Wooden Shjips music can be describe as dense, repeatitive, psychedelic rock with long songs and lots of personality. Influenced by Spacemen 3, The Velvet Underground and other sonic monsters of the like.

Watch below Motorbike, a great song included in their second album named “Dos”.

Indeed, check “Dos” album out on Southern Lord records, is fantastic. One of my favorites of 2009.

This thursday night I will be playing music at Sala Ra! Ra! Ra! with Dj Arbusto from Acapulco Club Madrid in a party called Robots vs Arbustos. Expect happy music: indie, rock, electronica, stuff that will make you dance. You can have an advance of what’s coming on my previous post

The place is located at C/ Serrano 41. Entrance is free, the show starts at 23:30.

See you there!.

I have decided to start recording mixtapes again under the moniker Robot Plays Guitar. The style is more or less the same that I used to dj some years ago: some indie, some electro, some house, some hip-hop too. All mixed together. This is happy music you can sing and dance.

Some of the artists included in the mixtape are: Fever Ray, N.A.S.A, Chromeo, Armand van Helden, Zomby, Crookers and the fake Daft Punk song which starts the mixtape, even without being a Daft Punk’s original I think it’s good enough to be included.

You can listen this mixtape below or if you really like it you can download it for free on my fairtilizer page.

Enjoy!

Songs: Ohia – I’ve Been Riding with the Ghost.

For All the Bad.

listen

Bonnie Prince Billy – Nomadic Revery (All Around).

For the darkness.

listen

Herman Düne – I Wish that I Could See You Soon.

For the sunlight, and the hope.

watch

Fleet Foxes – Mykonos.

For the epic, and the protection.

watch

Dirty Projectors – Cannibal Resource.

For the weirdness, and the summer.

listen

Joanna Newsom  - Emily.

For the quietness.

watch

Magnolia Electric Co. – The Dark Don’t Hide It.

For the rage.

listen

Animal Collective – Summertime Clothes.

For happiness!

listen

Shellac – Steady as She Goes.

For the energy.

watch (instrumental version, differs a little bit from the one on Excellent Italian Greyhound)

Nina Simone – Sinnerman.

For the glory.

listen

Moderat – Rusty Nails.

For Berlin.

listen

Wooden Shjips – For So Long.

For the psyche.

watch

Bonnie Prince Billy – Easy Does It.

For lovely mornings.

watch

Mastodon – Oblivion.

For the relentlesness.

listen

Love – Alone Again or.

For you.

listen

That’s it, I hope you liked it.

Recently I’ve been attracted about a kind of musical subgenre which seems inspired by Ennio Morricone‘s western soundtracks and tex-mex music. To this mix you have to add some rock and you have epic songs with trumpets, guitars and great instrumentation.

This is the track list included in the compilation:

1. Orthodox – Marcha de la Santa Sangre.
2. Calexico – Ballad of Cable Hogue.
3. The Sadies – I Tried Not To.
4. The Shadows - Geronimo.
5. Love – Alone Again Or.
6. Dick Dale – Spanish Kiss.
7. Townes Van Zandt – Snake Mountain Blues.
8. The Shadows – Guitar Tango.
9. Lee Hazlewood – Jose.
10. Giant Sand – Without a Word.
11. Calexico – Minas de Cobre (For Better Metal)

Get it here.

So, the albums, I choose twelve, one for every month, order has no meaning. Enjoy.

Extra Life – Secular Works

Listen

Fleet Foxes – Fleet Foxes

Listen

Songs: Ohia – The Magnolia Eletric Co.

Listen

Earth – The Bees Made Honey in he Lion’s Skull

Listen

Wooden Shjips – Dos

Listen

Shellac – Excelent Italian Greyhound

Listen

Dirty Projectors  - Bitte Orca

Listen

Vivian Girls – Vivian Girls

Listen

Animal collective – Mearriweather Post Pavillion

Listen

Grizzly Bear – Veckatimest

Listen

Joanna Newsom – Ys

Listen

Orthodox – Sentencia

Listen

Honor Mentions

• The Black Keys – Attack & Release
• Fever Ray – Fever Ray
• Mastodon – Crack the Skye
• Wolves in the Throne Room – Black Cascade
• Grouper – Dragging a Dead Deer Up the Hill
• Kylesa – Static Tensions
• Crystal Castles – Crystal Castles
• Wavves – Wavves
• Six Organs of Admittance – Luminous Light
• Rararariot – The Rumble Line
• John Doe & The Sadies – Country Club
• Moderat – Moderat

What is your favorite cover?

Mine is Shellac’s closely followed by Fleet Foxes’

What are your faves for this year?

Previous editions of best albums:

2008, 2007, 2006

Sad Songs Make me Happy

Llevo prometiendo muchos meses este recopilatorio, llevo un par de días dandole vueltas, y he quitado todos los temas mas indies para dejarlos para un próximo recopilatorio de indie tristón. Lo que ha quedado es folk que oscila entre lo oscuro y lo melancólico.

Viene muy bien asi para el invierno.

Aqui teneis el enlace:

Sad Songs for Happy People

El repositorio de pruebas esta en la siguiente dirección: http://github.com/therobot/chef-repo

#!/usr/bin/env ruby

base_path="/var/lib/denyhosts"
hosts_deny="/etc/hosts.deny"
denyhosts_files=%w(hosts hosts-restricted hosts-root hosts-valid users-hosts)

files=denyhosts_files.map{|file| "#{base_path}/#{file}"}.push hosts_deny
denyhosts_stop="/etc/init.d/denyhosts stop"
denyhosts_start="/etc/init.d/denyhosts start"

if ARGV.length!= 1
 puts "Wrong number of arguments"
 puts "Usage: denyhosts-remove ip"
else

 `#{denyhosts_stop}`
 ip=ARGV[0]
 files.each do |file|
 text=File.read(file)
 if file == hosts_deny
 buffer=text.gsub(/sshd: #{ip}\n/,"")
 else
 buffer=text.gsub(/#{ip}:(.*)\n/,"")
 end
 File.open(file,"w") {|fw| fw.write buffer }
 end
 `#{denyhosts_start}`
end

<p>&nbsp;</p>

First of it is working, you spend lots of time on working, it’s necessary and fortunately for me is quite fun working on ASPgems, also it’s great to do some freelance job from time to time, you get extra money, your CV grows too. As I am a big proponent  of Free Software I feel like I don’t return very much to the comunity, some small how-to on this blog from time to time, a small help on mailing lists or irc, but I’d like to start some small open source project, I’ve already started an Eclipse Plugin some years ago as part of my job for Google’s Summer of Code, but still I have a couple of good ideas that I’d like to start to implement. Also I spent time reading blogs and staying on touch with the latest things on the internet related of my job and also in the business. I feel like my ruby skills are not good enough, so I’d like to start learning more ruby and for sure learning rails as well. Finally I wrote articles for spanish linux magazine Todo Linux which is time consuming too (it remembers me to the university years, doing first all the process while taking notes of it and then writing a document with the process).

The second thing I really enjoy doing is djing, I love to play music for people even if I am not paid. Also I’d like to improve my dj skills and trying to became a real dj, ok maybe not that much real but still try to do it better than now. All of this goes quite tied with another thing that I really love and also is time consuming: music research not only because I need to be always on the new things also because I love music in almost every style and I am always eager to discover new bands. That leads me to another related issue which is attending to music concerts, I do it as much as my time, money and the other stuff  I do allow me to. Very close with djing is podcasting, from time to time I try to make some dj session and upload it to the internet. The latest thing related to music (which as all my friends know is my other big passion besides internet/technology/sysadmin job), I been playing guitar for most than ten years and still I am not a good perfomer but still I feel the need to learn a little bit more, even if it’s playing covers, and even more: I love playing with synthesizers in my computer (perfect for me since is the sum of my biggest passions). Some years ago even I started a band called Calrissians that of course did not have any kind of success. I would like to spent more time on this. Definetly I’d like to start a band with some friends, even we’ve been in some talks to start that in september.

I try to blog here of music and tech things from time to time (hence the title of the blog), but as you know updates are not quite frequent.

Also the third leg of this table is called social life, seeing friends, going out, having a beer or two, preparing a nice dinner for a couple of friend. Sometimes some party, sometimes too much ;) Also this is quite close with djing, and going to concerts.

Finally there are other small hobbies I have: I bought a digital camera some months ago (Canon Powershot G10 if you are interested on this stuff), so I am trying to learn a little bit about photography, digital manipulation of pictures and so on. I love reading novels and technical books too and watching a film from time to time, specially if they are related to music (not necessarily musicals). Also I’m quite interested in learning and expermienting with cooking, learning german, receiving lessons on wine taste and also receiving lessons on swing dance.

So… is it possible to do all of this? How?  I’m feeling sad and stressed of wanting to do so many many many things and not being able to do them. I don’t really want to miss anything in this life.