I picked this up after mixing sound for one of the shows on Marks most recent tour. It was an amazing show. For those of you who are not familiar with this name, he is the leading force behind the indie rock classic, The Red House Painters. He has also recently done work under the name Sun Kil Moon. This album features nothing but AC/DC covers which I think is really interesting. He recently did this under the Sun Kil Moon name with his latest album full of Modest Mouse covers and like that release What's Next to the Moon takes the original songs and breaks them down into their rawest of forms. It showed me that there is more to AC/DC than you may have thought. turns out they are pretty amazing song writers hiding behind their hard rock attitude. So I would not let the whole album of covers thing scare you off, this is definatily not one to miss. Its a brilliant collection of songs that I just can't seem to stop listening to so check it out!

iTunes link:

This mixing board is heaven! I got the chance to see one of these in person recently and my jaw was on the floor. This thing is the new definition for what to look for in a digital mixing board. It has everything from 17 or so processors (ok ok, maybe just 7 but still!) giving it a supercomputer status to slick details such as touch sensitive knobs. The screens on it are all gorgeous and for a digital mixer it is really intuitive and it sounds amazing. I know this kind of thing does not really get covered in the tech web so I thought I would share my experience here. In my mind this is a geek sound guy like me's dream. I wonder if I will ever get to actually mix on one of these bad boys? Only time can tell eh?

I have been traveling a lot recently and when I haven't been traveling I have been working so its been hard to get regular updates posted and I'm sorry about that. I miss posting all of the time and hope to get back into it in the near future! I am very very excited to hear that a new edition of Rapidweaver is coming out July 2nd which should allow me to make a few changes around here that I have wanted to do for a while now. It's a great piece of software that used CSS and so it makes it easy to keep the site organized and running smoothly. Seems like a silly consumer program but it actually can get pretty deep should you be willing to dig. Other sites I design I usually use Dreamweaver for because it offers a bit more flexibility but with this site simplicity is key, this way I can focus on updated rather than coding you know what I mean? I know I've mentioned this before.. I think.

So thats all for now. there is a quick new favorite up in the music section so check it out. I hope to throw a few more of those up soon and hey, who knows. Maybe a desktop or two. I hope everyone is doing well and thanks for sticking with me through this period of less frequent posting! Talk to you again soon.

Electro Voice and Blue Microphones got together and designed a couple of mics and they are called the Cardinal and the Raven. Both mics have this amazing future/retro feel and look (if that makes any sense) and they sound amazing. The cardinal is a condenser mic designed for vocals an instruments and the Raven is a dynamic mic that was designed for electric guitars and other instruments but also makes for an amazing vocal mic that provides a surprising amount of resistance to feedback. Anyway, I know that I have talked about them sometime in the past and I wanted to write a bit here about a site that I am working on.

EV is now the worldwide distributor of blue mics and they also share the connection that I started writing about here in the Cardinal and Raven mics. Because the audio company I work for is tight with EV I get to do some promotional work involving EV products from time to time. This time around I took it upon myself to buy the domain evblue.com and make a website featuring their two collaborative mics. So far there is only a temporary page set up but I hope to get the full mini site working this month at some point.

So tell me, what do you think so far? Heres a link: evblue.com

This great EP should not go un-noticed. I bought this on a whim when a local record shop was having a sale and after a few listens I relay grew to love it. It is an electronic music EP that, as with many electronic musicians these days, follows the trend of adding live instruments into the music which I think was done in a really subtle and effective way with this release. I would recommend this to anyone who is looking for some great new beats to put on in your car for those days that you just want to drive around with all the windows down and enjoy the drive.

iTunes link:



this is also available on emusic, follow the link to the left if you want to sign up and get it free. (and yes, it does help me out with the site should you choose to do so but i do love emusic and have used it for at least 3 years now. its easily one of the best online music stores out there today.)

the bit of downtime, im rearranging a couple things around here and im coming across a bit of trouble but it will get worked out soon so sit tight!

update: im sure you will notice that the images on the weblog are missing, sorry about that! im working on the issue now and it will hopefully be resolved sometime soon. all of the other areas of the site should be working still.

update again: until i can fix this issue i have added a home page again because it seems to fix my issues. sorry again for the trouble...

Whew! I'm back and getting together some new content, I have a podcast, a couple desktops, a quick review or two, and hopefully some friends desktops as well so keep an eye out here on the site! I hope to get these things up soon and I know there will at least be a couple new things up tomorrow at some point to so look out for all that. OK thats all for now...

Sorry for dropping of there for a while! Im down in Texas for a while and will be returning to normal updates soon. I meant to get a post up before running off but I didn't get a chance before I left. Hope all is well with everyone and stay tuned for updates in the coming week!

Here is a cool weblog that someone has started which features post after post of videos from youtube and google video that feature segments from tv in japan. There are ad spots, bits of tv shows and more. It makes for an interesting bit of browsing so check it out!

(update: oops, forgot the link)

Link

the woodcarver may stucco some olden a dire try bettor see sail be expensive a imminent some wristband some equitation some sluggish in bacchus or christ or receptor

For the most part my mail app catches most of my junk mail but from time to time I get a few unwelcome messages that have to head off into the junk pile manually. The message above is one of the odd messages that sneaks through from time to time. The trick is that while I try and make sense out of that message an image is loading touting all sorts of various drugs and things at black market prices. Fun Fun Fun. just thought I would share one of the stranger ones that I have seen here on the weblog.

Apple has a new ad campaign worth checking out, here is a link to the new tv spots.

Last weekend at my new job working as the sound engineer at The Flying Anvil I got a chance to see some great bands that all came to play for a cd release show. The cd is called 18 watts is better than none and is a double album compilation released by a local radio station that I used to dj at. It has 32 songs from 32 bands that either played on air on the station or at station sponsored events. All in all its a great cd and is available from their website (link) for just 8 bucks! Here are some photos from the show.


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(endless mic)


(cities)


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(megaband - playing the soundtrack to megaman II while someone on stage played and beat the whole game in under 40 minutes! It is the same group as Contraband which I have mentioned before here on the site)


(megaband)


(megaband)

I bought a new shirt today from Threadless which you can see above, I have mentioned the site a long while back here on the site. It is basically a site where designers can submit shirt designs which are then voted on and the highest rated shirts get printed up and sold in limited quantities. It's worth checking out.

I am happy to announce that I have some new desktops all lined up and ready to roll out so you can expect those to pop up on the site in the coming hours. I am sure many of you have been patiently sitting in front of your computer hitting refresh on the desktop page for days and days now and so hopefully upon hearing this news you will get up stretch a bit, maybe eat something or take a nap and come back knowing that something new is coming soon. Until then, here is a photo of my hand from photobooth.