Orbital//Halcyon & On & On

And while we’re on a bit of an electronic music kick…
I’m beginning to think I should just ask Ali to come do some guest posting here, since I unabashedly poach so many songs from her.

I can’t even listen to the opening piano notes of this song without being transported back to my freshman year of college. At the beginning of school, everyone was sharing music like crazy and people were being opened up to bands and groups they had never heard of, as well as bonding over slightly obscure shared favorites (Archers of Loaf). Ali downloaded this onto my roommate/BFF Kot’s computer and we became hooked on it.

Orbital, an electronic duo made of brothers Phil and Paul Hartnoll, has been cranking out the pretty electronica and ambient techno since 1989. Though these have never really been my favorite genres, the skill and craft of what these guys do is pretty impressive.

Recorded in 1999 at Glastonbury, in a time before the word “mashup” entered the popular vocabulary, this live version of Orbital’s “Halcyon & On & On” served up a pleasant surprise halfway through in the form of expertly cut and layered samples from Bon Jovi’s “You Give Love a Bad Name” and Belinda Carlisle’s “Heaven is a Place on Earth.” Eight years into the era of Girl Talk, this relatively simple bit of mixing still produces a truly astounding artist effect.



Halcyon & On & On (Live).mp3

Shot to the heart
And you’re too late
You give love
A bad name

Jib Kidder//Window Dipper

[Local! Music! Friday!]
Tell me...what is this Local Music Fridays?

Sean SC, the awesome force behind the whirlwind of art and music that is Super Jib Kidder, once said his biggest fans were Sorority girls and homeless people.

Jib Kidder used to do these amazing, extremely colorful chalk drawings all around Ann Arbor (hence the fan base). One early morning, I got a call from him: “guess what I did all night?”
“What?” I asked.
“Chalk drawing under the arch! I’m going home to sleep now!”
He really made the walk through campus a lot more vibrant and engaging. And, because he made the genius decision to do all his public art in chalk, he could never be fined for graffiti or destruction of private property.

Luckily for us, the chalk drawings are just the tip of the now San Francisco-based Super Jib creative iceberg. Jib Kidder is also a prolific musician who’s recorded dozens of albums and for a short time ran an independent subscription based singles club.

Here’s a picture of one of Jib’s awesome chalk murals on the UofM campus and also one of my favorite Jib tracks, which is sure to charm hoards of office 9-to-5ers [insert Microsoft jokes here], as well as all the booty dancers in the crowd (now, I’m not saying there isn’t a possibility for overlap).



Window Dipper.mp3

Bonus: anyone who can name all the reasons this song title is funny wins my respect.
Actual Bonus: Jib Kidder’s got lots of tracks up for free here.

Crtl+Alt+Delete your week!