How awesome is this cover of the Game of Thrones opening music? It was done by a sound designer, Roger Lima, and posted on his website WhiteNoise Lab. I think it really emphasizes the brutal undertones of the series and it also gives me MAJOR CHILLS every time I hear it! Nice work! \m/ \m/

And here it is set to the actual opening credits:

How much are you loving the show so far? I made a little tribute to Hodor today on Twitter, and the actor (Kristian Nairn) liked it! Kind of made my week.

We’ve also been recapping Game of Thrones on Sword and Laser a lot lately, so check it out!

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Here’s part of their performance from DNA Lounge!

If you want to download the song we (ok… they) made, called Cruzeratta, click here! They’re also on Twitter too.

For more videos, head over to Cruzearati.com, and follow the Twitter account here.

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Yes, it’s just that easy to get my attention*.

But I wouldn’t have written about it if it wasn’t awesome, so please check out the track on his demos page. Thanks to Doctor Popular for the email alerting me to this fact; he makes some pretty awesome music as well, in case you didn’t know.

*The Carps also figured that out a while back.

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Doesn’t this totally remind you of the rap battle from 8 Mile? No?

The amazing beatboxer Kid Beyond (who I first heard at w00tstock back in the fall) did a damn good job going up against Jonathan Coulton and his ZenDrum, but in the end I’ve gotta give it to JoCo. I’m a sucker for Beyoncé.

The rest of the show, by the way, was also great. Although, Paul and Storm let me down a little, with only a 12 minute long version of The Captain’s Wife’s Lament. DEJECTED ARRR!!!

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Yup, this is the best thing I’ve seen in a long time. Also, that ranger has some nice dual-wielding skills! I’m looking forward to seeing what other nerdy songs Vacant Manifesto have up their wizard sleeves.

Via BuzzFeed

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That’s right, a choir singing “Don’t Stop Believin’”. Love it. The kids from PS22 have also covered two of my other favorite songs: “Landslide” and “Eye of the Tiger”! I wish we were allowed to sing songs like that when I was in choir.

And make sure to watch the pilot episode for Glee on Hulu!

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Ben Harper & RELENTLESS7 – Under Pressure cover from Veronica Belmont on Vimeo.

The show was really great – as previously mentioned I’m not a big concert-goer these days, but I had a blast. Although, today my head feels like a blast went off inside of it (lightweight).

Anyhow, thanks to Jordan for the invite to the show! Their new album White Lies for Dark Times came out this month, so check it out.

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Anyhow, Josh pointed me to these posts on Laughing Squid, and I got a huge kick out of these literal translations, created by Dust Films.

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A few weeks ago I received an email from the girlfriend of a member of the band, The Carps. In the letter, she told me that they had written a song called “Veronica Belmont,” and that it was based on Internet culture and feeling like you know the people you meet online. She linked me to their MySpace page, and there it was! It’s a fun song, and some of the lyrics definitely made me chuckle:

Dark light as we expire,
But go ahead, just dance, dance, dance

He pwned in that disco,
When they played chocolate rain, rain, rain.

Apparently the band is really starting to blow up, because I’ve been getting emails every day from people telling me they’ve heard it on XM, indie stations, and even on RCRD LBL (where you can download the track for free!). It’s awesome (and humbling) that they thought of me, so I wanted to say a big THANK YOU to those guys. I hope they tour in SF sometime!

Waves and Shambles, the EP with the single on it is coming out this Tuesday, the 8th! I can’t wait to pick it up. But of course, all bets are off if they steal my Google juice. (I kid, I kid!)

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1. Chromeo – “Bonafied Lovin’ (Tough Guys)”: My best friend Nick turned me on to this band last summer, and it became my feel-good dancing around album for months. “Bonafied Lovin’” is good track to get you going in the morning.

2. MIKA – “Love Today”: I saw MIKA for the first time at South by Southwest in Austin, and I was blown away by his energy and upbeat songs. This is my favorite track off of the album Life in Cartoon Motion.

3. The Arcade Fire – “Intervention”: Yes, I know that it’s very typical to have The Arcade Fire on a list like this, but c’mon! Neon Bible is an amazing album. A lot of the tracks on this album had a very Bruce Springsteen feel to them, and “Intervention” just takes epic to a new level. See them live. Seriously, do it.

4. Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova – “When Your Mind’s Made Up”: This track from The Swell Season album (also found on the soundtrack to the amazing film Once) blew me away. Most of the accolades have gone to “Falling Slowly,” which was a huge track in the U.K., but this one really sinks in for me.

5. The Mother Hips – “Time We Had”: OK, I’ll admit it: I discovered this band on Rock Band. This group from Chico, CA, has a that great alt-country/folk rock vibe that’s so popular with the kids these days.

6. Kanye West – “Stronger”: I don’t listen to a lot of rap music (judging from this list, that’s painfully apparent) but I do love Graduation. Way to cross genre bridges and bring the people together! Also, Daft Punk sampling is always OK in my book. As Kanye says, “me likey.”

7. The Cinematics – “A Strange Education”: This is one of those songs that I listen to over and over and over until until I realize that Last.fm is recording all of my listens, and that people are going to think there’s something wrong with me (or that I left iTunes in repeat mode by accident).

8. Bat for Lashes – “What’s a Girl to Do?”: This album is dark and cute in all the right places, and this is perfect song to listen to after you dump someone:

We walked arm in arm
But I didn’t feel his touch
A desire I’d first tried to hide,
That tingling inside was gone
And when he asked me:
‘do you still love me?’
I had to look away
I didn’t want to tell him
That my heart grows colder with each day

Ouch!

9. Shout Out Louds – “Tonight I Have To Leave It”: Yes, they kind of sound like The Cure (and maybe even Stellastarr*) but that’s not necessarily a bad thing, right? I only recently discovered this band, and the album has stayed in pretty heavy rotation.

10. Jonathan Coulton – “Still Alive”: The final song from the fantastic video game Portal is the icing on the cake… sorry, it’s obligatory when writing about Portal to make a cake reference. The song perfectly exemplifies the quirkiness and fun of the game, and Coulton is a masterful lyricist.

There you have it! I now return you to your regularly scheduled top 10 list-free viewing. Let me know what you would have put on your list!

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Click To Play

Tuesday night I was finally able to live out a dream of mine since I was 12 years old – I saw the Smashing Pumpkins live. For whatever reason, I always missed them when I was in high school (and before that, I was “too young” to go to concerts, according to my mother). When I heard that they were getting back together and playing no less than ten shows here in San Francisco, I immediately had Ryan buy us tickets for my birthday.

The show was good, albeit way too long (I never thought I’d say that an SP show could ever go too long). It was over 2 hours, and by the end I felt like my back was about to break, or my feet were about to disintegrate… whichever came first. They started off the set with some new tunes, and although I have Zeitgeist I’m not all that familiar with the new songs. Then they played a few surprises, like “The Aeroplane Flies High” (from the box set), “Drown” (another B-side), and “Bullet with Butterfly Wings.”

Jimmy Chamberlin stole the show towards the end with an amazing drum solo, and we got a peek into the personality of the new bassist, Ginger Reyes, when they skipped a song without telling her. She seemed very sweet, and joked about it with Billy on stage. OK, now I’m just getting too involved, sorry.

Billy was kind of down on San Francisco, saying that everyone he met was “mean.” Really? But I guess it gave him the inspiration to write a new song, called “Peace and Love and All That Other Shit,” which is the video I took that you see above. It’s sad that SF wasn’t his cup of tea (and too bad they’re playing so many shows here, I guess) but the song was one of the highlights of the evening for me.

I’m having trouble finding the setlist for the show, but I remember them also playing “Tonight, Tonight,” “Disarm” (one of my all-time favorites), “Tarantula,” “Doomsday Clock” and “United States.” A mix of old and new, but as Billy said at the opening of the show, “This is 2007, not 1992. Welcome to the new decade.” It would have been nice to see them back in the day, but it was still totally worth the sore feet.

See this review and others at PLAYBACK:stl

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Click To Play

The other band that I saw was called What Made Milwaukee Famous, and they were phenomenal. I’ve seen so many good bands since I’ve been here, I don’t even know where to start! Yesterday I hung out with Kurt Woolf from Download.com, and we were to a few different venues on 6th Street. We saw a band called Office (I saw James Iha in the crowd and I totally freaked out), and then we went to go see The Silos play down the street.

Later, I met up with Cameron, Tantek, Ryan K. and Sarah, and we headed over to Zona Rosa for another show. The Pipettes were playing when we got there, and I think we all fell in love with them a little. Go check out their site, and you’ll see why. Then as we were getting a drink, I heard that The Rapture were playing next, who I love! That was a nice surprise.

OK, gotta head back downtown. More later.
CNET TV Report Day One
CNET TV Report Day Two
LonelyGirl15 Interview

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Click To Play

The polls are open! VOTE VERONICA! WOOOO!! \.m./

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Click To Play

I accepted a challenge from Casey McKinnon to participate in the Vlog Deathmatch: Air Guitaress Challange. I accept, Casey. Above is my trailer… more awesome coming Sunday. Here is my competition:

Casey McKinnon
Zadi Diaz
Mickipedia
Sarah Myers

I am going to devour their souls in a blaze of rock goodness.

Link

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I can’t stop listening to this song. I sucked it up and bought it on iTunes, because eMusic doesn’t have this album. Curses! I just learned that Last.fm has an embed feature, so here’s a snippit. The rest of the album hasn’t quite captured me yet, unlike most of Absolution and Showbiz. I’ll give it some more time.

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Obviously this blog has taken on a more general tone, but in the spirit of that idea I’m going to plug a new podcast that I’ve been listening to lately: Ravegression.

My friend Justin and I met in college, and we discovered that we both shared a love for two genres: hardcore and electronica. My music tastes have since changed quite a bit (I lean towards the more gentle indie these days) but Justin has gone back to his roots, and started producing an excellent mix each week of really great dance music. If you want to add some bounce to your step in the morning, I highly suggest checking it out.

Subscribe in iTunes
RSS

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+ New Shuffle
+ Color nanos (precious)
+ Movies
+ iTV (as it’s code-named) looks sweet
+ Better battery life for iPods in general
+ 80GB? Booyah! And it’s pretty cheap at $349
+ Games on the iPod

- Only 4GB nanos have colors. WTF?!
- Disney movies only so far (will soon add more, hopefully)
- iTV may only support iTunes purchased video (heard from a reliable source inside)
- You have to buy games? Oh rly?
- No turtleneck? What happened, Steve?

+/- Movies at 640×480 (Meh… better than 320×240 I guess)

Ok, and now for my real rant. I was so close to being free for the bonds of Fairplay. I was talking about other Mac-compatible players, planning on burning/ripping all my iTunes tracks to destroy the DRM, maybe even going Media Center in the house. But then they brought out those little color nanos, and the Apple fangirl inside of me gave a little gasp of joy, much like that of a hamster seeing a ferris wheel for the first time and thinking it’s the biggest hamster wheel in the world. Uh… yeah, just like that.

However, those dreams were crushed when I learned that only the 4GB nanos would have the colors. But… but… I wanted a 8GB pink nano, AND I WANT IT NOW!! *ahem* Sorry. I get a little hysterical thinking about it.

The final insult came when I installed iTunes 7.0 on my PC at work. I have iTunes on there so I can check the podcast to make sure it’s loading. After the lengthy downloading and installing process, I went into the program to check things out. I liked the new design, but my podcasts were acting funny. And by funny, I mean not loading. Then Explorer crashed. I tried again. Crash. Again. Crash. You get the picture. I gave up, and went to the BOL forums to get more impressions. Let’s just say that apparently the Windows XP version of iTunes enjoys not only crashing, but taking down the iPod with it. What the hell?

I’m installing iTunes now at home on the G5, so hopefully things will go a little smoother. If you want to hear my hysterics in audio form, check out the Buzz Out Loud and MP3 Insider podcasts for today. And if you’ve gotten this far into the post, let me know what you think about the annoucements.

References: News.com, Engadget (nice work Ryan and Paul!), MacRumors

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Kidding.

Ok, but that was definitely a perk. Another aspect of audio production that I loved was sound art/installation. I was never much of an artist, but sound art gave me the chance to express myself artistically in a way that I didn’t really know I was capable of. This week, I found out that my college professor, Jeff Talman, was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for his sound installations across Europe. You can get more info about his work here. Hopefully I can make it to Europe and see it in person this fall…

What this all comes down to is that while I’m very happy with my job, and I’m doing lots of creative video work, I’m a little sad to have left the creative sound work behind me. Podcasts are fun, but they don’t give me a chance to flex my artistic muscles in audio production. Maybe I should start working on something.

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For your viewing pleasure, the video for “Snakes on a Plane (Bring It)” by Cobra Starship.
Thanks, Crew Creative!

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