Minds On Music
-DIGITAL GALLERY-
-
Audio post reblogged from DONALD'S HAIR
-
Audio post reblogged from The Bumbershoot Project
Orchestral folk pop
Seattle, Washington
Kris Orlowski recently released a 5 song EP that features a 17-piece orchestra backing their already impressive knack for song composition. Kris Orlowski himself has been recognized locally as a strong songwriter, troubadour-type and is always consistently great. They’ve performed live on KEXP and worked with Budo on a remix to one of their tracks. Frankly, I’m pretty sure it’s just a matter of time before they take a headlining slot.
Coolest merch: Kris Orlowski & Andrew Joslyn “Pieces We Are” Deluxe Bundle
Follow them on Twitter!
-
Post reblogged from DONALD'S HAIR
Another week, another ten releases from this year that you might want to hear. See what else I’ve been listening to while I eat entire one-pound bags of pretzels here.
-
Photo reblogged from The Music Writers Collective
DON’T HATE
Coldplay
The debate whether listening to Coldplay makes you less masculine, and why we listen to them despite the ridiculeDo you know how I know Coldplay haters have an unfair advantage? They got Paul Rudd on their side. In Judd Apatow’s 2005 movie 40-Year Old Virgin, Seth Rogen questions Paul Rudd’s manhood as Rudd declares himself a celibate man. Rudd tries to defend himself by starting the joke “do you know how I know you’re gay?” Rogen throws the end-all of the short argument by telling Rudd he’s “gay” because he said he’s not having sex with women anymore. There’s not much to say after that, but Rudd then answers with an unrelated comment to shut Rogen up that eventually became one of the memorable lines in the movie: “Do you know how I know you’re gay? You listen to Coldplay.”
As immature Rudd is for throwing “listening to Coldplay” as a sign of lacking manhood, the fact that it became one of the hilarious lines from 40-Year Old Virgin means there’s a bit of truth in that joke, no matter how much you like Coldplay…
-
Audio post reblogged from The Music Writers Collective
When I was nineteen, I almost died listening to “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy”.
On a Friday afternoon, I went thrifting with friend of mine. We met on campus after her class had ended and rode the bus downtown to connect to another one. The ride felt long, like we were going out west. The bus station, generally littered with transient, slimming grandpas and tattooed, witch doctor babies, was quiet. The only ones talking were her and I, really.
We talked and talked until we were in the store and ceremoniously dispersed to our sections to file through old 5k t-shirts and the occasional good find that begged to question if it had an unacceptable amount of “crud” caked on it or not.
I’d been searching for a backpack since my last one was stolen and the replacement from Target was deteriorating from just being. It seemed unstable, so I replaced it with a JanSport I found hidden among sequin-armored hand-bags and belts covered by Looney Tunes characters.
“You ready?”
“Yeah, I gotta go anyway.”
We’d joked about how nice the weather was with cold rain slapping against our cheeks and seeping into the cotton of our socks. It finally ended, we noticed, it would all be alright.
As we stepped off the bus, I was peppered by quiet, young snowflakes. They were innocent enough until one of them whispered, “You gonna die tonight, whitebread” and the rest softly laughed.
I waited and waited for my bus and in that time a thick, hay-bale layer of snow softly built around me. Once the bus did come, thirty minutes later, it became clear that it would slowly immobilize due to the weather and, eventually, die from exposure.
I decided to take action.
My apartment was only several miles away and I’d recently loaded the new Kanye West album onto my phone. By the time I decided to make the trek, the snowfall had slowed but there was still a strong, burly wind that forced me to walk at a forty-five degree angle. Somehow the natural calamity that had encompassed me felt wildly insignificant to what I experienced by listening to the album.
My finger joints were hardening from the frosty air but I still laughed at Kanye’s punchlines, still felt my spine tingle and my molars buzz when especially smooth production flowed into my ears. By the halfway point everything around me was slow and still and dark. I think that’s the only way to fully appreciate the severity of the album; fully threatened by the imminent power of the raw elements but in complete denial of your mortality. My jaw clacked in the coolness.
About one mile from home, the storm returned, well-rested from before. I ducked into bus-stops along the way to warm my wrists and avoid stumbling around in the streets. Kanye was like a spiritual guide except he was more likely leave me to die. Throughout my walk, I’d been completely alone, but I just then noticed people across the street walking the opposite way. They watched me for a few seconds before continuing on, making sure I was breathing, I guess.
At the third bus-stop, I realized I hadn’t felt my legs or arms for what felt like ten minutes but I was warm somehow. I’d circled the album and “Devil In A New Dress” came back on. Surely, I thought, it was the elevator music of the afterlife. But of course it is, but of course Kanye West is played by God or whatever.
Obviously I made it home and didn’t lose any parts of my body, but I still wonder if I would’ve felt a presence of danger if I didn’t have something so explicitly immortalizing to keep me company. The darkened figures I saw while walking might as well have been Kanye, Pusha T, and Rick Ross all in white, smoking celebratory cigars, leading more converts into the wilderness.
