The new (I am pretty late on this) group of cute kids gone viral on the internet are the PS22 Chorus from Graniteville, Staton Island. The chorus is comprised of 60-70 students who audition to join every year. Their growing popularity is most likely due to the fact that they perform popular hits that mush a soft spot in everybody’s hearts. Don’t believe me? Just try not to fall for them.

They have tons of other videos at the link. They help me hold onto the shred of hope I feel humanity has left

[YouTube]

Okay, so I just heard of Die Antwoord today, I can’t tell if this is a joke or not. Seriously, I have watched this video like, 20 times in a row. The music is catchy, but seriously, just look at these people.

I am sitting here searching the internet for information to help make sense of this all, the only bio I can find is from Last.fm:

Formed in Cape Town, South Africa during Spring 2009, Die Antwoord is an afrikaans futuristic ninja rap crew consisting of Ninja (Waddy Jones ofMaxNormal.TV), Yo-Landi Vi$er and snor-rap superstar Jack Parow. DJ Hi-Tek keeps the beats nice and dirty. The majority of their debut album, $O$, was released for free on the Internet in 2009 – Ninja also handed out free albums with hand-drawn artwork at live shows called $O$: Burnt By the Master. The band are now on Magnetron Music and are rumoured releasing a very special, limited-edition package for 2010 featuring the album, a DVD and a book. Die Antwoord’s $O$ Album/DVD/Book package has a European release pending and the cover was photographed by the world famous, dark surrealist master,Roger Ballen. Find out more at http://www.dieantwoord.com/, http://myspace.com/dieantwoord, http://facebook.com/dieantwoord,http://twitter.com/dieantwoord and Wikipedia.

I’m going to sit and try to understand this, here is another video of them.

I feel so out of the loop.

Update: After close to 30 views of both video’s I have decided that this is not a joke in the least, its just a cheesy gimmick. A cheesy gimmick that works. The songs are super catchy, and I’m not ashamed to say that when the record is released, I will be grabbing myself a copy. I will probably be the pretentious guy who shit talks them when they release their second album and are huge in 6 months though.

Update 2: Just as I called it, Die Antwoord is actually a clever joke, created in the same vein as Ali G -CLICK HERE FOR MORE-

A bit of news slipped passed me until today; on December 19th, at the age of 58, Kim Peek passed away from a heart attack. Peek was the inspiration for the movie “Rain Man” and possessed many unique talents. Of them included:

“• He could read two facing pages simultaneously, one with each eye.
• With that ability, he read 12,000 books and remembered every one of the pages.
• He knew so many plays and music pieces with absolute precision that he would be able to tell if an instrument was a note off in a philharmonic orchestra.
• He could remember every day in the calendar, area codes, ZIP codes, maps, countless classical compositions, a zillion trivia bits across dozens of fields in human knowledge and the arts, and give GPS-like directions for any city of the US.”

I have watched a few videos on Peek, he was quite an interesting person. I highly suggest that everyone take the time to watch this documentary on him.

Also, there is a well written obituary done by the NYT.

[NYT via Gizmodo]

I’ve decided that along with some of the other blogs I have been posting, I will be occasionally (whenever I feel like it) be posting articles under the title “You Should Know Them”. In each of these posts I will highlight somebody I think you should know (get it yet?). These people aren’t going to all be about music, though a lot probably will. And with that, I will get this started.

Calvin Harris is a synthpop artist hailing from Dumfries, Scotland. Discovered on Myspace in 2006, Harris was signed to EMI and Sony BMG before ever releasing a full album. Prior to this he had three tracks featured on various 7-inch records with other electronic artists. Since signing, Calvin has released 2 records, “I Created Disco” and “Ready For The Weekend”. While neither had much critical acclaim, both are quite incredible records.

I am quite confused as to why he has yet to hit clubs up here (well he could have, I don’t club), nor the radio. The title track of his latest record is right up the alley of anyone into the traditional synthpop sound.

Ready for the weekend

But why else should you know who he is? One word, HUMANTHESIZER.

I love technologies. And I love when people use them to promote themselves in creative ways.