As you'd expect the Past Holiday Sampler has the usual Paste suspects - Sufjan Stevens and Great Lake Swimmers. Was delighted to see geek favorite Johnathan Coulton of Portal 'Still Alive' and 'Code Monkey' fame included as well.
From the Noise Trade Page:
Fortunately, every year some of our favorite Paste artists choose to
freshen the holiday music genre with new releases, whether they're
original compositions or unique takes on traditional holiday favorites.
If you're looking for the perfect playlist for that tired "Secret Santa"
party or just hoping to amp up your holiday spirit in a new way, look
no further than the Paste Holiday Sampler.
You know the drill, email + postal code that the artist can use to contact you gets you 18 hip Christmas songs.
Sufjan Stevens has released twelve songs of the fifty eight songs on his Silver and Gold Christmas box set via Noise Trade. Email + postal code = download. Sweet.
If you like your Christmas music on the folk/bluesy/jazz/torch end of things then Snow Angels by Over the Rhine will be for you. OtR has released the album for free on NoiseTrade. Give them your email and you can download the album. No you have no excuse for not having excellent artful music for Christmas.
- Peace
A fan video of Sufjan Steven's Hey Guys! It's Christmas Time!
Loaded my Xmas playlist on the ipod this morning - 284 songs from classical to metal. While I have six versions of Hark the Herald Angles Sing, I've got plenty of non traditional tunes to space them out. I do find it puts me in the Christmas mood, a healthy mix of darkness, lament and celebration.
BTW you can build your own Alt Xmas song collection by one, Geek Dad has arranged a free download of BNL's version of Jingle Bells though only for Dec 08.
Last June when I heard that Lisa was filling her new 30 Gig ipod with music to keep her company while in Uganda I managed to get about a half gig of Xmas music on there. Got some odd looks from friends when I told them what I up to. Got this from Lisa
Last night was my last night in my town of mbarara, and i had a great evening/Christmas party with my friends who live on the same compound as me. we made mincemeat tarts and listened to your beautiful collection of carols that you donated to my ipod. after 6 months of July, it started to feel a bit like Christmas last night.
This year at Christmas dinner we put birthday candles on the Christmas pudding (read: cake) and sang Happy Birthday to Jesus. This I think was more or less my two-years-old niece's idea.
Anybody have other special Christmas stories they want to share in the comments?
One down side with having a birthday this time of year is people will often say 'Merry Christmas and Happy Birthday' and that's fine. I have caught myself echoing that back to people a couple of times today. I got some odd looks. I meant Happy New Year of course.
