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Jun 11

“I like Grimes. I was just watching a bunch of videos of her, and I think it’s so cool she produces her own music.” Kathleen Hanna in conversation with Teen Vogue

Dec 28

“I think Grimes succeeded because I had to discard everything else in my life in order to do it. I was so fucking desperate to make it work, I don’t think I could have possibly allowed it to fail. I can’t stress how powerful the human mind is. If you want something bad enough, you can probably find a way to make it work. Very few people on the planet have the opportunity to even follow their dreams at all. Most people live in poverty, or in communities where the repercussions for behaving how they want are a lot worse than just people talking shit. If doing what you want is an option for you, you should do it, because your one of the few lucky people who can. And even if you fail, you will be in a better position than if you’d never tried. The competition probably isn’t that crazy. Most people are too scared to even try. Bad things can happen, but every horrible thing that has ever happened to me has added integrity to my art and improved my understanding of the human race.” Claire Boucher

Jul 1

top musik of 2k12 so far

this will likely change by year-end so all lists are simply alphabetized and only include things that have been released jan. through june

ten albums
- beach house: bloom
- cloud nothings: attack on memory
- fiona apple: the idler wheel
- japandroids: celebration rock
- julia holter: ekstasis
- laurel halo: quarantine
- merchandise: children of desire
- mount eerie: clear moon
- screaming females: ugly
- white lung: sorry

fifteen songs
- allo darlin: “tallulah”
- alunageorge: “you know you like it”
- carly rae jepsen: “call me maybe”
- dirty three: “rising below”
- fiona apple: “left alone”
- grimes: “oblivion”
- king felix: “spring 01”
- lower: “craver”
- merchandise: “time”
- mirrorring: “fell sound”
- nicki minaj: “beez in the trap”
- perfume genius: “hood”
- sharon van etten: “give out”
- the men: “open your heart”
- var: “brodermordet”

ten concerts
- calvin johnson @ market hotel
- drake @ jones beach
- fiona apple @ mhow
- kraftwerk @ moma
- laurel halo/gatekeeper @ 285
- primavera in its entirety
- pygmy shrews @ 285
- the men @ tommy’s tavern
- var @ wierd
- zola jesus @ guggenheim

Feb 18

“As a child I feared the day the world would be taken over by robots; these days I am seized by a much more potent fear that I am becoming one. Digital interfaces invade our imagination in strange, tangible ways, and with each day I spend in front of my computer screen, the red Gchat dots representing my friends and co-workers start to look more and more like HAL. Have you ever caught yourself trying to open a new tab in your brain? Was the Wikipedia blackout of 2012 as important a cultural moment as the New York City blackout of ‘77? Do androids dream of electric sheep, or do you not have an app for that yet?” Lindsay Zoladz on Visions by Grimes: best album review 2k12.

“She is a self-described “post-internet” musician, and this track provides an antidote to 2011’s persistent Retromania, proving that in an era of distracted listening and hyper-stimulation it’s still possible to take familiar influences and create something that feels wholly new.” That’s a sentence I wrote about Grimes in our year-end list that I think holds true of Visions in its entirety

Feb 2