Matthew McVickar

Post-frog.

Bristle-thighed Curlew.

I went on a bird-watching expedition with the Hawaii Audobon today at Campbell National Wildlife Refuge and photographed this migratory shorebird through one of the birder’s scopes.

My garage.

Drawing 5

When I need to focus, I put something on from my ‘Zone’ collection. These are records I can listen to without being distracted and be energized by, because I know every second of them by heart. The playlist itself is a work in progress.

Lion dance!

I won a beat battle here in Honolulu called Beatroot yesterday, put on by Lightsleepers. This qualifies me as one of the six producers to compete in the finals in April. Below, you can listen to all five beats that I used yesterday (plus two that I prepared and didn’t use).

You can also download them all here.

Mousepad.

Is the Consumption of Free Things Still Consumerism?

Is there a tendency to not think of the constant and sizable downloading and following and reading about music as ‘consumption’ and therefore not as ‘consumerism’? Does the fact that most music is now essentially free make consuming it seem less of a bad habit than the purchasing of physical objects? I’d be broke in two weeks if I bought the same amount of sneakers each week as albums I downloaded at no cost (or if I bought all those albums!). This obsessive pursuit of new content and the pushing thereof by media outlets — not just albums and songs, but album art and tracklists and news and tweets — is that not consumerism?

Koʻolau Range

Listen to the last three songs from my set at The Manifest last night. Many thanks to Corby for putting on a great show and to Travis for recording this.

&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href=”http://shownails.bandcamp.com/track/excerpt-from-set” _mce_href=”http://shownails.bandcamp.com/track/excerpt-from-set”&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;[Excerpt From Set] by Welwing&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

What’s Your Most Played Song?

marathonpacks:

“Jesus Fever,” Kurt Vile. 132 plays. One weekend during July counts for about 30 of these, I think. If I were to quantify my love for this song, it “peaked” then.

Pay it forward!

It’s gotta be ‘Bros.’ And… Last.fm confirms, with 149 plays.

iTunes has a different story to tell, likely because of scrobbling inconsistencies: The Books’ ‘None but Shining Hours’, with 193 plays, followed by ‘Bros’ with 152. (The rest of both lists is mostly dominated by more Panda Bear, Animal Collective, and Caribou.)

The two third-most-played songs in iTunes (tied at 106 plays) are special, so I’ll take this opportunity to talk briefly about them:

Cocteau Twins — Cherry-coloured Funk (Seefeel Remix)
An amazing reimagining of an excellent song. On many occasions a few years ago, this was my go-to track to put on repeat while lying in bed trying to ruminate my way out of an episode of depression. The synth pads are the sort you can curl yourself into, and the lyrics of the repetitive, glossolalic vocal sample are ambiguous enough for a very comforting sort of projecting – words like ‘still’ and ‘cried’ and ‘being’ and ‘should’ are audible and easy to grab on to as emotionally resonant; the rest are mostly unclear, offering themselves up for myriad interpretations.

Lotus Plaza — These Years
Lotus Plaza is the solo project of Deerhunter guitarist Lockett Pundt. ‘These Years’, a song from his underrated debut album, holds a secret in its construction. To hear it, open iTunes and queue up the song.¹ Under Preferences → Playback, turn on ‘Crossfade Songs’ and set the time to 12 seconds (the maximum). With the song on repeat (so that the end fades into the beginning), you’ll notice that the last note of the song, D, is resolved by the first note of the song, C. (C is the tonic of C major, the key of this song!)² It sounds wonderful because we like resolution, and the song seems to loop forever with no discernable breaking point.

If you don’t have this song in your iTunes, you can achieve the same effect ‘by hand’ with Two YouTube Videos and a Motherfucking Crossfader. ↩

If my music theory is way off, let me know – I only sort of know what I’m talking about. ↩

An awesome selection from Kevin McMahan’s recently completed cameramail project. See the whole set.

Back in 2006 I took the idea for cameramail from Kyle Van Horn and sent a few disposable cameras taped to a piece of cardboard through the mail. I got a small set of photos back, tried a few more, got nothing back, and more or less forgot about the project.

In March of 2011, though, the project was discovered by Photojojo, and from there it made it to Lomography, Reddit, b3ta, Laughing Squid, Boing Boing, Neatorama, and elsewhere. I was even interviewed for the Toronto Star. A number of Redditors and Flickr members wanted to try cameramail, so I constructed and sent out three more. I have yet to hear back from any of them. Hunter’s is the first successful project I’ve been notified of.