My ability to maintain a blog is really a sad state of affairs. Would you believe that this blog has been around since 2006? It is turning 7-years-old this July. What have I got so far? Some 120 posts, is all. Not even half the posts I would have accumulated if I were to update daily in a year. My bad – no excuses this time. I got lazy. I didn’t feel like writing on here anymore.
I asked myself what the root of the problem was. One thing I noticed is how I was hoarding a lot of things on this blog to the point of overwhelming. It turned in to a salad of passions, but not the good kind. Content was stale and put up for the sake of having one, which is a contradiction to the whole passion idea because my writing had grown lackluster as time went on.
Also, I felt like it was too chunky.
Well, enough of the self-deprecation. It’s spring time here in California and the season is ripe for some cleaning. Oh, by the way, one big life event that I need to point out is my moving to America. Why is this a big deal? Well, I have used this blog to somehow leverage the music scene back home during my heydays. Now that I am here, I feel really out of touch. Can’t say I’ve been compelled to switch bases and be in touch with the scene out here. The truth is, music consumption here is very different from what I’ve been accustomed to back home. There’s a community but unfortunately, I am not part of it. There’s a quality of isolation to how I get in to my music. There’s more control because streaming here is just seamless compared to the Philippines, but then again, it really is just a bunch of stuff I enjoy on my own in the privacy of my bedroom.
So cleanliness is key. Clean slate and maybe, I will be reinvigorated to fill up this blog again. I’ve cleaned out the plot and it’s time to plant fresh seeds. I am actually planning to delete all tags/categories and create new ones. This site is receiving a total overhaul! And notice too the singular post per page. For a change, I want to go minimalist and direct my reader’s focus on…reading. There will be some listening too, but we will get to that shortly.
Don’t get me wrong, I have kept abreast with the goings-on of music in 2013. One of my favorite things to fantasize about is the idea of going to a Sigur Ros concert which is actually taking place in Santa Barbara next month. It’s a bit of a trip from where I live but well within Southern California. Sadly, I am not actually going. Nevertheless, it did not stop me from listening to their superb album, which you could conveniently listen to here. I honestly love the vibe of this album. It seems to me they have returned to the ethereal sounds reminiscent of their 1999 album Ágætis byrjun. I don’t even know how to pronounce that, as is any other song they have throughout their discography (unless of course you speak Icelandic). Just hum along! Feel their music reverberate in your soul and permit it to take you elsewhere, most likely outer space.
One other album that has captivated my ears as of late is Tegan and Sara’s Heartthrob, which came out in an internet release. I have to say, internet releases have been quite the buzz out here lately. Last year, Frank Ocean launched Channel Orange and fans were just all over it. It seems to be the trend nowadays and Tegan and Sara have seized popularity by just building anticipation among their most loyal fans and using the internet to simultaneously unleash it to them. Of course, if you are accustomed to Tegan and Sara in their most adored state (Refer to Saint album), then the release must have come as a surprise. But no biggie, right? One other thing which amuses me is the image of a stereotypical West Hollywood club-hopping queer catching on to these more accessible renderings from the twins. It is definitely their break-in-to-mainstream album, but unpretentiously so. The album is full of very well-executed pop songs – my favorite would have to be Now I’m all messed up. It is probably a step done from most people’s favorite, which just proves my point about the whole break-in-to-mainstream. Who cares? Cry foul for sell outs? Pfft. It really doesn’t matter if you have your street cred behind you AND you’ve got a more embracing type of music which was just pulled off effortlessly. Respect.
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Check out the remixes too. Again, unpretentious and utterly mainstream in vibe.
See ya later.