It is raining in Seattle. Why not head to a beach circa summer of 1997? Poolside.fm’s webpage takes you to a 90’s Macintosh Desktop with curated music and videos. They have apps. Go to Poolside.
Category: Music
Road Trip: Spotify designs your Soundtrack
Spotify, in collaboration with Google Maps, launched Soundtrack Your Ride to make full ride-length mix tapes to complement your roadtrip. Enter your destination, answer questions like “what’s your drive vibe”, “who you traveling with” and “what’s your ultimate driving song”. Sounds fun, now where to go?
This Guy: Listens to Free Bird for the first time
This fellow, who goes by NOLIFESHAQ, claims he’s never heard Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Free Bird” and records his first listen. He gets the song’s ethos immediately and feels the long-ending flying solo in a deep, passionate way. NOLIFESHAQ is a pleasure to experience. I want to be his friend, although I’d probably just sit on his couch and listen to him espouse whatever he wants. His energy and enthusiasm is bottled contagiousness.
Linked from BoingBoing.
Discover: Acid Rap
I enjoy psychedelia. I mostly enjoy hip hop. It occured to me that the two are likely married outside my awareness. The internet helped me out.
Flatbush Zombie: This paragraph from Wikipedia — “Friends since grade school, all three members were born and raised in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, New York City. Erick and Meechy Darko are of Jamaican descent. One of the first things Dimitri Simms (Meechy Darko), Antonio Lewis (Zombie Juice) and Erick Elliott (The Architect) bonded over was the Japanese anime Dragon Ball Z and wrestling. During their teenage years, they began experimenting with psychedelic drugs, such as psilocybin mushrooms and LSD. Zombie Juice, along with fellow Flatbush native Issa Gold of the Underachievers (Erick did not participate), specifically started looking into the indigo lifestyle. Meechy Darko said the first time doing mushrooms his ego died and had a sort of rebirth of conscience.”
Noja Cat: Her rap style is funky and unique and this video is snapping a light stick and slinging the liquid at a wall while biting into a blow pop to get to the gum.
Ab-Soul: Herbert Anthony Stevens IV grew up in Carson, California at his grandmother’s. He developed his rapping chops in part by keystyling, which is like freestyle rap battles, but with typed text online. He’s been around as a professional music artists since 2002.
Kid Cudi: Originally from Cleveland, Kid Cudi began his rapping career in NYC. His creativity and emotionally-charged style have propelled him to stardom.
Trippz: I couldn’t find much about him, but I dig it.
LEIKELI47: “I only smoke girl blunts. What’s that mean? I don’t know.” This is flowing jazz rap fusion, spinning around the roller skating rink.
Mixed: Pearl Jam meets Footloose
DJ Cummerbund seamlessly cut together “Jeremy” and Footloose, with a dash of Tina Turner’s “Proud Mary”. An absurdist bouncy take on school shootings.
Vibe: Psychedelic Chillout playlist
If you have Spotify, here is an almost endless playlist of: “Unsane psychedelic, psychonautic sails forming tunes that fuel your imagination and give your mind wings to help you tune in, turn on and drop out into the One Cosmic Love 🙂 <3 … Feat. psydub, psybient, ambient, a pinch of glitch and lots of weirdness.” Bands include Mir, Bonobo, Air, the Great Mundane, etc.
Cover image by Yukaman.
Jive: SomaFM streaming radio
SomaFM is a cost-free, ad-free San Francisco-based streaming radio website. They have 30ish stations and even mobile phone apps. It’s a healthy chance to expose yourself to musical styles that you didn’t realize would make spectacular journey companions. A few of my favorites stations —
Groove Salad: A nicely chilled plate of ambient/downtempo beats and grooves.
Secret Agent: The soundtrack for your stylish, mysterious, dangerous life. For Spies and PIs too!
Fluid: Drown in the electronic sound of instrumental hiphop, future soul and liquid trap.
Boot Liquor: Americana Roots music for Cowhands, Cowpokes and Cowtippers
See: Music
Visualize classical music, or whatever MIDI file you throw at it. Change the keyboard angle with a click. If you scroll left you can choose from hundreds of piano compositions. Enjoy the graphics and then drop it in the background to add elegance to your mindstate (or better yet, for audio-only choose a Spotify/Apple Music classical playlist for less digital/abruptness).
Collage: Music video of found footage
One of my favorite past-times is scavenging the Internet Archive for open-use footage of old films, home movies, advertisements, corporate training videos, etc., and editing them along to music. This one is for a friend’s now-defunct band, Tumble Dry. The song is SXYMTN.
Together: Collaborative music playroom
Plink is a collaborative online music space where you can get your groove on. Initially you might play alone — its simple point and click for different sounds and keys (I’ve only tried it on a computer; I will try it on a phone and update this soon with details). The magic truly happens when random folks join. You begin a musical dance, playing off and against one another. And you can’t mess up, it all sounds pleasant.