UPDATE: Damn - don't know how I made it 6 years without posting this up at least ONCE. Reminds me to tell you all to go download Eleven's new Devin the Dude mix.

Posted by caps at 11:51 AM | Comments (0)

April 18, 2010

Imjured Alien

The Sabres' loss yesterday afternoon to the Bruins has been chalked up to softness and a lack of desperation, and it's easy to see the truth in both. Another sloppy second period and the outright collapse in the third provide plenty of supporting evidence for either charge.

But the hack on Vanek that precipitated his crash into the boards and his ensuing injury was the precise instant the team's fortunes fell. Word is that the Sabres' resident alien will be back at some point in the series. But in the meantime he needs extraterrestrial meds, stat.

Posted by caps at 04:38 PM | Comments (0)

April 16, 2010

Last Night

Last night was pretty fantastic, huh?

Here's the video they showed in the arena prior to puck drop:

And here's an instant classic of a sign. Three games early, but I like the moxie. Can't wait til tomorrow...

Posted by caps at 08:23 PM | Comments (0)

April 15, 2010

Round One, Game One

For the first time in 35 goddamn months, playoff hockey is back in Buffalo. I am so focused my eyes are gonna start bleeding.

This is my season-long chart, posted up in the office.

Been a long time. I'm very, very ready.

My dude Jed aka Daytona Hardbody just sent me this Sabres jam made by a dude named Nove and Buffalo's DJ Anthony:

Not mad! Reminds me to post up the Sabres playlist. Readers of El Stence who were around 35 months ago will remember these Sabres playoff necessities.

First off, a very special performance of the all-time Sabres banger:

Another classic:

The anthem for that magical 05-06 run:

I can't hear this without thinking of Kevin Sylvester, Mike Robitaille (get better soon!) and the intro for MSG's Buffalo Sabres Gamenight:

And we'd always play this after the Sabres scored their first goal - FINALLY THE HERD HAS COME AROUND:

The good people at HSBC Arena started playing this Boz Scaggs classic just this year, blasting it out when the Sabres are ahead late in the third:

And here's another new addition, inspired by Lindy's "let's crush some hopes and dreams" comment a few weeks back:

Oh yeah I posted up a 3000 word playoff preview for Mishka's Bloglin over here. Check it out.

Ok. More soon. GO SABRES.

Posted by caps at 03:53 PM | Comments (0)

April 11, 2010

Morning Rush

...is the name of this half-hour mixtape I made last summer.

Took me a minute - months - to get it up on the site, but now it's yours.

The inspiration for this weird tape was the Restless People song featured at the end, because the first time I heard it I damn near wept. No joke, no hyperbole; "Victimless Crime" will get me teary if I let it. It just hits me like that - but hell, I'm soft - and so I wanted to build a tape around it. It clocks in at 180 beats per minute, so I needed everything else to be real fast, too. Also, it's an end song, not a beginning song, so I marked it on my mix map as a final destination and set about looking for a way there.

"Feeling So Real" had been a half-serious, half-jokin anthem for me, Nash and P when we were in seventh grade - we used to listen to it at Nash's house on weekend mornings. We always listened to a lot of Moby and a lot of Prince at his spot when we were in junior high, and watch a lot of skate videos. Lil' Nash was a cool dude. Anyways, Moby was a good starting spot. And because "We Own" is the best song of the past decade, I was good for the first two. Me and Jonesy always loved the Cuizi song, too, and it was fast and frenetic enough to run with the cheetahs I was rounding up, and voila - that was song three. So far, so good.

But I needed more, so I went on a quest and started drinking a lot of coffee every sunny Saturday morning and listening to drum'n'bass for hours. HOURS. At first, Finny was real stoked cause she's an old d'n'b head and used to go to raves and do awesome drum'n'bass dances that I cannot replicate. However, she quickly grew disgusted after realizing that I preferred my drum'n'bass with sparkly melodies and cooing lady vocalists. She likes hers hard as fuck and real dark and industrial, whereas I want to feel like I'm flying into a Hyrule sunrise on the mane of a magical 50-foot-long cat. (You know how I do.) So I learned all about the differences between "liquid" and "jump-up" and "techstep" and related esoterica, then snatched up what I liked like a tombraider and continued on.

It got even worse for ol' Finny when I discovered happy hardcore. I forced her to listen to it for hours and spent a lot of time on Trackitdown.net, digging through happy hardcore charts and learning about labels with names like "Alienated Hardcore." I genuinely like the shit, and not just because of the pictures of aliens wearing headphones. To me, it sounds like being a five-year-old: hyperdramatic, hyperkinetic, sugar-soaked. Like Barbies singing over walls of synths constructed by Transformers. After immersing myself in a 2000 gallon tank of happy hardcore for a couple weeks, I handselected a bunch of jams and ended up deploying a couple snippets for structural support in the bridge I was building to my destination.

The final step was the jungle. Now ol' Jones had crates of jungle from his high school days, because while I was in Buffalo buying doubles of Sadat X, he was listening to some real crazy white label jungle shit, all gunshot noises and dancehall dudes over 170 BPM breaks. He had played me some of it when we were first mixing records, and perhaps long-time C&J listeners will remember that a jungle chunk ended up on Moving in Stereo, after "Go DJ" but before Billy Idol. I loved the shit, but it was all so damn mysterious to me, and searching for jungle records over the internet in 2009 was kinda like stumbling upon a lost Incan city deep in the rainforest: Many years ago, a vast civilization thrived here, an advanced society with an elaborate sonic hierarchy... But again, I found what jewels I could - including the "Dude" remix by Feyder, who I was fascinated to learn is a young dude from Russia, where apparently there's a thriving jungle scene - and kept it moving.

Once I reached my destination, I added the Screeching Weasel song for sentimental reasons. I have a long history with it because it was included on a mixtape given to me freshman year of high school by a punk rock sophomore named Sara from South Buffalo. She thought my shit needed toughening up - at the time, I was listening to hip-hop, Sonic Youth, Mercury Rev, and a Buffalo indie band named Tugboat Annie - and she made me a couple of mixtapes. I wish I had a picture of them because nothing in the world could look more like "PUNK ROCK HIGH SCHOOL 1995". They were black cassettes from the 80s, beat up, overdubbed a billion times, kinda grimey, and Sara had affixed gold star stickers to them, ripped off the old labels, and written "PUNKTANNICA VOL 1" on them in red marker. Most of the shit was beyond me - lots of riot grrl crunchers that I respected but wasn't rushing to rewind - but the Screeching Weasel stuck with me real hard.

I called the tape Morning Rush because it's meant to be listened to on hot summer mornings. Download here.

MORNING RUSH

Moby - Feeling So Real (Westbam rmx)
KES - We Own
Cuizinier - Qu'Est-Ce Qu'On Mange Ce Soir?
Dougal & Eruption - I'm Gonna Get You
DJ Food - Scratch Yer Head (Squarepusher rmx)
Tom Petty - Don't Come Around Here No More (Tiedye edit)
Stabilize - Airwaves
Crystal Clear and Netsky - King of the Stars
Shinichi Osawa - Star Guitar (Brookes Brothers rmx)
Conquering Lion - Code Red (Serial Killaz rmx)
Beenie Man - Dude (Feyder rmx)
SL2 - On a Ragga Tip (Modified Motion rmx)
Sigue Sigue Sputnik - Love Missile F1-11 (12" Extended Version)
Restless People - Victimless Crime
Screeching Weasel - Every Night

Posted by caps at 01:19 PM | Comments (0)

RIP

Larry "Bud" Melman.

Posted by caps at 05:58 AM | Comments (0)

April 10, 2010

One in a zillion

RT @capsworth your penguin is one in a zillion / it goes on and on and on http://bit.ly/aQrgH5

b/w:

Posted by caps at 01:23 PM | Comments (0)

April 09, 2010

Friday PM

Palm Springs vista via friend-of-el-stence James Ryang.

1. Just ordered these dice in time for the annual landing of the alien two Tuesdays from now. Thanks to friend-of-el-stence MBS for the heads up. As I said to him: Playing with these, you'd never lose!

2. Le retour des beaux jours! Via ol' stence staffer Nash.

3. Mr. Ducker has a tumblr.

4. Name of the Year 2010.

5. The movie title stills collection.

Posted by caps at 03:13 PM | Comments (0)

April 08, 2010

PIXELS

By Patrick Jean. Via Kotaku.

Posted by caps at 04:14 PM | Comments (0)

April 07, 2010

For the sixth time in 40 years...

...the Buffalo Sabres are division champs.

Yoffs beckon...

Posted by caps at 11:51 AM | Comments (0)

April 04, 2010

Yo

Been away in Minnesota all weekend. Just got home to stuffy Brooklyn apartment. Windows are now open and it's like a slice of June in early April - bluntsmokers yelling on the street, birds getting symphonic in backyard, airplane overhead, baseball starts tonight. Ride back from LGA on BQE was lovely: no traffic, orange-soaked skyline on the right.

Programming note: Even though I've watched 70+ Sabres games this year - I think I've missed two? - I have not annotated the ride in this space. That will change for the playoffs, which are imminent.

Posted by caps at 09:42 PM | Comments (0)