Nik Gomez.com

Hello world (Beijing)

View from the plane from Seattle... taken at 1am

So for the next three months or so, this blog will become the place where I put as much stuff about my summer travels as possible. Most of my posts will come from the iOS WordPress app, so posts will be short but hopefully frequent.

Today is my second full day here in China.

I flew in to Beijing at 10:30pm on Saturday night and stayed with my friend Joel who’s finishing up a class here. We’ll be traveling through the rest of China starting Wednesday. Yesterday we went to the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square early in the day, and then I headed back to the airport to pick up our friend Dan, who’ll be studying at Nankai University. We took a bus to the school in Tianjin and found an awesome dive bar to celebrate Dan’s birthday at. Luckily his roommate speaks fairly good Chinese already, so he helped us get around.

I’m back in Beijing today. To get back (because another two hour bus ride didn’t sound too fun) I took the bullet train that runs between the two cities. It was awesome (350km/hr.)

Just checked in to my hostel for tonight and tomorrow night. It was impossible to find, but it’s really nice.

The air here is horrible, but that was to be expected. I wish I spoke Chinese, so I’m going to work on that in a few minutes. Things are pretty cheap, but I’ve spent more money than I intended to. Guess that’s just because I’ve been back and forth between here and Tianjin, and it was Dan’s birthday. Not a big deal.

I have some cool pictures on my phone, but I can’t seem to get them onto the blog.

This is going to be an interesting summer.

Google: recursion

Google: recursion. Gotta love when nerds throw in easter eggs for other nerds.

I’m sure this is as old as the internet, but it’s new to me. I’ve definitely seem something similar in my algo books (in the index for Loops says see Recursion, and for Recursion says see Loops.)

(via Reddit – What did the cooling system say to the sound card?)

Beyonce – Run The World (Girls)

Does anything really need to be said? Competition is a wonderful thing.

Son Lux – We Are Rising & the making of the cover art

Album art for Son Lux's We Are Rising

There has been a lot of high-profile/0n-my-radar music released in the past few weeks, and for some reason only a small portion of it is living up to my expectations. One album that surpassed what I expected is Son Lux‘s sophomore album We Are Rising. I’ve mentioned Son Lux before, but I really think that this new offering deserves further note.

For an album made start to finish in 28 days, We Are Rising shines in so many different ways. I love the orchestral arrangements Son Lux (aka Ryan Lott) has put together. It’s obvious from the beginning that he’s a classically trained musician fully capable of composing very complex pieces, and he doesn’t shy away from his abilities. “Let Go” – a short track near the end of the relatively quick 38-minute run time – is one of my favorites not because of any pop sensibilities Lott shows off, but because of the fact that multiple tempos overlap through different instruments and phase in and out of each other until the end when tracks are stripped away until a simple beat is left.

Other standouts include the bombastic “All The Right Things” and the Portishead-reminiscent “Leave The Bones.” But We Are Rising really should be listened to in its entirety. I’ve gone through it many times since its release last month and don’t plan on letting it slip out of rotation any time soon. Lott’s deep constructions will give me new facets to discover for quite some time.

Portishead – Machine Gun

So I just turned today into a depressive Portishead day. This song is by far the most abrasive track from their most recent album Third. It was the album’s first single, and it heralded the return of one of my favorite bands back in ’08. “Machine Gun” kills me every time.

How I found out that Bin Laden is dead

This is just a short story of how extraordinary the internet is.

At around 7:20pm tonight (May 1, 2011), I’m sitting at my desk playing Starcraft II, and a notification from the Huffington Post pops up on my iPhone. It says that Obama is to make a surprise statement at around 7:30pm.

I jump on Twitter and see a tweet from my friend that says:

The tweet that informed me of Bin Laden's death.

Just a few minutes after I go on a mad fact-checking search through the New York Times, CNN, and other tweets, the deluge of texts from friends spreading the word starts. Within 10 minutes of the White House saying so, millions – maybe billions – of people know a piece of information.

The incredible part of this in my opinion is that this didn’t start while people were paying attention. It started on any normal Sunday evening. Now I’m just watching TV, waiting for the official announcement.

Mos Def redefined the rap live show last night

Mos Def: making avant-garde hip hop appeal to a mainstream college audience

I’ve been to a few hip hop shows in the past. Not nearly as many as punk, indie rock, or electronic shows, but still, a few. Mos Def’s show last night at USC’s Springfest ’11 was like nothing else.

I’m about as knowledgeable about Mos Def as the average guy off of the street; that is, I know “Ms. Fat Booty,” “Sex, Love & Money,” and I’ve seen a movie or two he’s been in. I can’t comment on how many of the songs he played – or flowed through – last night are his, but whatever it he was playing couldn’t have sounded more like the high-brow rap innovator that he is in my mind.

For the first fifteen minutes, I was waiting for a song I recognized to come from the DJ (we’d just finished a set by MURS who covered Rage and The Bangles). But when songs blended together and lasted ten minutes with extended interludes of Mos improvising over muddied beats removed of any mid or treble tones, I just went with it.

An anecdote: During the dead pause between two songs, someone in the crowd was repeatedly yelling, “Ms. Fat Booty.” Mos turned to face the guy and said, “Hey, this ain’t a jukebox show.” That pretty much sums it up.

The word to describe the set: weird. It wasn’t fun, but I loved it. I’m not sure if this is the best comparison, but it was what Portishead would do if for some reason Beth wanted to rap. It was fantastic.

Girls That Look Like Skrillex

this girl definitely looks like Skrillex

I deplore Skrillex and the music he makes. I cringe when people say things like, “I love dubstep! Have you heard of Skrillex?” Sure, you could make the argument that (like Deadmau5) he’s bringing people to electronic music that otherwise would have kept listening to Kings of Leon and Jack Johnson. Right. Because those are the kind of people I want at a Chemical Brothers or Aphex Twin show.

Tumblr is a wonderful thing. It gives us gems like this.

(via the infamous Coachella Forum)

A few quick notes on pop music producers

Tonight I went through the new Britney Spears album. It’s streaming on the AOL Music site. This is not a review of that album, although I do intend to write one because I find it an incredibly interesting listen and lesson on pop development. I’ve become intrigued with the production of pop music as of late, and this album only pushed me further down that path.

I just want to point out a few things that I discovered while researching the production of her album.

1. Bloodshy & Avant = 2/3 of Miike Snow. Now I understand why Miike Snow makes great pop music: the guys in the band wrote Toxic.
2. Benny Blanco, the guy who did a filthy, “raunchy, megahorny hip-hop” album with Spank Rock that I listened to a few summers ago writes songs for Britney Spears, Katy Perry, Ke$ha, Justin Bieber, and Ciara, to name a few.
3. Darkchild kinda seems like a self-absorbed loudmouth.

OFWGKTA (Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All) #coachella2011

The Odd Future collective just DGAF

Is it wrong that I think of Odd Future as 2011′s Die Antwoord with way more staying power? Regardless, that’s how I approach these guys.

Quick facts: OFWGKTA stands for Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All, which is shortened to Odd Future. Odd Future is a collective of about ten 17-23 year-old rappers and producers seemingly headed by Tyler, the Creator.

I first listened to Tyler, the Creator’s “Yonkers” after seeing Kanye West’s tweet declaring the video for the song “The video of 2011.” I have a thing for stark, simple, black-and-white videos (“Single Ladies“, “My Love“, “Drop It Like It’s Hot“, “On To The Next One“, I could go on…), and “Yonkers” keeps pace with the rest. It’s unique, and it keeps with Odd Future’s reputation as spouting shocking and ridiculous imagery through their lyrics.

The collective has been quite prolific since late 2008 (Pitchfork has a great review of their mixtapes), but hadn’t garnered a ton of attention until late last year. I’ve only just started going through the mixtapes and watching their performance at SXSW, but I’m hooked. I can’t pass up the allure of young energy breaking new ground without much regard for their elders. I’ll definitely be catching their set at Coachella this year.

Update: Pitchfork just posted an interview with Odd Future. It’s loaded with gems. My favorite is…

Pitchfork: Did you ever imagine you’d be playing at festivals like Coachella and SXSW a year ago?

Tyler, the Creator: I didn’t even know about Coachella a year ago. I knew about SXSW because N.E.R.D. played here. It was never my goal or intention to play one of those, and I never realized how important it was until recently. I’m a believer that if you keep saying shit’s gonna happen it will. Like, I always talked about how I wanted a trampoline, and now I have one.

Update 2: If this isn’t the best interview ever…