Can Buildings Walk? Only With Robot Legs.
On creeping buildings, creepy houses, toxic positivity, electropop from LA, vaporwave from Brazil, and Baroque breakbeats!
Well, hello!
Another strange week. Days are shorter here in the SF Bay Area with the sun setting at 4:30pm. Meanwhile, tempers are shorter in Flushing, New York, where apparently fighting over parking spots is absolutely SAVAGE.
And the rats are positively HUGE on New York subways. The last time I was in NY (which was 18 years ago), I remember thinking: it felt just like Manila.
Here comes a weird segue:
Just so you know, you don't have to be upbeat and positive all the time, because apparently it takes a toll on your mental health. And it's now being called "toxic positivity." Thankfully, no one ever accused me of being a bubbly ray of sunshine.
Anyway, on to the weirdest news on the web!
**Real Life, Stranger Than Fiction**
Can buildings walk? Well, anywhere outside a Studio Ghibli animation, the answer is normally no. I mean, there is such a thing as structure relocation using hydraulics and wheels. But buildings walking on legs?
Over in China, they've successfully "walked" an 85-year old, 5-story building 62 meters away from its original spot in order to preserve it from demolition using a battalion of expensive robotic legs. Engineers are the new wizards.
Since we're talking about creepy buildings... Over on Redfin, a house for sale in Kentucky has reached viral status. Because it is a creepy mess. It’s both a house and a warehouse for a ton of ebay CDs, DVDs, and collectibles. And it is the perfect setting for a mystery or horror video game. Don't believe me? Take the 3D walkthrough yourself and see it with your own eyes.
And speaking of virtual 3D versions of real locations. Someone turned the Four Seasons Total Landscaping location into a map on VR Chat. This is the power of an entirely overlooked electoral segment that no candidates currently campaign to: bored furries.
Oh, and since we're on the topic, Slate interviewed the owner of the adult bookstore located next to Four Seasons Total Landscaping. Best excerpt from that interview: "2020 has been so insane that Rudy Giuliani is in the parking lot of a landscaping company when he should be at a five-star hotel. If that’s how they’re running the country, and that’s how he runs his things, it’s kind of embarrassing."
And a reminder: stop carrying your gun in the waistband of your pants, gun owners. Unless you want to be like the guy whose dog shot him with his own gun.
**Ear Candy**
I just stumbled upon something beautiful on Youtube. It's Jewish music from Morocco. Recorded live in a tiny cafe in Jerusalem, with old and young singing alike, led by the divinely voiced Neta Elkayam. So much emotion, so much heart. Somewhere in the comments section of this Youtube video, someone kindly translated the song’s lyrics to English. Listen and weep:
Meanwhile, my friend and co-laborer in the arts, Mark Redito, an LA-based indie musician, 3D artist, and plant dad, just released a 7-track album called Natural Habitat, which is phenomenal, organic funky electropop. Listen and buy his music to help enable his serious plant addiction.
Found this track on one of the blogs I still follow. It's reminiscent of early bossa nova, but mixed with acid jazz strings and an electronic music production mindset. Jazzy, danceable, funky, happy. With the kind of sung chorus that anyone can join in. Listen to Photay's "Pressure."
Meanwhile, Sheryl Crow recorded a new version of her song "I Shall Believe" with her on most instruments. And it's only made a beautiful song more perfect. (Can you tell I'm a fan?) Listen in awe and wonder:
Have you heard of the musical genre known as vaporwave? No? In a nutshell, it's a very specific niche characterized by grainy sounding, 80s-tinged melodic muzak. Think: elevator music that once played in department stores. Anyway, this label on Bandcamp put together a 90-track fundraising compilation of Latin American vaporwave music. Worth a listen!
If you need a bit of calm during the workday. Listen to this ambient noise generator with headphones. My personal preference: "Leaves rustling in the wind."
**Shameless Self Promotion**
Meanwhile, I just discovered a friendly musical community on Twitter that engages in a weekly themed challenge (@MusicWeeklies): compose a tune every week that conforms to a specific theme. My entry for this week's theme, #Renaissance, is this track: "Ptolemy's Epicycles Were Horribly Wrong." Basically: baroque breakbeat!
And before I go, I’ll leave you with a track I worked very hard on for over 2 months. Why that long? I arranged harmonies for 8 singers, created the instrumental musical arrangement, sound edited each of the 8 singers' parts, and then the complete track. The final music video was finally released online this week. The track "Emanuel" is a Christmas song sung in Filipino, that translates Isaiah 7:14 (Behold a virgin shall be with child, and they shall call him Emmanuel) into an energetic pop song. Let me be the first to say: Merry Christmas!
That’s it for this week!
Cheers and dandelions,
Lionel