Posts tagged “Leeni”.

As a follow-up to my Festivus Round-up, creative collective The Beta Society has posted the entirety of the movie portion of A Very Alan Thickemas. It features the real voice of Alan Thicke, and also an impersonated voice of Alan Thicke. It’s directed by Celene Ramadan, who you might also know as chiptune musician Leeni. Yes, it’s a puppet musical.

Happy Festivus, everyone! I hope you get to air some good grievances. I hope the plain aluminum pole is not too distracting. And I hope you win the Feats of Strength!

Here I’m going to round-up a big random heaping of things I’ve found interesting recently. Artists, websites, musics, games, whatever. In random order:

Michaela Eaves

I saw her at a studio open house where she had some paintings and prints out for display. I really dug the way her paintings have heavy outlines, and the way the lines break up the colors in such a way that her paintings almost look like stained glass.

She also had an adorable painting of a rocket ship, done in a soft, children’s book style of painting. I dug it, but I can’t find a picture on her website (which is mostly about her graphic design & illustration business):
www.michaelaeaves.com

8-Bit Jesus

I thought this was pretty spectacular. Not only did Doctor Octoroc (sic) make 8-bit chiptune versions of many Christmas songs for his album 8-Bit Jesus, but he also wrote them in the specific styles of various 8-bit video games. My favorites are definitely “Carol of the Belmonts,” “Bubbles We Have Heard on High,” and “8 Days of Master Robots,” which very excellently captures the essence of the Mega Man experience. Also, “Icarus! The Herald Angels Sing” is quite accurate. Check it out:
http://www.doctoroctoroc.com/8BitJesus/

Machinarium

Machinarium is a beautifully done, old-style, point-and-click adventure video game, unbelievably done entirely in Flash. I like it ’cause it’s about robots. But more than that, the world is completely enthralling, and the puzzles all involve robot logic more than real-world logic.

The art style is pretty much spectacular. You can play a demo for free, or buy and download the full version here:
http://machinarium.net/

Kaiju Dance to Thriller

Just what the title says: a bunch of Kaiju dance to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.”

Wonder Woman Pumps

This woman takes shoes and tastefully collages them with pages from Wonder Woman comic books. She tends to use mostly monochromatic images, so the effect is a little subtler than you might expect.

She has an etsy shop where she makes all kinds of shoes and boots (not just Wonder Woman):
http://www.etsy.com/shop/Pachainkapink

Regurgitated Thanksgiving Dinner Scarf

Taisha McGee sells what she calls “Ugly Scarves.” They’re mostly actually quite pretty, but she nevertheless gives them hilarious names based loosely on their color schemes, names like “Mulched Roses,” “Tidy Bowl,” “Moldy Cheese,” “Mushy Froot Loops,” and my favorite, “Regurgitated Thanksgiving Dinner.” She also has the sense of humor to take photos of the scarves wrapped around a cardboard stand-up of John Wayne. Bravo!

Check them all out at her etsy shop:
http://www.etsy.com/shop/TaishaMcGee

Alexis St.John

An artist whose work I saw in a tea shop in Downtown Tacoma (Mad Hat Tea, 1130 Commerce Street) and I liked the humor and simplicity in it. I also really appreciated how most of the paintings were really small; a lot of ‘em were only like 6″ × 6″, and I don’t think anything of hers gets over 20″ in any direction.

You can buy the actual artwork, of if you’d prefer you can buy frameable prints of it.
http://alexisstjohn.com/Gallery.html

TheSixtyOne

TheSixtyOne.com is a fascinating idea for a democratic music website, where the more people like a song the more popular it becomes, and ANYONE can upload ANY song they’ve created (as long as they’re legally allowed to blah, blah, blah, y’know).

Not only that, but it turns listening to music into kind of an RPG. You gain experience (called “reputation”) and rise in levels. There are quests (like “Listen to 7 recently-uploaded songs” or “Listen to the radio stations of 5 other people for 5 minutes each”) that let you earn experience and “hearts,” which you can use to mark a song as a favorite (i.e., you heart the song). And you also earn experience as other people later heart songs that you previously hearted. The more reputation you have, the more likely other people are to listen to your opinions (in theory at least). So you get tangible rewards for finding new, unheard songs that you really like and then getting other people to like them as well, other than the reward of discovering good music.

Also, TheSixtyOne.com is the only place right now where you can hear Taisha’s musc (yes, the same Taisha that makes those scarves). Just go here:
http://www.thesixtyone.com/taisha/

A Very Alan Thickemas

THE Alan Thicke, Leeni, and puppets. Lots and lots of puppets. And Blake Lewis is somehow involved. It exists, I just have no idea of how to see it. Other than these:

That’s about it for now.

One thing you might not know about me is that I don’t listen to a lot of music, by which I mean I tend to focus on a small selection of music and then listen to it over and over and over again.

One of the things I do is I make Mix CDs that I listen to while I’m driving around—to and from work, to and from Fools Play, etc. Thing is, I only make one Mix CD about every three months and that’ll be pretty much all that I’ll listen to until I make another one.

Traditionally I go iTunes and organize my music by most recently added, then start pulling the best songs over to a new playlist as I work my way back in time through my music collection. This way my Mix CDs tend to have a handful of songs that I’ve acquired recently. I also try not to put in too many songs that were in my previous Mix CD. But I don’t add much music to my collection very often, so doing it that way only fills up a portion of the CD. So then I delve into my list of all-time most listenable songs. Y’know, the songs that I don’t really ever get tired of listening to (the playlist that I call “Ultimate Flawless Victory” in iTunes) and toss in a few of those. Then I look at all of the songs in my collection that I’ve given four or five stars and toss in a few of those.

These Mix CDs are both reflective and projective. I try to incorporate how my musical tastes have changed over the past three months while at the same time trying to predict what I’ll want to listen to for the next three months.

Here are the last two CDs I created:

August 2009:

1. Always Been There Anyway – Julia Massey
2. Around the Bend – The Asteroids Galaxy Tour
3. Brain Problem Situation – They Might Be Giants
4. Buddy Holly – Weezer
5. Cellars by Starlight – Kay Hanley
6. Golden Blunders – The Posies
7. Good Fish – Julia Massey
8. Have a F*****g Baby – Three Ninjas
9. Headphones on Your Heart – Leeni
10. House of Mayors – John linnell
11. The Last Thing On Your Mind – Lights
12. Little Fighter X – Fighter X
13. Lollipop – Mika
14. Lovebite – Order of the Crimson Wizard
15. Me + Yr Daughter – Natalie Portman’s Shaved Head
16. Over and Over – Leeni
17. Red Underwears – Three Ninjas
18. Say It Ain’t So – Weezer
19. Shut Up and Let Me Go – The Ting Tings
20. Soft Rocked By Me – Jonathan Coulton
21. Somewhere on This Couch – The Crazy Boy Floyds
22. The Way I Am – Ingrid Michaelson
23. You Don’t Know Me – Ben Folds (featuring Regina Spektor)

November 2009 (there is one repeat song from the August CD—see if you can spot it)

1. Dance, Dance, Dance – Lykke Li
2. Dirt Bike – They Might Be Giants
3. Doll Partz – Order of the Crimson Wizard
4. Heading Out at Dawn – Terrapin Productions
5. Jenny Towner – Julia Massey
6. Los Angeles – They Might Be Giants
7. Mario’s Café – Saint Etienne
8. Powers – Three Ninjas
9. Pride & Strawberry Wine – The Wastelanders
10. A Quiet Room – Tangentbot
11. Secret Skin – Busdriver
12. Spin Around – Josie & The Pussycats
13. Stairs – Locust Street Taxi
14. Starry Eyed Surprise – Oakenfold
15. Stop – Spice Girls
16. Sun Shower – Busdriver
17. Teenage Dirtbag – Wheatus
18. Theme from “Greatest American Hero” – Joey Scarbury
19. True Affection – The Blow
20. Ugly Girl – Fleming & John
21. Vancouver – They Might Be Giants
22. Veronica – Elvis Costello
23. The Way I Am – Ingrid Michaelson
24. What’s Golden – Jurassic 5
25. Your Love Is a Drug – Puffy AmiYumi

I have no idea what these songs say about me, so feel free to psychoanalyze me to your hearts’ content based solely on the content of these lists. Enjoy!

Last night I headed up to Seattle to meet up with @gendlec and my brother to see a performance by a whole bunch of 8-Bit chiptune musicians.

The show was at the Vera Project on the back side corner of the Seattle Center. It is a strange little place—a youth center for and run by youth (of all people). It has a rather large-ish room with a stage in it. Strangely, this is not where the show happened. The musicians set up on tables out in the lobby area. The sound system in there was less than stellar, and the sound board looked to be run by a 15- or 16-year-old, so there were often problems with the volume levels and sound mixing.

1st up: FIGHTER X (MySpace)

Fighter X is an instrumentalist – no singing. Good stuff, though his live set tended to be a bit more dance-oriented than his recorded stuff, or maybe that’s just the way it came off on big speakers. He had a couple of Gameboys and a handful of other electronics equipment. He got really into the performance. He reminded me of a younger, red-headed “Piz” from Veronica Mars.

2nd up: LEENI (Website, MySpace)

Leeni is the real reason why I went to this show. I’ve been a fan of her music for about a year but had never gotten to see her live. She played a good set that was unfortunately plagued by technical difficulties—her vocal mic kept on getting feedback, a cable started dying, and the sound mix was less than stellar. She seemed pretty frustrated with it by the end, which was too bad. I still enjoyed her performance, though, and so did @gendlec. Plus she’s adorable! Like a tiny version of Missy Peregrym (from Reaper and Stick It) with pink hair. I bought her new CD, Labyrinth, which I like quite a lot. It’s creepier than her previous album.

3rd up: KGHB (KIDS GET HIT BY BUSES) (MySpace)

These guys were frikkin’ hilarious. They dressed in matching red/white/silver, skin-tight outfits. They were all bravado and fearless energy. Their core was chiptune music, but they also had a vocoder synth, and the 2nd guy had two strap-on synthesizers that he kept on switching between, sometimes several times per song. He would often spend more time switching synths than he would playing them, which was very funny. They also had props! The lead singer put on goggles for no reason at one point. They had print-outs of some dude’s face that they wore on their hands and heads and performed a dance routine with. The crowd seemed most familiar with their songs and got into it. @gendlec recorded video of a couple of songs, so I’m gonna see about getting them from her and posting them here sometime soon. After their set they didn’t have a CD for sale, so we asked them what their MySpace was and they gave us some free buttons!

4th up: CIRCLES (MySpace)

Circles was one guy with a chiptune setup but also with an electric guitar. He impressed me least of all of them, though there was nothing at all bad about his performance or music. He did end the night with a Blink 182 cover, which was… an unfortunate thing to do. He seemed the most “mainstream” of them all. Plus we were pretty tired by this time.

Then we went to our separate homes.

Anyway, all of these artists are part of CrunchyCo, specifically Crunchy Records, which is a local group of chiptune musicians.

Some notes about the Youth of American as seen from our vantage point during the show: all boys are now wearing super-skinny, tapered jeans and their haircuts cover their ears. I don’t think I saw a single pair of ears on any of the men at this show. Their haircuts were either like Zac Efron or like Ryan Hansen (Dick Casablancas from Veronica Mars).

Here is a fascinating coincidence: The guy who animated one of Leeni’s videos (the one I posted here last week) and drew the album cover for one of Fighter X’s albums? Turns out that he’s none other than @GoshaDole , my good pal @elgaladwen’s boyfriend! I never knew that! Pretty awexeome, if you ask me.

Here is an adorable video for one of Leeni’s songs:

I totally dig Leeni’s stuff. Her 8-Bit Heart album was my Album of the Month last April. I should probably pick up her new album, Labyrinth. She’s having a show on Wednesday the 8th of April with Fighter X, another really good chiptune musician. I could probably buy Labyrinth directly from Leeni’s merch table there. Anybody wanna go see this show with me?