Know by Heart is an album by The American Analog Set, introduced to me by Mattbot. The lo-fi sound caught on right away with me especially with the aggressively named first track and the less than aggressive sound that came with it. This album is great to relax to as it won't surprise you after you know what you are in store for. That being said, it is still a great album to give a listen to.
Archive for July, 2009
-
Know by Heart
0 -
Mutations
While not one of the most popular Beck albums, Mutations is my personal favorite. Less poppy and more introspective, this is an album for a gray winter day, much like the album cover suggests it might be. That is not to say that the traditional "anything goes" sound of Beck is not featured throughout, it just means that you won't likely be playing many of the tracks on the dance floor, and that is OK with me. -
LP
A side project featuring a member of Vampire Weekend (Rostam Batmanglij) and a member of Ra Ra Riot (Wes Miles), this takes the sounds of each band and rams them through the electro-pop/Auto-Tune machine and produces something that is different but not all bad. While the entire album isn't fantastic, and at times I can't tell if they are mocking the Auto-Tune, there are some gems that can be pulled out.The first song that really caught me was Can You Discover?, basically a redesigned version of Ra Ra Riot's Can You Tell (a song I love). As you progress through the album, you find songs like Carby, auto-tuned to the MAX but still decent nonetheless. The top song is the remake of the Jackson 5's I Want You Back.
-
Giving Cable the Boot – Part 2
At the end of the last post, we were about to receive our Mac Mini instead of using the AppleTV. We got the Mac Mini and started working with Boxee on it, only to find that within a week, the machine would not boot. Luckily Apple was good enough to ship out a new machine once they got confirmation the bad one was shipped back, but it did mean we had a few days without a media station again. This time ended up being valuable though as it let us investigate Plex on our other computer.
Plex is a Mac-only spinoff of the XBMC project. The first time we tried Plex, we were impressed by it's interface. The folks who work on this definitely are Mac people as the UI was stunning. We were then wowed by the "App Store" within Plex. This is basically a list of plugins for Plex that allow streaming from a number of other sources, such as Netflix, The Daily Show, South Park, etc. What is especially nice about this is that it automatically updates when new sources are available. Since we have received the Mac Mini, Food Network and HGTV have been added, allowing viewing of some full episodes from each.
Plex also has the ability to watch movies and TV shows saved to the computer. It is impressive in that it can get movie and TV information from the internet, including TV theme songs when browsing through the different programs. We were so impressed by the ability to organize and view shows that we are starting to rip our DVDs of TV and movies shows so they can be easily accessible from the mini.
The one last big thing is Hulu. With the release of Hulu Desktop, we thought that might be a good option for us. This was reinforced when we found that Plex an open any other application on the Mac from it's interface. The issue with this was Plex had a difficult time releasing the remote to work with Hulu Desktop. While mildly frustrating, we worked with it. That was until we found that Plex has a Hulu "app" that works amazingly well. Because of this, we are now using Plex for everything.
It has been a bit of an adventure getting here, but we both agree it was the right decision. Within 6 months, the money that would have gone to cable and Tivo will pay off the Mac mini. While we are not getting as much HD content, we are getting almost everything we want to see (A side note: Discovery Channel, please start streaming your programs somewhere. Mythbusters is the only program we cannot get online that we used to watch). The biggest thing is that Plex really just works, where all of the other things we tried were going to be bigger headaches in the end run, so if you are looking to go this route, I highly recommend Plex.
-
Soapbox Army
DISCLAIMER: A member of this band is a good friend of mine.The quality of this album is top notch for indie rock. Bordering on indie pop, the diversity of the music instrumentation makes this worth a listen to by itself. Once you add in the quality lyrics, you have something that is worth paying attention to. My only dislike from the album is that the vocals drift a little close to the Goo Goo Dolls for my liking on some tracks. That being said, for a first album, this shows quite a bit of promise.