1. Total Fest
2. Yashicamat 124G
3. Sharkbite Studios, Oakland CA
4. Northern California camping
5. Finishing tour with “Hole in the Sky”, with Stavros from Atlas Moth on vox
6. Jon Howell
7. Every recording session I got to do this year
8. fastmail.fm
9. Peavey customer service
10. Ninkasi Brewing Company

Young Widows – In And Out Of Youth And Lightness
No contest, my favorite of the year. This record is incredible. Songs, performances, tones, recording, everything.
True Widow – As High As The Highest… and INO
Their first record dug a hole; these two crawled into it. I don’t know what that means but it sounds right. One of the few bands I hear and wish I was in that band.
Batillus – Furnace
Watching these guys play most of this record every night for two weeks = great. Watching people get knocked on their ass by the start of that first song = really great.
ME & LP – Chez Raymond
Super nice. I could listen to Lisa Papineau sing the dictionary.
Northless – Clandestine Abuse
Fuck my face, this record is enormous and heavy and hooky and awesome.
Whores – Ruiner
Perfect modern take on 90s drop-D riffage. Great recording too.
Paul McCartney – Ram
How did I never hear this record before? How was this made in 1971?
Cellos – Bomb Shelter
Am I just a sucker for Canadian noise rock? I stumbled on this on bandcamp a few weeks ago and I just keep listening to it.
Cartographer – Hats, Capes, Dark Arts
I shouldn’t list this since I recorded it and they’re buddies, but I genuinely love this record. Shellac-inspired aluminum guitar smart-assery.
KEN Mode – Venerable
I have loved KEN Mode for years. When this record is on, it is fucking ON. There is no other band doing what these guys do.
Mongoloid Village – Folly
Excellent weird rocking. Parts after parts after parts, but it works. These guys are allowed to name drop King Crimson; your shitty band isn’t.
Burmese – Lun Yurn
Batshit / awesome.

That last design, the MT one, was pretty tweaked out and hand-written and sucked to write, but it lasted six years. Actually, I still like it. But I was never going to migrate it; it was stuck with that specific version of MT.

While I was gutting things, I jettisoned about 90% of my blog archive, which dated back to 1999(!). Nothing anybody will miss.

RSS will probably hiccup, but hopefully redirects are working such that my thousands of readers will continue to never miss a post.

Right. Hello.

1. Kowloon Walled City has a new record coming out at the end of the month. We posted two songs for your listening pleasure, and you can pre-order a copy (12″ LP with included CD) here.

2. I’m speaking at Adobe MAX next month. My talk is “Flash Builder 4 Advanced Tips and Tricks”. It should be a hoot.

3. And though I’m not blogging much, I’m on the Twitter. I’m @gscottevans, the band is @kowloonwalled, and the Adobe me is @gseadobe. FOLLOW ME.

granddad and me. 1973.

I guess I’ve waited long enough on this. My grandfather passed away in June. Those of you who know my family know how important he was to us, and to me, and how much of him I see in myself. I can’t do him justice so I will keep this short.

Granddad’s life was everything any of us could ask for. He was married for 65 years. He ran a successful family business — selling educational foreign language materials, many of which he photographed, printed, and produced himself. He did a ton of community work, including a few terms as mayor of his village. (here’s a great article from his local paper.) He saw his grandsons graduate college and grow up. He met his great-grandson, saw him learn to walk.

Grandmother can’t live by herself, so I spent a week helping my dad take apart his parents’ house to prep it for sale. Fifty years of family history, memories, life stuff. Which of these paintings is important? Who’s going to take the dining room table? Holy crap, do you remember these photos? What do we do with a wall full of antique clocks? Does Grandmother want these books too? It was exhausting and amazing.

When we were finished, we sat down in the living room where we both grew up and poured two glasses of Granddad’s scotch.

How do you sum up 85 years? All that time at work, all that effort put into the house, all that stress over the kids, the money, the doctors. All the gifts with handmade cards, all the photos, all the advice. All the errands and todo lists and record keeping. We didn’t even try to sum it up, we just raised a glass: thank you for everything, Granddad.

Now a couple of months later, I’m sitting in my house, waiting for our second son to be born. He’ll be here any day now.

When my father died, it was like a whole library had burned down. -Laurie Anderson