I can’t look out my office window on a grey rainy day like today without imagining Spinners weaving through the buildings, crowds of people with glowing umbrellas and shady eyeball craftsmen working their frigid magic on the streets.And as the 21st century grinds on, I’m more and more convinced that Blade Runner is coming true. It’s like some window in an alternate future was left open, just a crack, and all that alternate reality is whispering through, one invention at a time.

Listening to the Blade Runner soundtrack really helps this vision coalesce, too. Vangelis’ haunting ambient score over the sounds of busy, rainy city life are mixing really well with the view outside. A great geek friend of mine hooked me up with the motherlode too, a while back: a collection of ambient background noise and sound effects from Blade Runner.

And of course, I wouldn’t have mentioned it if I didn’t want to share … help yourselves to ambient background sound and effects from Blade Runner, as well as Vangelis’ score, laid over sounds from the film:

Blade Runner sound effects

Vangelis’ Blade Runner Soundtrack, Part 1
Vangelis’ Blade Runner Soundtrack, Part 2

If any of you are motivated to mash up or remix these sounds into something, please share …

Popularity: 25% [?]

It starts with a simple, relentless drumbeat, punctuated with a catchy, almost tribal woodblock sound. Then the pulsing synth starts and you just feel the whole rollercoaster lurch away from your feet and you drop into a throat-hitching freefall, esophagus rippling while your heart screams with ecstasy.

It samples a bunch of the awesomest movies ever like Blade Runner, A Clockwork Orange, Scarface.

Maybe it sounds like steam rising off a jungle or a low, purple-red sun rising in a time-lapse movie of a highway jammed with traffic, fog burning away. It sounds like aerobics, but the cool kind. Like the aerobics in a montage from a very inspirational Hollywood movie about training to whip somebody’s ass in a dystopian future. There’s one thing that’s very clear about the hidden message in this song, though: there’s a great big busy productive world happening out there, and just for this one day, you want no part of it.

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Popularity: 23% [?]

I tried to write a couple dozen times today but my words got jammed up in my arms somewhere. They were all hot and excited, jostling around and sprinting to get on the train but couldn’t fit out the tiny doors at the end of my fingers.

So I’m posting this mix disc instead. Some of you have heard these songs from me before - it’s got a bunch of favorites on there. But there’s new stuff, too — so click, download, enjoy. You should be able to grab a PDF of the artwork and print it out, too.

Here’s the mix…

… and here’s the cover art.

This is up via Yousendit — good for one week or 100 downloads. Let me know in the comments if there’s any trouble and I’ll figure something out.

Popularity: 11% [?]

The Ramones were rock like lava: they burst from the earth in hot ear-shattering blasts, permanently changing the landscape. Their shows were surging, sweat-soaked onslaughts, loud, terrifying and utterly unbelievable.Live, the Ramones were a sonic weapon trained to a frequency only the weird could hear, a roaring NASCAR race with flawless rhythm.

My best friend’s mom took the two of us and a date to see the Ramones when I was fifteen. My glasses got knocked off and ground back into sand during the first 30 seconds of “Blitzkrieg Bop,” my hand trampled and kidneys kicked as I crawled blindly through the pit to find them.

When I came out of the show I was blind, bruised and nearly deaf and totally transformed. My Dad said “I don’t think these ‘punk’ concerts are a good idea for you, Jeffrey,” and I shouted “you just don’t get it, maaaan!”

That Truncheon Thing is hosting an awesome Ramones bootleg that pretty much perfectly captures their live sound:

THE RAMONES - 1-2-3-4 DIE (Live at The Palladium, New York - December 31, 1979)

It’s a soundboard recording from a 1979 New Year’s show at the Palladium in New York and it’s just completely perfect. Get it while you can.

Popularity: 10% [?]