THE STATE OF THE CONTINUUM
Upon conducting a recent inventory of my master list, I have discovered that I've discussed and/or linked to 111 of 361 tracks, which translates to roughly 30.7% of everything that I plan to cover, as of today's date. That's more than I thought I had gotten to, but there is a long way to go yet, not to mention any future additions. While I'm always seeking new tracks to expand my library, I have unearthed quite a bit already, and if that 361 number would never change, I would still be satisfied that I had done all that I can do.
ELECTRIFYING ART FOR AN ELECTRIFIED HEART
What's exciting about the current state of music is how connected everything can be, especially if your favorite artists have social-media accounts where they distribute their content. If an artist has created something that is top tier, in my eyes, then I want to support that creation, if I can. A $1.29 (or so) a song isn't much, but it's something. Now, I've been into various memorabilia collecting off and on over the years, mainly in sports and non-sports trading cards, as well as some miscellaneous art purchases of the starving-artist variety, including music downloads. The former of which I have largely outgrown, and the latter of which I have become completely addicted to [music]. This leads me to some of my music memorabilia, which is basically all that you see here, outside of music CDs, boxed sets and band t-shirts.
Pictured above is a robot-shaped USB drive from MC Lars that contains a digital album of
This Gigantic Robot Kills. According to Wikipedia,
Lars is "the self-proclaimed originator of 'post-punk laptop rap,'" in addition to a lot of his music being comedy-based, "Weird Al" Yankovic style. I mention it because, sadly, the only reason I ever heard of him was due to someone's death. Lars was one of the musicians that this person's mother had mentioned, and there was a song by Lars that I was surprised I liked as much as I did. Although I've not yet found a proper way to go into more detail on this, that USB drive and subsequent photo only came into my collection because the song has a story, which serves as a reminder of how powerful and important music can be.
Album: Prelude EP
I went to a ton of rock concerts
back in my day, but it never really behooved me to get an autographed anything. Autographed items were reserved for other hobbies I was into at the time. Recently, I couldn't pass up an opportunity to grab an auto'd CD from Veela, a vocalist who is fairly popular in the underground electronic scene, and one from which I will have several songs to post.
Left: Prelude EP, signed by Veela
Middle: MC Lars USB drive w/digital album
Right: Tritonia - Chapter 002 album, signed by Tritonal
Art drawn by Veela
Who's Veela, you ask? Right. It's this chick:
Rudebrat (ft. Veela & NLJ) - "Bad Wolf Bay"
^^ Some YouTubers are saying this is a Doctor Who reference, but I can't remember the last time I've been in a phone booth, so I'm not up to speed on such things. Whether the references are in the video or lyrics, or both, I dunno. I dig the production that Rudebrat was able to bring to the track. Veela's vocals are also ace. NLJ is the rapper dude. This is one of those tracks that I found from clicking on a bunch of random YouTube videos, instead of getting it from Pandora or the radio. It makes me wonder how much other good music there is out there that I will never get to hear.
Left: "Jaded" ;
Right: "Katharsis"
Artist: Cyril Rolando
I thought about getting prints of these two pieces of digital art ever since I saw them in their respective music videos. That is to say, I sat on the idea for a long time, simply because I'm a cheapskate. As you can see, I finally broke down and placed an order. These two pieces arrived a few weeks ago, and they now adorn my walls.
This is the music that accompanies "Katharsis":
Levi Whalen (ft. Wonder) - "Find You" [Karlington Remix]
Without the entries you see in this journal, my music collection would have remained lackluster for who knows how long. I think, as it's hard to say what other shape it would've taken without the discovery of this type of music. Having been out of music for several years prior, more or less, it's great to be back, and I'm having a good time doing it. As it were, finding great art in a fresh, organic way like this has always been my can of soda, and the fact that so much of it is tied to music that I really, really like, well that's just hot sex.