The new Octopus Project album is sublime. I'm just going to turn this into a habit where I blow my critical load right at the start of the post, so those of you who just want to know whether or not an album is good or not can just skip everything else I say here. To be honest, when it comes to this album, I don't have much to say outside of the fact that it is sublime.

Most of this album sounds a bit like this song. Some parts are dreamier, less Deacon-y, but every song is great through and through.

Hexadecagon originally came into this world as an 8-channel audio, 8-projector video live act that they performed outside a Whole Foods at SXSW this year. They set up the eight speakers circling the audience, with the audience circling the band at the center. Doesn't that sound crazy? Crazy awesome? Just imagine this song swirling around you. It'd be like being high without the being high part.

They're playing locally here in Los Angeles at The Echoplex on the 23rd. I'll be there. I don't know whether or not they're going to do the 8-channel/video version of Hexadecagon, but I can be hopeful. Knowing the Echoplex, though, I don't think the size of the venue (and the amount and arrangement of support columns) would be suitable for that kind of arrangement.

I guess we'll see.

Sometimes it's truly wonderful discovering new music. It's been a while for me, but sometimes you discover a band (or two) that turns you on so powerfully that you just have to collect all of their material. Years upon years upon years ago this happened to me with Olivia Tremor Control, and I spent a small amount of money on Ebay collecting all their albums. Yes, actual physical copies of their albums. I even have a "first edition" of Dusk at Cubist Castle.

I digress, however, and must cast my attention toward Black Moth Super Rainbow and The Octopus Project, two fabulous bands that I've since collected the complete works of, who join forces on this album to make something that I think is pretty much legendarily awesome as far as near-pure instrumental albums go.

I've never been a fan of post-rock, which is basically the only instrumental music you ever get in the whole genre of indie rock, there's something so seethingly pretentious about the whole tone of post-rock---like it's the score to some overwrought historical action drama no one would ever want to watch. Luckily groups like The Octopus Project and Holy Fuck play instrumental music that's more concerned with giving you a beat to move yourself to, either to dance or just to get shit done and please your ears while you do it.

This, The House of Apples & Eyeballs, is a marvelous chill out record that I would recommend to everyone. It's not entirely out of this world and hard to stomach, it's just some smooth tunes.

One of the most unfortunate things about life is that you can never really know for sure where your choices will take you, but when you try to imagine the life of another person flowing into the future it's pretty easy to see where they're going to go. Why do we feel like we can foresee the future of others but not our own? Why is what I should do not clear to me?

We fail to accept for ourselves the fates we assign to others. I suppose so much of everything is inevitable in the end that fighting it is how we subconsciously entertain ourselves. How boring would life really be if we always did what we told someone else they should do? "Stay away from that guy!" Please, and miss out on all that tasty drama? "I don't think you should unicycle on that bridge railing!" Come on, if I fall I'll fall toward the bridge, not away from it.

But really, making choices in life sucks. I feel consumed by a paralyzing fear that I am just wasting my time, and I try to convince myself that I have nothing but time to waste but I really don't feel like I do anymore. I've only got another 40 to 60 years of my life left, and I'm only going to be young for so many of them. What are the chances that I'll be George Clooney and still be all smokin' hot and charismatic at 50? Fuckin' slim. Real fuckin' slim.

So what do I do?

I guess I should just do what I'd tell someone who isn't me.