I had a hell of a weekend a few weeks back. 14 members of Fort Awesome (the alias friends from college go by, for those not in the know) visited Austin, and the Austin City Limits festival was in full swing as well. I had so much fun that weekend that my body took it out on me the following week. My plans for a post about ACL kind of derailed as a result, but here is where I set things straight. Without further ado, my ACL playlist:

• What Made Milwaukee Famous - only got a brief listen of these guys, but I did come to the realization that their sound is a lot more varied than I thought.
• Vampire Weekend - they basically played their entire album, and were a lot fun.
• Delta Spirit - my ACL buddies and I kind of wandered by the stage but we were pretty impressed with these guys. I definitely plan on taking another listen sometime.
• Gogol Bordello - I only managed to hold out for 15 minutes before I couldn’t take it anymore. These guys are just not for me.
• Hot Chip - they look like a pretty nerdy group of guys (we were joking half the time at how one guy looked like John Hodgman and another like Peter Jackson), but they rocked.
• N.E.R.D. - awesome show. These guys were every bit as great as all the hype. I won’t discuss the whole teenage girls on the stage thing (it was a bit creepy).
• Silversun Pickups - also awesome, although I think they turned up the noise factor more than usual. They also basically played their entire album (they’re only one, I think).
• Okkervil River - just caught a brief listen, but I did like what I heard. I also have to check out more stuff from these guys.
• The Raconteurs - I heard Gnarls Barkley rocked, but I was too busy having a blast listening to the Raconteurs.
• Foo Fighters - these guys did not disappoint. The perfect cap on a great weekend of music.

Overall, I managed to listen to quite a bit despite the busy weekend. I missed all of the second day of ACL, but to be honest nothing really grabbed me on that day anyway. This was my first time at the festival, but I don’t think it’ll be my last.

Have you bought a CD or listened to a Clear Channel sponsored radio station in the last 15 years or so? If you have, you are probably a victim of the ongoing loudness war in the music industry. Don’t think this is only a pop music phenomenon either, it’s all over the place including many indy labels.

What is the loudness war, you ask? It’s the practice of making songs sound louder by compressing their dynamic range. Louder-sounding songs grab your attention more than songs that sound softer. That much is obvious, but wasn’t obvious is that making a song louder often makes the quality go down. It’s been an open secret through the music industry for a long time.

I’ve been talking up the loudness war recently thanks to some mind-melding with my friend Dylan. He pointed out a recent article about the subject in the IEEE Spectrum, check it out here. The obligatory Wikipedia article (also good by the way) is here.

Is anyone listening to L’Arc~En~Ciel’s latest US release, “AWAKE”? The sound is more eclectic than their previous release “SMILE”. I’ve spent the last month or so listening to it pretty much straight through, and I have to say I’m pretty impressed.

For those of you into Japanese music (I’m looking your way Sam Felton) or curious, I highly recommend it.

A friend of mine from Kung Fu class is a ridiculously awesome guitar player. He’s trying to get gigs with his band while finishing up at Berklee College of Music and just got a web site up. Check it out here.

I just found out that L’Arc En Ciel’s new album will be appearing in the US on June 29th. Looks like this may be a little bit of a breakthrough for the group. Although I seriously doubt anyone besides anime, manga, and J-pop/J-rock fans will pick it up.

Oh well, more on my utter lameness at updating this blog later. I have to get back to my final project.

I’ve been listening to L’Arc En Ciel’s new album “SMILE”, released this past Wednesday. I never was a really big fan of Japanese rock bands, they all seemed to ’80s for me, or just too gimmick-ridden. However, SMILE really surprised me. I had heard the second song of the album as the opening song to Full Metal Alchemist and was quite impressed.

The rest of the album is on par with the aforementioned song “READY STEADY GO”, good beats and guitar work with smooth vocals from the ever-popular Hyde. Give “SMILE” a listen if you’re a fan, or even if your curious about what a Japanese band sounds like.