A Commonplace Book

9 days ago I went to this.

About 5 days ago I received my order of this.

And then 2 days ago this dropped.

Too much Sigur Ros? No such thing.

The first in what will hopefully be a number of artist and album spotlights I do for Amie Street.

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When you first listen to Ape Sounds, Nigo’s genre-mashing release on British downtempo superlabel Mo’Wax, it’s hard not to make some mental connections to A Bathing Ape, Nigo’s similarly genre-mashing line of streetwear.

Just as he does with his clothing line, Nigo pulls musical influences from everywhere and throws them together with risky disregard for any sort of smooth segues. Fortunately for you, his risk pays off.

You probably wouldn’t expect Japanese punk to show up on an album shoehorned into the electronic genre, but there it is in ‘Jet Set’, the second to last song on the album. But even before you get there you’ll have heard a medley that includes a Japanese hip-hop track featuring a shamisen (’Kung Fu Fightin”) and a downtempo torch song driven by a house music diva (’Too Much’).

For a special treat, any fans of UNKLE will instantly recognize which track was co-written by James Lavelle. (Hint: It’s ‘March Of The General’.)

If you’re only going to download a single song, choose from one of the above and go with the style that most fits your interest. Be warned, however, that this is one of those albums where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Pick and choose at your own discretion…

But it’s not a mixtape, it’s a Muxtape: No Parents!

As with most people I’ve talked to, my attraction to Muxtape, the new streaming audio phenom, is definitely grounded in its simplicity. With his initial Tumbler post announcing the service’s launch, creator Justin said “expect rapid developments,” but I’m hoping they don’t come too rapidly.

It might not advance their business model (is there one?) to take it slowly but the lack of features on Muxtape is what makes it so exciting. No friend lists, no search function, and no bloody profile to fill out. You can’t have more than one mixtape per account. It’s beautiful.

The move in this direction is a pleasant broader shift on the part of designers. Even Yahoo, usually a punchline to an untold joke about overcomplicated interfaces, just backed Flickr’s launch of video hosting that restricts length to 90 seconds. No full episodes of Family Guy there, the goal seems to be for people to upload, literally, moving pictures.

Whether either of these sites will remain in their uncluttered state for long is a mystery. Both could very well begin deploying “improvements” as soon as their basic architecture seems stable enough. I’m sure doing so will improve their bounce rate and their site-visit times and other monetizable stats, but for the sake of good design I hope they remain as they are.