I am really stoked for this Metallica album and maybe it’s because I generally like everything these guys do, (full disclosure: I thought St. Anger was fucking rad…) but I will for sure be rushing out to buy this album when it comes out on the 12th.

For now I can listen to the leaks on YouTube, which I am happy to admit won’t compare to the album blaring on my car stereo when I get my hands on the son of a bitch. Below is the video for “The Day That Never Comes”. Unfortunately the first half is essentially a drawn out medi-vac scene, however it is finally salvaged by a convincing second half with Kirk shredding against a soldier deciding whether or not to shoot an Iraqi woman advancing at him.

Iraq war music videos are usually condescendingly melodramatic (Green Day anyone?) as this one is also guilty of, but at least this one’s got a happy ending… Wait this is a Metallica video, aren’t 18 wheelers supposed to crash through beds and shit? I digress…

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Any way you look at it we are headed for some momentous change. Obama or McCain, both are right… things are about to “change”. Fall is around the corner and I’m about to head to NYC, where I haven’t been for about 2 years now. Last time I was in the city I was moonlighting as a tour manager for my good friend Mig. It’s been far too long, and I can’t wait to get back. I’m hoping for some sort of fall weather when I get there, although it will probably be hot as hell… I’ll be in town from September 10 to the 17th meeting with folks and going to conferences, but please let me know if anything is going on that I shouldn’t miss. I am always up for the out of the ordinary.

So with New York, here comes fall and for some reason every year around this time I become a sucker for fist clenching rock hooks and string arrangements. You’ll find an assortment of these sorts of songs in this collection for a fall that’s turning this summer into a blur.

I’m imagining this would be good music to watch the leaves fall off the tress to.

Photo by Lucy. Found at FFFFound

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My appetite for better quality web video is growing by the day. Where I used to go to YouTube and easily entertain myself, I find it hard to sit through the terrible quality of its videos these days. Hence I have been on the hunt for compelling video content that isn’t sullied by cheap high compression rates. Through my search I have come to realize that no one is doing this better than Vimeo right now.

Not only do they deliver HD video content flawlessly (thanks to BitGravity) but they are attracting the best of the best who are shooting in HD. I predict we will soon notice the ubiquity of Vimeo embeds increasing steadily, as shooting in HD becomes a pre-requesite for video content. I have been recently addicted to HD streaming video, watching Hulu clips at night and during the day spending entirely too much time on the Vimeo HD Channel.

Chalk Drawing from Joel Endicott on Vimeo.

Above is the video that spurred this post, it’s a simple video shot by a father of his daughters playing with sidewalk chalk, complete with a Sufjan Stevens song to make it even more endearing. But it looks GREAT and that’s what makes this HD revolution so exciting, good quality content is fighting its way to the top, and that can only mean good things for online media.

Check out 9 more awesome videos after the jump… [click to continue...]

I am not sure how this got under peoples radar, but this has to be one of 2008’s best collaborations. The king of chesse pop Darryl Hall invited Chromeo to his house and well… they made sweet music together.

Hall and Chromeo, its like a dream come true and these guys kill it in Darryl’s house playing both Hall’s originals and Chromeo’s kiler Tenderoni from the latest album. If you have time watch all the video’s in this episode of Live from Darryl’s House.

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You know the scene in Top Gun when Maverick is chased down on his Harley by his hot flight instructor only to take her inside her apartment for that infamous love scene? Well when they remake Top Gun, and face it folks its bound to happen, the new song by the Kings of Leon “Sex On Fire” has to be the soundtrack to that scene.

This song makes me want to wear aviator sunglasses at night, get in bar fights over chicks and generally take it to the limit. It’s that unique rock song that hits you like a clenched fist in the gut from your co-pilot because you deserved it… I am getting carried away with this Top Gun reference, but you get the idea. Go buy this song now on iTunes and get loose like Mongoose.

Kings of Leon - Sex On Fire

This video is so awesome, it’s like the coolest Beck video that Beck never made. The “first music video ever shot with a 360 degree panoramic lens” is a acid drenched psychedelic roof party . Almost flawlessly devised, this video parades through the absurd with just the right balance of daze and confusion. Although the song first came out in 2006, the brand new video just might be my favorite of the year (I make these sorts of statements entirely too often…) and the fact that it is the first music video shot with a 360 Panoramic lens means I can’t wait for more to follow. Check it out below…

Cut Chemist - 1st Big Break from eyestorm on Vimeo.

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After writing my blog about Lifecasting, I have recently formed an unhealthy interest in a crop of upcoming internet personalities, all of which seem to fall under the dubious term of “tech babes” or “CeWebrities” which ever you prefer.

There seems to be a new breed of good looking, fame hungry women who are determined to expand their names, faces and personality as far as the web will take them. These women are all refreshingly intelligent, charmingly witty and convincingly knowledgeable about the world of tech and start-ups. My girlfriend probably doesn’t approve of my waxing on about a fascination with “tech babes”, but this is not some sort of schoolboy crush. I am fascinated by the unique sense of celebrity that revolves around these tech savvy, intellectual women, who more than being easy on the eyes, are establishing themselves as the talking heads of the new media landscape.

That being said Playboy did just recently run a poll asking people to vote on which “tech babe” they would like to to grace pages of their magazine in the buff… apparently the poll wasn’t what the girls thought it would be, but you know all press is good press, right?

I put together a top 10 list of my favorite internet ceWebrity “Tech Babes” after the jump: [click to continue...]

This spot is one of the best I have seen in recent memory, not only does it use Justice’s “Genesis” brilliantly but it makes sense of the global oil and ethanol conundrum we have found ourselves in. It’s hipster geo-politics in a good way…

Head over to www.goodmagazine.com for more GOOD things.

Sometimes I stumble upon a band and for some untold reason beyond my better sense I get hooked with the most saccharine uncool set of songs. It doesn’t happen too often, maybe twice a year, but when it happens its bad… real bad. The worst part is that I was trying to be cool, I was trying to watch The Black Keys on Live at Abbey Road that I had found on The Sundance Channel’s On Demand series. But the first band to play on the episode was a band called The Hoosiers and for some reason I didn’t dust them with the fast forward button. I should have, they had all the makings of an obnoxious band, lame costumes (the keyboardist was dressed like Spiderman?) and a singer with that stupid reverse punk mullet with the long bangs and spiked hair in the back. But I didn’t, instead I watched them perform a song called “Goodbye Mr. A” and it was an offensively hooky, pop pandering melody with a skip along beat, just the way I like it.

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The Take-Away Shows for the La Blogtheque are by far the coolest thing to happen to music videos in the last 10 years, and my good friend Will Abramson who works at Imeem and is a massive enthusiast of music and the videos that accompany them, just produced his first installment for The Take-Away Shows with none other than my second favorite Swede, Lykke Li (Robyn is of course my first) and El Perro Del Mar singing songs amongst the soft sun of San Fransisco.

Check it out at La Blogotheque HERE