Category: unsorted

Night Vision: Avi Buffalo @ The Echo

Avi Buffalo (the name of the man and the band) played the third installment of his/its May residency at The Echo last night. The 18-year old frontman seems smaller and younger in person than he does in pictures, but he’s an even larger presence than one would expect. It’s mostly the effect of that impossibly youthful voice, which sounds not unlike the imagined middleground between Devendra and Danielson. Also helpful was the general freewheeling-ness of this particular set, in which Avi eschewed favorites like “Summer Cum” (playing in “Now Hear This”) in favor of loudness and jamitude.

The following clips feature poor lighting but decent sound. The first song is one of the night’s quieter ones, while the second is the band’s 7-minute closer.

Lala has landed (how to use and embed)

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UPDATE: Sorry to say, friends, it appears that the below instructions have been outmoded. It was a good run while it lasted, but we all know how quickly all things technological evolve. Weirdly, however, WordPress still hasn’t made it easier for mopes like us to embed the Lala player, or something comparable. So it goes. I hope to troubleshoot this all over again, but not sure when I’ll be able to do so. If you’re interested, subscribe via email or RSS to this blog, and stay tuned.

I’m happy to report cLm.wordpress now has streaming audio. You’ll find the Lala Music Forecast Lala Playlist widget to the right, and it’s easy enough to use. Hit the gray play button to listen to the songs beginning to end.

For five days following your initial play, you’ll be able to listen to each song once for free. On the sixth day, you’ll have register (also gratis) with Lala to continue using the player. There’s no credit card required or any of that. It’s still one play per song, but I’ll attempt to keep the songs fresh, so you’ll always have music to listen to. Should you want to purchase an unlimited stream or MP3 of a song, Lala offers those options as well. Click here to read Pitchfork‘s explanation.

WordPress bloggers: Getting the  Lala Forecast* widget functioning isn’t easy and I imagine I’m not alone in trying to figure it out. Here’s how I did it.

  1. In Lala, pull down “My Lala” and click on “Profile”
  2. Click “Embed this” above the Forecast box and copy the HTML
  3. Start a free Clearspring account, and click “Use the In-Widget API”
  4. Enter a name for your widget and click “Save”
  5. On the next page, click “Edit Your Widget,” then “Content Template”
  6. Paste your Lala HTML code into the “Widget Content” box
  7. Set width to 150, height to 345, and click “Save”
  8. Click the “Publish” tab along the top, then “API Info”
  9. On the next page, copy the WID string [ex: 5a141h4be8f4f322]
  10. In your WordPress dashboard, create a “Text” widget
  11. Name the widget, and in the box enter the following in brackets: clearspring_widget title=”YOUR WIDGET NAME” wid=”YOUR WID STRING” width=”150″ height=”345″ domain=”widgets.clearspring.com”
  12. Did it work?

*You can embed a Lala Playlist widget by grabbing the HTML code from the “Share” option within the playlist view, then adjust width and height (in the places mentioned above and in the HTML) to fit your sidebar.

Night Vision: Flying Lotus @ Downtown Independent

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Last night, Dublab threw Labrat Matinee VI at Main Street’s Downtown Independent, the new theater next door to The Smell. After dozens of artful music videos and shorts — ranging from the single-shot mini thriller that Ben Barnes made for WHY?‘s ” Sky For Shoeing Horses Under,” to Tim And Eric’s bizarro Absolut Vodka advert starring Zach Galifianakis — beat music auteur Flying Lotus performed. His set included sizable chunks from 2008’s fantastic Los Angeles LP, hard bop samples, rave send-ups  and at least one Squarepusher drum phrase. I captured a wee bit of it below.

Consider donatating to Dublab’s Flash Forward Proton Drive.

Feature: L.A.’s new underground mecca

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Tucked-away northeast L.A. venue The Airliner has been playing host to some exceedingly fresh talent on Wednesday nights under the Low End Theory banner. Names like Flying Lotus, Nocando, and Nosaj Thing are regulars there, and you can read about the latter-most (Nosaj) in a feature published in this week’s LA Weekly, online here.

I’m happy to report that music news aggregator The Daily Swarm picked up the article. It should remain on the front page through the weekend. If you dig beat music and you’re L.A.-local, I highly recommend a visit to L.E.T. The resident DJ is none other than D-Styles, which is a mind-boggling thought in and of itself:

Remember Mitch Hedberg

He was one of the funniest comics of his generation, and an extremely kind man. I just dug up some old articles to post to the archives, and found this. Also added some ancient ink on Modest Mouse, Damian Marley, and My Morning Jacket. Been needing some overwrought article openers? Look no further.

As is the case with virtually all of the Filter stuff on here, the text comes in PDF form, which makes for a long load-time. More importantly, watch some Mitch:

Dear Blogosphere,

At this remarkably wee hour, having just turned in a feature about a seriously fantastic young talent named Nosaj Thing, it suddenly seems of the utmost importance to introduce you to this. Therein, you’ll find streaming audio and a download link for wallpaper.’s remix of Das Racist’s very not serious  (but mighty fantastic) song “Combination Pizza Hut & Taco Bell.” Bump it.