Ben O’Brien Smith

Ben O'Brien Smith

• Weekly Roundup | 11/9-15 November 15, 2009
• Busy, Busy, Busy! November 12, 2009
  That’s been the best way to describe the past two and a half months. I’ve been working on 1,001 things that require my focused attention and simultaneously trying to stay sane. The result has been a lack of blog posts. This makes me sad. I love writing and I love posting my findings from the [...]
• Wild Things make our hearts sing: The Movie October 30, 2009
  (as published in the Racquette newspaper) Turning a classic story like Where the Wild Things Areinto a movie has become a much more popular and appealing reality despite the knee-jerk reaction that the concept inevitably provoked. It’s easy to see the opportunity to capitalize on bringing a piece of art to the big screen, but it’s a [...]
• Porcupine Tree releases new two-disc album September 25, 2009
  (as published in the Racquette newspaper) Porcupine Tree’s latest album, The Incident, is sure to quench the thirst of even the most diehard fan. The band decided to release the album as a two-disc set instead of a single-disc LP, followed shortly by an EP. The decision has resulted in more new music to digest all [...]
• Best Radio Out There August 21, 2009
  Consider this Part I of a three-part post I’ll be doing on my opinion of the best radio options available today. I grew up listening to the local rock/mainstream radio stations alongside classic oldies stations that my dad was listening to. As I got older, I lost interest in the mainstream because I was starting to [...]
• Upcoming Documentaries To Watch For August 20, 2009
  Over the past few months I’ve become very interested in documentary films. Part of this is that I’m kind of sick of the Hollywood work of late. The same story, the same ending, the same explosions, it’s like listening to mainstream radio- the same thing over and over. I’ll still watch a new movie, but [...]
• “Time Flies” :: New Single from Porcupine Tree August 18, 2009
  Porcupine Tree has released the first single from their upcoming album, The Incident (due out 9.15.09).  ”Time Flies” is a nostalgic, catchy song in 6/8 that is quite reminiscent of “Trains” (In Absentia). Hopefully this will help to tide us over until the release date. An accompanying music video was created by videographer/visual ar […]
• New song by Radiohead :: Free download! August 17, 2009
  Following Thom Yorke’s comments about the decision to stop releasing full length albums, Radiohead has released a new song, “These Are My Twisted Words,” for free download. Johnny Greenwood posted on the bands website this morning; “So here’s a new song, called ‘These Are My Twisted Words’. We’ve been recording […]
• How many speakers does it take… August 17, 2009
  If anyone were to know the answer, it would be sculptor Villu Jaanisoo. Jaanisoo is the creator of an art installation at the Art Museum of Estonia. Wave features hundreds of speakers on poles. All of the speakers are in working condition and are wired up to play sounds of crashing ocean waves. The best [...]
• SoundCloud :: Audio sharing of a higher quality August 16, 2009
  A glorious day has finally come; WordPress now supports the embedding of SoundCloud sound files. For those of you who aren’t familiar, SoundCloud is a website that allows you to upload audio, embed it, share it (publicly or privately) and interact with other users in a social networking scenario. Not to sound like a fanboy [...]