Archive for December, 2010


So I love dance/house/electronic/synth-pop type musics. Just let’s get that out there. I’m also quite fond of Jeph Jacques’ Questionable Content webcomic. Every year he blogs about his Top 10 albums of the year. We seem to have pretty similar tastes in music, so I can generally assume that I’m going to like the things he likes. This year’s article (found HERE) was no different. I downloaded his ‘Top album of the year’, and just fell head over heels in love.

It’s Grum’s Heartbeats. The Jeph’s review is short but passionate. Since I’m such a fan of Daft Punk, I figured I’d give it a listen. I haven’t been able to stop listening since. It’s like taking a time machine designed in the near future and taking it back to 1986. If you’re at ALL into dancy/poppy/discoy/synthy stuff, you’re going to want this album. It’s just about perfect. I don’t hear any throwaway tracks on it and it’s pretty much the perfect soundtrack to anything you could want to do in life (except the sad stuff, this album doesn’t have time for sad. Even the downtempo tracks are pretty upbeat.) It just reminds me of a time when Hall & Oates, Prince and Phil Collins were all you would need for a good time. The stand-out track for me is ‘Turn It Up’ (which you can listen to HERE if you don’t want to commit to downloading a whole album to see if you’d like it.) Oh and by the way, click on the album name up there if you haven’t already.

When I went looking around for information about this Grum character (he’s a dude from the UK) I read that this album has been compared to Daft Punk’s Discovery and Mylo’s Destroy Rock and Roll. I had never heard the second one but since I like Discovery and Heartbeats so much, I sought it out and grabbed it. Was not disappointed. I’d say give Heartbeats a listen and if you dig it, grab THIS.

So I mentioned that I might put some some album reviews. I guess this will be the first… kinda.

I say ‘kinda’ because it’s not really an album, but two. And not really new, just a new way of listening to it.

What I’m talking about is Radiohead’s 01 and 10.

You may be saying: “But I’m a HUGE Radiohead fan. How did I not know about this album.” Well that’s where the ‘not really new’ comes in.

The guy at Puddlegum lays it out a lot better than I could, but what it is is taking OK Computer and In Rainbows and sequencing them track by track to get a seamless, and eerily cohesive, ‘new’ album. You’ve probably heard both of these albums a zillion times before, (I wasn’t even a big Radiohead fan but OK Computer was one of the albums that changed my life) but now you’ll hear them in a whole new light.

The main article doesn’t mention it, but having a 10sec. crossfade between tracks really does do wonders for the flow of things. It’s pretty easy to set up in most media players.

Also, since I’m such a nice guy, I took the work out of it for you! You can find what you’re looking for here.

I just wanted to share with you one of my favourite songs of all time. And try this whole Soundcloud thing out. 🙂

Miles Davis – Someday My Prince Will Come by Smackdog

The Game Post

Over the past few days I’ve been playing a Wii game that’s been out for something like three years, but I just discovered it. It’s called No More Heroes. Excellent. I remember someone telling me about Killer 7 (I probably still have it on my PS2 hard drive), and Persona which are to other games that SUDA-51 (the writer/director) has made and this game seems as strange as either of those. This will probably be one of the few games I play through to the end. I think the last one was Bully on PS2 when I had my wisdom teeth out. I’m hoping that some time off during the holidays will help me catch up on all the games I’ve recently acquired. I’ve been logging the appropriate time with Rock Band 3, but it’s more fun when there’s other people to play with. Especially if I don’t figure out how to get online to play. I’ve got Kirby’s Epic Yarn and Epic Mickey (which I haven’t even loaded up yet) as well as Donkey Kong Country Returns and Trauma Team. Oh, not to mention CoD: Black Ops and Goldeneye 007 (which might be another one I log some time with over the holidays.)

If anyone has any more suggestions for Wii games I may have missed over the past few years, let me know!

So, I’ve changed webhosts and decided to start using this website. I’m not sure what will go up here, but I might just start reviewing albums (and maybe posting some ‘samples’) or things that I saw, as if my opinion matters! Wouldn’t that be fun!?

~Smack