When you blink your eyes...

I've made a few changes to the design of the site today including these clouds in the background. I'm not 100% sure if I'm going to keep them or not, but right now I like them. The initial user reaction tests I did people thought it was an improvement for the most part. I think it gives it more character than the monotonous gray background.

I've also started trying to start making everything XTML compliant and replace some of my previous table driven layouts more with CSS. I like CSS and think it can do some really cool thinks but it can also be a real pain for certain things that were trivial with tables. Also, making things look the same in both IE and Firefox can waste a lot of your time trying to figure out certain hacks or bugs, mainly with IE6. It took me awhile to make the layout always stretch to the bottom using only DIV's and make it work in both IE and Firefox.

I have added 2 new sections to to the front page, one to show the recent entries in blink. The other to show the last 5 photos I've posted to flickr. Hopefully this will make it easier to see when something has been updated in one spot. I'm still thinking about adding an about section or something and maybe moving links inside of it. The links section seems out of place to me, but I like having that info there somewhere.

One of my favorite small record labels in the last several years has been Star Time out of New York. I started when I got the first albums from Walkmen and French Kicks and realized they were both on that label. I saw something about The Jogger's on there about 6 months before they released an album, I couldn't get enough of that first single "Back to the Future". They turned out to be one of my favorite bands, I love both of their albums.

A few months back I was on that site again and noticed a band called Foreign Born. I listened to the track on the site called "We Had Pleasure" and I loved it. I have been listening to that one track on repeat for the last few weeks off and on. I was lucky enough to find a used copy of the 5 song EP they have out yesterday. I really like their sound. I read they were from LA which was a bit surprising, reminded me of another band out of LA that I love called Autolux.

Its hard to exactly pinpoint Foreign Born. The EP starts out and I'm thinking Gang of Four and Joy Divison or something. But then they keep meandering in and out of differeng sounds that fit together nicely. We Had Pleasure, the song that got me into them is second and it is a catchy rocker. Great atmospheric synth backing. It also has drum sounds that remind me of New Order and Joy Division or something the way its processed. You can say they have an 80s influence but I wouldn't say its exactly an 80s throwback sound, there is something new in with it. The third track It Grew on You, feels more modern to me, almost Interpol and Walkmen type of atmospheric guitars. Who are some of my favorite bands. Exactly on the Verge the fourth track, is probably the song I've listened to the most so far after We Had Pleasure. It makes me think a little of Jesus and Mary Chain but more hopeful. It has a certain kind of epic feeling to it.

I realized this EP was released a year ago to the day that I purchased it, makes me wonder if they are going to do anything else. I think this is very promising, its a kind of sound I really can get into.

Several people in the last few months have been telling me how great this CD by Tom Vek called "We Have Sound" is. I kept checking for it at my local record store but they never had it in. Finally I went ahead and just downloaded it from emusic.com.

I really love this album. Its got this quality about the whole album that is really my style of music. The production is kind of rough sounding, not overly polished. It feels very loose. Its fun but not syurpy or poppy in a bad way. Its stylished and cool but doesn't feel too pretentious to me.

I'm sure people will say it borrows too much from 80s influences. I know there was a big wave of that over the last few years and some were doing it just to jump on the bandwagon, but I really like that sound when done right. I do hear the talking heads, joy division/new order, gang of four influences in there for sure but its got its own different momentum behind it for me.

I can put the entire album on repeat and I like all the tracks. Its great rhythmic, dancy sounds, jangly guitars, drum loops, keyboard noises, etc. It keeps me interested and I feel like I've heard a good portion of the music that has influenced Tom Vek, but it holds its own for me. I also thought it was cool to find out it was just one guy doing all this. I've already recommended it to a couple people I thought would like it and they came back with the same feelings I had, so I'm not alone in the positive feelings towards this recording. I hope to see him live sometime this year.

I have been listening to this internet radio station for the last month or so on somafm.com called "indie pop rocks". I think it has a pretty great mix of stuff I like, and new stuff I haven't heard yet. I heard this band "Band of Horses" on there. I wasn't sure at first if I'd like it or not from the one single. But, I picked up a copy of their debut album Everything All the Time and I can't stop listening to it.

The first song that got me was the first song, called "The First Song". Its very soothing and melodic. His voice adds a lot to this song for me. Its not exactly something I've never heard before, but it works very nicely.

Then I was totally floored with "The Funeral". I listened to it on repeat for days. I can't get the phrase out of my head, "At every occaison I'll be ready for the funeral". I think that's a great way to live life. I think its good to be ready to die at any moment, once I started feeling like that many years back it was a big weight off of my shoulders. So, this song is not only great in the sound of it, but it has some very cool songwriting in my opinion.

Then I started listening to "The Great Salt Lake" on repeat. I think its a great track to listen to out on the open road or something, I've listened to it many times in the car and it fits perfectly. Really the entire album is strong. They slow it down a bit more at the end. But with repeated listens all the songs keep growing me.

Really, you can't say this record is totally original in any respect. But it just really works. Its not exactly copying off of anything that comes to mind and blends old and new sounds quite nicely. It has a fresh and comfortable feeling to it, a lot of fun to listen to. Its been on the top of my play list for over a week now.

Awhile back I decided that I wasn't totally happy with Gallery2. It has a lot of great features but its just a bit to slow for my taste with the way it has to access the database for everything.

I heard about the Flickr API maybe 6 months ago or so, it sounded like a very interesting idea. I already kept a lot of my photos there and it would allow me the ability to dynamically get photos from flickr and display it on my own website. I looked into phpFlicker and found it pretty easy to get going with it. After a few months of tweaking it and making some custom views on the photos I have updated my website to view photos in this way.

When you initially view a gallery it shows the small square thumbnails to the left and a large view of a photo on the right which changes accorded to the thumbnail last hovered on. The images are pre-loading as soon as the page is viewed so the mouse-over should work relatively quickly. If you click on either the thumbnail or the large photo view it goes to the single photo view. Here you can go next and previous and all that. If you just click on the photo it goes to the next photo unless it is the last photo in the set it jumps back up to the entire set view. There is an opportunity to contact me about any particular photo by using the contact link at the bottom. This takes you to the contact page with that particular photo automatically included in the message I receive so I can respond to any questions about it easily.

I'v had several people beta test the new design and see how it works on several browsers since it uses heavy service side scripting and some unusual CSS stuff especially in the photo viewer . I've had positive responses so far. I feel like flickr is a service that can be relied on even though it is still beta. I access flickr daily and have only experienced very minor interruptions, less than most sites I visit. Thanks to everyone for the help in beta testing.

I finally got around to getting a copy of T. Rex - The Slider the other day. Its a Rhino re-issue with a bonus disc of alternate versions. I haven't gotten to the second disc yet because I cannot stop listening to The Slider, I have it in the car, on the iPod working out, playing at home, non-stop. In the week I've had it I can see why I've heard so many great things about it in the past.

This album has a great swagger to it, it really rocks. Its also just a lot of fun, highly listenable yet also very inspired. The song-writing is amazing, Bolan's voice is so confident and soothing. It really is a good compliment to some Bowie stuff I've been listening to lately. This must be my month for glam rock.

While working out this morning I was thinking that if I were a stripper "Telegram Sam" would be the perfect song to perform to. It reminds me of some of the great Rolling Stone tracks. The saxaphone, and roaring guitars have real momentum behind them. Then I was thinking of the beginning of the lyrics to "Rabbit Fighter", so great. "Shady politician in my bed... Tying bolts of lightning to his head".

If you are like me and hadn't heard this album before, do yourself a favor and pick up the copy. Its worth the extra money for the re-issue. Once I fully absorb the original album I'll give the second disc a try.

For awhile I've been kind of frustrated with a lot of the photos on my flickr account. I have a huge amount of photos I want people to see from parties, family gatherings, photo blogging, outtakes, etc. But I don't want them all to be on my main flickr account. Flickr has become really a way to host somewhat of a virtual exhibition, you want to show off your best stuff and see what people thing. For this reason, I created a secondary flickr account that will be used for all these other photos I don't want to put on the original flickr account. I have started moving entire proof sets so far off of the old account to the new account. In some cases I've been re-processing them with new techniques I've learned as my style has changed.

This will help me to get the one flickr account a lot more focused and start going toward a more portfolio quality gallery. I am experimenting with figuring out how to integrate the flickr stuff into my josephrussell.com gallery.

For future reference the portfolio quality flickr account will be at:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/josephrussell/

The account with everything else, potentially 1000's of photos soon:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jrussell/

Over the latter half of 2005 I became good friends with an Oklahoma City band called The Stock Market Crash. The first time I saw them play back in June I was really impressed, no one else in Oklahoma City had a sound like that.

I took a few photos at that first show that I didn't really think were that great because the lighting was so red. But, they saw the photos and really seemed to like them. I met them at another show and we talked and we shared a lot of the same musical interests. They're really great guys. They asked me if I could do band portraits of them. I hadn't really done anything like that before but I wanted to give it a try and since I liked their music I wanted to help them out. They liked the results of the photos and they use them today for promotion and in newspapers.

I later took photos of them at Bell Lab's recording studio in Norman, OK while they were recording their album which would later be titled "Geology". They also use some of those shots on their website.

Last Friday TSMC had a CD release show and started on a 2 month east coast tour. I went to the show and took some photos. With a new light setup they had going I was pleased with the results. Also in conjuction with a lot of research and practice I've been doing on photoshop and post-production work lately, I think this is one of my better live music sets. It helped a lot that the venue was packed out and there was great energy all around. Hopefully that shows in the photos.

I also heard that several of my photos were in local newspapers. Last week's Gazette and Friday's daily Oklahoman. Their manager said he was also putting them in other newspapers in cities where they would be playing.

Here are a few of the photos I took the other night, click on one of them to see the entire gallery:

This is one of my favorites because it reminds me of an old photo of Ian Curtis of Joy Division

The following photo was not originally intended when I shot it, I accidently had it on a 4 second exposure but kept holding the camera to see what would happen. This is what turned out. I liked the result and went ahead and processed it.

For the last day of 2005 I decided to try to get at least 1 good self-portrait. I often have a hard time taking photos of myself. I am very critical of my photos of other people but even more so of images with me in them.

In my frequent viewing of flickr I have become a fan of 2 people who have developed a good style of depicting themselves in photos. One of them is a single mother in Iceland, Rebekka. It seems she is pretty much an online celebrity on flickr and has quite a large following. Take a look at some of the photos she's taken of herself. Another I have recently started watching is an Italian man Paulo, who goes by Tsunami Notes. He has a great rough look about him, makes me think of Jean Reno. Often has a cigarette in his hand with smoke going across his face. Take a look at some of the photos he's taken of himself.

I ended up posting 2 self-portraits that I thought were good enough. I don't normally smoke, but I like how the cigarette looks in photos so I tried one with a cigarette out on my balcony. The light was getting pretty low but I liked how the setting sunlight was coming from behind. I took a lot more shots than I wanted to in getting this one. At first I thought about just trashing all of them as I often do when trying self-portraits. But I left them for awhile and came back and decided this one was good enough even though its slightly blurred due to the longer exposure needed with the low light. It was shot on a tripod with a cable release.

Before I knew that I was going to even use one of the cigarette ones I tried a few others of myself in my bathroom mirror. I liked the way the wild hair looked. I had a black hooded sweatshirt on and it reminded me of Jake Gyllenhaal from Donnie Darko. I decided to play the song "Killing Moon" by Echo and the Bunnymen while taking the photo. That song can be heard at the beginning of the film. I wanted it to be kind of devious looking like Donnie's face. I was holding the camera just below the frame at my chest. I had an external flash bouncing off of the wall to the left side of the frame, I wanted it to have a harsh contrast with no light coming from the ride side of the frame. I was also happy with the hair in this final one because it reminds me of the way the younger Bob Dylan's hair looks after having recently watched "No Direction Home" again recently.

So these are what came out this time. I feel I can definitely do better next time, but I was happy to come out with 2 that passed my criticism level. I sent a message to Paulo thanking him for the inspiration and he was kind enough to respond. Its interesting to me to see the contrast in the 2 images. I think the one with the cigarette makes me look really old and I look younger in the other one. It seems a bit conceited to take photos of yourself, but I think its a good excercise.

Anyone who I've talked to about music in the last month or 2 has probably heard me mention the band Wolf Parade. A couple weeks ago I was talking with a friend and I was trying to explain what the sound was like and I thought of the phrase Drunken Calliope Trance. I wanted to write down why I like this sound and what it means.

I read a review on pitchfork awhile back (can't think of which one right now) that said something that has stuck with me. The writer made an observation that a common tie between many of the greatest rock albums is that they sound like they have the ability to fall apart at any moment. Something is on edge, or of kilter about it. Something unpredictable. You're not sure how long this will last but you like it. When I came across this Wolf Parade album it gave me that feeling. I'm not saying Wolf Parade instantly deserves to be among the greatest rock bands or anything, but for me it has quickly moved up high on my list.

Apologies to the Queen Mary was produced by Isaac Brock of Modest Mouse. Reading the review in Pitchfork of Apologies to Queen Mary they mention that it gives you that same feeling of listening to the great early Modest Mouse albums. You're not exactly sure what you're hearing at all times, but you like it. I agree with this. The Wolf Parade sound isn't exactly ground breaking. But it brings together many different influences to a really great and interesting sound. For the music I find myself often listening to it was close to the perfect next step. I've talked to many people who agree with me while others think its too poppy or sounds too much like their influences. Yes, at times it has fun dancy atmosphere to it, but to me on the whole it is more dark than that.

The drunken calliope trance sound makes me think of this manical, carnival barker with wide glazed over eyes. Wolf Parade to me has these crazed trancy chants that kind of slur together at times. Its not exactly droning, but a driving sound that starts to gain momentum as it goes off the side of the cliff. I get the sense of a goth-influenced sound with many Wolf Parade songs. They are not goth by any means, but you can hear sounds similar to Interpol at times. Who are sometimes considered "Post-goth" or some such category. Interpol in contrast has much more of a polished sound to me, they share the same driving almost trancy type of sound. But they don't have the calliope/carnival sound like I think of with Wolf Parade. You can hear in many WP tracks that they have 2 keyboards playing at once which really adds to this sound I think. I've always thought that most goth or goth-type music I've heard reminds is derivative of Jim Morrisson and the Doors. I do hear some of those influences here.

I was telling someone about WP and they asked me if it was post-punk, I thought about that and it wasn't an easy question to answer. Interpol is definitely post-punk but WP is on a different tangent. I would say they have a lot of similarites with the post-punk sound but not necessarily in that category.

Another recent album that has made me think of my crazy calliope interest is Animal Collective's Feels album. Its definitely a lighter album, but possibly even more weird. Neutral Milk Hotel who is often mentioned in comparison to Wolf Parade also makes me think of this sound. As well as the aforementioned earlier Modest Mouse albums especially Lonesome Crowded West. Walkmen are another band who love and I would say are coming from a similar place to WP with their vocals and use of keyboards/pianos and atomospheric sound. Arcade Fire is another that makes me think of this carnival type of sound. I've heard some say they sound too much like Arcade Fire which I really disagree with. I love Arcade Fire and have listened to them a lot since I saw them in July of 2005. They definitely share some influences and are a part of the same Canadian scene. But, WP does things for me that Arcade Fire never did.

I know WP has gotten a lot of hype and attention and have recently started to gain some commerical success. But, I don't think that should stop people from listening to or appreciating this album. For me, it has been a big influence lately and has given me a sound I can't quite hear anywhere else.