jammy - jammy

I've really been enjoying the page about rounds on jammy's (user #59115) website, {homemadejam}.

Tim Walters -- doubtfulpalace

doubtfulpalace (User #82680) came to my attention via this great song in the music challenge. Apparently Tim has a holiday music web site up year round with holiday songs going back to 1993 as well as a roundup of other talented artists.

Alison Conard—Voodoo Economics

nosila (user #60765) has a website that... that... well, what does it do? Nothing that I can control, it seems, but it's a screenfull of spooky, shifting imagery and random echoey bleats of musical snippets. The figures and the sounds seem to respond to mouse motion, and clicking on the absurdist words and sentences in the upper left corner only exacerbate the situation. It's quite disorienting; I feel sorta dizzy and oogy. The only meaningful words on the screen are "Download Album." So I click on that, and the site spits out a .zipped album, by her band Voodoo Economics, which turns out to be actually quite interesting and quirky and snakey--and Alison has a cool voice! To think I almost missed this music due to frustration at the artsiness/incomprehensibility of the containing website. Afterward, I notice further down on nosila's mefi profile page that there is a warning: "creepy, uncanny sounds play automatically." d'oh!

Bård Edlund—edlundart

edlundart (User #10322) hangs out in the MeFiMusic backwaters a lot, and Bård's website showcases his music alongside his other artistic outlets--photography and poetry included. But it's his digital images and illustrations that stand out--mostly very tactile-looking, geometric, featureless bendy people, posed in various ways among simple, stark backdrops. There are also a few wordless comix featuring these people. The miscellaneous section of the site also yields a couple of gems: Bård has designed a double-heeled stiletto and a thong with f-holes! (F-holes as in like what's on a violin.) In his bio, we learn that Bård is "pronounced 'Board,' or yes, 'Bored.'" [Insert your own pun about boredom leading to creativity here.]

The design is pretty no-nonsense, sans bells-n-whistles, sometimes mildly frustrating as options for navigation are found in tiny fonts at the bottoms of some pages; but that was easy to spot after a few clicks.

AccordionGuy -- the Adventures of AccordionGuy

Joey deVilla (User #15623) got a little famous this week for his Craiglist wedding post and follow-ups (here) but he's been around and blogging since November 2001, practically the blogging stone ages. You can browse by categories such as accordion instrument of the gods or possibly just the accordion category which has one post with this excellent photo. With 5,000 posts, you might need the Best Of page to help you find some more good stuff.

noloveforned -- noloveforned

noloveforned (User #39526) is an internet radio sensation. The noloveforned website is a treasure trove of five years of archived radio shows and in-studio performances.

carsonb--ne parle

carsonb (User #7721) has a little blog with a bunch of mixes and little stories, but he hasn't updated it in quite a while. He's still bopping around on MySpace though.

dobbs—Wrestle the Future to the Fucking Ground

dobbs's (User #13877) site is great. The splash page is a bit intimidating, demanding an email address, but the links at the top (check WTF? to figure out WTF) lead to an explanation and some archived writings from what turns out to be a splendid email list. After reading bits from the archives (I liked I'm on Fire, and check out Untitled #6) I signed up for the list. The writing from his Victory Shag project is also quite good: I don't want to know if this is truth or fiction, but it's a hell of a story. And, to top it all off, the music link has a great set of songs available. I hadn't heard The Handsome Family before, but after reading the Sally Timms story, I had to hear, and they're great!

TonyRobots - so-sad & manwithatan

TonyRobots (user #20429) had an old website with a broken poetry machine and a functional bunny machine. I like playing the number stumper game with single digit numbers. He's got a blog now which sings Aaron Neville at you. He also has a CitrusFortress, but I don't know what it does; looks fun though.

willc—willchatham.com

A personal site with a bit of everything, from programming CSS to music musings, willc's (User #18114) site seems innocuous on its face. There is a dark underbelly, however. On the sidebar are links to his other sites: the incisive magazine reviews at Dumpworthy, the fabulous mp3s at his music site, and the very disturbing pictures at My Nail Collection. The latter is essential viewing.

cortex—Josh Millard Speaks!

cortex (User #7418) Josh Millard Speaks! WTF can I say? I've been avoiding reviewing his site, I've had this post in draft for two weeks, but now he's a mod and I guess I can't avoid the matter anymore.

I mean, certainly you must pay attention to cortex's RPM Challenge album (the David Bowie song is a masterpiece!), and what MeFite doesn't know about 88 lines (here is where I say how disappointed I was not to get a mention). The problem is that this page is just the tip of the cortex media empire, and it's all great! Check his side bar for his other sites, although my current favorite, Pen and Inklings, isn't yet listed.

What I'm trying to say, without being coy, and with too many words, is that JM's website is the model for project driven quality websites. Absolutely fabulous.

goodnewsfortheinsane—Wolkenvelden

gnfti (User #20191) a self-described Child of the Eternal November has several websites. I can't review his Dutch blog, as I don't speak dutch, and his music recording blog seems a bit stalled, but Wolkenvelden looks like it's still going strong. (The index page is really quite nice.)

I'll admit that I've been dreading reviewing it, precisely because I like the songs and the attitude so well. Any bio page that begins

If 2006 were 1920, and Holland were Ireland, Paul Hunt would be drunkenly strolling along the banks of the Liffey, taking off his hat for beautiful women and turning his Dublin encounters into brilliant, unintelligible prose

is alright by me, even if it smacks a bit of heresy. This website is one that I always wish were updated more frequently, because I like it so well.

I'm not sure if my favorite gnfti song is on his site, but you can catch it at Aural Times, it's about a letter, and the Swedes, and serendipity and redemption. But it's better than that.

nanojath—The Fairly Secret Song of the Day Blog

nanojath (User #18794) has a blog, which is Fairly Secret, on which he posts a song a day (just about). It's a bit hard for me to evaluate some of these lyrics without actually hearing them as songs. I do like the pastoral Sick, Weary, and And Necessity is cool because it explains the whole project (and you can hear the song at MeFi Music, his song Jonestown on MeFi Music is also quite good, but I can't find the lyrics on his blog). I like The Inspector, and Babel, too. nanojath is taking part in the RPM challenge this year, and says that he's maybe going to put his blog on hiatus in March.