The Acid Lounge started as my radio show on the University of Colorado’s Radio1190 radio station for a solid five years, from 2000-2005. Now, it exists as a series of playlists and podcasts, published sporadically and sometimes monthly.
Tag: Music
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The Acid Lounge – Winter 2015
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Berghain Music Club – Berlin, Germany
Suggested to my by both Jan Nick and Alex Takashima, who said I should go if I love electronic music! Thanks guys for the suggestion.
Berghain: The Secretive, Sex-Fueled World of Techno’s Coolest Club
Berlin’s Berghain is famed for its groundbreaking sounds and X-rated sights, but the club is also a test case for how tourism and gentrification are threatening Europe’s party capital
In the past, I’d only felt nervous outside a nightclub if I was relying on a fake ID or wearing the wrong kind of shoes. But at Berghain, the hopeful can queue for up to three hours and still be turned away from some of Europe’s most hallowed dancefloors, thanks to a notoriously strict door policy.
Set in a former power station in Berlin, legends are built on euphoric tales of the atmosphere within, where two huge sound systems pump techno into a cavernous interior, and a 1,500-strong crowd dance themselves well into the following day.
But before the party gets started, clubbers must first get past the club’s terrifying, grim-faced gatekeeper, Sven.
Berghain’s head doorman is a man who looks like a post-apocalyptic bearded version of Wagner, the Brazilian X Factor contestant who destroyed multiple hit songs in 2010. But rather than destroying music, Sven destroys clubbers’ dreams of getting in, with highly selective decisions on who makes the grade. -
Listening: MIXED BY Kastle via Thump
I’ve been obsessed with this mix lately, as it’s been providing a perfect background soundtrack to preparations for my next adventure… Happy listening.
I’m also using this post as an experiment for embedding geo coordinates with each post, and generating a summary map of all geocoded posts.
[geo_mashup_map]
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Listen: Little People – Youth & Progress DJ Mix
A fitting first post as I move back to Boulder for the winter – I’m loving Little People’s somewhat old “Youth & Progress’ DJ Mix. It’s been re-posted as a lead up to his new album, Youth & Progress. From the DJ:
“Here is an old DJ mix which i put together for the launch of ‘mickey mouse operation’ now available as a free download… I lovingly burned 100 CDs by hand and gave them to everyone that came on the night. It’s the follow-up to the sweetness & decency mix i posted a while back. Incidentally, Youth & Progress is the name of my new label under which my new album will be released.”
As I’m planning out my winter in Colorado, namely a few key winter 14ers mountaineering ascents, lots of days on the ski slopes, and a few backcountry trips, I’ve found this a worthy listen…
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Shooting for Joios at Saks Wine Tasting
Today I took a few pictures at Saks Fifth Ave in NYC for Joios, a new app. A few shots..
Joios is a food & drink community and process, built to empower exploration and discovery.
We connect people: eaters, drinkers, producers, vendors, experts and amateurs. They’re drawn by the opportunity to find exciting flavors collaboratively, at fun and educational events.
We help tasters better understand their preferences. Our system – truly blind tastings, a user-friendly app, a rigorous peer matching process – strips away bias.
We match people (“TastePeers”) and make reliable recommendations.
https://twitter.com/Jeffzilla/status/252516635288670209
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Here’s What I’ve Been Listening To Lately: EOS!
Great mix from EOS on TheFuture.fm, my new favourite mixtape site..
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Mix of the Day: Feed Me’s BBC Radio 1 Essential Mix
While I’m working all day, I usually listen to electronica mixes. Lately my favourite website to find new mixes is TheFuture.fm – and today, I found a great new BBC Radio 1 Essential Mix by Feed Me. Essential Mix is one of my all time, long time favorite radio shows, and is hosted by the legendary Pete Tong. Here’s Feed Me’s Essential Mix, originally broadcast on BBC Radio 1 on 2012-09-8.
Tracklisting on ElectronicaDanceMusic.com
Feed Me BBC Radio 1 Essential Mix Download
Other favourite radio shows include Worldwide with Gilles Peterson and The Breezeblock with Mary Anne Hobbs. These three programs were the basis of my own radio show, The Acid Lounge.
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Muji’s Ambient Background Music
Every time I shop in the Muji down the street from my office, I notice their soothing, hip, and perfectly fitting background music. Sometimes it’s ambient dreamscapes, sometimes pop, sometimes acoustic, but always nice. Today Boing Boing posts a piece about Muji’s BGM ambient background music. Soothing… Makes me remember back to the Buddha Machine, and miss hearing tracks from Brian Eno’s “Hello Waveforms” while out and about.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpfUksipbIs&list=RDrpfUksipbIs#t=7
More details on the now defunct “Things You Should Download” blog.
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Best Album Ever: The Avalanches – Since I Left You is being re-released!
Wooo! It’s about time – in honor of its 10th birthday, the classic Avalanches album “Since I Left You” is being re-released. After hearing this album for the first time in 2002, I’ve been hooked – it’s easily in my top 3 most listened albums of all time, and one of my favorites too.
From music blog Music From To Go Whoa:
The Avalanches seminal debut Since I Left You is set to get the deluxe treatment with a 10-Year Anniversary issue in the works. The reworking was announced just hours after the record came in at #9 in triple j’s Hottest 100 Australian Albums of All Time. The record also took out the top spot in the industry list a few weeks back.
Since the record’s global release in 2001, its legacy has continued to grow exponentially. Since I Left You is a record that came seemingly out of nowhere and went on to become not only one of the most influential records of the last decade, but in recent polls conducted by both Pitchfork Media and Australian radio station triple j, as one of the greatest and most beloved albums of all time.
According to the group’s label, the re-issue will feature “the original classic album accompanied by a bonus disc of material including remixes from the original album campaign, new reworks from the likes of El Guincho, MF Doom, Canyons, Black Dice, Jackson and his Computer Band, some exquisite Avalanches remixes of other artists, plus unreleased early b-sides, demo tracks and other such rarities.”
The Avalanches – Since I Left You (Stereolab Remix) (Hype Machine Link)
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Planet Bluegrass
Today marks the start of the Telluride Bluegrass Festival.. with the crush of people coming into town, and the crazy spectacle of a large portion of them, it’s like being on another planet.. Planet Bluegrass… I’m delighted, and horrified.
Listening to: Ghostland Observatory – Midnight Voyage
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Back on Radio1190 – DJing A Guest Set on Sub-Harmony
During college at University of Colorado at Boulder, I worked at the college radio station Radio1190 KVCU as both the RPM Music Director and the host of my own radio show, The Acid Lounge. During the show’s 5 year run, I had the privelege of having DJ and producer Chad Westcott on as my co-host. Chad is still working at Radio1190 now as the primary host of the Mix-Up/Mash-up show Sub-Harmony, which airs Sunday nights from 20:00 – 22:00. This week since I was in town, I got to come hang out on the show, and DJ my own guest set for the second hour of the show. I didn’t have much time to prepare, so I ended up DJing the entire set live, straight off my my iPhone 4 using the Djay iPhone app. Overall it was a fun experience playing live on the air from my iPhone. Here are a few pics from the studio, as well as link to the show podcast and playlist. Podcast is also available on Chad’s site Audiocasto.
- Set on Sub-Harmony, 2011-05-29 20:00 – 23:00 MST
- Podcast on Audiocasto
The Sub-Harmony group in the studio 
DJing with the Djay iPhone App Set List
- Quantic – Mishaps Happening
- Empire of the Sun – We Are The People
- Excerpt from The Twelves Essential Mix on BBC Radio One
- Two Door Cinema Club – What You Know
- Justice – D.A.N.C.E
- Phoenix – If I Ever Feel Better
- Deadmau5 – I Remember
- Deadmau5 – Faxing Berlin
- Telepopmusik – Breathe
- Dubstep mix from DJ Jess
- Chemical Brothers – Swoon
- -Break for DJ Swamp interview-
- Chemical Brothers – Orange Wedge
- Holy Fuck – Korock
- Tobacco – Truck Sweat
- Lemon Jelly – Stay With You
- Metronomy – Go My Way
- Ralph Myerz – Natasha ’75
- Daft Punk – Voyager
- Daft Punk – Face To Face
- Minotaur Shock – Mistaken Tourist
- Minotaur Shock – Six Foolish Fisherman
- Ralph Myerz – Kill The Habit
- Royksopp – Poor Leno
- Tosca – Boss On The Boat
Previously, I’ve written about my old radio show The Acid Lounge…
- Index of Acid Lounge blog posts
- First episode
- The Acid Lounge 2005-06-23
- The Acid Lounge 2004-09-08
- The Acid Lounge blog featured!
- TheAcidLounge.com wins at Meebo.com
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Online Project: Playlist
For now, the Playlist project is simply an aggrigation of RSS feeds from my Last.fm audio scrobbling feed, as well as my Hype Machine loved tracks feed. Going forward, I’m hoping to build a playlist feature that will play recent tracks I’ve loved and listened to from around the web.Additionally, my brother Jason has been working on a custom made music library management and player web app, which may soon be integrated into this page.
Finally, you’ll notice that on all pages within this site, including blog posts, that have a media file – audio or video – linked, you’ll see a little slider bar on the bottom of the page, which opens up the Yahoo Media Player widget. This little bit of javascript automatically picks up on media links, and then adds them to a live playlist that the widget is able to play. I’m not super happy about the look of the player, but it does work fairly simply. Additionally, by picking up on actual linked media files, without the need for any special tags, I should be able to switch to another media player that uses the same basic detection, in the future. -
The Twelves: Essential Mix
Pete Tong’s Essential Mix is always great, and was a major inspiration for my old radio show on Radio1190, The Acid Lounge. Lately I’ve been loving remixes by Brazilan duo The Twelves, and just found a recording of The Twelves Essential Mix.
Listen: The Twelves – Essential Mix
Interestingly, a few years ago while working at Giant Step, I got to run the NYC street promo team for Pete Tong’s movie “It’s All Gone Pete Tong“. Interesting how things seem to come around.
Other related mixes I’ve written about include:
- The Breezeblock hosted by Mary Anne Hobbs
- The first episode of my radio show The Acid Lounge
- Matt Darey’s Nocturnal Sunshine (which I still listen to every week via iTunes)
- DJ Jess’ mixes, which I’ve had the pleasure of listening to live at Soho House NY
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Updating the Breezeblock Post
Looking at traffic metrics for the blog, a significant amount of traffic has been generated by my old post on BBC Radio One’s old radio show The Breezeblock. It looks like people have been finding the post looking to download old shows. Unfortunately, over the years, and through a couple domain/server moves of this blog, the original file I liked to in that post was lost. So tonight, I re-uploaded the originally linked file, as well as all of the other set files I have – and made them available for either download, or immediate listening.
To listen directly on the webpage, I’m using Yahoo’s media player widget. I’m generally not a fan of Yahoo these days, but their media player widget seems simple enough, requires importing one javascript file to use, and it instantly converts all media file links on the page to play links- there’s no need to specifically tag media files for it to work. I like this because it allows for future upgradability, and ideally compatibility with a future HTML5 update to the blog – since the linking to media files is in standard HTML and not with any plugin specific code, if I were to change up the player file, I would not have to re-code all the urls.
Anyway, listen to the old Breezeblock sets on my previous blog post.
Ps – In the spirit of my original blog, in which I would note what I was listening to while writing a given post:
Listening to: Fever Ray – Seven (The Twelves Remix)
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CMJ 2009 – Japanther at The Suffolk
Brooklyn based rock duo Japanther playing last Thursday night at The Suffolk, as part of the 2009 CMJ Music Marathon…
Strangely, Michael Meyer posted a few pics of the same show on is “The Daily Up” blog, and got a shot of me taking the above picture with my Canon SD780IS digital camera – it’s small, but does the job in a pinch. (I’m on the right side)
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The Acid Lounge – First Episode
Here’s the one that started it all – the pilot episode of my college radio show, The Acid Lounge, broadcast in 2001 on Radio1190, KVCU, Boulder. The audio is a little hot, but you get the gist of where the show began. Enjoy!
[display_podcast]
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Stunning new HD video from the Canon EOS 5D Mark II
The yet to be released Canon EOS 5DmkII, in addition to 21 Megapixel stills, also takes full 1080P 30FPS video, Akihabara News just posted another stunning, unofficial Canon EOS 5DmkII HD video, taken with presumably a pre-production sample of the camera. It goes on sale at the end of the month, at which point expect some self-shot HD goodness. Until then, enjoy these shots from Japan. Watch full screen for full effect…in full HD!
One of the most exciting aspects for me, in terms of being able to shoot HD video with a DSLR, is playing with aperture for interesting DOF effects and control. That, and having the ability to capture the scene, whether in high res stills, or high def video – definitely a game changer. Finally, that last track in the video is “Poupées Russes” by Kraked Unit, a French group. Great beat – found it also used in this car commercial, as well as appearing in a French movie soundtrack. The track starts around 2:46. Reminds me of the days of Pelican City (Danger Mouse’s early college work) which was definitely frequent Acid Lounge material.
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Musical Roots: The Breezeblock on BBC Radio One
Update on 2010-02-21 – BBC Radio One’s show “The Breezeblock” hosted by Mary Anne Hobbs has long been one of my favorites. Back in college, it was one of the two main influences in defining the sound of my radio show on Radio1190, “The Acid Lounge“, along with Gilles Peterson’s show “Worldwide”. Although I’ve listened to a ton of the Breezeblock mixes, I only managed to download and archive a handful of them. In the recent years that this post has existed, there’s been a good amount of traffic from people looking to download and listen to Breezeblock episodes so, I’m posting up as many of the shows as I can find. Also, here’s a listing of a lot more of the episodes on Mixes DB Cheers! -
Who needs Instinctiv when you have real Pandora on your iPhone 3G?
Why make software for an increasingly dwindling market – the 1st generation (EDGE) iPhone. Instinctiv is a new company that’s making iPhone software that purports to predict what you want to listen to based on a number of factors, and the smartly shuffles your songs accordingly. But it only shuffles your own songs. Only the music you have on your phone at that moment. No network listening.I can see how this would appeal to iPod Touch and 1st generation (slow EDGE) owners, but, since the 1st Gen iPhone is no longer on sale, that group is starting to dwindle. On the new iPhone 3g, with speedy fast 3G network connectivity, is Instinctiv really necessary? (Or, does it have a viable future?) Why not just listen to real, genuine Pandora radio, if that’s the experience you’re going for? Although it’s not out yet, I’m almost positive a real, native Pandora radio application will be released for the new iPhone 3G, which will (or, should…) use not only the iPhone’s wifi connection, but the 3G cell data connection as well.
Better yet – ever shared with a friend a Pandora station you’ve made? Cool to be able to listen to the same batch of songs, no? How about allowing iPhones running the Pandora radio application to synchronize their stations, so two iPhone listeners can listen to a synchronized Pandora station? Why not push this feature to the standard browser based web player too? It might get dicey for the music licensing, but would be cool nonetheless.
(Seen on TechCrunch)
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Weezer – Pork and Beans Video Sources
The new Weezer music video for Pork and Beans off their forthcoming album (the red album), due out June 3rd, 2008 is quite the mirror. In one foul swoop, they managed to distill down most of the major “viral videos” from the last couple of years, including some older classics, namely All Your Base (Zero Wing). It”s interesting to note how quickly internet video and viral video has become a mainstay of our culture and online life – enough so that it’s worked it’s way into popular music.
I don’t know if this is good or bad, or what this says about me but…. yeah, I knew instantly pretty much every single clip or parody in the video – amazing.
Here’s the video, and a list of all the source clips I could identify – disturbingly easily.
**Update….. looks like Weezer ended up disabling embedding of their video.. use the above link to check it out.
Weezer Pork and Beans video original video clips:
Numa Numa
(Brookers has a good one too – Crazed Numa Fan)
Dramatic Gopher
Japanese Gameshows from TV in Japan
Starwars Kid
Angry German Kid
Ms. Teen USA South Carolina
Tay Zonday
Liam Sullivan – Shoes
Will it Blend?
Chris Crocker
Stupid Ninja
Diet Coke and Mentos
Peanut Butter Jelly Time
Evolution of Dance
K-Fed
GI Joe
T-Shirts
Soulja Boy (yeah… I still need to be cool and learn this dance..)Did I miss anything?
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Tracking Music Pirates with Last.fm
Could Last.fm be used by the music industry lawyers to find, track, and nail music piraters?
Here’s my thinking: a user downloads a pirated copy of a new, unreleased album from Bit Torrent, or any other file sharing site, puts it in their iTunes, and then starts listening. While they are listening, naturally, their Last.fm plugin is reporting back the track/artist/album names to Last.fm, to be posted in real time, time stamped, on their personal profile. If that album is unreleased, then how would the user be listening to it already? They must be stealing music. And those timestamps on each track are good evidence.
What’s the privacy like on Last.fm? Would they ever allow music industry lawyers access to their user/track database? With full access to that information, it seems it would be fairly easy to cross reference track names and listening times, then compare that information to release dates and narrow down a list of, for example, users who listened to tracks from Madonna’s new album before the release date. Then they just need to cross-reference those usernames with their real contact info/email address/other personal profile info, and bam.
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M83 – Saturdays = Youth
The latest album from M83, Saturdays = Youth is out as of April 14th, and it’s purely wonderful. A slight departure from the sounds of the previous albums, especially digital shades, but great in its own way. This album holds its own among Anthony Gonzalez‘s repertoire of M83 sounds, but fits perfectly within it. The 80’s, song driven style is solid and makes the album listenable from beginning to end. M83 is one of those sounds that I very frequently put on when I need to buckle down to some serious work, focus, or just walk around and get lost in thought.Additionally, offering it on iTunes as iTunes Plus (DRM free) makes it actually worth going for the instant gratification iTunes route. I’m a little sad to not have the full album artwork, and feel bad for contributing to the downfall of physical packaging artwork, but love the idea of not cluttering my bookshelf with more physical jewel cases. The higher quality and DRM freeness of iTunes Plus makes it a viable music purchasing channel.
Here’s the first single from the new album: Graveyard Girl by M83
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It’s….. The Dozens!
The Dozens, the band that I do marketing for/help out with is playing a gig this Friday, February 29th at Connolly’s, in NYC. Come on out this Friday for “A gig so awesome, it could only happen once every four years”.. or so they say.
Check out their myspace page and flyer for the show on Friday. LISTEN!
Here’s the “blurb”…
Imagine putting the last 40 years of high-grade, head-nodding rock music into a blender, hitting spin, and pouring the mixture into a New York City four-piece. The Dozens set “standard” rock formulas on their ears, with melodies and chords that sound both utterly unique and familiar. While daring to forge new musical turf, they haven’t forgotten the value of an old-fashioned guitar hook, sing-along chorus, and well-pounded beat.Led by songwriter Eli Musser, The Dozens will be releasing their debut record – pleasing both head and heart – in 2008. However, their raucous live shows truly define this band’s exciting, contagious energy. The Dozens are quickly capturing the attention of music fans in the New York City area, and working hard to spread their message: Real rock is back.
Event Details:
Who: The Dozens
Where: Connolly’s, 121 W 45th Street, NewYork ,NY
When: Friday, February 29th, show @ 10pm
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The Acid Lounge 2004-09-08
Jeffzilla.com’s first podcast! This is an old episode of my college radio show The Acid Lounge, from 9/8/2004. I originally mixed and broadcast it on Radio1190 KVCU-Boulder from 9pm – 11pm. For more info on The Acid Lounge, and to see all of my older playlists, surf over to The Acid Lounge Blog.
Enjoy!
