I love The Cinematic Orchestra

A few weeks ago I mentioned mentioned the Lounge Anthology album, and since then I’ve really gotten into The Cinematic Orchestra, a UK based Nu Jazz/Downtempo group of awesome awesomeness. These guys exemplify everything I love about the genre. Unsurprisingly, they’ve shot up on my Last.fm charts; #2 most played in the last 3 months (behind post-rock band Mono) and #11 on my overall.

A good number of their songs can be listened to in full on their last.fm page, but here’s a couple I’m particularly in love with:

To Build A Home

Man With The Movie Camera

All That You Give

Evolution

On a slightly related note, BreadofWonder just linked me to this really awesome youtube vid of a guy covering the song Clutter via Sax:

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On the eve of a new number.

Just some random thoughts. Finished the archives and contact pages and I decided to get rid of “About” too. I just can’t be bothered writing enough about myself to fill it up. Lame, I know.

It just occurred to me that this is my very last day as a 22 year old. Not going to waste time reflecting on what has been a generally uneventful and slightly disappointing year.

My Sennheiser headphones finally crapped out. Given the abuse I made them endure I can’t say I’m surprised. This comes at a bad time, though. It’ll be awhile before I can replace them even considering how drastically they’ve dropped in price; next time I’m going wireless.

On the music side of things, I picked up Lounge Anthology: Cool Session yesterday. I haven’t gotten through half of it and I’m already amazed by how awesome the tracklisting is so far. I’ve fiddled with uAudio a bit. It’s a wordpress music player plugin and it seems fairly nifty. I think I’ve gotten it working, too, so let’s give it a whirl!

5 tracks from the album (click to plaaaaay):

One Self – Bluebird

Dajla – Routine

Alif Tree – Forgotten Places

Shazz – Sit Down

Diplo -Into The Sun

Shazz is a name I’d hitherto never heard of, in particular. I listened to “Sit Down” and was immediately reminded of Moby due to their similar sampling style. Cool, yah?

It’s not yet noon. I think some breakfast is in order, and maybe afterwards I’ll stop procrastinating and do my homework.

March to March.

Time flies, and such. Come the 11th, Aaronology.net will be a year old. If I let my mind linger on how little I’ve done with the site I’ll probably get frustrated and a bit down. But it’s really not all that bad. What’s a year, and what’s 60 bucks, anyway?

Jazz is playing on the last.fm radio, Nina Simone. It’s a nice change from everything I’ve been listening to recently. I’ve been gorging myself on post-rock for the last few months, particularly the band Mono and just recently Mogwai, God Is An Astronaut, Red Sparowes, and others. I listened to them while dozing off to sleep, while gaming, in the shower, doing homework, and any other time I could get close to my music. I guess I overdid it somewhere along the way. Something snapped, ha, and yesterday morning I found myself unable to bear any more post rock.

Weird, yeah? The point is I needed a change and jazz called out to me. And what music, too. I’ve adored everything I’ve heard so far, loving tracks left and right. Lee Morgan, Miles Davis, Stanly Jordan, Dinah Washington… names I’ve either never heard of or never cared for until now. But I’m quickly discovering that Jazz fits me like a well tailored suit. That shouldn’t be a surprise, I guess. I take after my dad in nearly everything else and this is his favorite music; heck, the only thing I think he’ll acknowledge as music.

Austin is curled up on my pillow behind me. My shades are drawn. The house is quiet. It feels like an easygoing day.