I love the sound of that last infinite loop of Pop's and Crackles that play on once a record has come to its end. Sometimes without realizing it I will find myself getting totally lost in thought as they crackle through. Then from time to time I become aware of hidden little rhythms that can be found in the loops and find myself hypnotized all over again. I find it to be a really meditative, beautiful moment during any given day and thought I would share with everyone.

This wil be the last mention of the Zune around here, promise. I just had to point those of you who have not already seen this to an article written in the Chicago Sun-Times. Probably the most painful Zune review to date... link.

I just posted a new podcast for those interested, this is a great one in my opinion. Lots of really mellow music that I am really happy to share. I hope to get another misc ramblecast out sometime soon when I'm in the mood to record one and I already have enough music for another music episode which will be a big one including amazing acts such as Jamie Lidell, The Mountain Goats, and Joanna Newsom! So thats something to look forward to.

Other than this I will head out and shoot some photos for some new desktops, I know I have not posted many recently and I'm sorry about that but I do what I have time for here on the site. So thats all for now, thanks for visiting (I never say that it seems but I mean it) and I will see you again soon.

I went to see Jamie Lidell last night and it was really amazing, here are some photos fresh off of the camera. looks like rapidweaver compressed them a bit to heavily so they may look a little fuzzy, I also have them posted on my flicker page at a slightly higher resolution if you are interested. (oh and keep an eye out on the podcast for a song or two from the show...)

I wanted to step in here and mention that two of my prints have been sold from my store to long time reader Dave. He bought two of my favorite prints available and they are getting mailed off today. There are still some great prints left so head over and check them out.

I will be adding a couple poster sized prints sometime in the near future so keep an eye out...

From time to time I like to dig through my statistics to see how things are going around here traffic wise and its always interesting to dig through the x-rays for signs of life. Today for the first time I found that more people were visiting from outside of the States than inside these walls. I was always hopeful that this would happen one of these days and that day is today. The amount of visitors from various countries fluctuate a lot but thats to be expected. At the moment I'm getting a lot of visitors from Spain so I thought I would say hello.

If you can read the contents of the blog here and are following it at all take a second to leave a comment to let me know where you are visiting from.

It sure has been interesting reading about the hysteria brought on by the launch of the PS3. People are acting like zombies or drug addicts or something. Waiting in line for days to give away your money (and plenty of it) simply to go home and sit down on a couch and stare at a TV for hours and hours (or days) seems to be something that I'm not sure I would look back on in my old age and be proud of that great accomplishment in life. I love video games too but this is just getting ridiculous don't you think? I've read reports of violence in lines and reports of people paying thousands of dollars for a PS3 and all sorts of other insane stories involving the PS3 insanity.

Is playing games in higher resolution worth all of this? What do people get out of it? Fun? This is your life people, does it not seem a little strange that hours and days of it are slipping you by spent in such a mindless state? I know that at times it can be a group thing but more often than not gaming as it is is something you do alone and no, I don't believe that playing people online constitutes being social with real people.
(which is a topic I could write a whole post on because the internet is like that too, gives the illusion of being social which is really interesting to me) Again, I will admit to being a gamer myself but there is a line being crossed here and I'm wondering how much further it will go.

I wonder how the Nintendo Wii will stack up on launch day. They seem to have a lot more units to go around thats for sure and I would much prefer one of them than a PS3 any day. It's not a 'fanboy' thing I just think that the new control ideas brought to the table create something much more engaging than your average lazy couch games. I can't wait to have a few controllers and a Wii with some multiplayer games, seems like it's something that everyone can enjoy which I like in games these days because it brings people together rather than secludes them in their bedrooms or couches. So at any rate, I think I've gone on long enough here for you guys to get my point, so all that said...

What do you think?

UPDATE: Wow, digg.com is littered with stories of PS3 related robberies, muggings and the like, engadget has a nice roundup of stories going... insane... link

I am usually not all that impressed by iLounge and find their reviews to be ill balanced and their reporting style really forced. It always feels like they are struggling so hard to be 'impartial' and that bothers me, even well respected magazines and publications approach their writing with more of a personal, approachable touch than iLounge. iLounge is just do dry for me I guess. OK, OK sorry, no more wining here... so all that aside, they wrote up an article documenting the Zune's rise to lacklusterness (yes i know thats not really a word) that I thought was well written and debunks nearly everything Microsoft has woven into the marketing and development of their player. Great read for a nice overall look into the short history of the player over the past few months. Heres a link.

UPDATE: You simply must check out this video of a bit of a newscast from CNN talking about the new Zune on its launch day. Classic. Link

UPDATE 2: More on the news coverage on iLounge. (Im not sure why but this whole zune thing is just so funny to me)

Engadget got zuned.

So I have finally added some content to my store page. I am starting simple and selling off a few photos that I had made prints of recently. More will follow sometime and in different sizes and will most likely and hopefully being poster size prints of your favorite desktops. Also I will be selling a lens soon as well as other odds and ends. So I will leave it at that and present to you the twistedsun.net yardsale.

If only beck was still this creative with his recorded music. I still think he should go back a few steps and record an album without the lavish production of his more recent ones.

It's been a while since my last hi-fi post so I thought I would throw one together. Lately I've still been stuck on a lot of the music from the last ts hi-fi because there are some albums that have stuck in my head that I just can't stop playing. My music listening has been torn recently because there has been a whole lot of great music to come along recently that I just cant shake off. This year has been pretty slow for music in my opinion but suddenly here in the fall things have really started to come together and a lot of really great music is getting released. So anyways, without further mess...


Alva Noto + Ryuichi Sakamoto - Viroon

Everyone has times in live where they need nothing more than to sit down with a pair of headphones, close their eyes and meditate with some sort of forgiving, easy on the ears, not so distracting music. Recently that need has been met by a pair of releases by Japanese composers Alva Noto and Ryuchi Sakamoto. The album above is the one I picked for this list simply because I got it fairly recently. The other release is called Insen and I think edges out Viroon overall. Within these sound waves you can expect to hear some of the most beautiful ambient piano music you have ever heard from Ryuchi which is perfectly complemented by Alva's gentle electronic edge. You just cant beat these releases. They come highly recommended. Here it here (itunes link)


Arovane - Lilies

I featured Arovane's first full length album here on the first hi-fi a month or so ago and this time around I am adding his newer album called lilies to the mix. Although his music is not all that groundbreaking it is very very good. He has a great since for subtle, simplistic melodies that drift through his music. There are a few samples in here from a trip to Japan that he took if I am remembering right from reading about this record on the labels site which fit nicely into his style. If you check this album out at least listen to the track Tokyo Ghost Stories which I find gorgeous and haunting but what do I know, right? Hear it here (itunes link)


FourTet - Remixed/Remixes

This is the latest album from the now infamous FourTet Is a double album. One disc is full of songs that he has remixed and the other are remixes by other artists of his own work. At first listen I could take it or leave it but the more I listened to the remixes side (remixes he has done) the more it becomes clear to me that he is one of the best electronic musicians remixing music today. Being an electronic musician myself I can say that it is one thing to be good at making music on your own terms but to take another musicians music and make it your own while still letting the soul of the original track live on is a tricky balancing act that I feel that he has mastered. There are a ton of great remixes on here some that I have head and some that are pretty new to me. The disc of other artists remixing him has its moments but I feel as though his own remixes are where the real treasure in this release are.


Jeremy Enigk - World Waits

I remember years back I used to listen to Sunny Day Real Estate a lot. They were one of the first indie rock bands that I really got into and what drew me in was the dynamic vocals and melodies of the singer Jeremy Enigk. I knew that he had done a solo record a year or so back and I heard it but never really gave it much of a chance. Well a couple weeks ago he released a new solo record and I got my hands on it to check out and at first listen I just kind of shrugged it off. Then one night I was sitting down going through some new music and came to this album and lay back and listened to it nearly all the way through because I found that I didn't want to stop listening. I think what did it was the second track which is called Been Here Before. It really stuck with me, the song builds up through a chorus or two and then out of nowhere breaks into this great melody played on a huge sounding pipe organ. It's just a great track and leads right into a really amazing album that I can't seem to get enough of. The song I mentioned that I like so much is on the labels website I think you can buy the whole album there as well.


Nina Nastasia - On Leaving

I first started getting into Nina's music when I heard her reissued first full length album called Dogs and loved her smooth sounding singing and the swaying rhythms within her melodies. I have since picked up her other albums and have really enjoyed all of them so I was excited to hear that she had a new one out. The thing I really like about this one is the scaled down approach to the production of the music. I like the stripped down approach to these songs. Styles seem to vary a lot between songs as well, one will sound a touch irish in a way then one will sound more like american folk and there is one song on here that I swear sounds like a quasi song. At any rate, its a great album and well worth checking out if your looking for some relaxing singer songwriter type music. Hear it here (itunes link)


The Places - Songs For Creeps

I first heard Amy Annelly when I found one of her solo albums on emusic years ago called A School Of Secret Dangers and couldn't stop listening to it. She has been called a female Elliott Smith which I only slightly agree with. I mostly just enjoy her lo-fi approach to her song writing and recording. You will often find samples of fuzzy radio stations which add to the feel of the recordings that really add to the overall mood of the albums. So other than her solo record she also has released albums with a "band" made of what pretty much seems to be other musician friends in the portland area and these are released using the name The Places. The last album released as the places was on hush records and felt a little over produced and was almost painfully slow moving. Absolutely gorgeous but very very sleepy. Songs For Creeps seems to be a perfect bridge between these two worlds. The album is riddled with new favorites of mine and I really cant recommend the album highly enough.

You can pick the album up on her website via paypal. Here you can also sample plenty of music should you be curious. Link


Squarepusher - Hello Everything

Ah Squarepusher is at it again, this time he had a lot to live up to in my opinion. After his brilliant album Ultravisitor and killer Venus No. 17 EP I was really wondering how many more tricks he had up his sleeve. I have to admit that when I first picked this up I put it on and skipped through the whole album without feeling the least bit excited and was left pretty disappointed. This is not another Ultravisitor, there is no Stienbolt on this one and I couldn't help but feel really underwhelmed. A couple of days later I came across a huge article where fans asked him questions and it opened my eyes to what he is doing with his music. He seems to release music that he wants to hear. With this album he decided to try something lighter than usual and took a more direct interest in writing melodies and synth/bass lines that he thought were fun to play a listen to and now listening back to it I find that I'm no longer comparing it to everything else he has released and started listening to it for what it is. It has really helped me get into it and I would have to admit that it's really growing on me. There is this one song in the middle called Vacuum Garden that is a 6 minute ambient song and its one of the most interesting ambient tracks I have heard in a while. Really has a distinct mood to it and overall you will find everything from his classic dnb to his jazz inspired more acoustic type tracks. Hear it here.

I had an unexpected absence from the internet for a couple days there from a somewhat last minue show 4 hours north in Virginia. I had a couple things I wanted to post but couldn't like the other version of the shadow desktop and another twistedsun hi-fi which will be along shortly, I have to gather album covers and links and it will be ready to go. Also I have enough music for two new music podcasts so that will be along sometime here soon as well. Most likely Sunday or Monday because I am heading back up to Virginia but this time to go through photos from a wedding I shot a couple months back. Anyways, more soon, this week just ended up being busier than I thought it would be.. as always.

I have not seen such silly banter from the mac vs. pc world in a long time but turns out someone has taken the idea behind the my dream app for the mac platform and recreated it for the windows platform. Only the windows one was created out of spite of the mac community and their supposed silly useless ideas. This guy is a bit over the top in my opinion. The contest was to give people a chance to vote on the application they wanted to see made and thats what happened. Anyways, check out the form thread here on my dream apps website. It's a pretty feisty debate that I think is making both sides of the game look pretty bad. It's so frustrating to me how this debate is so hateful at times. These are just computers guys, to each his own right? right?

(new desktop)