i <3 hiphop

i realise most people only read this for videos/music so here's one of my favourite suprises of '09. Snoop Dogg goes 2step, angriest rap comeback in a while:

conceptual seperation of self

going through another one of those heavy drinking, deep thinking, getting deppressed, 'what does it all mean?', high fidelity parody phases. it's like summer all over again but with shit weather and more bros. i love being miserable.

lisztomania

all these end of year/decade lists leave me asking one question, do they refer to the most important album/song of said measure of time or the one the writer(s) most enjoy listening to?
the two are very different things. in my opinion if the former is true no one should dispute this as being number one:

hurricane thunder-cloud/

it's so strange being back home. half of me hates it, half of me loves it but i definietly need it.

theres hope for weezer after all.

The Antlers from jamesfeatherstone on Vimeo.

this album is incredible, it completely dicks on every over-sentimental wannabe Bon Iver album that's come out this year due to For Emma kicking off last year. The lyrics are soul crushing, the instrumentation is beyond beautiful, this album is one of those gems I can almost guarantee I will be coming back to for years to come, it's not gonna change many things and hopefully there's not gonna be hundreds of copycats but it is definitely a strong contender for album of the year. Along with Cymbals Eat Guitars:

both completely free of any kind of pretentiousness, free from any recognizable influence from modern alt trends, these albums sound like they could have been made any time in the last two decades, which is quite a feat to achieve. and i get to see both bands today and tomorrow, winner.

'Framing effects can be quite subtle and even affect our recall of events. For example, in one study, groups of students were shown a film of a car accident. Each group of students was shown the same film clip and then asked ‘How fast were the cars going when they xxxx each other?’ ‘xxxx’ was different for each group, variously ‘smashed into’, ‘collided into’, ‘bumped into’, ‘hit’ and ‘contacted’. The table below shows the average speed estimated by each group.
Verb Mean Estimate of Speed (mph)
Smashed 40.8
Collided 39.3
Bumped 38.1
Hit 34.0
Contacted 31.8'

will dirty projects 'go big'

http://pitchfork.com/news/37093-premiere-solange-covers-dirty-projectors-stillness-is-the-move/
that cover sounds pretty big, even if it is just solange singing stillness is the move over xxxplosive by dr dre, ha.

weird that 3 bands/artists from my shithole of a hometown keep cropping up over and over in 'top tips for 2010' or whatevers. good luck to all of them, especially good luck to the ones that haven't been tempted by the majors. mad love to talonz.