Well, it had to happen at some point. I can no longer hide behind the comforting blanket of minimalism and greyscale design for my blog because, well, I knew it would take hours and hours to make anything reasonable that used color. Gaze your eyes on the new monospectra (version 0.8-something-someshit)!

I’m planning on adding dedicated static sections for particular content, similar to what j.chorng has set up instead of only having a blog here. I’ve also change the way I format my blog posts to be more concise at a glance so that I can show more posts per page, and have retrofitted a lot of my previous posts. If you ever want to read the full text, it’s dynamically rendered in front of you like magic.

Alas, there’s still a lot of work to be done.

Many of you probably have seen the influx of albums on Facebook of the below trip. Nonetheless, I had my camera in tow as well, so here’s a few more perspectives. We went on a hike on MLK Day organized by herren… mostly because the park is called Helen Park. I don’t know about the rest of the group, but I had never been to a brewery either, so checking out Lagunitas Brewery afterwards was pretty awesome. It is stunning how beer is made in mass– even from a microbrewery.

Finally “finished” furnishing my place with the last piece being the dining table. I decided to go with glass because I wanted to emphasize the chairs as much as possible and make it look like things weren’t as cramped as they might be.

Now I’ve got somewhere to eat besides my desk… now I can fall into a slump of not giving a damn.

Simian Mobile Disco released a new album Delicacies, which is full of darker techno and tech house throughout. A lot of the songs on the album would probably turn off the majority because they honestly could induce a nervous breakdown. Luckily, they included a “DJ Set” mixed bonus disc with the release that demonstrates how they’d present all the tracks in a live set, which makes the individual tracks (each clocking in at 8 minutes each on average) make much more sense. This song, Fugu, is my favorite… especially when it peaks in the end with that mad atmospheric synth.

I’m a little late to the James Blake party, but the title track of his CMYK EP is a great song. I don’t really dig the other tracks on the release, but this one is very cool.

Joy Orbison released another 12″ last week. This song, the A-side track BB, is definitely the better of the two… take a few listens and it grows on you.

So under the suggestion of a few friends after sending out the 10th MMDS e-mail, I’ve decided to go forward with releasing compilation “mixtapes” of sorts of songs that I’m currently digging. These compilations have no restriction to genre or release date (although most tracks, I’d imagine, are newish), contain somewhere around 8-12 songs, and also have my own personally made custom album art (thanks to Mich for the inkblot drawing for the main art). Each compilation has been heavily ID3 re-tagged in an attempt to not clutter up your respective iTunes libraries (more on that below). Simply download the compilation, unzip the archive, add to library, and you’re good to go. The extra details about “Grouping Compilations” you only have to do once, but will aid in cleaning up your Artist list. The only drawback to all of this, however, is that I had to remove the Album name from all the tracks in order for them to group correctly in iTunes, sorry.

So first, do yourself a favor and get your iTunes settings correct (you only have to check one stupid box) to group the compilation into a single entity rather than a ton of singles by different artists. Open up your iTunes Settings (command + , on Macs), navigate to Advanced and do this:

Tracklisting

1. The xx – Intro
2. Miike Snow – Cult Logic
3. edIT – Ants
4. HEALTH – Lost Time (Pictureplane Remix)
5. Friendly Fires – Lovesick
6. (I just noticed I fucked up this first one, there is no track 6. God dammit.)
7. Bloc Party – Flux (Extended 12″ Vinyl Mix)
8. Boys Noize – Sweet Light
9. Tiësto – Love Comes Again (Original 12″ Vinyl Version)
10. Deadmau5 – Strobe
11. The Mamas & Papas – California Dreaming (Benny Benassi Remix)
12. Minus the  Bear – Patiently Waiting
13. Bloc Party – SXRT

→ Download Monospectra Compilation 01 ←

I hope you all enjoy.