iToons

The past week has been a whirlwind combination of new tracks, rediscovered old tracks and some frighteningly regular soundwaves around here (damn you, Kanye!). There have been a lot of late nights lately, something that is not uncommon in a Ninja Base. After all, ninjas generally come out at night, because thats when the crime fighting action is at its best... and if ninjas were spied emerging from an underwater base during daylight hours, said underwater base could hardly be called "secret" anymore, now could it.

Late nights filled with crime fighting and source code have turned the soundscape into one of alt-country and songwriters:

Ryan Adams & The Cardinals - Cold Roses and Jacksonville City Nights... the first two albums of Ryan's 2005 trilogy...

Aaron Booth - Transparent. Huge thanks to fellow ninja, DT, for this one. Sparse and acoustic, reminiscent of Ben Gibbard, without the whine and Ben Folds, without the tendency to write bad songs.

Chad VanGaalen - Infiniheart. Again, DT came through on this one. Imagine if in some cosmic shift, Ryan Adams ended up fronting The Flaming Lips (Wayne Coyne could wear one of the bunny suits)... you'd end up with something resembling these songs... Blood Machine especially.

Gillian Welch - Revival. More country folk music.... wow.. are the ninjas going soft? Public Enemy to Gillian Welch? Nah... Billie the Kid was just as bad-ass as Chuck D...

Annie - DJ Kicks. No songwriters here. The same electro-pop princess who Pitchfork'd last year's #1 song (heartbeat) and has become a staple on my iPod Shuffle adds to the DJ Kicks series (K&D and Thievery Corporation)... this playlist is crazy awesome. Fav track: Death From Above 1979 - Black History Month (Alan Braxe & Fred Falke Remix).