i’m having some major computer issues at the moment, so i think it’s best if i don’t update this page for awhile so that i can focus on getting things sorted out.

things will pick up again in november. expect reviews for the past lives EP, chris cornell’s scream, q-tip’s long-awaited the renaissance and others that i’ve been working on but haven’t had a chance to post yet.

i would like to use november/december mainly as catch-up months for releases i’ve missed or haven’t had an opportunity to get to.

also in anticipation for the long-awaited guns n roses album, i intend on doing a live-blog of me listening to their discography for the first time. we’ll see how that goes.

take care, and i’ll be back soon.

[UPDATE] october 30th: so apparently the chris cornell LP isn’t coming out until february. i guess i won’t be reviewing that until the new year.

also, in other news, expect things to be back to normal by sunday night/monday morning. thanks.

every now-and-then this blog gets visitors redirected to it from search engines and luckily, through the magic of wordpress, i can see what terms they used to get here. i was a bit surprised to see that people are not always looking for music when they arrive:

i attributed most of my traffic to people looking for .rar blogs and links to full albums, but now i can say that this blog has more than one (misleading) draw to it. so, i’d like to welcome those of you who might’ve stumbled upon this site inadvertently in your search for big black cocks. perhaps there’s potential for a slogan here: “there was no sound: come for the big black cocks, stay for the awful sentence structure.”

i suppose i was a bit naive to think that tagging one post with the word “cock-rock” (that tag has since been removed), and another with “big black” wouldn’t get me into a bit of trouble. lesson learned! i’ll take responsibility for that one, but i have no clue how “fuck babes” redirects here.

in other news, i think sunday nights/mondays are going to be the days when i do the bulk of my review-posting. that way i can get the jump on other review sites and blogs that schedule their reviews around release dates. i’m also going to try to limit myself to two reviews per week (although i’ve rarely exceeded or met that quota before) to help give myself a bit of a deadline/goal to meet, and it’ll also force me to pick two specific albums to listen to, which sounds far more efficient than my current method of listening to everything-under-the-sun to figure out what i’ll then review.

the word on the street book and magazine festival is taking place this sunday (tomorrow) over in queen’s park for anyone who’s interested. i thought i’d mention this here because not only is an old professor of mine going to be speaking about his new book of poetry there (adam sol, jeremiah ohio), but there also appears to be a pretty cool music tent being run by eye weekly magazine. performers include castlemusic as well as laura barrett, both of whom have just put out albums that should be reviewed here shortly. there are also a number of panel discussions taking place at the same time, with a “diaspora dialogues tent” featuring discussions on toronto seen from its numerous and unique points of view, as well as the “ideaspace young adult marquee” having a discussion on “music of the word.” in relation to another interest of mine, journalism, i’ll be attending the “survival tips for freelancers” talk that will be happening in the “canadian magazines tent” at 12:45 to see what i can glean from more experienced writers. all in all, this event sounds like it has something for everyone, and if i’m not mistaken, it’s free!

in other news, check back here tomorrow because i should have a review for another local music event that happened last weekend: extermination music night.

finally, if you’ve got some time to kill at 7pm on monday night, tune into cbc radio 3 and follow along to the live broadcast of the polaris music prize award ceremony like i will be doing. i’ve taken a look at the nominees list and realized that i’ve been slacking a little bit when it comes to reviewing canadian artists, as i’ve only reviewed one of the nominees. oops. i’ll blame school for that…

just a quick thanks to the people over at hydrahead records for mentioning my review of stephen brodsky’s new album over on their blog. that quick link increased my daily traffic to more than ten times its normal amount. it’s nice to know people are actually reading this blog, let alone record companies.

things have been a bit slow around here for much longer than i had planned. now that i’m settled after my much-needed vacation, i’m ready to get back to writing for this blog again.

hopefully i’ll be posting a bit more regularly. i’m also going to need to play a bit of catch-up since a lot of music has been released during my down time.

i’m considering making a name-change to the blog as well. i’ve never liked the name, i just named it this because it’s all i could think of at the time. any suggestions would be excellent, although i think i’m on my own for this one.

expect more here soon.

this blog isn’t dead, but things are going to be kinda slow around here until i finish my MA research project (due august 1st).

i’m working on reviews for the new beck and made out of babies records. i should also have a concert review coming up as well.

dear peter gabriel,

apparently you want to cover vampire weekend’s “cape cod kwassa kwassa.”

please don’t.

love,

mike.

in a myspace post made two days ago, pet genius announced that they’ve called it quits. citing conflicting obligations, the post made it clear that the members of the band have future plans that do not include pet genius, although there is apparently an EP still in the works that should see the light of day sometime soon. it seems things have ended amicably and i would hope so, as the members have all been involved in other projects with one another in some shape or form before, which have also ended because of growing interests elsewhere (namely cave in and the octave museum). so as unfortunate as this news is, it seems more positive than anything else. they made an excellent album, toured a bit, had fun doing it and carried on naturally to do other things.

while mr. brodsky has already shown that his solo work is where his priorities are, it’ll be interesting to see what the other members of pet genius do with themselves. johnny “coolbreeze” northrop is also a member of another cave in offshoot, clouds, who have a record that just came out on tuesday. i’m willing to guess that’s where he’s headed, but he might have something else up his sleeve. we’ll see. as for jr, he’s a bit of a mystery. i know he’s the drummer for doomriders, but they seem to be inactive at the moment.

anyway, here are some videos of pet genius doing what they do best. they happen to be the only videos on youtube of pet genius playing pet genius material, so here you go:

according to idolator and numerous other credible internet sources, this site is claiming to have (had) their paws on nine songs from the upcoming guns n roses album chinese democracy. i would normally label this a hoax, but apparently people were actually able to hear the leak before it was taken down. most of the songs that were leaked have been heard before though, either during recent performances, or through previous lower quality leaks. this album has been a joke for so long– something that was never actually expected to come to fruition. but this past year alone, we’ve seen a lot of activity from the guns n roses camp, most notably axl’s response to the dr.pepper challenge. is chinese democracy’s release in our near future? will america get their free dr. peppers? or is this leak a stunt to get poor saps like me to generate more buzz about a band who should have either called it quits long ago, or changed their name to “axl rose and the revolving doors?”

even though i’ve never really been a fan of guns n roses outside a few songs from appetite for destruction, i think it’s interesting to see people so wrapped up about an album that’s been in the making for basically 17 years (give or take). here’s hoping it all sounds like “my world” from use your illusion.

[UPDATE] speaking of the fervour surrounding this album, this post alone has garnered my blog 46 hits in the past 18 hours, when i normally just get three or four people wandering by a day. thanks, guns n’ roses! i still don’t like your music, but maybe i’ll tag more of my posts with “guns n’ roses chinese democracy leak” to bolster traffic.

also, while i’m at it, there’s been no news as far as whether or not the leak was legitimate, or if other people were able to rip it before the streaming audio was taken down.