As you could probably tell from the posts this week (unless you are reeeeeally not paying much attention), we are back! The unimitatable TsuruBride (aka Baby) and I spent last week in Paris (with a day trip to Lyon on Baby’s birthday to visit our friends Isa & Ben from Our Society). What an amazingly awesomely awesome trip it was!
Paris Graffiti No. 1
Epic…. So epic…. but unfortunately with a week off from work and the impending time off for the holidays, work is doing a double-time, if not a triple-time, on our asses. So, though the posts may be a little few & far between until things settle down a bit, we’ll do what we do as much as we can do it…
But back to Paris. I’d never gone before, Baby had gone a few times — it is her favourite place and like I said it was her birthday (the big 3-0), so really, what better way to celebrate? – Exactly, there is no better way.
What can I say about the trip? It’s fucking Paris! It’s beautiful, it’s romantic, it was rainy & grey & amazing!
Chauds
Ah, all things chaud, all things chaud. Yes, it was chilly — though really, crappy weather in Paris kicks crappy weather in Columbus’s ass any day of the week — so that may have had something to do with it, but I’d never had “vin chaud” before — nor chaud crepes with motherfucking nutella — and, well, let’s just say, chaud & I are now intimately familiar with each other.
Wait, that sounded weird.
Rue Mouffetard
I’ll tell you what… instead of my jibber-jabberin’ and really offending even more Parisians — yeah, that was me who spilled his red wine on the group of Parisian business men at the table next to us when we deeked into a cafe on Rue Mouffetard — how we get to the good stuff? You see, I brought you back a little sumtin-sumtin…
No, it’s not much, just a little thing we “picked up”. A little mixtape and a little film I made, you know, no biggie.
So, while I get to work so I can get this weekend on — 3 xmas parties… hooray (I’m tired already) — how about you load up our little film, then load up our epic mixtape and come along with us down the rues of Paris (and a little Lyon), where the vin is chaud, the baguettes are hard — lol — where the croques are extra cheesy, and the mustard ain’t really all that yellow as….
The weather outside is indeed frightful, sub-zero Fahrenheit wind chills, snow, and general nastiness. I don’t even have the right gear to ride my bike, it’s so cold. Is there a better time for Illinois?
No… No there isn’t. You ever been to Decatur? Yeah, this is Illinois weather.
Yep. The Age Of Adz is on the intertubes. Free to grab, peruse, manhandle, and look into your bank account to see if it’s worth some of your hard earned moneys…
And yep, I hate it. I really do. Shame too. I’ve never been on the Sufjan wagon, though it’s not for lack of trying. I did like that “to the creaaator, all things go, all things go” song, that “Majestic Snowbird” live song that floated around, and I dug that surprise EP, but otherwise I was — once again — sitting on the side lines as all my musically inclined breathrens & sistrens cooed over every layer of gentle Jesus less-than-3 melody that floated in their craniums.
But, then I head about The Age Of Adz, looking awful prog, I was hopeful, then “I Walked” came aboot and no, it wasn’t proggy at all, but it was absolutely beautiful. I thought to myself, this is it! I’m going to be a Sufjan fan!!! Kaloo kalay!!! But then I listened. Now, I try to be relatively positive here on TSURURADIO, I really do, but you know, I don’t think I’ll be able to today but, instead of just complaining, let’s also think about happy things, shall we? So… while we talk about The Age Of Adz, I’d like to share a recipe for some Chocolate Cake Balls With Peanut Butter Ball Centers Dipped In Chocolate I made Saturday night! Sound good?
Fuck yeah.
STEP ONE
Bake a cake. Simple box cake. I chose a chocolate “moist deluxe” one. Easy peasy.
Much like how the Sufjan album starts out, easy peasy, all innocent and shit, all old-school Sufjan-esque, pretty, gentle, tender even, like a morning flower. But then “Too Much” gets going and suddenly the blip-bleep-bloop machine kicks in. We are treated to the sound effects of Star Wars while an orchestral Sufjan song tries to make it’s way through the clutter. Oh… Oh no.
Oh, while the cakes are in the oven, let’s get on with the next step, the peanut butter balls!
STEP TWO
Mmm…. One of my favourite yummies, peanut butter. Peanut butter is the perfect balance for chocolate. These are super easy to make, just use a 2-to-1 ratio of powder sugar and peanut butter (I did 2 cups to 1 cup), mix together with a teaspoon of vanilla and a tablespoon of milk (I used soy milk) to give it a bit more moisture. Just mix it all together until you have a near-dough mixture, then roll them up. I covered them in more powdered sugar to “seal” them, though I don’t think this is necessary. This is our surprise center, so moisture & flavour are important, but shape, not so much. I made mine more “nugget shaped” than ball.
While I’m mixing and rolling these bad boys up, we got the title track “The Age Of Adz” on. You can hear a beautiful sweeping song in there, somewhere, you really can, but sweet fuck it’s a jumbled up mess of just… stuff. Even the touching bits at 3:40ish, could’ve been quiet and beautiful, but hey, were those lazers???? BEEYOO!!!
WOOT, the cake’s almost done..
We are going to have to dip our balls in some melted chocolate later, how about we put some Baker’s chocolate in a bowl and get it melting by sitting the bowl in a pot of hot water?
STEP THREE
Okay, chocolate’s melting, cake is baked, peanut butter balls are ready, time to put this all together! While the cake is still warm, drop it in a big bowl (all of it) and start breaking it up with a fork. Then add in the ENTIRE 16 ounce frosting container (I used chocolate).
Mix it together until you have a doughy mixture!
Ooo… “I Walked” is on. Such an amazing song. The sound FX are being used much better here, accentuating the song, not covering it up, not distracting me, making it better, spacier, like floating in a void of space vs in the middle of a Battlestar Galactica battle (the original series, not the remake).
STEP FOUR
This is messy. Take some cake ball batter in your hand, put a peanut butter ball on it, slightly in it, then cover it with more cake ball batter and make a ball!! Do it for as long as you have cake ball batter! Put them on a wax paper as you do this. Then it’s on to the last step! Covering them with chocolate!
Oopah, “Now That I’m Older” sounds like pure vocal whankery — is that a word? — but no worries, “Get Real Get Right” is on and we are right back to our blip-bleep-bloop machine. I think I heard a fluttering of wood instruments, but BOOM-OOM Ssst Ssst buried it. Ah, speaking of burying.
STEP FIVE
Carefully cover the balls with melted chocolate. Careful not to use too much or you’ll run out of chocolate and your balls will be bare! I used a fork to hold & lift the ball and a spoon to work the chocolate around the ball. Cradle the ball with the fork, be gentle, they are sensitive.
Believe it or not, I’m still talking about the dessert and NOT my testicles! Nuts, eh? HA!
Okay, when your balls are covered in chocolate and back on the wax paper, put them bad boys in the fridge and let that chocolate harden back up!
While your balls are cooling off, let’s get back to Sufjan. Basically from “Bad Communication” to “I Want To Be Well” we keep the same thing going, we got the messy burying of what I think are Sufjan songs — more fluttering woods and flutes and whatnots, along with some interesting choirs, so it must be, right? But who cares. I’m too annoyed with the all the crap on top to even think about getting to the cake ball inside! It’s like Sufjan covered his balls in aluminum foil. And if you ever chewed on aluminum foil, yeah, that’s this album….
STEP SIX
Come party time, I just put my balls in a bowl — our salad bowl, old wood style — with the left over peanut butter balls and served!
Since we are at the end of the recipe, let’s talk about the end of the album, the 25+ minute epic “Impossible Soul”. It starts off fine, pretty even. I ignored the cash register ca-ching, and just let the song go. Uh oh. Electro-percussions are getting a little wonky. Hang in there Tsuru! First chorus, nice. Nice…. Huh, “guitar” solo? Ish? Okay, we are back. Chaos and resolve. You like that, right? yeah.
“Don’t be distracted…”? Easy for you to say! BEE-YOO BEE-YOO! SPACE-SWIRL! BEE-YOO!!! etc etc until about the 10 minute mark when we are treated with more sound effects until the near-12 minute mark, the creme-de-la-creme-de-la-creme kicks in and we get………
AUTOTUNE!
Like UBER-autotune. Like Usher & Kanye & Rivers Cuomo & that Vampire Weekend side-project would be proud autotune!
I hung in there, finding around the 15 minute mark that we got a fun little song going on and stuff for a moment, but by then, I was so done. It ended pretty enough, old school Sufjan again, where if you only heard the first 2 and last 2 minutes of the entire album, you’d think nothing has changed at all in Sufjan land. I think the word that sums up 95% of the entire album, “annoying”. No, not challenging, not something to decipher, just plain annoying.
On the plus side, the balls were a success! Watching everyone eat my moist, rich, and overwhelmingly massive balls, watching them work their way to the center, swallowing every morsel that came into their mouth, made me very happy at the Stinkybomb baby shower where they made their debut! HOORAY!
Listening to The Age Of Adz? Not so much. Sorry, Sufjan…. 1/2 a wheelie (that half a wheelie is for “I Walked”). BOO!
Okay… happy Friday and all but… before we begin, we got to discuss this.
“Forget You” instead of “Fuck You”? Really? “Fah-get”? Yes, I know censoring for radio stations still occurs, but c’mon. Word change-outs are the worse form of music censorship, don’t you think? Chaning “fuck” to “forget” completely kills the fun & impact & the viralnicity of the song. Better would’ve been clever blanking or, I don’t know, how about get creative and do really bad dubbing of stupid words like “fletch” or something.
But…. and this is crazy, I know, how about you just don’t change it. How about you realize that people get their music via iTunes, Amazon, Youtube, etc, be true to what you created, and let the dinosaur radio stations deal with turning down the volume at the scary f-word, s-word, and variation on the n-word.
Where “Fuck You” is a solid 4 to 4 1/2 wheelies out of 5…. “Forget You” is a solid dud. Sorry my friends. Lyrics matter.
Speaking of tsuruloosies…
We gots a new Sufjan song out on the loose! On the lamb!!!
After a rather annoying start, it settles into a not quite as annoying song. Not too shabby, but feels…. transitional. I think that’s it on the Sufjan songs until the album rears it’s head!
So, with that, let’s get on with the reason for the season of the pleasin! Sunday Psalms by The Shivers!
Oh man, where the hell have these guys been all my life? Some kind of modern bluesy reincarnate of Lou Reed, with all the swagger you could hope for, bottled up into something called The Shivers? Why yes, you DO give me shivers, of awesomeness! I could almost see these guys setting up in an old abandoned church down in New Orleans, testifying their sweatiness for the few down-trodden parishioners that happen to wander by….. now THAT’S a revival I could believe in!
Okay… it is Labour Day, it is our day off, so we are going to keep this short. I will say, last night we had us a little BBBBBQQQQBBQ (the extra B’s are for boooooze and the extra Q’s are for Quality!) with some of our crafty peeps, local BFFs, and two bustown music bloggers – our friend Katie from Heavy Percussion & Jack In The Pocket & new Columbus transplant Jen from Tympanic Transplant, and it was all chill good times, full of drinks & grub & (as always) nipples!
Oh yeah… work it baby!
Not only was it a perfect time to hang out, meet up, and photograph nipples, it gave me the perfect opportunity to test out today’s epic — and I mean EPIC — mixtape! You may remember a week or so ago when we shared Recently Vol 1 from 2006, well, the other morning Baby & I found & shaked our money-makers to a good portion of the finale to the woo-ing trilogy, Recently Vol 3, so much so, that I had, HAD, to share some of it with you.
Unfortunately, while some of the mixtape was booty-rumpadumpin’ good times, some was a bit too chill for booze & bbqin’, AND it was just too short. So yesterday, I took volume 3, divided by 4, multiplied it times 2, then squared the shit out of it!
The results? Let’s just say, the BBQ went long & I’m hurtin’ pretty good today!!! So, here it is for you, for all your labours, enjoy as…
And we here at TSURURADIO, the whole paper crane collective, just want to say a big fat and delicious thank you… thank you very much! I hope you are enjoying what you are reading and spreading the good times yourselves to you and your’s. We really appreciate you comin’ around, takin’ yer shoes off, and sittin’ a spell. Until next time!
Oh dear, I’ve been gone too long. It’s been HALF A MONTH since I updated. So much has happened! I flew out to California, reunited with BFFs, move into and unpacked my room, bought an excessive amount of accent rugs and throw pillows, partied a bit, shmoozed a bit, walked a lot, led an orientation trip to at Dana Point beach for a week with 2 dozen freshmen, and most recently, BOUGHT A MATTRESS! WOO! NO MORE TWIN XL! #college.
I’m pretty pumped about these next few weeks. So much is going on that I’m super excited for! I have my first live show on kspc on Fri Sept 10th 4-6PM, I’ve got a press pass for FYF fest next weekend, Baths is playing a foot from my dorm room on Thursday (maybe an itty interview coming? perhaps?), I’m starting up as blog director of the kspc blog, I’m probably going to buy more throw pillows, and I’ve got a killer concert line up for the fall. Also my dorm has air conditioning. Living is easy.
UNFORTUNATELY, I’ve been whisked away by all this business (…I tried to type the noun form of busy and ended up with business, which I guess works too) and have neglected tsururadio, twitter, and all my other little connectszons. So. My apologies. Sincerely.
Now for a few little thangs, aiight?
This is a century old, but if you havent seen/heard Cee-Lo’s recent song (from 2 weeks ago) “Fuck You,” it’s one of the best things. The song is dynamite, the lyrics are clever, and that voice, OH THAT HIGH HUSKY VOICE!
Here is where I would also post the recent Sufjan single “I Walked,” which is … real’ grand… but it’s already posted as a tsuruloosie just two posts below! Check that out!
This is some incredible shit that I’m strongly considering doing. I mean, it’s expensive, but funerals and gravestones and all that shit are ALWAYS expensive. So why WOULDN’T I pay to have my ashed compressed into a vinyl album and maybe have some beautiful sufjan song or some catchy-as-fuck of montreal track sent around to all my loved ones to they could remember me as the beautiful and catch0-as-fuck person that I am? I know right? Death to Vinyl
And now time for a little shameless sibling-promotion! The Exposure just dropped a new video/track from his upcoming electronic E.P. and I think it’s pretty rad for something he made rather quickly. I like to think he was inspired by the Baths LP I gave him for his birthday… :) He’s also got another track up on bandcamp, so check that out also!
Okay want some mainstream culture right quick? NEW KANYE SONG! YAY KANYE. Real talk right now though: It’s pretty good. Mostly I’m just in love with Nicki Minaj, and obviously Jay-Z, Rick Ross, and Bon Iver don’t hurt anything. Like, is this even real life? What a star-studded line up! He posted it for free on zShare, so I’m going to risk it and post it here for you too. Shhhh. Kanye West – “Monster” (feat. Jay-Z, Rick Ross, Nicki Minaj & Bon Iver)
aaand that’s all for now! I need to go practice some French because all I can remember is … nope… cant remember anything.
LOVE YOU!
So.. learning from his musical brethren amongst the internettals, Mr. Jesus Stevens is following up a surprise & very buzzable EP with a an album to make sure them twitters keep on tweetin’ about him! It sounds like it may be absolutely prog-tastic!
Well, the first song as “dropped” as well, making three Sufjan-bombs to hit the tubals within the past week or so. Kudos, my man… kudos. So, how’s the first track? Let’s tsuruloosie this bitch out of 5 wheelies and see!
Hot fucking sauce!!! Anyone who’s anyone knows, I’m not Sufjan lover of old, though I really liked that new EP. But holy shitake mushrooms growing out of Jesus’ ass this is gorgeous! Not prog at all, just Mmm….. Slow ee-lec-tronical yummy yum yum.
Where did the weekend go? Seriously? I’d like to know. Photoshoots & bike rides, the norm, but man o’ man, so much running around then BEEYOO! it was over. Oh yeah, broken iPods and my new phone turning into a brick. That certainly didn’t help. Oh yeah, massive rain & phone repair & too small a car for our new chair causing us to literally double up our errands. Oh yeah. Good times. lol.
But whatevers, man, it’s a new week and that means new music! This time around we got a new EP by Mr. Sufjan Stevens called All Delighted People! Huh… I guess now that SS has them 50 state albums all done, he can sit back and release little bullshit EPs, eh?
Now, I’m not the biggest Sufjan fan. A bit too preachy for my taste. More often than not, I like my Jesuses like I like veneral diseases, i.e. no where near me & my genitalia. Exceptions are Violent Femmes as there’s a way he does it that makes you question if he’s being sincere or tongue-in-cheek.
Sufjan though, it doesn’t take rocket scientician to know he loves him some Jesus in him. I think if you had my first 18 years of my life, you shutter at the thought of listening to some guy jibber on about his infactuation with the bearded one.
Side note… Still cracks me up how “white” they make Jesus in paintings & stuff, eh?
But hey. These aren’t original thoughts, but Sufjan’s making original music, so let’s get back on track, okay? All Delighted People, the 60 minute “EP”, which I’m assuming it’s an EP due to the lack of theme and the addition of a 2nd version of a track. At 60 minutes though, hell, anything over 30 minutes for some artists, is a 2 year long in the making album, so, though I rarely bother with EPs, here we are!
So… what do we have? Well…. we got Sujan, almost a genre in & of itself. Tender & slightly whiny, yet beautifully arranged & executed compositions (as opposed to songs). Joanna Newsom and this guy should do an album together. Actually, on 2nd thought, maybe not, might just destroy the indie-universe with it’s collective orgasm!
Ew….. Indie-bukkake.
You know that shit would be nasty smelling from all the crappy beer they drink.
Well, what do you know? It’s quite possible I offended christians and hipsters — and possibly Sufjan himself — in one single post? So, I’ll tell you what, let’s just end this now while I’m behind, eh? It’s a lovely EP, chock full o’ beautiful music. It was released on Bandcamp proving, once again, that bands REALLY need to stop using myspace. I can sample then buy your music in one stop? SWEET! You know?
Okay… the music!
1. All Delighted People (Original Version)
2. Enchanting Ghost
3. Heirloom
4. From The Mouth Of Gabriel
5. The Owl And The Tanager
6. All Delighted People (Classic Rock Version)
7. Arnika
8. Djohariah
Clogs will release their 5th album The Creatures in the Garden of Lady Waltonon March 2. The band features Australian composer Padma Newsome, who wrote the songs, and Bryce Dessner (The National). Guests on the album are Shara Worden of My Brightest Diamond, Sufjan Stevens and The National’s singer Matt Berninger. I’m very excited for the album!
tsururadio. The musical obsessions, meanderings, and field observations of Aaron Tsuru most often presented in mixtape format, the way the good lard intended!
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