Secret Still

I’m working on hashing together our first podcast. In the spirit of everything going on here it’s going to be themed “Music to make you move.” Because we’re moving into the new house next Friday. Get it? You get it. I’m ready to get on with the moving so most of the music in the podcast will be the kind that makes you shake your ass, or at least get out of your chair and walk around the room. I’m shooting for a half-hour show, but if things run long I may try to stretch it to an hour. And of course it wouldn’t be a decent podcast without some words of wisdom and one sided conversation from yours truly interspersed throughout. My microphone is crap though so we’ll see how that works out. I may even sing along with some of the songs, because I am just that kind of awesome, Earthlings. I’ll ask the others if they want in on the action, but since they never post here they probably won’t. Fine. More for me, dickholes.

Let’s do some links.

Todays epipenultimate link (I’ve just foreshadowed hard) is a stew of links relating to my new favorite album, which will definitely get some podcast play, Shine Through by Aloe Blacc. If you have ever liked Stevie Wonder, and I’m pretty sure you have since most of you are not goth obsessed, hot-topic groupies, then you will be into this album. It’s like Stevie Wonder meets the twenty first century in an alley and the century is hanging out with D’Angelo, just shootin’ the shit. In other words: it’s really good. Jamie Liddel wishes he could make an album like this. The album was released by Stones Throw, which is the home label of such wonders as Madlib and Peanut Butter Wolf. Spend some time checking out their other artists, and then cruise over to their Aloe Blacc Profile and get some learnin’. When you’re done there you can check out all of these other links to get a full dose of Aloe.
Aloeblacc.com
Aloe Blacc Myspace is good for getting some previews of songs on the album.
Emanon site. This is Aloe’s hip-hop group with Dj Exile. Their last album is in my top ten of all time. Expect to hear it in the cast, also.

Now that you’ve been inundated with all that soul and hip-hop for your mind I’m going to take things to a little more esoteric level. I was link hopping around this morning and came across a new version of Design Graphik. If you’ve never seen their site before then this will be quite a treat for you. If you’re familiar with their work then this will be quite a treat for you. I found myself smiling the entire time I was there, and it was one of those wide-eyed, awe-and-wonder type smiles that babies get when you jingle keys in front of them.

And out final link is a flash game that I got really obsessed with for a while last year. Grow Cube is an intuitive flash 3-D continuance puzzle, which basically means that you have to use 3-D objects in a specific order for each of them to evolve enough to create the final goal. The idea itself is pretty fucking badical (badass+radical), but the game itself is really well designed and, most importantly, fun. Once you’ve mastered Grow Cube, and don’t expect to get it in the first hour of playing (yes, you will want to play this game for an hour), then you should try all the other games the designer has made. This shit’s better than an easy-bake oven anyday.