Raleigh Denim Grand Opening!

Slugfork this weekend!

The Love Language: Heart to Tell

The Love Language - Heart to Tell from Merge Records on Vimeo.

Via 521 STUDIES

Get out and Vote

Perfume Genius

Just found this beautiful voice, Perfume Genius from Seattle, Washington (link).

The Future Sight

VeeLee has now released their first album, The Future Sight, through Grip Tapes!  

Dual Turntable

Found this yesterday at an estate sale! This girl is now going to be rocking the house!

Small Black tonight at Kings*

Cooke Street Carnival 2010: House Party in the Street

U.S. Religions Knowledge Survey

Atheists and agnostics, Jews and Mormons are among the highest-scoring groups on a new Pew Forum survey of religious knowledge, outperforming evangelical Protestants, mainline Protestants and Catholics on questions about the core teachings, history and leading figures of major world religions.

Take Pew Quiz

via http://pewforum.org/

Infographic: Forgetting Food Safety Costs Hundreds of Billions

via GOOD

Soiree de poche: Beach House

Google Partners Up With Arcade Fire to Launch HTML5 Chrome Experiment

The Wilderness Downtown

Choreographed windows, interactive flocking, custom rendered maps, real-time compositing, procedural drawing, 3D canvas rendering... this Chrome Experiment has them all. "The Wilderness Downtown" is an interactive interpretation of Arcade Fire's song "We Used To Wait" and was built entirely with the latest open web technologies, including HTML5 video, audio, and canvas.

via http://www.chromeexperiments.com/arcadefire/

Twin Sister & Memoryhouse played last night at Cat's Cradle

Last night Memoryhouse and Twin Sister played at the Cat's Cradle, to an audience of about 25. I felt that I got to know these two bands intimately. Both these bands have shown up on Pitchfork's 'Rising Section'. Pitchfork writes, Long Island-bred indie-pop quintet Twin Sister make music that sounds like a secret. Main vocalist Andrea Estella's voice breathes like a whisper while the rest of the band pulse, reverb, and twang behind her. The result is intimate, diffuse, and even a little funky. and writes, Ontario duo Memoryhouse layer reverb over wistful, bittersweet hooks and minimal drum machine tics like a more fresh-faced Beach House.

If you get a chance to see these bands, I wouldn't miss it.

Suburbs hit #1 on the Billboards!

They beat out Taylor Swift, Eminem, and everyone else in the Pop world (Billboard). I can't believe it. Is there a change in the mainstream? Well, I hope so. For your moment of Zen, see their recent live performances on the Daily Show, posted via Stereogum.

Judge overturns Calif. gay marriage ban

A federal judge in California ruled Wednesday that the state's Proposition 8 ban on same-sex marriage violates the constitutional right to equal protection, the first step in a legal struggle that most expect will end at the Supreme Court.
It was the first federal trial to consider whether banning same-sex marriage violates the U.S. constitution, and Olson and Boies provided an elaborate record for Walker and future courts, with their own clients, social scientists, psychologists and experts on marriage providing testimony. Cooper called only two witnesses, and, in his questioning at closing arguments, Walker seemed peeved that the Proposition 8 backers did not do more. continue reading . . .
via http://www.washingtonpost.com/

Class Portrait

The ethical issues and paranoia surrounding the laws of photographing children in today’s society is confusing and somewhat farcical. At what point will the photography of children be completely forbidden.

via Anna Brooks

You Ain’t No Picasso’s favorite songs of summer 2010

Going through some new songs that 'You  Ain't No Picasso' has added as their 2010 summer jam (link).
YANP’s favorite songs of Summer 2010
MP3: Menomena – TAOS
MP3: Jaill – Snake Shakes
MP3: Wavves – King Of The Beach
MP3: Wolf Parade – What Did My Lover Say (It Always Had To Go This Way)
MP3: Of Montreal – Coquet Coquette
MP3: Lissie – Bully
MP3: Cults – Oh My God
MP3: Guards – Sail It Slow (feat. Cults)
MP3: Antarctica Takes It! – C & F
MP3: Cotton Jones – Glorylight and Christie
MP3: Black Mountain – Old Fangs
MP3: John Grant – I Wanna Go To Marz
MP3: Tennis – Marathon
MP3: Polock – Fireworks
MP3: These United States – The Great Rivers
MP3: Magic Kids – Summer
MP3: Sibylle Baier – Tonight
MP3: Kevin Barnes – Tonight
MP3: Family Trees – Dream Talkin
MP3: Edriano Celantano – Prisencolinensinainciusol
MP3: Carl Broemel – Heaven Knows

Burning Man Infographic

via by xmasons

The Guardian's summer photo competition

This photo was taken in the north-west of Scotland in Fort William. We were there to climb Ben Nevis and afterwards, when camping by a loch, this scene was truly enough to relax our sore muscles

This photo was submitted and was accepted into the guardian's summer photo competition (link). I love this Photo.

Elon Musk: 'I'm planning to retire to Mars'

The SpaceX founder is convinced that humanity's survival rests on its ability to move to the red planet.
Musk wants to secure humanity's future by turning the human race into a space-faring people able to colonise other planets. It's the only way, Musk believes, that we can be saved, either from destroying ourselves or from some outside calamity. To put it mildly, Musk thinks big and takes the long view. "It's important that we attempt to extend life beyond Earth now," he says in an accent hinting at his childhood in South Africa. "It is the first time in the four billion-year history of Earth that it's been possible and that window could be open for a long time – hopefully it is – or it could be open for a short time. We should err on the side of caution and do something now." continue reading...
I still think that the earth is worth saving and the we can do it. I also view the world as a whole, and not humanity separate -  so, this is a bit too much for me to grasp.

Night Gallery, Constant Struggle

A new tape that I love. You can listen to Constant Struggle through Rainbow Body Records (link).

The Suburbs Leaks!

It has met my expectations!
'Sometimes I can't believe in, I'm moving past the feeling'!

Check out guardian.co.uk review (link): 'It sets the album's tone, which reins in the excesses of the past, even when the songs veer towards something similar. Empty Room has the propulsion of Neon Bible's No Cars Go, but it's leavened by Régine Chassagne's gorgeous, airy vocal. For the most part, The Suburbs' pleasures are subtle ones – the sudden lurch in rhythm that disrupts the drivetime rock dynamics of Modern Man, the delicate drift of Half Light I. The most surprising among them must be the discovery of Arcade Fire's sense of humour, hitherto unnoticed, possibly because it was hitherto nonexistent. If the album's wearying length (at over an hour, it could happily lose three or four tracks, starting with the leaden Half Light II) and song titles packed with brackets and roman numerals still suggest a band inclined to take itself too seriously, there's something charming about the way an album about growing up in the suburban 80s gradually starts to resemble a chart rundown from 1983: the taut, post-new wave rock track (We Used to Wait), the mournful social-realist ballad (The Sprawl I), the glittering synth-pop masterpiece (the glorious Sprawl II). You wait expectantly for them go the whole nostalgic hog and hit you with a novelty dance track along the lines of Agadoo, but, alas they don't: instead it ends with a reprise of the title track, and a satisfying sense of having accomplished what they set out to achieve.'

guardian.co.uk/ maps war logs

guardian.co.uk/ selects 300 records, from the 92,201 WikiLeaks database, which they see significant and provided details through an interactive map (link).

via http://www.guardian.co.uk/

WikiLeaks: Afghan War Diary, 2004-2010

Release date

July 25, 2010

Summary

25th July 2010 5:00 PM EST WikiLeaks has released a document set called the Afghan War Diary, an extraordinary compendium of over 91,000 reports covering the war in Afghanistan from 2004 to 2010.

The reports, while written by soldiers and intelligence officers, and mainly describing lethal military actions involving the United States military, also include intelligence information, reports of meetings with political figures, and related details.

The document collection is available on a dedicated webpage.

The reports cover most units from the US Army with the exception of most US Special Forces' activities. The reports do not generally cover top secret operations or European and other ISAF Forces operations.

We have delayed the release of some 15,000 reports from the total archive as part of a harm minimization process demanded by our source. After further review, these reports will be released, with occasional redactions, and eventually in full, as the security situation in Afghanistan permits.

via WikiLeaks

Deadly Toll

via Spiegel Online

Don't argue with an ibex

Thanks Jane, I needed this

From A Cell Phone to Porsche, The Craigslist Master

Bartering Master!

via http://www.huffingtonpost.com

Raleigh Denim - handcrafted in North Carolina

UNC-TV featured Raleigh Denim!

Lower Dens - Twin-Hand Movement

I recently heard "Hospice Gates" from Lower Dens new record and I love it! I look forward to hearing more of this album!
Pitchfork remarks that 'Hunter's deep, smooth voice-- comparable to PJ Harvey's, especially on grittier tracks like "Completely Golden"-- is woven in with the least trebly of the instruments, whispery yet tensile. When it's time for the guitars to show off with elaborate arpeggios, gurgling shreds, and distant, glittery calls-and-responses, she stands back from the mic entirely, or at least gives the instruments, including her own, a long intro. Even when her lyrics are a key component of a song, she can sound (like Beach House's Victoria Legrand) a little lost in the mix, as if the force of the instruments were threatening to blow her away. The rare tracks where she's loudest are just as strong as the others: there's the slight "Truss Me", whose title is a good indication of how slow and loose the song is, and "Two Cocks", a joyous, robust potential single.' Continue reading from pitchfork ...