheus from their city. He had failed to realize, that to dream of desirable changes is one thing, to act upon those dreams is another. My kithara has seventy-two strings, and I shutter to think what might have happened to me in Ancient Greece.”

[ohdeereohmy]

Yuri Landman, is a luthier from The Netherlands, specializing in unique prepared guitar-like instruments. Much of his work in influenced by microtonal music theory, and strives to achieve melodic capability within the confines of atypical musical scale. He has built instruments for artists such as HEALTH, Aaron Hemphill of Liars, and Lee Renaldo of Sonic Youth.