Tokyo F.A.T
The short answer is that this year I listened to a lot of disco.
In January ’08, shortly after publishing last year’s XMIXes and with the housing bubble still comfortably inflated, I linked up with like-minded WNYU DJs for the inaugural Serious Bu$iness, a night of electric disco and boogie funk. Still going strong at the ripe age of 1, Mike and Alex put me up on a lot of disco 12″ knowledge in 2008, and with the help of Jamie Dubs we established some Serious Bu$iness classic party starters including the D Train and Central Line included here.
Luckily we weren’t the only ones feeling the pulse of synths and boogie rhythms (and motherfucking so much autotune) last year – proud to say that my XMIX has a number of tracks that actually came out in 2008! James Pants and Dam-Funk are two of the most exciting recently signees to Stones Throw, and James’ Welcome LP and Dam’s Rhythm Trax Vol. 4 have been on steady rotation at the house. I also had the chance to share a drink and talk music with the both of them during CMJ, and they are two kind, motivated, enthusiastic dudes. Good people. No surprise – we’re all Gemini’s (me’n James got the same birthday).
Francis and the Lights – blowin’ up the blogs, amazing live show, mysterious frontman, incorporated rather than signed to a label, giving away their albums (mostly), sounds kinda like minimal, yelping Prince, beautiful stuff, about to be huge. (Just so y’all know, when all your friends are telling you about this new band, they played a show in my dining room back in 2007 – recognize game.)
A few discoveries came from the catalogs of a certain record label at which I was briefly employed this year that shall remain nameless. They have some deep gems in the catalog (which, thankfully, is completely digitized) that will remain painfully overlooked as long as they have the same boss problems that made me jump ship. The James Monroe cut being a prime example, as well as the lost bit of tape that’s on some after-school program spittle, reminiscent of my man Eli’s famo-worthy battle.
With my “cheesy music” gag reflex seriously tamed by a steady diet of disco, (and a friendly push from my girlfriend) the floodgates were opened to let some seriously R&B-flavored jams find their way into my crates and my heart, from Computer Love, Loose Ends, and the crafty productions of the System, up to the ‘too soon?’ nostalgia of a Mark Morrison banger. Raymond Scott and Project Pat, scientists in their own worlds, got me through my last semester of college, and Javelin will be forever fresh.
Stay tuned to letsgetserious.net for more musical selections in 2009!
Download
Bennett4$enate – XMIX 2008
(123.5mb .zip ’cause I like them 320kbps mp3s, y’heard?)
or stream the Opentape.
Tracklist:
shoutouts:
Marty McSorely – I had a chance to do a guest spot on Marty
s show, a night called Broken Tape Decks, where Marty, Forest and I played all thrift-store and found cassettes for 4 hours. Totally awesome, some super bizzare music, listen here
A Downtown Affair – Mike McGill and Alex B. doin’ the disco from WNYU to you. My guest set here.
Discogs, Wax Poetics, drop.io, Last.fm, Opentape, and Oh Babar! for being great resources.
It took me a few years to warm up to this one, but eventually my dad finally talked me into it, and I never looked back. Kind of like Brusells sprouts.
Happy Thanksgiving y’all.
I, like many of my generation, spent a fair percentage of my youth firing foam darts at my older brother . We used to throw our Ninja Turtles against the wall until they broke and then re-arrange the body parts, but somehow we never thought to take apart our NERF guns to enhance their speed, range, or firepower.
Maybe it was just a simpler time, when all one had was their Arrowstorm and the second amendment to keep from becoming a Nerf P.O.W.
Things have changed since 9-11, but thanks to people like YouTube user uin13 we can rest assured knowing that good old-fashioned American ingenuity will help maintain our technological edge against the twisted minds of terrorists and older brothers alike. In the following MagStrike Mod, he walks us through how to double your clip capacity without pumping in between. Terrorists hate freedom, but they really really hate foam darts.
Maybe not the most professional How-To, but almost better this way, to share in the discovery, frustration and “fuck it – just use duct tape” attitude that come up in any taking-things-apart session.
More options in the Mods section of Nerf Haven.
This bout of nostalgia is brought to you by “May is National Make a F***ING Post Month” and the fact that I just graduated from college.
Did You Know?: The default Mac OS X (I’m on version 10.4.11) screensaver picture slideshow function can read an alpha channel in a .gif file. That is to say, as the slideshow plays your images, a .gif with an alpha channel will appear to be “on top” of the previous image, and as the slideshow goes on, the .gifs will continue to “layer” on until an image of a different format is displayed, which has a default white or black background.
So what?
Take advantage of the randomizing function to create some home-made screensaver machinima art!
The animation above is a sample implementation: The NEW Office Party Screensaver from FATLAB.
In the spirit of Men of the Internet, this screensaver is a series of carefully-sliced 800×600 .gifs, sourced from the faces of the hardest working local board members, regional vice presidents, administrative assistants, and other fruitful regular-dude-generating search terms on the internet. The .gifs layer over one another to hybridize these generic gentlemen into a randomly-generated ultimate budget-balancing force of suits. Its dudes! (<-- math joke)
Click here to download a small .zip file of the .gifs. Point your screensaver to it and set your preferences like this:
And you’re all set! Never not working, brought to you by the FATLAB.
The expressions published in this site are all in the public domain. You may enjoy, use, modify, snipe about and republish all F.A.T. media and technologies as you see fit.