Daft Punk is playing in my Nikes

And I like it...

LCD soundsystem released a mix with iTunes and Nike. It's pretty tight and I've read about the release in everything from Rolling Stone to the NY times. ie. Someone's PR agent's working extra hard with placement in the media...and I want them to hire me.

(Why? Because if you're "hip", you've probably seen their work. They are another of those "taste-maker" centred marketing companies that aggresively pursue pretentious bloggers (ahem), American Apparel-sporting, Indie-loving, VICE magazine-reading hipsters etc.)

Anyway, you can get it from iTunes and listen to it at the Hype Machine.

The track's called "45:33", just like that John Cage piece, except there's music...

Porn for bibliophiles

I came across this at a random time of the night and it really stuck out to me. Perhaps it was the music, the cuts, (the fact that Murakami made a "cameo"). It's by a chap called Remy from france and you can see more of his short films here (cliquez-moi). Enjoy.



Books on Vimeo

Depeche Mode Remixes

My friend Leah in Argentina sent me a lovely tango remix of "Enjoy the Silence" by Depeche Mode. It stays pretty true to the song yet adds plenty of Latin charm through the accordians etc. It's very fun.

Another Depeche remix that blew me away was the 'minimix' by electro artist Nullsleep , he's a musician who programs music using old nintendo sound chips. So, imagine Mario and Luigi on speed, at a rave with Depeche Mode bringing the beats! Nullsleep set up a record label for like minded artists called 8-bit peoples. Last Wednesday, some lucky bastards on the East Coast got to watch Nullsleep and other "chiptune" musicians perform in 8bit Movie, a documentary about art and video games which was screened exclusively at the Museum of Modern Art in NY.

The third remix is really different one, it's stripped down cover by Susanna and the Magical Orchestra. They cover quite a lot of songs in the same manner, exuding all the detached Norweign charm they can muster! Personally, If I wanted to hear lounge versions of New Wave and electropop songs, I would throw on some Nouvelle Vague, they're absolutely champ (even though they're French).

So, take your pick, these are the three most unique remixes I've heard.

Enjoy the Silence (a la Tango)

Enjoy the Silence (Susanna and the Magical Orchestra)

Enjoy the Silence (Nullsleep minimix)

Le Weekend

This weekend, we had breakfast with two charming individuals in Triple-X at about 5AM sunday morning and talked at length about politics, race, the sleaziness of human nature and literature.

"Julius", poet, wordsmith extraordinaire and his friend C. shared some of Alice Walker's poetry from her book "Absolute Trust in the Goodness of the Earth" Also, we talked about Murakami, one of my favourite authors and his short story "On seeing the 100% Perfect girl one beautiful April morning", which is the most tragi-realistic thing I've read in a while. It's a love story of sorts.

Murakami's work is very easy to relate to despite the cultural differences (Murakami is Japanese), he is heavily influenced by Western music, especially jazz. He usually deals with issues like, adolescence, love, death, longing...But there's a lot of wit and humor in the manner he approaches them.

I would recommend picking up "Norweign Wood", his biggest hit in the west.