wow just wow

WORLD. OF. WARCRAFT.

Yes, I reactivated my account. Yes, I'm totally enthralled once again. Yes, I'm grinding out daily heroics on 4 characters, not to mention finishing off the Brewfest achievements on the couple who don't have the title yet, and pvping on my warlock. Yes, that's the reason my blog posts have been sparse/absent lately. Yes, I am a sad sad human being. Yes, I'm still having the time of my life.

I have no excuse other than... haters gonna hate!

WoW is still the most fun you can have with your friends online. Seriously, a group of close friends doing ANYTHING in this game - as long as it's done together - can be so enjoyable that you forget that anything else ever existed. And don't even get me started on all the new Cataclysm info that pops up every day (I can't even tell you how excited I am for all the changes planned for the expansion).

I promise I won't make it a habit of missing daily posts because of wow from now on. I'm still listening to new music, rediscovering classics, and blowing my own mind with sound. And I'll certainly be reporting on all that shortly. But for the time being, this beast has grabbed hold once again and I don't see it letting go any time soon.

Protomen

No time for a proper post right now. Back tomorrow with something real. In the meantime, have an awesome song by an awesome band.

Dubstep? eww...

Dubstep gets a bad rap from a lot of people. Probably because it got so popular so quickly. All of a sudden you couldn't turn a corner without hearing someone talk about the latest dubstep mixtape they picked up or whatever. Then just as the genre began to define itself, it actually started to bleed together with other electronic music. Artists would use a dubstep-lite beat and suddenly draw ire from fans and opponents of the genre. DJ's throw dubstep songs in their playlists just because it's a dope song, and there's a backlash from one group of fans or another. I wasn't even fully aware of what the genre itself encompassed until recently. I was listening to some random track and my roommate came home and heard me listening to it. He acted as if he'd caught me looking at torture porn or something...


"Ugh, you seriously like DUBSTEP? That shit is so wack, man."
"I don't know... is this dubstep? Hm... I guess I do like it because this song is fresh as hell."

Maybe I just have a different viewpoint because I've always enjoyed so many different varieties of music. I'm not one to dismiss an entire genre from the outset just because it's popular to rag on it. Especially when it is somewhat new and the definition is still rather nebulous. But on the other hand, fans of the genre tend to be extremely zealous and protective if someone says "meh, [musician] is better than this". Too often I've seen forum threads spiral into pissing matches over OMG MY FAVORITE ARTIST IS BETTER THAN URS, and that always drives me nuts. Love it or hate it, just try to be reasonable of what other people like.

All that said, I really like this song.

soof ee yawn

No time for a big post today, but I thought I'd throw this out there real quick. NPR Music put up an article about Sufjan Stevens' new album, The Age of Adz, and you can stream the whole thing for free before it comes out in October. It's all right here, and it's all very very good. It sounds like he's pulling a lot of the elements from his early albums, but still working a crazy amount of varied instruments in there. I've only listened to it once through at this point, but I can tell it'll be in my rotation for a while. Sufjan just does not disappoint.

Hope is a bastard

This Tuesday, the 28th, Ben Folds' new album entitled Lonely Avenue comes out, and I'm here to tell you that it's really really good. After 2008's Way To Normal came out, I was a little let down. It just didn't sound like the Ben Folds I'd grew to know and love. So I guess it's a little odd that i like this new album so much, since Folds didn't write the songs this time around. Writer and novelist Nick Hornby penned all the lyrics, and Folds set them to music. And I think that might be the key. Without having to worry about writing the lyrics, he could concentrate on solid piano-driven arrangements that really fit the tone of each story that the Hornby is telling with his words. Be it the uptempo pop-sounding Your Dogs, or the slow ballad with massive building strings of the first single Picture Window, the whole album sounds like a return to form and I'm loving every minute of it. If the last album turned you off a bit, fear not because Lonely Avenue is as solid as you can get.

I'm known to eat a sandwich

I don't know what I can say about Das Racist. I can't tell if they're serious or not. After I heard Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell a while back, I thought it was just a silly hip-hop comedy act. But their new album Sit Down, Man sounds like they're actually artists. All the songs on it are pretty solid, mixing clever and witty rhymes with a crazy variety of beats. Maybe I should just leave the review to Pitchfork, because they pretty much nail it. But I'll at least say this much, All Tan Everything is the best song I've heard in months.

Harmony harmony...

Yeah, late to the party once again. I just can't get enough of Robot Unicorn Attack. It's probably mainly the song that gets me. It simply will not get out of my head! Go ahead and play it if you're like me and are always months behind the curve with stuff like this. But be warned, it'll grab ahold and never let go.

Alright, I promise tomorrow I'll get to some actual decent posts.