http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfOa1a8hYP8

I was on a posting hiatus when the new Radiohead album came out. Maybe if it was a life-changing piece of art like some fans regard each of their albums, I would have bothered to throw up some words on it. Don’t get me wrong, I love about half of their catalog, but Amnesiac is pretty garbage. But to come back around to talking about their newest output, The King of Limbs, it’s definitely a slow, minimalist album that most people think has more in common with Thom Yorke’s solo work than Radiohead’s past music. If I had listened to The Eraser more than once maybe I could relay my opinion. I like this song, though, and hearing it at the bar along with some other good tunes like “Bloodbuzz Ohio” from The National helped me forget that my friend actually asked me, “So did you see ‘Atlas’ this weekend?” I shouldn’t have to explain why that is at once both amusing and depressing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhzOE35057M

The newest Mogwai album is fantastic. It came out two months ago, but considering I haven’t posted any music on here since last year, this is as good a song as any to bring attention to. I thought about the song “Rano Pano”, which I actually posted on Roto Hardball months ago, but this track title is about twenty times more awesome. I imagine the American equivalent would be Portland Reagan Death Party? Some public square in the Pacific Northwest, anyway, or one in a poor black neighborhood. 80s conservative leaders aside, Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will is an hour of great instrumental (mostly) music to listen to while writing blog posts.

- Obviously, both “Sunshine (Adagio in D Minor)” and “Lux Aeterna (Winter)” have parenthesis in their titles.

- The trailer for Sunshine used the Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers trailer remix of “Lux Aeterna” — which is the overused version.

Since I’m pretty sure I’ve never posted the song on here before, I might as well do it now:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQXVzg2PiZw

It’s a terrific song, and one that fit the ultimate sacrifice which it scored in the film. It was a death that happened in possibly the most epic way possible — incineration by the sun. A very similar arrangement of the song was also used by John Murphy himself in Kick-Ass, albeit somewhat effectively during a slow-motion rescue scene. Tonight on The Walking Dead, it was used during an RV and station wagon road trip montage. Not exactly the same type of impact there.

The song was also used in a recent trailer that I needed to look up on Wikipedia to remember — The Adjustment Bureau. And apparently an arrangement was also used in the last scene of the season finale of V.  I guess the people behind the music for these trailers and TV shows have figured they’ve drained one well and it’s time to make everyone sick of another song. I just hope they never start using “Death is the Road to Awe“, which I prefer to both.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3F2pr2FbfQ

The Tron: Legacy soundtrack doesn’t even come out for another two weeks or so, with the movie releasing a week and a half after that, but naturally it has already been leaked to the internet. I’d say listening to a soundtrack before seeing the movie might lessen the impact, but I’m not sure how much it’ll affect the vacuous laser show that Tron: Legacy will likely be. The Clint Mansell-orchestrated Black Swan soundtrack is a different story.

So this soundtrack is really, really good (keep in mind that YouTube quality is garbage). I picked this song because it’s probably the most epic track and while it doesn’t feature much of Daft Punk’s signature electronic sound, it throws a little in there. I could have also gone with “The Game Has Changed“, but that was used in one of the trailers already. And don’t worry if you don’t like Hans Zimmer, there are plenty of tracks with heavy synthesizer use, like “Derezzed“, along with more atmospheric songs like “Solar Sailer” and “Adagio for TRON“. But no one should be shocked that Daft Punk wanted to go a bit more traditional and classical when they got the chance to do the score for a major motion picture. If you obviously have the talent to utilize a 90-piece orchestra, why not do something you’ve never done before?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4b_-TMdRIY

Unless you’re a Cablevision customer or not a baseball fan, you’ve noticed that FOX has replaced this theme with their NFL on FOX theme (which I won’t even link here). It’s one thing to move on from a sports theme you’ve used for years; it’s another thing to replace it with a well-known theme associated with an entirely different sport. It’s not like this theme is amazingly iconic like the NBA on NBC or NHL on ESPN themes, but it’s total garbage to condition your audience to expect to see a football stadium and/or Terry Bradshaw making an ass of himself after hearing a certain minute of music, only to be greeted by the terrifying faces of Joe Buck and Tim McCarver. I can only imagine how confused a thick-headed football fan would be after such a traumatic experience.

Perhaps FOX figured this would be the best time to make their NFL theme their universal sports theme, seeing as the bigger issue at the moment is millions of New Yorkers not being able to watch the World Series. Although, Cablevision now says you can order the MLB.TV World Series package and they’ll refund your $10. Classy move. Unfortunately, while it seems like News Corp. is being the more unreasonable of the two companies, Cablevision is going to be the one to suffer in this dispute, as customers are just going to start switching to Verizon, DirecTV, etc. On the other hand, it’s not like I can feel sorry for any hardship endured by James Dolan. So yeah, everyone just switch. I can vouch for the greatness of FiOS, at the very least.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZNspDuvkDE

This is my way of talking about The Social Network without dedicating a post to a pitiful attempt at being a film critic. I think this song is indicative of just how cool this David Fincher-Aaron Sorkin collaboration is. It’s a movie fueled by a fantastic soundtrack by Reznor and Ross, a non-stop script from Sorkin, and ingenious directing by Fincher. All the components come together to form the quickest two hours you’ll spend in a theater this year.

Yeah, Facebook is the backdrop for the action in the film, but it’s not what drives it. The movie is about a quest for importance — for coolness. It’s about a kid who was smart enough to take an idea and bring it to its inevitable end. Facebook almost does seem like an end, doesn’t it? If the end of the Cold War was the “end of history”, Facebook is the end of the anonymous internet — at least in the sense that neither is really true, but can easily be seen that way. ANYWAY…

Fincher brilliantly flips back and forth between the creation of Facebook and two depositions of the lawsuits it spawned, splicing together sentences, contrasting excitement with irritation, and chronicling the destruction of a friendship both in real-time and in retrospect. I haven’t even mentioned Jesse Eisenberg’s performance of Mark Zuckerberg, which will probably become the way most people imagine the youngest billionaire on the planet. It’s probably not fair nor intelligent to take the film as any sort of documentary, but it’s impossible not to be sucked in. Everything seems so damn believable, from Zuckerberg blogging about his ex-girlfriend (apparently actually true) while creating a website to rank Harvard girls in his spiteful mood, to the way he’s lured in by the magnetic personality of Sean Parker portrayed by Justin Timberlake*, to the arrogant way he dismisses any claims of wrongdoing.

It’s just an immaculately crafted movie, and the critics calling it some “defining movie of this generation” aren’t too far off. I never, ever thought I would say that going in. David Fincher is back.

*Seriously, Justin Timberlake’s performance was great. If you told me 10 years ago that some kid from N’Sync would be a good actor, and that Ben Affleck would be an arguably great director, I would have expected you to think a black dude was going to be president, too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubcdb-oAIu8

How many times have I said I wished I could describe music more intelligently? I’m also at a loss for words when it comes to convincing someone to listen to a band. Usually I’ll just resort to saying they’re awesome. And that’s what I’m going to do here. I recognize the cover Black Mountain’s self-titled album from five years ago, but I never got around to listening to them until hearing how great their latest album, Wilderness Heart, is. After a half-dozen listens, it’s one of my favorite albums of the year. This is actually the hardest-rocking song out of the ten, but they’re pretty much all fantastic. Check it out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvokOD-EnMw

I’ve been tempted to post another Sleigh Bells song, but I have finally gotten around to checking out The Suburbs a bit over the past week or two. This YouTube video has been around for three months, so I’m definitely way behind. Anyone reading this has probably already listened to this song. Oh well. At least I’m documenting my listening habits with these posts.

The Suburbs is a grower, but even after a few listens, I still prefer a bunch of other albums this year — including the one from the aforementioned Sleigh Bells. Fuck, that album is just too fun. I also still prefer Neon Bible, if only because there’s a few songs on that album that are just phenomenal, and better than anything on The Suburbs for me. But we’ll see if it grows on me anymore in the coming months.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s92DwkAjVqk

I have to give @310toJoba credit for posting a Russian Circles song on his sadly now-inactive blog. He posted “Geneva”, a song I was close to posting myself, but I forced myself to mix it up. I also have to give credit to @DrewGROF for making me go back to the band after only listening to their newest album a couple of times. Now I’ve been listening to all three of their instrumental albums. I think I made a nice selection. The song builds up wonderfully — like some charging, galloping force — then explodes in a ridiculous wall of sound, pulls back a bit, and then finally goes totally apeshit. It’s awesome.

Dream Is Collapsing

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_QEBeTa37M

Click if you want to listen to a couple of more tracks.

Mombasa

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dr1gJ2B90GE

Time

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xeHiTmx5AU