We could’ve headed over to North Beach for fireworks at Ashwin’s, but I figured since I’m only gonna be at this loft for (at most) 9 more months, there wouldn’t be another 4th of July to experience from my place. We got to see probably a half dozen “shows”… legit ones going down around the pier, as well as some pseudo-official ones around the Mission Dolores area. What was cool about being at my place though was that you got to see tons of illegal fireworks being shot off all over the neighborhood for hours before and after the official shows.

Terrarium Upgrade

I gave my terrarium some much needed love with the addition of 3 new plants and fresh ground cover. While I was in Korea/Spain, there wasn’t exactly time to take care of the moss so it all died off. I documented a couple shots with the fish eye for shits right here. Blue frog bro is lookin’ sharp.

Other than that, I’ve just been living the dream… you know: waking up relatively late, performing random errands lazily, failing to cook food for myself, etc. At least I’ve made some way on Ableton through the past week or so. Trial and error is a bitch… and so are composing melodies, making clean transitions, and thinking at all about song structure. It’s all so way in over my head. Oh well, pushing on…

Simian Mobile Disco came out with a new single named Gizzard a day or so ago and it’s nothing less than inspiring. It includes two versions of itself, along with a bonus remix. The original is definitely more gentle (if you want to call it that) progressive house / tech house that they’ve mastered at this point as far as I’m concerned. Version 2 is heavier hitting and a tad darker. Check out version 2, the remix, and a Jacques Greene original below. You may have heard that Radiohead commissioned him to remix Lotus Flower for a series of 12″ remix singles they plan on releasing.

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Download (Simian Mobile Disco - 2011 - Gizzard (Version 2 Original Mix) (320k)).

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Download (Simian Mobile Disco - 2011 - Gizzard (Psycatron Remix) (320k)).

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Download (Jacques Greene - 2011 - Another Girl (320k)).

Grandma & My sister Olivia this past weekend on Easter.

Work at ngmoco has been ramping up fairly hardcore. With the success of our two new games We Rule & Godfinger, the company has been blowin’ up; so many new hires that I don’t even know 1/4 of everyone’s name. Amit and I are gearing up to work on our 2nd game and he’s positioned himself as the lead coordinator, or as the process calls it, the ScrumManager, which I’m totally fine with. I’ve been practicing Ruby (an elegant programming language) a lot lately and brushing slightly with Ruby on Rails (framework atop Ruby for websites) in order to get my chops up to less-than-failure status (I’m so fucking tired of PHP). While I cannot delve into details of the new game, it’s going to blow Epic Pet Wars out of the water… guaranteed.

Moving on… it’s not the weekend yet, but it’s time to post bangers anyway… at 6:45AM.

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Download (Punx Soundcheck (Neo Tokyo Remix) (2010; 128kbps)).

thanks to jimmy on this one. he loves some neo tokyo as much as I do.

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Download (D.I.M. - Level (2010; 320kbps)).

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Download (Boys Noize & Erol Alkan - Lemonade (2010; 320kbps)).

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Download (Boy 8-Bit - Wolfen (Jokers of the Scene Remix) (2010; 320kbps)).

PS: thanks to j.chorng for the mad photoshop skills. he’s a pro.

Flying Lotus - Cosmogramma (2010)

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Download (Delorean - Come Wander (2010;V0)).

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Download ( The Glitch Mob - Drive It Like You Stole It (2010;320kbps)).

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Download (Flying Lotus = ...And the World Laughs with You (ft. Thom Yorke) (2010)).

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Download (Caribou - Jamelia (2010;V0)).

The Glitch Mob, Coachella, New alum release in may.

]]> http://monospectra.com/2010/04/02/some-awesome-work/feed/ 0 http://monospectra.com/2010/01/07/predict-relax%e2%80%93-with-cfcf/ http://monospectra.com/2010/01/07/predict-relax%e2%80%93-with-cfcf/#comments Thu, 07 Jan 2010 08:50:44 +0000 Drew http://monospectra.com/?p=115

Been really digging CFCF‘s 2nd full length album, Continent. So glad I jumped the gun and pre-ordered this guy’s new record on vinyl despite that his first effort felt a bit empty. To my surprise, Continent is consistent, much more rich, but still retains the CFCF minimal/downtempo style that I’ve grown to love more and more. The attention to detail with the album artwork also threw me off a bit in a good way, as he has adorned the cover and inner sleeve with warm and worn whites accompanied by photos of, well, motherfuckin’ plants. The whole execution of it leaves you very content staring at it in your hands. Here’s a sampling of some of the best tracks:

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Download (CFCF - You Hear Colours (2009; V0)).

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Download (CFCF - Big Love (2009; V0)).

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Download (CFCF - Come Closer (2009; V0)).

I make a prediction… because last year, my good friend Dave did for ’09 and it all became true. I predict that 2010 will be a year of reflection, rewind, and most importantly relaxation. OK so these may just be hopeful wishes, but nonetheless I am feeling rather psychic tonight.

This notion came to me after my family and I visited my great Aunt Clara. She can drive a car, and still does weekly. She can carry on a conversation for hours. She is 4 foot, 11 inches. She is 95 and oh god do I love her. She’s the last of my Dad’s parent’s generation and probably the only relative I have that I can truly look at her and speak with her and suddenly want to be more Italian. Her house is in Monterey Park, before it became near entirely Chinese. We went to her place to visit and she was complaining to us how telemarketers call her up and immediately start speaking Chinese because her last name is Young (hah). Did I mention she incinerates trash in her back yard (yes, burning garbage) even though it has been illegal since the 1950′s? Anyhow, I just wanted to post up a photo of us two for context. I’m clearly on my knees and still clear her height by a good inch or two. It’s so cool.

Over the break was filled with family, work (bleh), and friends, as usual. I went to Bear Mountain twice thanks to the ping from Will ass Chang with J.Chorng in tandem with Michelle and the dance machine himself, Brian Han. I ended up snowboarding for 2 days, staying in Michelle’s relative’s cabin for two nights. Even though none of us four saw you Will, many fasho’s and thanks for the heads up because getting a good start on the season boarding has got me confident hitting jumps and boxes now. I bought my season pass to Heavenly in Tahoe and am going to go boarding again this weekend. New years was an absolute blast at the Chorng house, needless to say. Everyone who was there knows the real deal, aNYway.

Hope you all have a legit 2010, I’m damned excited about it. If you’re up in SF early next week, try to come out to an art show Michelle is going to be in called Intergalactic Space Travels. I just got back 2 pieces of hers I had framed even prior to knowing she was going to be in this show and I must say the work is getting more and more chalk full of dank-awesome.

Instead, I held out for Cyber Monday… which, apparently, is an even bigger hoax where internet retailers try to lure buyers into some false promise of better deals than they normally offer during the holiday season after Black Friday. Again, this is true that it is bullshit most of the time but there are gems & loopholes here and there. I only say this because I ordered an HDTV for my room for what I think is a pretty good deal. Nothing super fancy, just a 37″ Vizio LCD that does 1080p and only cost me 4 bills. Not bad, right?

However, Black Friday wasn’t absent of all joy… killer party located at the standard J.Chorng/j.Chorng household was in full effect, and included so many faces that I haven’t seen in so long (some of them 4 fucking years) that it couldn’t be anything less than legit. Seeing the likes of nearly the entire Troy High 2004 ASB crew was awesome, to say the least. We even somehow managed to coax Tamby and Hata to come out, making the entire situation feel like Irvine House circa 2005 all over again… and even Michelle didn’t pass out in 30-60 minutes like she usually does! I’m sure you can head over to Jesse or Will ass Chang‘s respective blogs to cop some photos of the action in DSLR goodness… irresponsible goodness at that just because Jesse and Jimmy just procured an absurdly badass camera. Expect some 1080p @ 60FPS porn of Jimmy in the near future to show up on Vimeo.

In other somewhat personal news, many of you probably aren’t aware but in the past 3 months my Grandmother (Mom’s Mother) has been struggling in the hospital and then in a rehabilitation center. Many of us family members prayed for a miracle as things just kept getting worse, but out of nowhere she made a huge recovery over the course of 2 weeks! She’s now back at home… chillin’ as she should be now with some extra nursing help but otherwise doing great. I love my Grandma. Period… and am so happy she’s OK.

One thing I’ve learned is that when extremely tired, one is more prone to impulsively buying tons of shit online. In my case, I found myself knee deep in a vinyl order from both Insound and Amazon in a single night, nearly browsing their entire catalogs. The first round of goodies have come, and I’m pleased with all of them. I thought for a bit of time again that I need to cool it on procuring records so quickly. In my mind, a strange preconceived notion exists that vinyl is something that one is supposed to collect slowly over many years and do so via browsing a record store meticulously. I admitted to myself that while I’m down for that, I just don’t have the time usually to head out to Amoeba or some of the smaller record shops around SF to browse for an album only to be let down that they don’t carry it. Also, purchasing vinyl online avoids tax which is another win and hell, everyone loves opening packages. So, clockwise albums I now add to my collection are Boys Noize – Power, N.A.S.A. – Spirit of the Apollo, Elliott Smith – From a Basement on the Hill, Simian Mobile Disco – Attack Decay Sustain Release, Bibio – The Apple & the Tooth (apparently limited to only 1,000 prints!), Minus the Bear – Menos el Oso and (not pictured) RJD2 – Deadringer… and more are on the way.

Big things are happening at the ngmoco:) camp too, but I’ll save that for another post. For now, here’s Hot Chip’s title track off their new upcoming album “One Life Stand” coming out early next year.

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Download (Hot Chip - One Life Stand (debuting 2010; 320kbps; 13MB)).

And lastly, Mich… so what do you all think? Should I submit this shit to Look at this Fucking Hipster?

I haven’t done Flash for about 2 years and since got back into it the past 2 weeks in order to throw together a battle view for Epic Pet Wars on Facebook + epicpetwars.com… The difference is pretty intense compared to what was there before. Now the battle sequences on the web outpace the phone (in my opinion) just slightly provided you have a top-of-the-line computer. Only issue with it is performance, so I’ll be working on a video settings pane for turning down graphical effects in order to make FPS go up on slower machines. The entire app was programmed in Actionscript 3… there is no timeline code. Many thanks to the tweener and rotator classes I took advantage of to simplify programming animations.

Anyhow, the experience has been pretty fun since a lot of it was just visual effects and transitions work.

Epic Pet Wars on Facebook • EpicPetWars.com

Kelpe released his new album which I promptly ordered a 12″ LP of because I’m lame like that. Anyhow, this is a really cool song off of it… kind of IDM/downtempo + 8-bit.

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Download (Kelpe - Microscope Contents (2009; V0)).

I believe I’ve gotten my room setup to be near completion after the addition of a few pieces of tech. After suffering terrible internet connection despite buying a wireless 802.11n router for downstairs, I decided to try to hook up an old Comcast modem to the coax output in my room. It worked. I’ve now got some sexy 3.0MB/sec down sustained speeds for internet as well as my own wireless network beaming from my room so now anyone can get pretty excellent interweb anywhere in the apartment. Also, I think I’m going to try my hand tonight at ripping an LP to digital since my deck has a USB port on it that I’ve ignored since buying it. Now I can sleep, eat, consume media, and just generally chill in my room because it finally feels like a room rather than just some “sleeping space” of sorts.

I saw Junior Boys last night with mich and I must say, they’ve polished their live performance hardcore since I saw them a few months ago… plus the venue (the Mezzanine) was much better than where they played the first time as far as sound setup. I shamelessly bought 4 LPs, three from Junior Boys and another from the opening band which I had never heard of prior called Circlesquare… they’re quite the trip.

I’ve had the entry level Grado SR60‘s that have a reputation of being some of the best headphones you can get for the price (~$70) for about 2 years. It’s time for an upgrade. I checked out the reviews, price pints, and my eyes landed on their model about 4 steps above the SR60, the SR325is. These are open-air headphones, meaning that at even casual listening volume, people at a library would definitely get pissed off at you. Having Grado’s is just like having two really good, really small speakers close to your ears. Anyhow, the sound is phenomenal and I’ve bought up an external sound card or two cause apparently you get the full audible range with non-motherboard (ie: laptop) sound (24bit/92Khz). I can’t tell the difference too much I must say, but the placebo effect has definitely kicked in anyway.

Anyhow, check out this awesome Shinichi Osawa remix. I swear he can’t make bad material.

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Download (Boys Noize - Feel Good (TV=Off) (Shinichi Osawa Edit)).

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