Well, I must give praise to a fine man that, on this
very day, was granted the patent for the light bulb. Where would we be without him? There wouldn’t be any blogs, that’s for sure…And we all know how important those are to our everyday existence. All joking aside,
Edison was the man that gave technology a swift kick in the ass to get things a movin’. I mean, just look at this
awesome video clip of how Thomas Edison lived. A true baller, no?
In lieu of his invention, I have picked a handful of songs dealing with “light” for your listening pleasure.
[MP3] Bloc Party – Blue Light
[MP3] The Secret Machines – Light’s ON
[MP3] Joseph Arthur – Speed of Light
[MP3] Bright Eyes – Light Pollution
[MP3] Mason Jennings – The Light (Part 2)
[MP3] Patrick Wolf – To The Lighthouse
[MP3] Wolf Parade – Shine A Light
Thomas Edison was a good man, and as both Sufjan and Tom Waits sing, a good man is hard to find.
The child prodigy and (probably) the greatest musician that ever walked the Earth,
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, celebrates his 250th birthday today. Of course, like seemingly all great musicians, he died at a tragically young age. However, a quarter of a millennium later his music still remains unblemished by time and praised by millions.
[MP3] Mozart – Requiem
[MP3] Mozart – Sypmphony No. 40
As promised, The Features have released a new song/demo and it’s about time! They have aptly and tenatively named the new song: The Drawing Board (for obvious reasons). They’ve written about 36 new songs, but appear to be more concerned about quality and not quanity. I didn’t get a chance to rip the song from their site, since time has been somewhat strained for me lately, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t head over to their blog and check it out.
[MP3] The Features – The Drawing Board (New Song Link!)
It sounds rather promising and I can only forecast more songs to be posted in the future as well as a late breaking album details.
Another favorite album this week is
My Latest Novel‘s
Wolves. Here are a bunch of people from Scotland who just seem to be on the same page with my musical taste…and it’s odd, because their music transcends the classification to one “genre” of music. They hit with a few long, lush instrumentals that start slow, teasing out emotion while building up to furious apex. You really need to relax for these songs, trust me, it’s not wholly passive music. Take it in slowly, feel the music, let it take you with it. That sounds
really ridiculous and cliché, but it’s the truth. Zone out to these,
all highly recommended:
[MP3] My Latest Novel – The Reputation of Ross Francis
[MP3] My Latest Novel – Boredom Killed Another
[MP3] My Latest Novel – The Hope Edition
You can hear more over at their official site and myspace page.
Perhaps people don’t know about him? Perhaps people are intimidated by his last name? I’m not quite sure why Ray LaMontagne isn’t huge. He has all of the variables needed for being a moderately big indie success: great voice, sensational lyrics, no money, a small cult following, unbelievable live sets, and more humbleness than Mother Teresa. Yet, he remains a remotely quiet force in the musical world.
Myself and
Ms. Heather Browne had a discussion recently on the unbelievable music this man can make with his mouth and hands. After the drooling on our respective keyboards subsided and the swapping of unreleased live tracks came to a dwindling halt, we concluded that I should dedicate some iGIF space to him. Last summer I went on a quest to gather as many Bonnaroo acts as I possibly could before the festival, and lucky for me Ray was one of them. His album,
Trouble, had just released and I grabbed a copy only to let my
jaw drop to the floor. How could a
shoe factory worker make music
this good?!
[MP3] Ray LaMontagne – Jolene (Highly Rec’d)
[MP3] Ray LaMontagne – How Come
[MP3] Ray LaMontagne – Trouble
[MP3] Ray LaMontagne – Hannah
Who knows, some of these come outta no where artist are better to be left unsolved mysteries. What I do know, is that I am expecting only great things from this artist and a sophomore release, logically, has to be in the works sometime soon. Be sure to check out his site for more info and music exclusives, along with an amazing live set exclusive from iTunes.
