Category: Collection

Categories
Playlist

Playlist of the Month: June 2016

This month has been a bit interesting for my iTunes Library – I’ve been using it as the primary data source for a bunch of neural network research. That said, it hasn’t changed much, doing all that, other than the fact that I sat down for an hour and cleaned up the ‘genre’ tags of everything. Beyond that, it’s been a read-only operation.
Anyhow, here’s the list:
5AM – Amber Run
I Need My Girl – The National
Your Hand In Mine – Explosions in the Sky1
Team (Lorde Cover) – Matthew Mayfield
Midnight – Lane 8
Smoke Filled Room (Acoustic) – Mako2
Disintegration Anxiety – Explosions in the Sky
Sorry – Liss
SWORD – ΔUGUST
Heart Go Bang – Blue October
Home (Tim Palmer Mix) – Blue October
Jericho – Westerman
Hold Me Down – YOKE LORE
Daydream – Leo Kalyan
stard(us)t – johan
Insomnia – IAMX
Elodie – Ten Fé
Hands On You – Tony Pops
Thursday – LostBoyCrow
Atlantique Sud – M83
Used To Be – Beauvoir
Shouldn’t Have Done That – Two Another
LATE AT NIGHT – GENERIK
The Lucky One – Blue October
Lou Lou – Albin Lee Meldau
Fools and Their Gold – PLGRMS
Cold to the Touch – RALPH
Sight – Sleeping At Last3
Smell – Sleeping At Last
Memory Lane – KOLIDESCOPES
Hearing – Sleeping At Last
Let Me Go – Albin Lee Meldau
Touch – Sleeping At Last
SeeThroughDreams – Kellen
Lovers – Albin Lee Meldau
Darling – Albin Lee Meldau
Someone Like You – COBRYAMA feat. Gibbz4
All I Want – Kodaline
Half Light – BANNERS5
Riptide (String Quartet Tribute to Vance Joy) – Vitamin String Quartet
Be Somebody – Kings of Leon6
Wilder Mind – Mumford & Sons
Hopeless Wanderer – Mumford & Sons
Uprising – Muse
Elysium – Mendum7
Teardrop – Massive Attack8
Withdrawn – White Morning
They Shall Be Called (Part II) – White Morning
They Shall Be Called (Part I) – White Morning9
Big Jet Plane – Angus & Julia Stone
Safe & Sound (feat. The Civil Wars) – Taylor Swift
Thru – Vallis Alps
Atlas – Coldplay10
Ghosts – BANNERS
Shadow and a Dancer – The Fray11
White Square (Demo) – Rebecca McDade
Wona – Mumford & Sons
There Will Be Time – Mumford & Sons
Mood – Porches
Crimewave – Crystal Castles12
9 Crimes – Damien Rice
Burning In The Skies – Linkin Park
In the Dark – JUDY
Wake the Dead – Nassau
Remains (Bastille Vs. Rag N Bone Man Vs. Skunk Anansie) (Crossfaded Version) – Bastille

  1. The “Friday Night Lights” version. ↩
  2. It’d be interesting, at the end of the year, for me to go back and pick out the songs that were the most permanent. And hey, since I’ve been doing research using my iTunes Library, I know how to automate that process pretty well now, I guess. Hmm. ↩
  3. I’m gonna wind up buying everything by Sleeping At Last at some point, based on the little ‘senses’ series of songs alone. They’re all wonderful. ↩
  4. This song makes me want to listen to Kings of Leon. ↩
  5. The lowest star-ranking I’ve given a song by BANNERS is 4 stars. I have, I believe, every song he’s put out. ↩
  6. I blame “Someone Like You” for this song being back in here. Not that it’s a bad thing at all. ↩
  7. I’ve been digging back through some of my playlists from the past couple years. That’s my favorite part of doing these monthly playlists, actually – the fact that I can do that. ↩
  8. My sister and I watched a lot of House when we were kids; both the show and this song are, in a strange way, a bit of a ‘happy place’ for me because of that. ↩
  9. I’m glad I don’t have comments enabled at the moment, because I know some of you would complain about these being out of order. ↩
  10. Someone told me that I was losing ‘hipster cred’ by listening to Coldplay. I have never before said “I don’t care” with such vehemence. ↩
  11. Seriously, Helios is such a good album. ↩
  12. I spent a while listening through some of my older playlists this month. And by ‘some’ I mean ‘all, in order.’ I do a lot of listening to music at work. ↩
Categories
Photography United States

Myrtles Plantation

I’m sure I’ve mentioned somewhere that I’m doing a bit of traveling this summer, though I’m definitely too lazy to go back and find where, exactly, I mentioned that.

Still, it’s a thing. I’m spending the summer in Louisiana, doing research on neural networks at Louisiana State University. Which is a full-time job, 40 hours a week, 9-5 and all that, but my weekends are free and I do occasionally leave my room in my free time, so I’ve got some photos to show y’all.

This first set are from Myrtles Plantation, which markets itself as “the most haunted house in the American South.” Went with my family, when they made the trip down here to visit – my sister is a big fan of all things spooky.

I brought my camera with me, of course, because what’s a paranormal investigator without a camera? Photos are below the fold – I’m not a fan of making people load lots of images on the front page, even with the new CDN up and running. It’s rude to people on mobile, or with metered connections.

Continue reading “Myrtles Plantation”
Categories
Collection

Finding a simple algorithm for intelligence

Michael Nielsen:

I don’t believe we’ll ever find a simple algorithm for intelligence. To be more concrete, I don’t believe we’ll ever find a really short Python (or C or Lisp, or whatever) program – let’s say, anywhere up to a thousand lines of code – which implements artificial intelligence. Nor do I think we’ll ever find a really easily-described neural network that can implement artificial intelligence. But I do believe it’s worth acting as though we could find such a program or network. That’s the path to insight, and by pursuing that path we may one day understand enough to write a longer program or build a more sophisticated network which does exhibit intelligence. And so it’s worth acting as though an extremely simple algorithm for intelligence exists.

Making progress is all about dreaming big.

Categories
Collection

Word processors

Baldur Bjarnason:

I don’t write primarily in markdown because the format is nice but because markdown apps like Ulysses and Byword value the joy of writing as well as the need for structure. They recognise that writing is equal parts emotional and executive reasoning. Favour emotional logic too much and you get Apple’s glossy, wrapped-in-plastic writing experience. Favour executive reasoning too much and you get Microsoft Office’s kitchen-sink-included helicarrier.

I do all of my writing in Ulysses, and it’s a joy – full Markdown support, with one or two extra touches1 that make everything easy.
As to the Pages vs. Word debate, I tend to use Word – Pages is distinctly easier to use, but it lacks a couple features that I need whenever I’m using a ‘full’ word processor.2

  1. Like their footnote macro, which replaces markdown’s clunky [^footnoteID]/[^footnoteID]: content syntax with a quick, easy (fn) and typing into a popover. ↩
  2. And I have Office anyways, because the terabyte of OneDrive space and my need for Excel’s power features necessitate it. ↩
Categories
Collection

WWDC Wishlists

Six Colors pretty well covered what I’d like to see in the next version of macOS:1

I’d like to see an entirely new and simplified version of iTunes for Mac, perhaps multiple apps. iTunes can become the hub for Apple’s media sales, as it is on iOS. A new Music app will need to support Apple Music as well as local music files. And as for syncing, updating and configuring iOS devices, let’s move all of that to a new iOS Sync app that’s completely separate. Break up the iTunes monopoly—it’s way past time.

  1. I’m still not sure if I like ‘macOS’ or ‘MacOS’ better, but ‘OS X’ just doesn’t feel right anymore. It’s been around as a brand for too long. Plus, now that Windows 10 is out, there’s room for verbal confusion- did they mean ‘OS X’ or ‘O.S. 10’? ↩
Categories
Collection

“The Computer for the 21st Century”

I was given this paper to read the other day, and I thought it was fascinating. I didn’t really check the date it was published until I was partially through the paper, and found the whole thing to be still applicable to the modern day.
A few select quotes:

Pads are intended to be “scrap computers” (analogous to scrap paper) that can be grabbed and used anywhere; they have no individualized identity or importance.
Pads, in contrast, use a real desk. Spread many electronic pads around on the desk, just as you spread out papers. Have many tasks in front of you and use the pads as reminders. Go beyond the desk to drawers, shelves, coffee tables. Spread the many parts of the many tasks of the day out in front of you to fit both the task and the reach of your arms and eyes, rather than to fit the limitations of CRT glass-blowing. Someday pads may even be as small and light as actual paper, but meanwhile they can fulfill many more of paper’s functions than can computer screens.

On the death of the user interface:

Prototype tabs, pads and boards are just the beginning of ubiquitous computing. The real power of the concept comes not from any one of these devices; it emerges from the interaction of all of them. The hundreds of processors and displays are not a “user interface” like a mouse and windows, just a pleasant and effective “place” to get things done.

On ubiquitous software:

Today’s operating systems, like DOS and Unix, assume a relatively fixed configuration of hardware and software at their core. This makes sense for both mainframes and personal computers, because hardware or operating system software cannot reasonably be added without shutting down the machine. But in an embodied virtuality, local devices come and go, and depend upon the room and the people in it. New software for new devices may be needed at any time, and you’ll never be able to shut off everything in the room at once.

There’s some really interesting ideas in there. We’ve done one or two – some computer settings are mobile, if you stay within one ecosystem, and we’ve definitely got little screens on the ‘tab’ scale. But still not in the ubiquitous way they discuss – we’re still tethered to specific devices, rather than genericized hardware with software that adapts to the person using it.
With the advent of cloud computing, though, that seems more possible. I spent a couple days this week running software that simply couldn’t run on my laptop. Artificial intelligence of the flavor I’m researching this summer requires a lot of processing power, and GPUs meet that need quite nicely. My laptop does not have a GPU; it definitely doesn’t have 8 Titans. And yet, there I sat, in a classroom, running 8 Titans along at peak capacity, all from the comfort of my laptop.
We’re getting closer to some of the ideals that Weiser wrote about 25 years ago. It’ll be interesting to see where we go from here.
(Oh, and you should absolutely read the rest of the paper– there’s more interesting ideas in there that I didn’t pull out, and a nice narrative-style exploration of some of them at the end.)

Categories
Music

GSV Empiricist

The GSV Empiricist, or General Systems Vehicle Empiricist is a ship in Iain M. Banks’ Culture series of novels. In its first physical appearance, the Empiricist is described as having “no single outer hull surrounding [its] hundreds of individual components, just colossal bubbles of air held in place by field enclosures.” And it’s enormous:

Comfortably over two hundred kilometres long even by the most conservative of measurement regimes, fabulously, ellipsoidally rotund, dazzling with multiple sun-lines and tiny artificial stars providing illumination for motley steps and levels and layers of riotous vegetation – belonging, strictly speaking, on thousands of different worlds spread across the galaxy – boasting hundreds of contrasting landscapes from the most mathematically manicured to the most (seemingly) pristinely, savagely wild, all contained on slab-storeys of components generally kilometres high.

In short, it’s a mobile city with a population of ten billion, and I wanted to try to capture a little bit of that here. In truth, exploring a space this vast would take hours, even moving incredibly quickly, so I composed the work from the perspective of a drone, put in place simply to watch the passage of this massive construct. Its motion through the ship brings forward several novel acoustic spaces.
(Both quotations are from Iain M. Banks’ The Hydrogen Sonata.)

 

Continue reading “GSV Empiricist”
Categories
Playlist

Playlist of the Month: May 2016

Since I’m working a desk job at the moment, you’d think I’d have more time to listen to music, but I have even less. There’s a lot of audio involved in that desk job. My headphones are in, but not hooked up to iTunes. Sad day.
5AM – Amber Run
I Need My Girl – The National
Your Hand In Mine – Explosions In The Sky
Team (Lorde Cover) – Matthew Mayfield1
Midnight – Lane 8
Smoke Filled Room (Acoustic) – Mako
Afterlife – XYLØ
SCRAM – Mogwai
Lou Lou – Albin Lee Meldau
Tangle Formations – Explosions In the Sky2
Disintegration Anxiety – Explosions In the Sky
Hallucinations – dvsn
Logic of a Dream – Explosions In the Sky
Sorry – LISS
Land of All – Woodkid
I’ve Fallen For You – Tom Redwood
SWORD – ΔUGUST3
Break Ground – Blue October
Driver – Blue October
Heart Go Bang – Blue October
Houston Heights – Blue October
Home (Tim Palmer Mix) – Blue October
Jericho – Westerman
Cara Mia Addio – Aperture Science Psychoacoustics Laboratory
Landing Cliffs – Explosions In the Sky
Hold Me Down – YOKE LORE
Pripyat – Mogwai
Daydream – Leo Kalyan
Coal Makes Diamonds – Blue October
Heart Go Bang (Night Mix Prod. by The Egg) – Blue October
stard(us)t – johan
Insomnia – IAMX4
Happiness – IAMX5
The Background Noise – IAMX
Bridges – Koresma
Say Hello Melancholia – IAMX
Elodie – Ten Fé6
Hands On You – Tony Pops
Thursday – LostBoyCrow
Atlantique Sud – M837
Used To Be – Beauvois
I Want It – Blue October
Shouldn’t Have Done That – Two Another
LATE AT NIGHT – GENERIK
The Lucky One – Blue October
Road Blaster – M83

  1. For some reason, this song isn’t on the Amazon version of the album, so I’m linking to it on iTunes instead. Weird. ↩
  2. I’ve just noticed that some of their songs are filed under “Explosions In The Sky” and some are under “Explosions In the Sky.” Dangit iTunes. ↩
  3. Still not done laughing at the fact that this group is named “?UGUST” in Amazon’s database. ↩
  4. Note that this whole album is distinctly NSFW, if you listen to the lyrics. ↩
  5. I’m linking this one, though, because I find the lyrics hilarious. ↩
  6. I’d be more annoyed about how often this one gets stuck in my head, but it helps to drown out the stupid clocktower here, so I’ll take it. ↩
  7. I wasn’t too much a fan of their new album, but this one was nice and calm compared to the rest. ↩
Categories
Music

Voight-Kampff

I make music sometimes! This was one I put together for a class, my Intro to Music Technology class that I just wrapped up recently.

From the program notes I wrote:

This was composed for the Introduction to Music Technology class, as the first major project, with a focus on the style of synthesizers that were first popularized in the 1980s. It’s a collaboration between myself and my roommate Ehren – I set up the session with the synthesizers and harmonic structure I wanted, and then left the room. This gave it a bit of an improvisatory feel – though I did move one or two of the notes around afterwards, to keep it from going from ‘improvisatory’ to ‘unsure.’
The end result reminded me of the dark, gritty science fiction movies that were popular in the 1980s. I think of Blade Runner as the authoritative piece of dark, gritty 1980s science fiction, so I chose a name from the lore of the film: the Voight-Kampff Test is what’s administered to find out if the subject is a human or replicant.

Categories
Photography United States

Los Angeles Against the Mountains

So, as I mentioned in my previous post, I’m doing a bit of traveling this summer. The first trip was down to Los Angeles, because that’s the only place where you can go to get an Austrian Visa-D, if you live on the West Coast.1

Anyhow, while I was there I was able to meet up with a family friend and take some pictures out in Santa Monica. There’s a conference center there, the Serra Retreat Center, and it’s got some awesome views. Take a look, and feel free to click on any of these pictures to see them in a larger size:

One of the things I wanted to do while I was in LA was look at the mountains. It’s something I’ve been wanting to do since I read the essay after which I titled this post: Los Angeles Against the Mountains.

I read the essay for an English class I took, fully expecting to hate it – I have an inherent dislike of anything that’s intended to be ‘literature.’ I was wrong: the essay was a fascinating look at an aspect of Los Angeles that I’d never considered. Long story made incredibly short, the mountains over LA are unstable, and the city has to deal with flooding that gets turned into pseudo-pyroclastic flows by the amount of rubble put out by the mountains. It’s a wonderful read, and I highly recommend it.

  1. Because heaven forbid we be able to turn in a stack of paperwork and get our fingerprints taken anywhere less than a thousand miles from home. ↩
Categories
Playlist

Playlist of the Month: April 2016

Oh man I need there to have been more of April, I’m not done with things yet.
5AM – Amber Run
I Need My Girl – The National
Your Hand In Mine – Explosions In The Sky1
On Your Knees – Matthew Mayfield
Team (Lorde Cover) – Matthew Mayfield
Midnight – Lane 8
You Can’t Save Me – Johnny Stimson
But Now A Warm Feel Is Running – Fhin
House for You – LOYAL
Maps For the Getaway – Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness
I Feel The Weight – Miike Snow
Smoke Filled Room (Acoustic) – Mako
Afterlife – XYLØ
SCRAM – Mogwai
Run – TOURIST
Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea – XYLØ
Fat Man – Mogwai
America – XYLØ
Lou Lou – Albin Lee Meldau
Communicate – The Dunwells
Black and White Movies – Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness
Tangle Formations – Explosions In The Sky2
Disintegration Anxiety Explosions In The Sky
I’m Not Right – XY&O
Hallucinations – dvsn
Logic of a Dream – Explosions In The Sky
Flare Gun – Woodkid
Dusk Talks – Woodkid
Sorry – LISS3
Tracker – Woodkid
Que Te Mate el Desierto – Woodkid
Weak Force – Mogwai
The Infidelity of Language – Steve Benjamins4
Solitude – M83
Infinite Orbit – Explosions In The Sky
Are You a Dancer? – Mogwai
Land of All – Woodkid5
I’ve Fallen For You – Tom Redwood
Wilderness – Explosions In the Sky
Jump – Woodkid
The Ecstatics – Explosions In the Sky
Bitterness Centrifuge – Mogwai
Shoot Them Down – Woodkid
We Know Where You Go – Blue October
SWORD – ΔUGUST6
Hey Now – The Dunwells
Break Ground – Blue October
Driver – Blue October
Heart Go Bang – Blue October
Houston Heights – Blue October
Home (Tim Palmer Mix) – Blue October7
Jericho – Westerman8
Cara Mia Addio – Aperture Science Psychoacoustics Laboratory910

  1. The “Friday Night Lights” variant. ↩
  2. Oh man I am so happy about this album ↩
  3. Note: this link is to the explicit version. ↩
  4. I just really love that name for a song. ↩
  5. This whole soundtrack is pretty great, actually. ↩
  6. This was hilariously hard to find the Amazon link to – their database apparently isn’t unicode-safe. Weird. ↩
  7. I’d call this my favorite song off of the album so far, but I am so excited about this album. I love Blue October. ↩
  8. Soundcloud link, as I couldn’t find it on Amazon. Which I’m not happy about – Soundcloud doesn’t allow artists to monetize very easily, while Amazon is just like “sure, we’ll sell your stuff for a small cut.” ↩
  9. I wrote a paper about this song for a class – might publish that here, actually, it was pretty interesting. And it’s just a delightfully weird song! ↩
  10. This one’s free to download – you can get the entire soundtrack off their site! ↩
Categories
Playlist

Playlist of the Month: March 2016

I’ve decided that, for some of these things, I’m going to include links to buy the songs1 – make it a bit easier for y’all to find the songs, if you’re interested, and throw a bit of support to the artists.2
5AM – Amber Run
Shiver – Amber Run
I Need My Girl – The National
Forgiven – Millesim Remix – Wolf Colony3
Trusty And True – Damien Rice
Your Hand In Mine – Explosions In The Sky
Hymn for the Weekend – Coldplay
Just My Soul Responding – Amber Run
Elysium – Mendum
On Your Knees – Matthew Mayfield
Team (Lorde Cover) – Matthew Mayfield4
Midnight – Lane 85
Summer Heart – Pretty Haze
Fire – Jack Garratt
You Can’t Save Me – Johnny Stimson
Ghost ft. Patrick Baker (Lane 8 Remix) – Lane 8
But Now A Warm Feel Is Running – Fhin
Haven, Mass (B-Side) – Bon Iver
Canyon Moon – Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness
House for You – LOYAL
Maps For The Getaway – Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness6
Animal – The Dunwells
Your Call – Duck House
In the Air – Star Slinger Remix – Ten Fé
We Were Happy Once (feat. Bess Rogers) – Anya Marina7
Man Of Lies – Blueneck
Broken Fingers – Blueneck
Father, Sister – Blueneck
I Feel The Weight – Miike Snow
Back Of The Car – Miike Snow
Monster – Mumford & Sons
I Will Wait – Mumford & Sons
Hopeless Wanderer – Mumford & Sons
Little Lion Man – Mumford & Sons
Ghost feat. Patrick Baker (Lane 8 Remix) – Lane 88
Smoke Filled Room (Acoustic) – Mako9
Klara (Theo Kottis Remix) – Lane 8
Afterlife – XYLØ10
SCRAM – Mogwai11
Run – TOURIST
Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea – XYLØ
Fat Man – Mogwai
America – XYLØ12
Lou Lou – Albin Lee Meldau13
Communicate – The Dunwells14
BLK CLD – XYLØ
Lucky Ones – The Dunwells15
LA Love Song – XYLØ
She Whispers – The Dunwells
Tzar – Mogwai
Smoke Signals – Hotel Garuda16
MERCURY – YATES17
U-235 – Mogwai18
Will You Wait For Me – The Dunwells
Sunlight (Jody Wisternoff Remix) – Lane 8
Ether – Mogwai

  1. From iTunes or Amazon Music, as those are the two stores I ever use- I used to use Google Play, but haven’t since I switched to iPhone. And I’ve got a Thing against Spotify. ↩
  2. The exact metric by which I’ll decide which ones to link is “randomness with a bias in favor of less-popular groups.” And a good bit towards “new to these lists,” as well. ↩
  3. Fun story: while trying to verify that this was the correct version of the song to link to, I accidentally hit ‘play’ and iTunes started playing a totally different song while the Amazon sample was playing. “This is not at all the right remix,” I thought, before realizing what I’d done. ↩
  4. “I’d normally never listen to Lorde, but I’d listen to an album of you doing Lorde covers.” – someone complimenting me when they heard me singing along to this. Thanks, friend! ↩
  5. This song is so calm, it’s up there with “Your Hand In Mine” in my favorite songs to listen to when I need to defuse a bad mood. Or diffuse it. Either way. ↩
  6. The first few times I listened to this song, I was biking, and what with the wind and all that I couldn’t quite hear the lyrics right, so I spent a while thinking this song was about planning a heist. ↩
  7. For some reason, this song reminds me of a lullaby that I’d listen to as a child. Which is weird, considering how depressing it is. ↩
  8. Why yes, this is the second time this song is on here – one version is the Soundcloud rip (sorry!), and one version is from the actual album. ↩
  9. Another one my roommate gave me, I love this song. ↩
  10. Things I’ve learned today: how to type an uppercase Ø. Shift+option+o, for those wondering. Leaving out the shift gets you the lowercase ø.
    Interesting note about this: you can’t type that character into the Amazon search field. ↩
  11. This whole album is all ‘nuclear history’ references and it makes me so happy ↩
  12. Why yes, I am linking to multiple songs off this album. I’d’ve linked to ‘Afterlife’, as well, but Amazon only has the explicit version and I have very strange ideas about what level of censorship it’s necessary for me to have on this here blog. ↩
  13. The only thing I don’t like about this song is how dang short it is. I want mooooore. ↩
  14. This song is basically how I respond whenever my friends complain to me about their relationship problems. “JUST COMMUNICATE” ↩
  15. For some reason, my laptop saw fit to change ‘Lucky’ to ‘Luckyy.’ … Okay? ↩
  16. This one reminds me of that song. “If our love is tragedy,” yadda yadda. If you lived through, what, 2012? Yeah, I think that was the year. Anyways, if you lived through that year, you know this song. ↩
  17. WHY ARE WE SHOUTING ↩
  18. Get it, because uranium isotopes? heh, I have a weird sense of humor. ↩
Categories
Playlist

Playlist of the Month: February 2016

How did February go past so quickly, when did that even happen? Weird.
Big Jet Plane – Angus & Julia Stone
All I Want – Kodaline
Fast Car – Navarra
I Found – Amber Run
5AM – Amber Run
Shiver – Amber Run
I Need My Girl – The National
Homegrown – Mahama Remix – Haux
Forgiven – Millesim Remix – Wolf Colony
Trusty and True – Damien Rice1
Your Hand In Mine – Explosions In The Sky
Hymn for the Weekend – Coldplay2
Spark – Amber Run
Just My Soul Responding – Amber Run
The Hanging Tree – James Newton Howard
Elysium – Mendum
Ghosts – BANNERS
Start a Riot – BANNERS
Shine a Light – BANNERS
Back When We Had Nothing -BANNERS
On Your Knees – Matthew Mayfield
Team (Lorde Cover) – Matthew Mayfield3
Midnight – Lane 8
Summer Heart – Pretty Haze
Fire – Jack Garratt
You Can’t Save Me – Johnny Stimson
Ghost ft. Patrick Baker (Lane 8 Rework) – Lane 84
But Now A Warm Feel Is Running – Fhin5
Haven, Mass (B-Side) – Bon Iver
Canyon Moon – Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness6
House for You – LOYAL

That’s it for this month – I’ve been so busy with the choir tour and the start of classes7 that I haven’t had a whole lot of time for messing around with my playlists. Hopefully next month’s will be a bit longer.

  1. I did a bit of digging into my old playlists at one point, this one came up. ↩
  2. I didn’t watch the Halftime Show while it was going on – I was actually on a bus, driving away from San Francisco at the time – but I did watch it about a week later. Impressive. ↩
  3. One of the best compliments I got this month was as I was singing along to this- someone told me “I’d never listen to Lorde, but if you did a cover of Lorde I’d listen to that.” Flattering, in a weird way. ↩
  4. Lane 8 was probably my top find for this month, even though it’s only these two songs by them that I actually enjoy. I’m subscribed on Soundcloud, hopefully they’ll release more stuff in this vein. ↩
  5. This is listed as “Deep House” but on name alone I think it deserves honorary standing as “Post-Rock” ↩
  6. Anecdote time: I wound up with this song because I was editing a video for a class and it needed to have some sort of upbeat song playing in the background. But this is me, I don’t have happy music, the closest I get is, like, energetically depressed. I asked Chase if he had any, and this was the only upbeat song he had. We have similar taste in music. ↩
  7. And the various extracurricular nonsense that I choose to get myself embroiled in. ↩
Categories
Playlist

Playlist of the Month: January 2016

How is this month already over? I’m still writing ‘2014’ on my papers sometimes, good lord.1
Slow It Down – The Lumineers
Big Jet Plane – Angus & Julia Stone
All I Want – Kodaline
Fast Car – Navarra
I Found – Amber Run
5AM – Amber Run
Shiver – Amber Run2
I Need My Girl – The National
Safe & Sound (feat. The Civil Wars) – Taylor Swift
Thru – Vallis Alps
Arcadia – Great States
West Egg – Great States
Homegrown – Mahama Remix – Haux
Forgiven – Millesim Remix – Wolf Colony
Trusty and True – Damien Rice
Yellow Flicker Beat – Lorde
All My Love (feat. Ariana Grande) – Major Lazer
Atlas – Coldplay
Your Hand In Mine – Explosions In The Sky3
Just for Now – Pentatonix
The Birds Are Chirping – Beware of Safety
Hymn for the Weekend – Coldplay4
Amazing Day – Coldplay
Spectre – Radiohead
Spark – Amber Run
Just My Soul Responding – Amber Run
Heaven – Amber Run
Kites – Amber Run
Breathe In – Frou Frou
The Hanging Tree – James Newton Howard5
Elysium – Mendum
Valentine’s Day – Linkin Park
Ghosts – BANNERS6
Start a Riot – BANNERS
Shine a Light – BANNERS
Back When We Had Nothing – BANNERS
On Your Knees – Matthew Mayfield7
Team (Lorde Cover) – Matthew Mayfield8
Gold Dust – BANNERS
Midnight – Lane 8

And that’s 2016 begun. A shorter list than the rest, but I’ve been keeping a strange schedule and not gotten a whole lot of new music this month, so oh well.

  1. It takes me a long time to adjust, okay? ↩
  2. I’ve gotta say, Amber Run was probably one of my best finds for all of 2015. ↩
  3. This is the variant off the Friday Night Lights soundtrack. I still haven’t watched that show, actually – the quality of the soundtrack wavers back and forth between being enough to cancel out the fact that football bores me. ↩
  4. I just saw the music video for this one the other day. I liked it! ↩
  5. I believe he’s actually the composer, and that it’s Jennifer Lawrence singing, but that’s how the soundtrack shows up in iTunes, so whatever. ↩
  6. Actually a different version of it than what I had, since he finally released his EP so that I could replace the Soundcloud rip. ↩
  7. I really wasn’t sure that I was going to like this one, and then practically overnight it became the song that I’d skip past a bunch of others to get to. ↩
  8. I’ve never heard the Lorde version. I should probably look that up at some point, if only for comparison. ↩
Categories
Playlist

Playlist of the Month: December 2015

This one is a bit weird, because for a good chunk of the month I wasn’t actually listening to this list – I was going back through the rest of my playlists for the year, in chronological order. Still, it was pretty fun! Anyhow, here’s the December list:
Pacific – Sleeping At Last
Slow It Down – The Lumineers
Big Jet Plane – Angus & Julia Stone
All I Want – Kodaline
Fast Car – Navarra
Ghosts – BANNERS
I Found – Amber Run1
5AM – Amber Run
Shiver – Amber Run
Not Alone – Linking Park
I Need My Girl – The National
Yellow (acoustic version from Jo Whiley’s Lunchtime Social) – Coldplay
King Nine – Blueneck
See You Soon – Coldplay2
Controlled Burn – Tall Heights
Fireproof – The National
Safe & Sound (feat. The Civil Wars) – Taylor Swift
Thru – Vallis Alps
The Running of the Bulls – Tall Heights
Careful Where You Stand – Coldplay3
Woods – Bon Iver
White Winter Hymnal – Pentatonix4
Sleigh Ride – Pentatonix
That’s Christmas To Me – Pentatonix5
Mary, Did You Know? – Pentatonix6
Silent Night – Pentatonix
D to E – MOGWAI
Earth Division – MOGWAI
Arcadia – Great States
West Egg – Great States
Homegrown – Mahama Remix – Haux
Forgiven – Millesim Remix – Wolf Colony
Petals – Biblio
Heart Beats Slow – Angus & Julia Stone
Stay With Me – Angus & Julia Stone7
Driving Home for Christmas – Blueneck
Strong Hand – CHVRCHES
Trusty And True – Damien Rice
Yellow Flicker Beat – Lorde
All My Love (feat. Ariana Grande) – Major Lazer
Scream My Name – Tove Lo
Set The Fire To The Third Bar – Snow Patrol
Atlas – Coldplay
Your Hand In Mine – Explosions In The Sky8
Mary, Did You Know? (feat. The String Mob) – Pentatonix9
Just for Now – Pentatonix
The Birds Are Chirping – Beware of Safety
Rug – Sleeping Lion
Hymn for the Weekend – Coldplay10
Army of One – Coldplay11
A Head Full of Dreams – Coldplay
Start A Riot – BANNERS
Joy to the World – Pentatonix
Amazing Day – Coldplay
Birds – Coldplay
Mi (Soul Channel Rework) – Nils Frahm
808s & birthdaycakes – Tim Legend
La (Sebastian Freij Rework) – Nils Frahm
Re (Helios Rework) – Nils Frahm12
Spectre – Radiohead

That’s all for the year, folks! I’ve now got an entire year of consistently making a playlist for each month!
Well, okay, I had that as of August, but now I’ve got a calendar year.

  1. I’m supposed to be learning this song for voice lessons, but I keep singing one of the low harmonies instead of the melody. I can’t help it, they’re nice harmonies! hashtag-choir-kid-problems ↩
  2. Acoustic version. ↩
  3. Acoustic version. ↩
  4. It wouldn’t be Christmas without a bunch of acapella christmas music. ↩
  5. This song is a lot harder to sing than you’d think. ↩
  6. This one is… pretty much exactly as hard to sing as you’d think. I have a mental block against learning my part. ↩
  7. This song and the one before it are off the Spotify Sessions ↩
  8. This is the 4:11 version off the Friday Night Lights soundtrack. ↩
  9. I keep forgetting I’ve got both versions of this song – with strings and without – in this playlist, and I get confused whenever this version comes on because it’s got more sounds than what I’m expecting. ↩
  10. Me, singing along: “I’m feeling drunk and high, so high, so high…”
    My mom, sitting beside me in the car: “Nice song.” ↩
  11. I really feel like this is two different songs that just happen to share the same lyrics – the bridge in the middle should’ve been a track break. ↩
  12. The fact that ‘Helios’ is in the name keeps making me think of the album cover from the same-titled album by The Fray. ↩