photos from the ANDREW BIRD show at dream factory. frankly, not one of the best shows I’ve been to, mostly due to the crappy sound situation at dream factory, as well as the general layout of the venue. when that place gets packed, it’s a miserable time, anyone not standing within a couple feet of the stage can’t see anything except for the tall assholes in front of them, which leads to alot of chatter and general sounds of revelry from the back. still, i had a good time, i stood on the wings of the stage for a while and he really is a great performer, as well as an excellent whistler. yay!

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stoked to see that my friends at SPLITWORKS are bringing more awesome Canadian bands to China! HOLLERADO are doing an insane 14 city tour across the PRC and they’ve even organized a chinese site to generate more buzz. they play this SUNDAY at YUYINTANG. see you there!

ps. also stoked that the GREAT LAKE SWIMMERS are gonna be rolling by in january. yay, canada!

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settling fairly quickly into a winter rhythm, cold weather means bundling up and more time spent in the kitchen and in the bedroom. the fog is upon us this afternoon (peep the view out the w+k windows) and all i wanna do is crawl under the covers. made a new mix, full of warm & fuzzy!

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CLICK TO DOWNLOAD: FALL/WINTER 2009

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DOWNLOAD: lovesongs.zip — (original image here)

so we flew back from beijing early on saturday after the monster SOURCE party and slept for a couple of hours before going to see the fucking yuyintang. even though we were super tired, i was SO GLAD we went, those dudes rocked super hard and stage dived and sweat their asses off and it was one of the best shows i’ve been to in what feels like ages. i also managed to get a sweet spot up on stage, so it helped that i didn’t get trampled in that sweaty, crazy, dancing crowd.

thanks SPLITWORKS for yet another awesome gig. check out more handsome furs photos HERE ON MY FLICKR.

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it’s been a while since i last updated with a downloadable mix (up + down!), life has been so bizzeee though! here’s my latest though, it’s full of very earnest, pretty, quiet songs. the original image for this mix can be found here (thanks dropular!)

DOWNLOAD: THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST.

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another late night in the office, waiting for a dinner delivery of indian food and catching up on the day. too many meetings and craziness in the afternoon means post-office hours are the only time when things really get done. tired tired tired, but listening to alot of new songs lately and posting up a quickie mix of pretty pretty sounds i’m into. at this point, i’m not even sure if anyone’s listening, nevertheless, but here it is, from me to you xx.

<< DOWNLOAD LETSMAKEPRETTY >>

ten relatively new summer jams to dance to!

yesterday marked the hottest day shanghai had to suffer through in 65 years! it was so hot i was melting, i can’t even describe how awful it is. supposedly it was 40°C, but i swear i saw a report saying it was 46°C with the heat index. i feel like i’m living in a stinky dumpster.

<<download ten summer jams>>

alot of my friends like to tease me about my high-school years in the seventh day adventist christian wilderness, but i stick to my guns and tell them where to shove it. however, it’s always bummed me out a bit that christian music gets such a bad rap. it’s not true that it’s all horrid, you have just have to look past that whole DC Talk jesus freak rabbbble rabble.

my friend nathaniel from splitworks and i have talked about this before, and i think a big part of it is getting over the ‘christian rock’ label and just listening to things you like. maybe “serious” christians will disagree with me, but it’s all about feeling something in what you’re hearing, feeling amazed and thankful for all the cool shit we get to see and experience on an everyday basis.

the search party for example, were a fantastic christian folk/psych that came out of california in the late 60s, and their music is haunting and amazing and beautiful all at once. the innocence mission are another band i really like who use christian imagery in the prettiest way imaginable. bands like danielson are so fun you wanna puke but also so sweet and ridiculous you can’t help but like them.

i’ve put together a zip folder of 5 songs i really like by christian artists – i used to try and figure out what was ‘christian’ and what was just ‘music’, but i’ve decided it doesn’t matter. you can download the folder here (thanks sam for hosting!).

the songs are:

001 danielson – did i step on your trumpet
002 neutral milk hotel – king of carrot flowers pt 2+3
003 search party – speak to me
004 innocense mission – tomorrow on the runway
005 pedro the lion – indian summer

saw this beautiful site mentioned in okaygreat this morning – singer/songwriter mitch davis, aka orba squara, has a new album coming out called “the trouble with flying.” to help promote the release, he recently (with the random collective) launched a super ambitious web experience that weaves his song’s lyrics with documentation of a ten day journey across america.

the website is literally one long (420 ft!) scrolling set of images that feature a mixture of photo collage work, beautiful typography, and contextual illustration. i don’t know much about his music, but the site is incredible – check it out!