Manic Pop

A friend recently got me in to listening to Flying Lotus radio on Pandora and Flying Lotus was his top pick as music he loves to work to. The beats are steady, usually electronic/synthesizer based, and dreamy. Many people cite his biggest influence as J. Dilla as does one of my current favorite artists, Toro Y Moi. Fans of his album Causers of This released in 2009 will likely dig Flying Lotus's 2010 release, Cosmogramma which is a mix of synthy-beats and jazzy electronic instrumentals with blips of video game sounds. This is quite conducive to a productive creative work flow. It's been making me want to stay up in the sewing room! These following photos are paintings (which I love!) done by said friend - Chicago artist, Ennis Martin... likely listening to Flying Lotus?  Painting copyright of Ennis Martin. Painting copyright of Ennis Martin. I generally work to lots of things; Pandora stations, my own last.fm mix, but one I always seem to come back to is ...

I haven't done a "year-end" list in a long while - mostly because I haven't been moved to in a while - but I think the time has come to list albums and songs of 2010. It's a new decade with new sounds. A music buzz word I picked up on this year was "chillwave", likely coined by hipster satire blog HipsterRunoff.com and redistributed across various blogs and websites across the world. The music is characterized by "their heavy use of effects processing, synthesizers, looping, sampling, and heavily filtered vocals with simple melodic lines" according to Wikipedia including such bands as Toro Y Moi, Memory Tapes, and Neon Indian. Wikipedia also mentions that these bands derive musical styles from the 80s "often with a laptop at their very core", but re-interpret it with a less-aggressive, soft-focus and low-fi version of 80s synthpop, with a more "chilled out" sensibility, hence "chillwave". I had the chance to see To...