Still chill out there, oddly enough

Not the best time in the year for early-morning classroom appearances.  Anyways, for those of you forced to venture out into the arctic winds, I've got some cold-weather songs bundled up and waiting after the jump.

Three small strays

Here are Joanna Newsom and Bill Callahan, with... some other folks, covering Melanie's Ring The Living Bell (which has become much more captivating than I can remember any Melanie songs ever being for me).




I was recently introduced to this Tame Impala tune...




...and soon found this.

I just wanted some geeky 80's synth tunes

And then it turned into this whole thing.




There's a Part 2? Well, okay, sure -- let's give it a listen. Or pageview. Whatever.




Sticking with the New Traditionalists-era synths, but dialing down the visual complexity...




Bringing visual complexity levels back up to critical capacity...




I'm not a crazed fan of the animation in this one, but the music has a nice Lemon Jelly chill to it.  Turn your speakers down first -- the test pattern tone at the beginning is a bit insistent.

A fistful of Devo

Here they are in concert in 1973 at Kent State. They aren't doing the kind of scumbag techno-blues in evidence on the "Hardcore Devo" albums, but they're getting close.




I keep meaning to get acquainted with the Jihad Jerry stuff, but it hasn't happened yet.




Here's Devo and Neil Young.





And, uh... the word "Devo" is in the title of this one.

TURBO DISTURBO SPEDAAMO

Well, tomorrow marks the official beginning of fall. Such little time left for heatstroke hallucinations. And so I gather together the summer's creepiest audio-visual finds, and offer them up to those of you interested in such things. For those weak sisters in the audience with an aversion to the combination of Karo syrup and red food dye, I'd advise you to skip this post and maybe try something safe, soothing and non-confrontational.

Skull Thunder graffix

Ah, the wonders of Photoshop. Here's a handful of unsolicited graphics work I've done.




The following works were done in a spirit of experimentation. This next one is based on  the Minimize filter. When I was nearly done with it, I realized that there was at least one method that could bypass the regions that developed into rectangular forms, but by then I was ready to be done with it.




It took a mad amount of tweaking minor details to get this next result.




And look! Video! It's a silent thirty second loop, so I suppose you could put on some music and trance out. There's an HD version, but the fine details are smeared into Technicolor mud. What can you do?




I adore this effect. Not an easy thing to accomplish.




Hey, more video! Like Heavy Metal Omelette, it's a silent thirty second loop, and available in a higher-definition version -- but unlike Omelette, the fine details are the point, and yet here they are, lightly stomped into artifact grunge. But, hell, it's free, so why complain?

Techno ZZZ's v1.01

Allow these next few selections to tug you to sleepytime.

Star Wars stuff

Oh, given the last few posts, I may as well.




The following vids start out okay and take a quick nose-dive.

Hey, howsabout some pseudo-metal?

I mean, as long as we're in an aggro mindset and all...




Okay, okay. Here's some real heavy metal.

Atomic cocktail

That there above image comes from an issue of Mickey Rat. The next video is somehow related.




The process is somewhat reversed in the next song, which comes from a soundtrack inspired by Daniel Clowes' Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron. I really want to like the CD, but this is the only song that kinda does it for me.

NSFW - So I was trying to find a track by Dishwasher...

...which is a project by Martin Cesar of Think About Life.

Searching Google for "Dishwasher" did not result in successful hits. So I refined my search to "Dishwasher 2006 CD" and discovered that this exists:

So... there's that. But I was eventually able to find this...



...and this...




...and, finally, the song I was looking for in the first place.



You can buy a Dishwasher CD here.

Charming, harmless animations

Don't bother looking for this one on teevee. Nickelodeon took a look and rejected it. Fine tastemakers, there.

Super-creepy animated weirdness

Here's a one-day batch of bad-acid visuals. They start out relatively mild and get progressively freakier.




Also:

NSFW - Comedy stuffs

There are far too many post-Bill Hicks comedians who borrowed his over-the-top sex obscenities and cussin' about Republicans, without really searching for and finding their own voice. Watch how Doug Stanhope does it. I liked Bill Hicks and all, but choked with rage as he was, his arguments always seemed disjointed and sort of out-of-focus. The measured, structured stand-up shown here is where I hoped he'd get to someday.



Here's a bit of Chris Morris

Starts out bad and gets worse quick, so if you're not into excruciatingly dark humor, pass this by. I'm not sure I could say that "Gun" is the creepiest thing I've heard from Chris Morris, but the dissociative nature of that monolgue give me some big-time creepy-crawlies.



I like books. Not everyone does.