John Ash vs Deerhunter

John Ash is a true Dudebro. He was the first to chose 4 songs (last week at Pizza Di Roma). Let's hear it for John Ash!

1. Nothing Ever Happened

2. Hazel St

3. Cryptograms

4. Desire Lines

catching up - pitchfork 2011

Sometimes I get bogged down in doing listening homework before fests. Lollapalooza is always the worst (or the best) for this--there are so many potential future favorites that I don't recognize when the lineup's announced.

Pitchfork has been rolling out stellar lineups for a few years now. While no day of this year's fest touches the near-perfection of Sunday 2010, this year's lineup is full of my favorites. Recently, though, as conversations turn to the fest it becomes apparent that some of the bands I don't know too well (Superchunk, Neko Case) are some of the sets my friends are looking forward to the most. The opposite was also often true, but instead of just finding more about my friends' favorites one-on-one I thought it'd be fun to compile a list and post it here.

I've asked a few of my friends to pick a favorite band of theirs playing the festival. The challenge was for them to showcase the group using only 4 songs chosen to entice a stranger to the band. I've been really pleased with the responses I got--overall this has been a lot of fun to put together! I'll be rolling out posts until the fest starts. If you'd like to choose the 4 songs that best highlight a band's catalog, just send me your submissions and I'll put them up!

Edit: I've got 10 of these posts up now. Check them out!

Ice Cream Pain Job

fistful of love

Antony looks a little bit like Andy Milonakis in this one. THIS IS SO GOOD.

New/Old Sounds

Buy a new needle. Listen to your records backwards. Slow them down, and then slow them less partway through a song. Play them forwards. Finally give your slipmat some use--slow or speed revolutions with your hand. You're Making Art (at the very least, you're on your way).

Anyhow, I've had a lot of fun with that lately. This is especially fun with those 25 cent records you picked up at a garage sale in 2008 and still haven't listened to because the warped voices are less likely to sound out of tune if you haven't familiarized yourself with them.

catching up

I've been posting too many links on facebook lately. Here you go, hear this.

1. Zach Hill - The Primitives Talk

2. Emeralds

Album of the year? One of them, at least.

3. sufjan sufjan sufjan

Heading over to the project lodge to listen to Julian Lynch's new album. Catch you later

fixing small spindle holes

Summer is upon us at Madison so expect a lot of postponed blog ideas from asly in the coming weeks.

If you are one of the increasing number of people buying new vinyl (way to be!) chances are good that you have encountered a record with too small of a spindle hole. I'm not sure what the deal is here. I asked my father if he had this problem 'in his day' and he said he didn't. They don't make 'em like they used to, eh?

There's probably some product out there to fix this problem. I don't know what it is and I can't imagine it would be cost effective when there are a few good home-made remedies. One article I found suggested using a scissors to scrape a bigger hole. This seems a bit intense to me.

My favored method for enlarging spindle holes is to use sandpaper.

1. Acquire sandpaper.

2. Roll up into a spindle-sized tube. Hold in place with a rubber band.

3. Insert into spindle hole and spin record. Don't spin it more than a few times before checking how it fits into the spindle--you don't want it to get too big. Usually one or two spins is all it takes.




All better! Now it looks good AND plays without being forced onto your turntable.

Okay now, remember to be careful. Take off the least amount of hole-clogging vinyl possible and you should be golden. Let me know how this works for you/what you do when you get a record that doesn't easily fall into place on your player.