You’ll remember Duck Sauce from last year’s ridiculously huge hit “Barbara Streisand”. Well, the American/Canadian DJ duo of Armand Van Helden and A-Trak are back with this absurd NSFW video for their new track “Big Bad Wolf”. Is it as catchy as “Barbara Streisand”? I’m not sure. Do I like it? I do. It’s definitely a less funky track, more house, darker. I will have to listen on good speakers and not the shitty headphones I have on right now.
Jury’s out.
Today Charles invited me to a private alpha of a new site called This Is My Jam. The idea is that you post a song that you’re jamming to but you’re only allowed one song at a time. So as soon as you switch it, your old song goes away. Pretty interesting, I think. Anyway, just clicking around today I stumbled across this gem of a song.
I don’t know anything about the group except that they’re British, I think. But I know I love this song and the video. It’s so perfectly weird in a heartwarming, accessible way. I love the dance, I love the karaoke lyrics at the bottom, I love the lo-fi aesthetic. It’s just really great.
My buddy Josh, who you might remember as one of the directors of The Sword’s “Fire Lance Of The Ancient Hyperzephyrians” (which I never made a post about for some reason even though I am in the g-d video, what the hell is that about?), directed this fully amazing throw-back video for Township’s “Golden Light” and “Pushing Metal to the Bone”. It is clearly inspired by the shitty local cable instructional videos of our collective youths with all the awkward edits, excessively long pauses, picture degradation, and tracking errors of a ninth generation dub. Perfect.
The songs are awesome, reminding me of the best of 70s stadium rock. There’s a very powerful Thin Lizzy vibe running through the songs on Township’s One More Summer and I really dig it. My only complaint is that I can’t find where I can pick up the LP. I am listening to the album right now on Spotify (awesome), but why is it so hard to give these guys my money?!
I know, I know. You’ve seen this. I’m slow to the party. But you know what? You can go to hell. This is too awesome not to put on The Black Laser.
DO YOU SEE THE THING!? IT’S FLOATING. SCIENCE IS AWESOME.
It’s Okay to Be Smart has a description of how it works:
What you start with is an inert disc, in this case a crystal sapphire wafer. That wafer is then coated with a superconductor called yttrium barium copper oxide. When superconductors get very cold (like liquid nitrogen cold) they conduct electricity with no loss of energy, which normal conducting materials like copper can’t do.
Superconductors hate magnetic fields (when cold enough), and normally would just repel the magnetic force and float in a wobbly fashion. But because the superconductor is so thin in this case, tiny imperfections allow some magnetic forces through. These little magnetic channels are called flux tubes:
The flux tubes cause the magnetic field to be “locked” in all three dimensions, which is why the disk remains in whatever position it starts in, levitating around the magnets.
Drier explanations here and here.
Charles sent me this video the other day and the thing we started talking about immediately was whether or not the floating would decay over time or if the super cooled slug would just fall when it warmed up so much that it was no longer able to maintain the quantum lock. And then we recognized that we were total nerds, but you knew that already, didn’t you?
A few months, maybe a year ago, Carol introduced me to I Am Kloot’s Sky At Night. This song quickly became my favorite from that record mostly because I am a sucker for sad drinking songs and this is one of the best sad drinking songs I’ve heard in a while. It might be right up there with The Magnetic Fields’ “Papa Was A Rodeo”, which is high praise coming from me.
The rest of the album is similarly good and I highly recommend you seek out a copy. Unfortunately, it’s not on Spotify (lame), or I’d have provided you a link. Here it is on Amazon, import-only. Weird, eh?
This video is a perfect embodiment of how I feel about most electronic music: it’s silly, repetitive, fun beats made by eggmen. Eggmen.
