The Cold Cut

Update 2: The fileden links went down due to popularity! You guys sucked up 5 Gb of bandwith in about 5 hours. I've re-uploaded all the individual tracks on zshare for your listening pleasure. Enjoy.

Update: The Lemur is turning 17 tomorrow- Blogstars have put together another completely original mixtape to celebrate the event. Make sure you take a visit, comment, and most of all say Happy Bday to the furry dude. The Lemur Blog

Yay! I'm 18 today (26th July)! How exciting! The plan for the day was wake up (after a late BBQ last night with some frivolity), take a run, have brunch, open a few pressies/cards and then go to see The Dark Knight. The evening was be topped off with a meal down at the beach. Perfecto. I'm not going to cover the day's celebrations yet, although I will say that The Dark Knight was fucking amazing. A full review will be posted once I have got over the emotionally draining experience that was the best film of 2008.

To tie in with my celebrations, a secret team of uber-bloggers (and a few DJs/musicians) have been working behind the scenes with myself to create a super-blogtastic 18th Birthday mixtape for you. And it rocks.

The Blogstars (remember that name- coming to an internet near you soon) have each chosen a song to be featured on the mixtape, bringing together a host of musical tastes and some of the best music blogs on the internet. Think of this as the Justice League of music. On the right of each song, you will find the blog which selected it- click through to see some more from each contributor. Oh, and enjoy, as I will be doing!

You can download each track individually, but to save time you can obtain the whole tape in singular files as a zip. Mixtape artwork is above/below- click through for mega-sized versions. The tracklisting is as follows:

Blogstars Presents Happy 18th Birthday Mixtape (Full).zip (Link 2)

1. Cut Copy- Lights And Music (Boyz Noize Happy Birthday Remix)... The Lemur Blog
2. Treasure Fingers- Come True Tonight (Dub Mix)... Immuzikation
3. Rihanna- Disturbia... Pretty Much Amazing
4. Grum- Go Back... Check The Availability
5. K-OS- Neutroniks... Party cmyk
6. VETO- Built To Fall... Where Did I Leave My Keys?
7. The Uglysuit- Chicago... Hypeful
8. The Game Ft. Lil' Wayne- My Life... Gordon DJ Stealth McGinnis
9. Cut Copy- Going Nowhere (Whitey Remix)... Ohh! Crapp
10. The Silent Years- The World's Worst Birthday Gift... Hypeful
11. Felix Da Housecat- Silver Screen Shower Scene... Neon Cool Kids, Yo!

Bonus Tracks:

1. Patton Oswalt- You Are Allowed 20 Birthday Parties

Coldplay- Violet Hill (Cold Cut Remix) (Link 2)

Just thought I would share something with you: I was messing around with the new Coldplay single earlier on Garage Band, and my doodling turned into a remix of sorts. It's just about good enough to post (aka not totally rubbish), so please leave a comment with your thoughts.

Music is, in my opinion at least, designed to be open to interpretation. Therefore I decided to try my hand at the old remixing, and I can assure you, it's a lot harder than it seems. I wasn't a huge fan of this single when it was released, but it's a definite grower. In my remix I hope I have brought out some of the more important aspects of the song: its maritime connection, a little more power in the lower end of the spectrum- bass in particular. There are a couple of cool tricks that I picked up today- inversion, reversing etc.- which have found their way into the remix.

Anyway, I have to say I really enjoyed the process- having a Mac is brilliant, but the utility is wasted if you don't learn how to fully use the programs. This remix has pretty much taught me how to use Garage Band in a few hours. I hope you enjoy it, and leave comments- I'll be able to put your tips into practice next time I decide to remix a song.

Discuss: Best computing program for remixing?

Cajun Dance Party- The Race (Link 2) (Link 3)
Cajun Dance Party- The Hill, The View And The Lights (Link 2) (Link 3)

The break from blogging was a lot shorter than I imagined- let me briefly explain my absence. Over the weekend I spent some time in London- watched my sister destroying her previous time at the London Marathon. Basically, she was brilliant. On Monday I had an interview with IBM- it was super intense, but really enjoyable. All in all, the last couple of weeks have been some of the most crucial to come thus far- the revision for the last of the endless school exams, and trying desperately to secure a job for my gap year.

Anyway, intense, intense, blah, blah, blah. And as much as I'm feeling the pressure, there are some people my age who have much more weight placed on their shoulders. I am, of course, talking about Cajun Dance Party. In a recent interview, lead singer Daniel said:

“We’re very proud of our debut album. It’s taken a long time but now it’s done, we just want people to hear these songs as soon as possible. We understand a band has to do certain things to get music to as many as people as possible, but right now we’re finishing school and are well underway with the second record.”

These guys are in the same year as me... it makes you feel useless when you're struggling with exams, and yet people of the same age are busy becoming musical gods, whilst still holding back their album release until they've finished school. That idea was abandoned when the band already had more than two albums worth of material- therefore their debut, 'The Colourful Life' will be released on 28th April.

The thing is, Cajun Dance Party don't seem to be feeling the pressure at all. They've released three tracks, all of which have been incredible. And a second album is already in the works... recording will commence in the summer, when the band leave school.

In short, now is an exciting time- both for the band, and for us. The two latest tracks that have leaked are available above: third single 'The Race' and album closer 'The Hill, The View And The Lights'- kudos to Stereogum-, which sees Vicky Freund (I presume, as the only female band member!) stepping forward for vocal duties. And just like that, the band become a boy/girl duo... that sense of spontaneity is just one of the things that makes this band very special.

For news on the band, visit their website...

Just a few random tracks I'm enjoying at the moment...

Radiohead- Street Spirit (Link 2)
Vampire Weekend- Oxford Comma (Link 2)
The Courteeners- Aftershow (Link 2)
Madonna/Britney Spears- 4 Minutes To Break The Ice (Link 2)

On 1st April 2008, The Cold Cut turned 1. A momentous occasion, don't you think? So momentous that I forgot to post about it on the day...

Anyway, the site's been going for just over a year, and although it was a bit of a bumpy start, things are settling down nicely. At first it was 'The Cold Cut', devoted to anything and everything. Then it was films, music and TV. And finally, music. It now has a clear cut identity... although I still cover anything that takes my fancy.
I used to obsess over stats, but recently it has become more of a treat to see the hits increasing. At the moment, I'm getting around 1000 a day.
That might not sound like a lot, but on one particularly boring day I had a look at how many hits some of the most popular music blogs were getting daily. The results were interesting: Good Weather For Airstrikes gets around 1300 a day. Neiles Life has around 500 a day. The obvious leaders, though, are Pretty Much Amazing! (with an average 3500 visiters a day!), and Brooklyn Vegan (unpublished figures, which are huge). So basically, I'm still low down on the food chain, but I'm not doing too badly. I can't really compete with those websites as they are run by hordes of people (hint hint- If you would like to write here then email me...).

I just thought I should commemorate this moment. I hope there are many more anniversaries to come.

PS- I'm looking to branch out and get my name into the air. Any ideas of publications/magazines/websites that you think would let me write for them? Cheers...

Wow. 50000 visitors. Its hard to believe The Cold Cut has only been going for 10 months, but I feel as if this blog is at least beginning to make an impact. I had a few issues at first- I didn't focus enough, but music is quickly becoming an even more important part of my life, and I'm really glad that its the focus of this blog.

I just want to thank everyone who has visited The Cold Cut, from a one-time visitor to those of you who come here everyday. Regardless of your standing, I urge you to subscribe to my RSS feed, tell your friends, spread the word and comment. Your contribution means more to me than you would believe.

It happened very quickly- some pretty cool stuff started happening about 3 months into this blog's life. I've had Dev Hynes of Lightspeed Champion commenting, a producer of Lupe Fiasco's (The Black Mage, or Chris of 'Chris N Drop) new album commenting numerous times, been on Rolling Stone's blog and much more. Lately, I've started to receive loads of band submissions, something I'm truly grateful for- I hope my posts have helped you all in some way or another. My popularity is increasing, with the Hype Machine indexing my blog (I've been number 1 on the popular list about 10 times now!), regular Paper Thin Walls spots and popular posts on Elbows. The page rank is going up as well- just as a side note, if you want to exchange links, drop me a line...

I have serious plans for this blog... I recently bought a new domain, www.thecoldcut.com, which is not functioning just yet, but will soon be up. With the new domain I will keep Blogger hosting for now, but may eventually move to Wordpress so I can integrate a much better template. I've put more advertising on the blog to offset the costs of file hosting- I will hopefully soon be making enough to buy a yousendit premium account.

Thanks for a great 10 months. Long may it continue... This one's for you!

Led Zeppelin- Thank You