The perks of staying at home

Making the rounds yesterday wasn't just Thirty Seconds to Mars's new single Up in the Air. And their ridiculous album packages. There was so much insanity yesterday, much hungover from being up till the wee hours for the Q+A with the guy from ISS. I've been staying away from coffee for a while, but yesterday just begs for at least one strong cup to keep me awake and productive.

The new album comes out on May 21st, and features the art of Damien Hirst on the cover and the disc, which is pretty cool. While the Echelon was going cray cray, two videos/tracks from Vampire Weekend also surfaced!

Their new album Modern Vampires of the City comes out (most likely) on May 7th in these parts. You can check out their website to pre-order. It's been a while since I last listened to their stuff. And I remember keeping their album Contra on repeat back then.

Okay, so maybe I'd hear of these things anyway if I were on location somewhere, but it feels good to just be at home, working in solitude. It's been a very productive day. All while glued to the radio.

My kyoot leetol radio from dimensione with some shoddy photoshop effect

It's been a while since I even listened to the radio, which is pretty ironic for someone who breathes music. But I just had to hear Up In The Air on local radio.  I've been glued since 11 in the morning and probably heard the song every single time they played it till I had to pass out. I went too far tweeting almost everytime the song came on, but fangirl lang, can't be helped. Bless Jam 883 for being the last of the good local stations. May they never pull the plug on this one. One of the perks of being home for me is having access to proper internet to download FREE MUSIC!

Check out the article here.

NPR Music has been super generous to share 100 songs by artists to listen to at SXSW. Which is awesome as I'm too far to cartwheel over to Austin, Texas. The download for these tracks won't be available forever, but you can download it as many times as you wish till April 4th. I've been busy keeping Olafur Arnalds' Old Skin on repeat that I'm yet to get to the other tracks off The Austin 100. I strongly recommend you to listen to Emma Louise and Alt-J, also in that free download. One hundred songs takes a while to sift through, and all the more with my favorite artists releasing new songs left and right. You can also download the songs individually, but why do that when you can get everything in one zip file? Your new favorite might just be there.

Crossing my fingers I get to stay home the rest of the week to catch up on all my editing backlog. I've been meaning to check out all the gigs around Manila while I was out but I always end up too exhausted (or my camera out of batteries) by the time the shoot ends. Hopefully I can make up for it next month because it's been ages since I last went to a gig. I have to remind myself that if I want to photograph musicians on stage I'd better make it happen. And NOW.