Is This Goodbye?

Sadly, I believe this is goodbye. I have merged with my fellow friend and blogger, Digger. If you're sad don't be. The new blog is going to have all the usual goodies that I post plus Digger's fresh perspective. We're even going to be adding a few more writers, one being my friend Ian. So get ready and get ready to add a new bookmark because your new favorite blog is, Digital Hygiene. It's going to be fantastic. There is already two free music downloads up, The Cool Kids mixtape, "Gone Fishing" and new artist Jade's EP, "It's My Heart, Cookie." So get your butts over to Digital Hygiene and make it a daily habit. This has truly been a pleasure and the response has been overwhelming. In just a short time I got over 1,000 page views which was awesome. All right, see ya guys and remember, Let Love Rule!

Let The Beat Build.

In case you didn't know, this is a cover of a song by Lil Wayne. This video was filmed in one take, with audio being recorded simultaneously with the film. The video features Nyle and is produced by Last Pictures and 194 Recordings.

Nyle "Let The Beat Build" from Nyle on Vimeo.

Hacking Democracy.

Hacking Democracy is a documentary made to bring awareness to problems surrounding our voting system. With the formation of new technologies, voting ballots have been started to get counted electronically. This has raised some serious questions about voter fraud and election rigging. In the film they found about that the company in charge of all the electronic voting machines, Diebold, had terrible security measures on their software. In fact, hackers were able to change vote totals within about a minute. They didn't even have to use a password to log in and change to totals. There were simply ways to work around the log in, which is a very scary to think about. While this is a concern, it would be relatively easy to pick up on if the voter total didn't match the amount of votes cast. That's why this next part is the most frightening bit of data. The memory cards that are used for the voting machines can be manipulated to take votes away from one candidate while giving the other more. So to make sure it doesn't effect the total votes they simply would just take say 5 votes away from one candidate and give the other 5 additional votes.

I am downright stunned. Yeah everyone makes mistakes, but when you run a business that is responsible for tallying the votes for presidential elections, this is inexcusable. Either these guys are really dumb and don't know what their doing or it has been done on purpose. I'd like to think that our government puts sufficient thought into contracting people for the job. It appears they dropped the ball on this one. Diebold needs to be held accountable. They need to secure their software so that the votes are tallied correctly and aren't open to outsiders to potentially hack and change the results of an election. This shouldn't even be an issue we should have to talk about.

Turbo - TDouble?

I'm unsure on what this young emcee actually goes by. It's either Turbo or TDouble. Either way, I'm on board. I just saw this video he put together and became an instant fan. Check it, then go to his myspace.

Passion Pit - "The Reeling"

Here is a band that you might have heard of by now called, Passion Pit. I coped their Ep, "Chunk of Change," a tad over a month ago and have had a fantastic time exploring it. My immediate favorite song was "Sleepyhead," but their are other greats like "Smile Upon Me" and "Better Things." Turns out I'm not a lone fan of these dude from the Boston area. Turns out everyone has been hyping the shit of these guys even picking them as their "band of 2009." While Passion Pit is great, and brings new sound to the table, I wont be so quick on my judgement. There is a lot of 2009 left to go people, who knows what's in store. So this post is mainly supposed to be about Passion Pit's new video/song debut called "The Reeling." The video and the song are both excellent. If the Ep wasn't quite selling you on Passion Pit, I think "The Reeling makes a strong case for you to go out and buy their debut album, Manners on May 19th. I believe I will be. So let me get my SNL host on right now. Ladies and gentleman, Passion Pit.


Passion Pit - The Reeling from Smoke My Tabaco on Vimeo.

So You Think You're Fly?

When Theophilus London steps into the room you'll surely be outdone. Theo's signature cutout camera chain says it all. But it doesn't stop there. He does some pretty super hip-hop as well. So super, that some are even saying that he is laying the groundwork for the resurrection of good hip-hop. Me personally, would not consider myself a hip-hop fanatic. But Theo has definitely captured my attention. With the help of label mate, Machinedrum (normrex), Theo has put together two fantastic mixtapes. The first mixtape embodies a Michael Jackson theme, appropriately titled, Jam! The second one draws influence from his early influences like Whitney Houston and The Smiths. Hence "This Charming Mixtape," a play on The Smiths song, "This Charming Man," for the title of mixtape number two. In the large scope, I've been really impressed with the production of mixtapes that have come out in past year or so. We've seen Charles Hamilton an almost redundant amount of mixtapes with the "Hamiltonization Process" and then also with Kid CuDi's "Man on the Moon." Theo's "Jam!" and "This Charming Mixtape" deserve to be in the same category and I would even put him a notch above Kid CuDi. Mixtapes have become a super marketing tool for these artists, which has benefited both the listener and the artist because they are free and gives people something to bump in anticipation to their new album. Personally I think they work the best for artist making their debut. Just a hype machine. So mixtapes are great and so is Theophilus London. He actually just came out with his debut album last week called "This Charming Man." Since I just recently started listening to Theo I haven't had a chance to fully explore his mixtapes yet, so I'm going to wait to purchase this for a little while. If it's anything like his mixtapes we should all be in for a treat. I'll end this by quoting Theo and giving some much appreciated love to all of you for sticking with this blog. "This one's for my day one fans."

Here's a sweet ass song called "Hum Drum"

Live Show Review: Pomegranates.

First off, Pomegranates like to do what I describe as "Rock The Party." Not is so much of a literal sense, although they definitely demonstrated that the could last night, but in more of a every day type of use. Like for example....

Some Person: Hey man are you ready to go to the grocery store?

Me: Yeah dude, let's rock the party.

Now that my crash course on "Rock The Party" is complete let's get to how rad Pomegranates are. I've been itching to see how these fellows sound live and to my delight, they played at 7th Street Entry last night, which if I could have chosen prior to, would have been my venue of choice. Off to a great start. The only thing that sort of bummed me out was the number of people in attendance...around 20. But it turned out to be ok. Poms played like it was a sellout crowd. Appreciated. I don't think they actually told the audience who they were until about 4 song in. Instead they introduced themselves under a few different alias' like 3 ninjas plus one for example. There were a few others that I can't currently recall, but awesome non the less. With exception to the drummer, the other three rotated instruments playing guitar, bass and the keys throughout the show. What an added bonus to know that these guys are super talented musicians on top of playing ridiculously fun music. They even pulled a dude out of the crowd to play the tambourine for the last song. Overall these guys blew me away. I went in expecting a good show, but they far exceeded my expectations despite a small turnout. To put the icing on the cake they seemed super genuine too. I got to meet/talk to Joey after the show and was a super cool dude. He even said that despite the small showing, that this was the most fun that they've had on tour thus far. Their performance surely seemed to reflect that. Wow, so I realize I've just been gushing about this band, but there is one final thing that made this night fantastic. Instead of t-shirts, they were selling aprons. I coped one, and am definitely going to get the BBQ going.

Notes:
-Their album "Everyone, Come Outside!" just came out so buy it baby. You won't be disappointed.
-Wye Oak headlined the show and was pretty rad. The guy counterpart in the band played the drums with one hand while playing the bass on the keyboard with the other. Crazy.