Excellent Online

Sci-fi geeks shoot their ashes into space and thanks to And Vinyly, music geeks finally have a way to go:

"A UK company called And Vinyly is offering people the chance to press their ashes in a vinyl recording of their own voice, their favourite tunes or their last will and testament. Minimalist audiophiles might want to go for the simple option of having no tunes or voiceover, and simply pressing the ashes into the vinyl to result in pops and crackles." (via Wired)

I think the 20th Anniversary version of the legendary Stone Roses debut album pretty much summed it all up.  That had all the demos and live stuff anyone could want.  But not happy with that, the powers that be decided on releasing YASRC.  This one, titled 'Collection', is a little odd since it's mainly just random tracks from their Silverstone days (1988-1990).  It's not a "best of" or a "b-sides" or even a "remix" album, it somehow includes a sample of all of those tracks, a collection if you will.  The tracklisting is below thanks to Slicing Up Eyeballs.

Also over at Slicing Up Eyeballs, you can download a cover of "I Wanna Be Adored" by the Raveonettes.  You almost can't mess up that song and it's a great cover.

Arcade Fire have teamed up with Google to create an interactive film called, The Wilderness Downtown.  It features the Arcade Fire track, "We Used To Wait" off their recently released Suburbs album.  And it's a pretty fantastic demo of the new HTML5 standard.  For you less technical folks, sites like these are typically built using Adobe Flash which is annoying because it requires a plugin (which is sometimes slow and buggy).  The animation, sounds, and video all use features that are all built directly into the browser, a major step forward from the old boring websites.

Technical aspects aside, the film itself is pretty astounding.  You are prompted for the home address where you grew up and then it will use satellite & google street views of your childhood home directly in the video.  My favorite part is when you get to write a note directly in the video.  Take a few minutes to check it out (and you may have to download Google's Chrome to enjoy it).

It's Monday.  You know what you're missing?  A blog dedicated to bringing you classic album covers with tacos photoshop'ed on them.  Yeah, some people have too much time on their hands.

While Unknown Pleasures is good, I think my favorite might be Sonic Youth's Goo.

A couple of days ago Cee-Lo released a lyric-video (need a youtube account to view) to his new song, "Fuck You".  While that was great on it's own there was no need to write an Excellent Online post about it since it was pretty much covered on every blog in the known universe.  But now the fine folks at the Dallas Observer took it one step further and overlayed the song into some of your favorite movie scenes.  They used the track in Shawshank Redemption, Dirty Dancing, and Say Anything.  Shawshank is one of my favorite movies of all time and so it made me laugh out loud (aka LOL), watch it below.

A couple of  weeks ago we mentioned that Bez was convicted of assult because he choked his girlfriend because he though she stole his money.  NME is reporting that he rejected to perform unpaid work (aka community service?) and instead took a four week sentence in prision.

Elbow have been on a pretty amazing streak of great albums.  Actually, I can't think of a "bad" Elbow album and their shows are getting better and better every time I see them live.  Naturally, I cannot wait for their next record which is slotted for next year.  BBC 6 Music interviewed Guy Garvey, the lead singer, and he said that the working title for the album is, "Lippy Kids".

The album is about 75% complete and they are all currently excited about the the record so far:  "We're all buzzing off it. You have periods of nervousness and then you have periods of elation. And we're all buzzing off it at the minute."

Around 10pm last Thursday, right after the Swell Season played, "When Your Mind's Made Up", a man jumped off the roof and fell to his death about three feed from lead singer Glen Hansard.  Glen walked over to the man, not knowing what happened, and then quickly left the stage.  A doctor in the audience attempted CPR but was unsuccessful.  The band has issued a statement regarding the tragedy:  "The band, crew and all involved with them are shocked and saddened by the unfortunate events of last night. Their hearts go out to the victim and his friends and family."

Phil Selway is the drummer for Radiohead and he's going to release a solo album very soon called, "Familial".  You can stream four songs from the upcoming release over at soundcloud (via MusicSlut).

The BBC reviewed the album and say it's a rather mellow (that's me paraphrasing, I'm not a writer), "In fact, even the most fervent of Radiohead fans might lack the patience to get excited about this humble collection. But therein lies its charm."

This is kind of an odd one.  Last year on David Gilmour confirmed that he was working with the Orb.  Actually, he was just working with 1/2 of the Orb, Youth.  A fan-run blog about David Gilmour has recently elaborated on the project.  They say that David is NOT working with the Orb.  He merely went into the studio and jammed with Youth to work on one track.  The Orb then took that jam session and used the material across an entire album called, Metallic Spheres, which will be released in October as, "The Orb featuring David Gilmour".

What's funny about this is that NME picks up the story and pastes the headline, "The Orb to release new album featuring Pink Floyd's David Gilmour."  And they link to the fan-run blog which clearly states, "David is not working with the Orb on a new album..."

The Orb will always be special for me.  After the shoegazing days of the early nineties, I picked up "U.F.Orb" and was blown away by the 15 minute long ambient tracks.  They were the "band" that introduced me to electronic music and opened my eyes to a world of great music without drone-y guitars.