Psalm 52 by Seth T. Hahne
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Forgotten Favorite
Some good news came this week in the form of more Velocity Girl remastering. This time it’s a compilation of non-album tracks from various places being released by Slumberland Records. The collection is called 1989-1992 and the contents are precisely what it says on the tin.
The first available track from the release is my favorite song by the band, “Forgotten Favorite.” Even after the remaster, it’s still a bit muddy, but I’m not sure if there is anything more the band could do apart from rerecord the track completely. It’s still a stellar song through, with a shoegaze-worthy crush of guitars that’s as propulsive as anything put out by UK pedal hoppers. Despite some muck still on the recording, the vocals are pristine, and Sarah Shannon sounds heavenly.
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I’ve been getting car sick when trying to read in a moving car since I was a kid. Little did I know, my favorite computer manufacturer has a solution for that, which was brought to my attention by this piece in The Verge. The technology is called Vehicle Motion Cues.
According to big-S Science, this type of vehicle motion sickness is caused by the eyes staring at a static display while the inner ear feels the car turning, braking, and accelerating. Motion Cues solve this by placing dots around the periphery of the display that move in harmony with the motion of the car. When the car turns right, the dots sweep across the screen to the left; when the car brakes the dots slide forward.
I can’t wait to try this out, especially on a long trip.
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Datatapes
Louie Mantia offers some new drive icons based on the datatapes from Star Wars, and they’re pretty fun.
(more…)The Imperial data vault on Scarif contained thousands of datatapes, one of them being the plans for the Death Star. After the plans were broadcast to the Rebel fleet, they were transferred to a small datacard.
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We Might As Well Be Strangers
The last few days have brought with them some serious nineties nostalgia. So it’s fitting that Weezer released a video for their new single, “We Might As Well Be Strangers.” The song represents a return to the form for the prolific but not always consistent band.
Perhaps the best part of the song and the video is the inclusion of guest Karly Hartzman of Wednesday. Hartzman brings her punk rock sneer and pout to the breakup song. As Grace Robins-Somerville notes for Paste Magazine, Hartzman perhaps outshines Weezer’s frontman.
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Chemicals Make You Small
When I read that Hammock had collaborated with The Flaming Lips on their song “Chemicals Make You Small,” I was a bit shocked. Wayne Coyne and The Lips are brash, experimentally noisy, irreverent, sometimes goofy and often oversaturated. They seem to have almost the opposite of Hammock’s ethereal, slow, quiet and completive approach.
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Jim Carol New Year
With Life in Small Spaces, the upcoming album from Black Marble, the project’s creator, Chris Stewart, taps into one of my semi-obsessions. The album’s description on its Bandcamp page has further details on the clue we are given with the album title.
It is an invitation to accept and consciously agree to a more minimal lifestyle for the sake of creative expression and freedom, and to never need to compromise your values for the tempting illusion of success.
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Six Flags White House
Kevin D. Williamson writes for The Dispatch about the spectacle of setting up a UFC match on the White House lawn.
read more…It does not matter whether you live in a trailer park or a brick ranch house or something more grand and getting grander, it is all the same: Tornado bait is tornado bait. When the Trump administration announced that it was staging a UFC fight on the South Lawn of the White House, I knew what I was seeing. It is as familiar to me as the taste of canned Ranch Style Beans on cornbread or the smell of cigarette smoke soaking into Dacron-upholstered office furniture and slick tallowy well-yellowed linoleum in the grim waiting rooms outside those weepy Al-Anon meetings my mother dragged me to for a while because she couldn’t afford a babysitter. I know my people. My people know what they like. And they will have what they like even if it harelips the pope—especially if it harelips the pope.
