Music is food for my soul

Due to some recurring issues with my Ears (from too much water time) I have been unable to pursue my favorite pastime and one of the key loves of my life much in the past 4 months- Surfing . This especially sucks due to the east coast of Australia having had one of the best winters of surf since I've lived here. Want further evidence - check these ridiculously good waves . (bit of link love for swellnet -best mid range surf forecast going).

Rather than slowly go nuts at the thought of how many fricken waves I'm missing I've decided to suck it up and pursue other things. Hence the establishment of this blog, my descent into OCD like workaholism and reading as many books as I can.

One of the things elevating my heart beat at the moment is listening to some of what I think is completely awesome music. Kind of ironic due to having had a skin graft on my left eardrum 3 weeks ago. My musical evolution has been erratic and spanned a number of genres. It started early but key infatuations run something like:

• Early electro & breaks (when I was 8 or 9 the whole hip hop b-boy breakdance thing was huge and incredibly seductive. I was a one man rural b-boy of some repute)
  
• Dire Straits when I was 11 or so - I really loved those muscial nerds for a while
• Licensed to Ill era Beastie Boys (before buddhism & sobriety calmed them down). I loved this album although I felt slightly naughty due to the dodgy lyrics & concepts.
• Guns N Roses when they were cool and drunk and drugged with an appetite for destruction. A path in boganism was calling along with a love affair of black t-shirts.
• Metallica - yep GNR lead to loud speed metal. Pretty much where my teenage dodgy hair cuts began.
• Nirvana -This was perfect for me when I was a confused, weird, angsty, depressed rural teenager.
• Suicidal Tendencies - I loved angry Mike Muir for a while - must have been craving some kind of latino ghetto styles. I even got in trouble at school for wearing a bandanna like Cyco Myko. This was maybe my nadir of angry.
• Dead Kennedys - I always had a scratchy mix tape somewhere with California Uber Alles during my rural / semi urban skate punk period (13-16)
• Fugazi - The sobre thinking mans angry Music - Waiting room is one of the best songs ever written. These guys are nuclear reactor meltdown hot live as well (maybe I should have warn earplugs)
• Boss Hogg - Damm she was a hot cartoon
• Chemical Brothers - Exit Planet dust is the start of my circular return to the beats
• Massive Attack - Blue Lines and protection were just so dammed cool and Tricky is the scariest, stoned gangster from noll west I've never met
• Sonic Youth - Noisy NY art geniuses all of them and I always thought Kim Gordon was attractive. The Goo Album was an awesome soundtrack to 3 months surfing in south Portugal a few years ago (well 10 actually).
  
• Roni Size - new forms - the drum and bass oddysey begins
• RJD2 - deadringer - hip hop brilliance
• Salmonella Dub - inside the dub plates. These Guys , Shapeshifter and the All Blacks make me proud to be a kiwi
• Gerling - seeing them a few years ago got me high on life

Anyway thats a very breif snapshot of the weird and wending road that has shaped my musical tastes. The Five tunes that are doing it for me at the moment include:

• Roots Manuva feat Rodney P - Swords in the Dirt. 3 minutes plus of booming mashed up hip hop and drum n bass. (Now listen again 8 on Ninja Tune by DJ Food & DK)
• Tayo meets Acid Rockers - dread cowboy. Dub + Breaks + Bass = goodness
• LCD sound system -North American Scum. Dirty NY seppos with humour and electro biz -is good
• DJ Shadow - Right Thing (massive mega mix by Z-trip) oh how I love this
• Shapeshifter - One - Drum N bass + soul + Aotearoa love. Pure Beauty

Anyway I've taken the last train to ramble town with this sonic summary. I would have linked to some to these bands but I'm a lazy bastard.

Conceptual Randomisation

So this is the first post as I embrace the interweb and use it as a means to publish the random concepts floating through my brain. I have no pretence that I have genius skills when It comes to writing , Its more that i have finally decided to scratch the nagging itch in my brain telling me to write dammit as maybe there may be some gems of insight amidst the cloud of average.

Anyway why the name Subtle Yet Sheep? I had a number of other titles but due to being about 9 million years to late to get my act together and set something up a number of my titles had been used by all the quicker cooler kids who are on point with their digital skillz. Titles I was toying with included:

• Tangential Meanderings (tangentials been done - look mum no new ideas on the net)
• The Random Cowboy/Off the Randometer (I sometimes possess weapons grade randomisation abilities - unfortunately the random concept has been done even more to death)
• Edge World (Way too late as bleeding edge tech voices own this concept)

Then I pulled the old take 1 concept and add it too a concept so diametrically opposed or unrelated that you get some weirdness:

• Puppy Hammer (never the main option and could get flamed to hell by humourless animal rights terrorists)
• Creepsy Thoughts (kind of a disney movie about a stalker connotation - which I'm not)
• Tickle Punch (a bit too much of an abusive B&D relationship vibe)

Subtle yet sheep worked because I couldn't find it in Technorati (yegads a smidgen of originality in a sea of sameness). I also like the sheep thing as I'm from a little country called Aotearoa that has more sheep than people. I also like that you could spin it into the whole "however much I embrace mass individualism and contrary consumption I'm still a sheep".

Anywho the tangential, meandering, randomised, rambling has begun. If you dig come back and I may even write some more.