[music | Dr. Octagon - Waiting List (DJ Shadow/Automator Mix)]

I don't usually post about new CDs, I just get way too many of them. But I've been waiting patiently for two independent CDs and they both came in recently, and I really liked both of them.

Germz - Thingz 2 Say. Germz is a Boston area producer who is just getting launched and making some good old-school beats. Dumb title, illegible art, good music though. I can't wait to hear the mix tape which has been "coming soon" since the beginning of history. The snippets I've heard so far sound like it's really coming together.

The other is Unwoman - Blossoms. I've got her previous two CDs (Knowledge Scars and Wildness & Artifice) as well. Unwoman is based in San Francisco, so I have no "my friend's friend did this" stake in this one, it's just good music. If you think you'd like a more electronic type cello and piano based soloist, look no further. Well, that's pretty specific, but give her stuff a listen, it's really good. I've been in the car and heard a track that I would have thought was hers, to have it turn out to be Chris Vrenna (Tweaker), that means "good beats".

Hopefully I get more exciting CDs and post more on that, but not a lot of what I buy sounds that new to me.

Well, there is more, everyone should immediately buy The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust! by Saul Williams, produced by Trent Reznor. Come on, $5, Natalie and I actually both paid separately, cause, hey, $5. And I'm unemployed. So no excuses.

Ok, the more I think about this, the more I notice a whole stack CDs I've bought in the last couple weeks that I could go on about. Just go look here and start clicking around, go to homepages, listen to samples.

Recently:
Hank III
Horrorpops
Nekromantix (Yeah, bit of a trend there)
Dig For Fire, Pixies tribute and High School Reunion from American Laundromat.
From Russia With Love, Russian covers of Pigface tracks.

I give up. Late.

Someday I'll have to add a "recently added" list to the front of that thing. And a Last.fm link generator. And allow it to do compilations. And make it not-ugly.

[music | Aphex Twin - Windowlicker]

Last Friday we saw Zoe Keating open for Imogen Heap at the Paradise. We had seen Rasputina last October and were really looking forward to seeing Zoe do her own stuff. She basically plays a couple bars, loops it, then plays over it, loops that, until she has a really impressive sounding full composition. It was crazy to watch her do that live from 8 feet away. One guy and his girlfriend next to us couldn't believe how good she was and that they'd never heard of it before. It was cool to see people get turned on to something different for the first time. I heard lots of comments from people around us to that effect.

As for Imogen Heap, she wasn't really our thing. She seemed talented enough, keyboard + vocals over programmed iBook. I kept being drawn back to "here's a DJ, singing at me", but the audience loved it, and it was decent music.

We ended up leaving after about 5 songs into her set to try and get the train before the "rush". However, what we ended up doing was leaving the club and walking right into the crowd leaving from the UMass hockey game right next door. I think their crowd was a lot bigger than our crowd.

Speaking of the whole "Cellopunk" thing which seems to be bubbling up, I also happened upon Unwoman a couple months ago and bought her CDs, very different stuff from this, but also very good.

The other day, I bought a CD, Orbital - In Sides. I got it home and opened it, put it in my computer to rip it, and CD1 came up as Olga Tenon - Sobrevivir. The CD is screened right, it's just the wrong music.

Uh oh. How do I know this is going to be drama. I bought the disc used, so while the store might give me credit, it's not gonna get replaced by them, which is fine. My wife likes the other CD just fine anyway, but I don't want to have to re-buy the Orbital disc if I don't have to. So I emailed Sire records, who was the manufacturer at the time this was re-printed in 2000.

Hopefully they just cheerfully send the new disc along and all is well, but I doubt that's going to happen.