Blog: Athens66

Pure coincidence led me to stumble upon Metric this Sunday morning, a Canadian/New Yorker band whose sound can be accurately described as the Cardigans meet the Stars. All I can say is that they provide the perfect soundtrack for an enjoyable morning coffee, which is quite a lot for my standards! There are few clips on YouTube, mostly live performances, so it took me an hour to find a suitable video to post. Enjoy! [...]

Today has been a really lay-back-and-enjoy type of Saturday, with the sun shinning gloriously upon the whole city...what a better mood for chilling and putting some of your favorite old albums on the stereo. And this brings us to today's Tune of the Day, from the original lo-fi indie rockers Pavement. What a better soundtrack to today's weather than their first two albums Slanted & Enchanted and Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain. Our tune comes from the latter and is accompanied by a typically ridiculous Pavement video. Enjoy..

Our favorite web-seriers-only is back!! IFC has partnered with Nerve.com and agreed to co-produce a third season of Joe Swanberg's hit Young American Bodies. Season 3 premieres on May 27th at IFC.com site and I'm certainly waiting for the 12 brand new episodes. In the meantime, all the previous episodes from the first two seasons are now also hosted in IFC. PS. I'll be checking out the other web series of IFC soon, with a couple of them looking really promising (and another couple looking really lame).

I'll sound bitter and old again, but I've missed the good old days when one of the joys of going into a record shop and browsing through the endless record collection was to also glance at some of the finest pieces of art depicted on the album covers. I'll be totally honest, I didn't really live through the golden years (since I grew up at the time of CDs), but with the digital revolution taking over the music industry, I start to wonder (like many have before me), is this art form slowly disappearing? (and am I starting to sound [...]

Can't say that I've been a big fan of Will Ferrell. I have to give kudos to him though, because he finally made a movie that is at least watchable. It is also funny at times! It even made me want to post something after so much time! That's all for now, I'll get back to the posting habit when I can find some free time during working hours. Until then, I must avoid the temptations :)

Today I've decided to dedicate both the Clip and Tune of the day to Fujiya & Miyagi. Despite their name, the group currently has three members (none of which are Japanese). The real brains behind the group are David Best and Steve Lewis (with Matt Hainsby being called in later on to replace two previous members). Their sound is indie electronic (or plain electronica) and in their last album Transparent Things back in 2006 they produced some really amazing tracks. Below, you'll find Ankle Injuries, which has a really cool video (and thus named our Clip of the Day) and [...]

This review really troubled me for a while. I must have listened to No Age's new album more than a dozen times during the last couple of weeks, yet I've been delaying the review constantly. I guess I wasn't sure what to make of it. I definitely love it (no doubt about that), but whether it deserves more than that was troubling me. No Age are basically a duo from Los Angeles, Dean Spunt and Randy Randall, both previous members of Wives. They are part of the new lo-fi punk scene, along with Times New Vikings [...]

On yet another boring journey back from work, I was pleasantly suprised by a huge billboard with Stefanel's new Spring/Summer collection for 2008. I'm no fan of fashion, but seeing Gisele Bundchen photographed by Mario Testino surely gets my thumbs up..

Glasgow's Rangers may not have been that lucky against Zenit yesterday but when it comes to music they are at the top of the indie cities leaderboard. Scottish bands are constantly popping out, especially from Glasgow. So, as a consolation prize for yesterday, here are two reviews of (almost) fresh Glasgow based bands. The Twilight Sad - Fourteen Autumns & Fifteen Winters The Twilight Sad have been around since 2003 with a number of EPs, but it wasn't until last year that [...]

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"One beautiful April morning, on a narrow side street in Tokyo's fashionable Harujuku neighborhood, I walked past the 100% perfect girl. Tell you the truth, she's not that good-looking. She doesn't stand out in any way. Her clothes are nothing special. The back of her hair is still bent out of shape from sleep. She isn't young, either - must be near thirty, not even close to a "girl," properly speaking. But still, I know from fifty yards away: She's the 100% perfect girl for me. The moment I see her, there's a rumbling in my chest, and my mouth [...]

It was up to Igor Denisov and Konstantin Zyrianov to set things straight and give the UEFA Cup to the team that actually deserved it. FC Zenit St. Petersburg won their first European title last night after defeating 2-0 the unbearable Rangers FC. The Scots tried to steal one more victory by playing their usual annihilation system but fortunately for most of us, it only got them as far as the 72nd minute. And to top it of, the Russians doubled their goals on the 92nd minute to give them a blazing victory. All eyes now on Chelsea to salvage [...]

I've been keen to TV shows lately (probably due to the lack of any decent new movie or just my inability to focus for more than 40 minutes), especially comedy ones. Comedy shows however are usually in the form of short 20-minute episodes, which means I consume a couple of seasons in a week, leaving me constantly searching for replacements. As was the case, I run out of How I Met Your Mother and The Big Bang Theory episodes quite quickly and turned to CW's new series The Reaper for comfort. The Reaper is a mix of comedy and action, [...]

While I do love cars, I've never been a real fan of Ferrari. Their style of producing chunky supercars in bright colors in order to show off before performing (which undoubtedly they do) always put me off. I was more into Porsche and especially the slick sporty British style of TVR and Aston Martin. The unveiling (not official, but the pictures were released by the Scuderia) of the new Ferrari California seems to change this with a sexy form and the usual goodies under the hood. Nicknamed as the "Baby Ferrari" due to its size, it also comes with a [...]

This should have been posted by BLR (who mailed it to me earlier today) but he is too lazy to write for the blog. So it was (once again) up to me to do the dirty work and post it for all. This is a track by No Age (which I will be reviewing soon) played backwords. It's been too long since bands recored these kinds of things in their albums (guess you can't play too many tracks backwards in an ipod). Lo-fi punk with more to their lyrics than you though...Leg it!!

As you can obviously see, we decided to change the style (design) of Athens66. This will be followed by a number of additions in the sidebar columns (which we are still working on). Sorry for the mess that you may have encountered all day long (if you passed by), but it was unavoidable. It's back to the writing board (keyboard actually) from now on...

After an endless search for this video, I was able to locate it. The trouble with this particular clip was the fact that it was removed from all the video hosting sites (just this particular clip; all other excerpts from the series were still available...probably he was too "policly incorrect" with this joke). I'm not sure if the clip will be available for long, so enjoy it while you can.. PS. This [...]

This review should have preceded that of Foals but that's bound to happen since I'm not planning my posts at all. Battles are the American representatives of modern math rock (with Foals being the British ones). While Foals have a more indie sound, Battles are pushing the boundaries of experimental and progressive rock. Most of the songs in Mirrored (their debut album released back in 2007) are purely instrumental, with only a couple of them containing any lyrics (which in most cases don't make much sense anyway). Their tracks are full of rim shots, repetitive guitar lines, drum beats, complex [...]

Keeping faithful to my posting style (and probably music listening), it wasn't until recently that I finally discovered another band to accompany my moody depressing times (with the other band being obviously Tindersticks). The National are a five-piece band from Ohio, although looking at their pictures and listening to their music you could easily mistaken them for a British band, writing their lyrics while spending most of their times down at the local pub. The National made their debut back in 2001 with their self-titled album and ever since have kept their sound mostly unchanged. Poetic [...]

I just spent almost 2 hours searching and waiting in line to get some gas for my car. I was away all the previous couple of weeks and had no idea there was a strike going on. And of course today was one of the few days that I really needed my car (have to drive all the way out of Athens for a friend's wedding). At least I came out a winner (full tank), although I'm still skeptical if it was gas they were filling or mostly water (I'll just have to wait for the autopsy). [...]