So here goes, in no particular order, ten of my most favorite posts of my best girl rockin the internets. maija swims lake cochituate – maija vs the lunar eclipse – maija vs peanut butter bagel – the maija nell fan club – maija wins the dog-a-palooza – snowing in Allston for Husky Dü – stuff my dog hides under – maija wrassles zed – a mediafriend-powered 529 – maija’s christmas present. And a bonus link for the best of all tags. Have any links you like better than these? Let us know in the comments below!

Also, an entirely gratuitous bonus birthday slideshow from my maija flickr set. Or if you’d rather, you can check it here in full screen. And a promise, after today, no more dog stuffs for a while.

Also, a Mediafriend interview.

Mediafriend: [coughs] You can always hear a musician’s apartment and the street outside their window through their music. It can happen in many different ways, but it usually happens. I’m pretty sure it’s happened in my music. That’s probably a good thing, I think Boston is an interesting city to listen to. But if you listen carefully, you can hear NJ, Philly, NY, and whatever in there too. That’s just the cities I mean…

Me: You mentioned “broken electronics”. From what we’ve heard you’ve done your share of breaking electronics so to speak.

Mediafriend: Yeah, my brother got me into that. It all boiled down to the notion of having entirely new instruments. Nobody is going to rip off your sound if they have to reinvent your instruments first. Well, maybe.

Me: What instruments are we talking about?

Mediafriend: The Playertron mainly. It’s a big part of the sound. The Playertron is a series of tape players with a bunch of knobs and switches that allow you to control the speed and play a cassette tape like a monophonic instrument. We record tones or voices or whatever onto tapes and go from there. It’s great.

Me: We heard you play all this live on the album. Is it true that none of this was sequenced?

Mediafriend: That’s mostly true. Definitely all the synth parts and those tapes and of course, any guitars [are not sequenced]. The beats are mostly tapped out on a trigger pad or played on a drumset. Some of those beats though… on those I sequenced a beat, burned a cd, and mixed them up on a pair of cdx’s [cd turntables]. So, everything does go through some process of actual performance and nothing is completely sequenced.

Tried some experiments today with shooting with dual XL2s for a new feature – Medaifriend in megarealistic 3D. It’s probably ok to start getting excited about the awesomeness that will be.

In possibly related news…

VidFest: High Performance Video and Music Festival
Fri, Aug 8 (raindate Sat Aug 9); 7:30pm
A one night only blitz of live music and video art in the heart of Union Square. VidFest will feature video accompanied live music performances alongside temporary video installations by local artists and contemporary video makers. Produced by Sarah Schoemann.

Mediafriend’s new album ‘I Don’t Feel Like This Is Happening’ is online for streaming purposes. Were I the type to express strong preferences I’d recommend ‘Flight Risk’ where Chris spins out a slow Pinback-like beat & verbal declining modulation before crunching into a dissonant conclusion. Or if by chance you’re an echoplanar fan you might like to hear the full versions of ‘Love, An Art’ and ‘In Green’, from which parts were excised for use in It’s OK to Be Afraid. I also appropriated the second version of Fragrant Skies for my own self-indulgent purposes a while back, prompting a surprising number of unrelated people to remark to me about what a terribly sad song this is. The Nuno Albuquerque version of this track goes to a calmer, chiller, less emotive place. All in all, worth checking out – a more productive use of your time at work than actual work.

UPDATE: A few people have mentioned having trouble with blip.tv stuttering for them. If that sounds like you, 529 is also on youtube.

Thanks to the cast (Christopher Player, Nathanael Hevelone, Vihann Kong, Le Nguyen, Khoa Nguyen, Julie Kong, Troy Turick, Mai-Khuyen Nguyen & Allison Stevens); and crew (Allison Stevens who produced, Nathanael Hevelone who directed and Christopher Player who did foley work & assistant editing; also to the others who worked tirelessly on this but prefer their anonymity). Lastly, we’re extremely grateful to the musicians – Mediafriend and Action Set.