Love!! Obsession!! Incest!! Suicide!!

All wrapped up into one grandiose majestic masterpiece of post-ambient-shoegaze-prog-metal.

What more could you ask for!?

The second full-length album by Boston’s (their based out of L.A. now) Isis, is probably one of the most creative and original metal albums of all time. Oceanic has been cited as the album to spawn the post-metal (or ambient-metal or metal-gaze or whatever you wanna call it) genre.

Even though the album is categorized in the metal genre it is far from what you would typically think of as heavy metal music. There’s no cheesy guitar solos or pulse pounding double bass rhythms. Oceanic is filled with slight electronic texture, ghostly female vocals, slow paced instrumentation, and sprinkled with occasional screams and big distortion.

The concept is based on a dude that is all bummed out and fed up with life, he meets a girl and becomes obsessed with her. But, he finds out that the girl has been hooking up with her own brother. This bum’s the dude out even more (understandable) and he commits suicide by drowning himself in the ocean. Oh, the drama!! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oceanic_(Isis_album)

This album really is the coolest. If you don’t own it already make this your next music purchase. But you can’t just download it; you have to actually buy a physical copy of it. The artwork and the cerebral outline of the story listed inside the booklet are important to truly appreciating this business and you have to listen to it all the way through. It’s art!! Serious!!

http://www.isistheband.com/Home.aspx

Jon

I would have to say out of the three that Fletch is my favorite.

-sidenote-

Look how ridiculous Rodney Dangerfield looks on the cover of Caddyshack, I love it!! Ha!!

Jon

To usher in the first dusting of blissful snow for the ‘08-’09 season, Absinthe Films and Milosport held the world premiere for the new Absinthe video at the Tower Theatre on Saturday night. The movie is awesome and got me stoked to ride some pow. Check out a little highlight video of the premiere and follow the links below to see the real teaser for “Ready” - Absinthe’s 2008 release.

http://www.sphereofinfluencetour.com/newSite/hiResPlayer/

Oddly enough, up until a couple of weeks ago, The Young Machines was the only album I had from Her Space Holiday.  Until couple weeks ago*, I was on my weekly new music hunt and I stumbled upon their newest EP, Sleepy Tigers**.

Yes, the title of the EP is great and the artwork is perfect (see below please), but the title track steals the show.  Granted it’s a blatantly obvious declaration of love, but there is nothing wrong with that.  It’s a fun little ditty (yeah that’s right, I said ‘ditty’) that’s already made one mix-tape of mine and will probably make a couple more before the year ends***.

Regards,
H

* I apologize for the delay.

** I know I’ve mentioned it before, but I’m a huge fan of anything that falls into the category of wild felines.  I promise, I’m not trying to drive the point home, all of these feline related posts are just coincidence really.

***Wow, the ending to this post is blatantly obvious too and perhaps a bit cheesy.

DJ Shadow – Entroducing

This album is a classic and the first album to be 100 % compromised of samples. DJ’s are always biting this albums style. All of DJ Shadow’s stuff is good except for The Outsider, that one is weak.

Björk – Vespertine

By far the most emotional album she has put out. The beats are random and slight. Favorite Track right now “It’s Not Up To You”. Also check Homogenic and the music video collection Greatest Hits: Volumen 1993-2003. I wish I could be magical like Björk.

 Foo Fighters – Foo Fighters, Big Me Single, (Late! – Pocketwatch)

I busted the Foo’s 1^st album out a couple of weeks ago and it’s actually really good, much better than the corndog music they put out now. The big hit off that album “Big Me” was released as a single and has bunch of b-sides from the 1^st albums recording session. I also started digging on Dave Grohl’s first solo tape under the pseudonym Late!. You can’t buy it, but go to the myspace www.myspace.com/latedavegrohl and you can get directions to download it in the blog section.

 June of 44 – all 6 of their recordings

 If you are obsessed with Slint & Rodan (honestly who isn’t), Then check these guys out. All 6 of their albums are amazing. The music may seem kind of one dimensional at first but, I’m telling you this band is the top of the pops. Best song “Of Information and Belief” off of Four Great Points. Too bad they broke up in 2000. Check out all the offshoot bands especially Shipping News. www.myspace.com/giugnodel44

 Mineral – EndSeranading

This band sounds so similar to Sunny Day Real Estate that upon listening to the bands final recording before they broke up in 1998, You might think that you are listening to a long lost SDRE recording. Only problem is the original bass player for SDRE, Nate Mendel (he’s my favorite) is much better then Mineral’s bass player Jeremy Gomez. But it’s cool, I won’t hold it against him. www.myspace.com/mineralmusic

So thar it be!! A bunch of old Bodacious music to bug out to!!

I didn’t put any links on the album covers, because I decided I have been pimping amazon.com too much!!

Jon 

The Heavenly States was formed from lesser bands in a lab outside of Silicon Valley. They just had a new album drop not too long ago called Delayer. The CD case artwork is rather unique. It is made up of semi-transparent paper with the lyrics and song titles from the page underneath showing through giving it a layered look, hence - Delayer. Check out the interview and check out their myspace.

So, recently I was visiting mcsweeneys.net, to see what was happening and I stumbled across a new publication, a publication right up my alley.  It’s a quarterly DVD magazine called Whophin.  Each issue includes short films, documentaries and animations, work that doesn’t have the blessed fortune of hitting your local Cineplex Odeon.

So being the impulse buyer I am, I decided to purchase an issue.  Picking an issue wasn’t a problem. I was going with issue No. 5.  The reason being it included a short film called House Hunting** that was adapted from a short story by Micheal Chabon, author of the first-rate novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay.  As it turned out though, this wouldn’t be my favorite in the issue.

To be truthful, I’ve only made it half way through, but so far I’m enjoying everything my first issue of Wholpin.  The standout so far is the opening short Death to the Tinman, a tragic tale of limbs and love lost.  Not only is it well written and visually stunning, I also found out, upon further research, that it was written as a prequel to The Wizard of Oz, detailing how the famed Tinman came to be heartless and well, made of tin.

Now Wholpin is not only an animal born from the result of a dolphin and whale mating, it’s a terrific source for unseen films delivered to your home.

Check it out: http://www.wholphindvd.com/

Regards,
H

* I’m a nerd.
** Directed by Amy Lippman, the co-creator of the life-altering series Party of Five.

I was trying to figure out why I stopped obsessing over video games which I remember used to take up  hours and hours of my time. Then I relaized that all these new fangled sytems and game consoles are bogus and every time I try and get involved with a new game it gets way to time consuming.

So I stopped buying into the hype and broke out my orginal 8 bit Nintendo (NES) and 16 bit Super Nintendo (SNES). I started playing thorugh all my old games and soon became obssesed once again with Contra III: The Alien Wars (SNES). After totally dominating the game several times, my thirst for some Contra action was still not quenched. However Contra III was the only game in the series that I owned (pathetic I know). So I went about trying to track down Contra (NES) and Super C (NES). I soon discoverd that since 1987 and 88 that both games have become rather coveted and rare to find.

I finally found some used copies on www.amazon.com . Contra was $20.00 and Super C was $13.00 which seemed kinda pricey for a couple of busted ass used NES games but I was obssesed so I forked out the $33.00 and waited patiently for a week for them to arrive.

Once they arrived. I broke em out, started playing and soon realized that these games are way to hard to play without using the old school cheat codes (Contra: U,U,D,D,L,R,L,R,B,A, Start = 30 lives & Super C: R,L,D,U,A.B,Start = 10 Lives). Once I used the cheat codes I started tearing through levels and conquering both games left and right. All with out spending days and weeks trying to beat the games (average Contra beat down 35 to 45 minutes). 

So long story short, brush off all the hootin’ and hollerin’ going on with with all the new flashy souless video games. Get vintage with your NES, SNES and some bad ass Contra games. Goodtimes!!

Jon

When you have been riding as long as Fuzzy has, you learn pretty much everything you need to know about the industry. Having kids, he now has to make that call whether to push his kids into the sport or let them choose it on their own. If you’ve ever met Fuzzy, you know he is not the type of guy to push anyone into anything. Luckily for him, his son is into BMX and it’s something they can enjoy together. Now watch the video.

Make sure to click through to Fuzzy’s BMX store.

http://www.5050bmx.com/

Let’s fast forward to 2008* and a few albums later,  The Walkmen have released their latest effort, You & Me.  Being a fan of all their albums, I might be a little biased and enjoy everything they put out, but it’s becoming an album that is in heavy rotation on my Zune**.

Here’s the good news about their latest release:  It’s only $5 dollars to purchase a high-quality mp3 download of the album and ALL of the proceeds go to Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in honor of Luca Vassallo, who is a seven month old boy battling leukemia

You can learn more about Luca here, www.loveforluca.com.

Regards,
H

*Fast forwarding and rewinding have become a common occurrence in my LEB blog posts… I’m so nostalgic.

**Kidding of course, I don’t own a f—king Zune,