Likes & Likes

If you watched the Grammy’s last night, it might have left you feeling a bit like it did for us. Seemingly most of America is listening to the same three artists: Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift and Beyonce.

Last night’s pop culture awakening might contribute to why I found this site My City vs. Your City so interesting. The website enables visitors to compare listening patterns of respective cities, based on data from Last.fm. The website was developed by German creative coder Michael Schieben.

Truth be told, it seems Lady Gaga is popular everywhere.

Also, become friends with Likes and Likes on Last.fm here and here.

Likes and Likes Mixtape - Volume 3 - Wintry Mix

Click the player above the image to stream the mix online. To download this mix, click the above image, or press the download button to the right of the player, then select “Page” or “File” from your browser’s toolbar, then select “Save As…” and save the file to your desktop.

Tracklist:

Impossible (Possible Version) - Shout Out Louds
Plain Material - Memory Tapes
Talamak - Toro y Moi
Oh Naoko - Sun Airway
Walkabout (feat. Noah Lennox) - Atlas Sound
Golden Phone - Micachu and the Shapes
You’ve Got the Love (Florence and the Machine cover) - The XX
A Horse Is Not A Home - Miike Snow
Poison Lips - Vitalic
Sky Ghosts - The Depreciation Guild
In Your Heart - A Place to Bury Strangers
Swim - Surfer Blood
The Zookeeper’s Boy - Mew
Dominos - The Big Pink
Who Makes Your Money - Spoon
Watch The Waves - Taken by Trees
Paradise Circus (feat. Hope Sandoval) - Massive Attack
Norway - Beach House
No Need to Cry - British Sea Power
Change of Heart - El Perro del Mar

Previous Likes and Likes mixes:
Volume 2 - Fall into Winter
Volume 1 - Summer

We’ve all had to deal with those flimsy plastic headphones that came with some CD player or other device. We hated them for their cheap tiny sound and instant break-ability. We’ve also used ear-buds, which are fine for a quick listen when commuting or working out at the gym. But sometimes, you really want to hear your music. Fully appreciate it. Take in every nuance. Thankfully there’s a way to do it without breaking the bank on a roomful of equipment and having your neighbors calling the police on your high-volume escapades. Enter Grado Labs headphones.

Billing themselves as the world’s finest headphones (and phonograph cartridges), this Brooklyn-based company has been making audio accessories for over 50 years. They are one of the oldest family-owned companies in the audio industry, and (according to their website) still make every product by hand.

I really dislike the Apple ear-buds, and I wanted to pair a more substantial set of cans to my iPod (and now iPhone). After doing some research, I decided to test-drive the Prestige Series of headphones, winners of more awards than any other headphone line in the world. Amazingly, despite the accolades, these SRs are entry-level cans, and so were relatively inexpensive at about $100.

I compared both the SR60 and SR80 models (they’ve recently upgraded them and added an “i” to their names), and while the SR60 sounded fantastic, I was really blown away by the warmth, vibrancy and size of the sound produced by the SR80s. It’s really like nothing you’ve ever heard from chintzy headphones that usually come with most consumer electronics.

By the way - I bought these headphones well over 5 years ago. So far I’ve only had to replace the foam earpads - they got a little torn from toting them everywhere. And once, when I got tangled up in the cans’ seemingly never-ending cable, I yanked the wiring out of one of the cups. I sent them back to Grado for repair, and had them back in a week. Who repairs stuff like this anymore, let alone the original manufacturer?

So, what next? I’m sure I could really get some great sound out of my iPod/iPhone and draw less battery power by using an amplifier. I also might try my hand at a few modifications. But for now they’re still going strong. It’s pretty much a perfect setup, and one I can’t recommend enough.

How F*cking Romantic, is a project by an ever-growing group of (mostly) London-based artists who have taken on illustrating every song on the Magnetic Fields’ epic 3-disc 69 Love Songs.

See the completed favorites on the How F*cking Romantic blog while listening to your favorite tracks.

My new favorite band of 2009 had to be The xx. The boy and I saw them play live twice (once at the Apple Soho store and then a full set at Webster Hall).

An installation music video sculpture for The xx is currently on display at the Vinyl Factory in London. The sculpture by Saam Farahmand, evolved out of the artist’s interest in exploring what music videos can offer. “Music videos are a 2D visual interpretation of a song,” he explains. “We are interested in creating spaces that exist as a 3D physical interpretation of a song or an album, and that is what we have created for the album xx.”

Consisting of three large audio-visual units, each contain a film of one of the three members of The xx, shot by Farahmand, as they play through their album. Alongside the films, the units also emit a lightshow that reacts to the music. The overall affect is simple yet compelling.

“It shares sensibilities with art installations, but it should not be considered in this context,” continues Farahmand. “It is in essence a physical music video, a looping shrine to the album that you cannot compress, send or turn off. We have to understand that these pop-up ‘rooms’ and ‘spaces’ should and will become as commonplace as music videos, bridging the gap until we have the technology to ‘stream’ a 3D experience through our home computer as if it was a YouTube clip. The xx are the perfect ambassadors for the medium. Their music is mesmerizing, and deeply physically affecting.”

More info available at TheVinylFactory.com.

(via CreativeReview)

“Spacious Thoughts” by Tom Waits and Kool Keith. Video by Montreal’s Fluorescent Hill. Interview about the video on boingboing. Slick.

This is part of the N.A.S.A. (“North America/South America”) music project, which is a collaboration project put together by Squeak E. Clean (brother of Spike Jonze) and DJ Zegon. You might have already heard the single “Whachadoin?” which features M.I.A., Spank Rock, Santogold (Santigold?), and Nick Zinner. The album, Spirit of Apollo, features names like David Byrne, Chuck D, Kanye West, Method Man, Lykke Li, George Clinton, Chali 2na, Amanda Blank, the RZA and more. Think Dark Was The Night mashed up with Brazilian funk.

Check out more videos on the project’s MySpace page.

Likes and Likes Mixtape - Volume 2 - Fall into Winter

Tracklist:
Islands - XX
Lowlife - Scanners
Higher Than The Stars - The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart
Tightrope - Yeasayer
Something In Common - Free Energy
They Done Wrong/We Done Wrong - White Rabbits
Market Girl - Headlights
Death - White Lies
Gee Up - Kindness
Swim (To Reach the End) - Surfer Blood
Fables - The Dodos
Puzzles - The Mary Onettes
When I’m Small - Phantogram
Belong - Washed Out
Roscoe (Beyond The Wizard’s Sleeve Remix) - Midlake
Cult Logic - Miike Snow
Sometimes - Miami Horror
Sugarette - Bibio
All For The Best - Thom Yorke/Andy Yorke
Repetition - Zaza

Download Likes and Likes Mixtape - Volume 2 - Fall into Winter

(To download, click the above link, then select “Page” or “File” from the toolbar, then select “Save As…”)

“Hey Jude”, flowcharted by Love All This.

Multiple likes on this one. I’m a big fan of Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward’s musical collaboration She & Him. In the music video for their song “Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?”, Deschanel teamed up with her co-star from “500 Days of Summer”, Joseph Gordon-Levitt. It was also shot by the film’s director, and pays homage to the bank heist/movie musical dance sequence.

Likes and Likes Mix Tape - Volume 1 - Summer

Tracklist:
Coffee Girl - The Tragically Hip
Into The Galaxy - Midnight Juggernauts
Heads Will Roll - Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Evening / Morning - Bombay Bicycle Club
Messy Enough - The Radio Dept.
Shadows - Au Revoir Simone
Look At Me (When I Rock Wichoo) - Black Kids
Maybe Im Crazy - Milke
The Sex Has Made Me Stupid - Robots in Disguise
Make It Take It - Amanda Blank
Far Away - Cut Copy
Little Bit (CSS Remix) - Lykke Li
Freight Train Control - ToToM
Walking On A Dream - Empire Of The Sun
Explain (Home Video Remix) - Faunts
Gold and Warm - Bad Veins
Paris (Aeroplane Remix/ADv5 Edit) - Friendly Fires
Vacationing People - Foreign Born
So Far Around The Bend - The National
505 - Arctic Monkeys

Download Likes and Likes Mixtape - Volume 1 - Summer

(To Download, click the above link, then select “Page” or “File” from the toolbar, then select “Save As…”)