His words, not mine, folks. Either way, you can probably stop that long running bet with your bro who writes for the university paper about whether or not Oregon, New Jersey or Rhode Island will be the next Sufjan States record, because, well, it probably ain’t going to happen. In an interview with Paste, Stevens calls the absolutely ambitious and totally NPR-worthy States Project “a joke.” The dude who wrote tunes about a holiday that celebrates a Revolutionary War officer from Poland and the pot-holed mess of a raised motor path known as the BQE, goes as far as saying “I took it too seriously. I started to feel like I was becoming a cliché of myself.” Sufjan then goes into detail about his BQE project, which debuted over two years ago at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and is just now being issued to the public. “In all honesty, that piece is what really sabotaged my creative momentum.” Apparently, considering he hasn’t done anything but issue old stuff (the BQE), rearrange older stuff (Run Rabbit Run), contribute re-arranged, remixed, re-worked 10 minute-plus old track works to a high profile AIDS comp and probably made a Grilled Cheese or two. Anyway, sounds like someone’s developed a really hefty weed habit, is spending too much time hitting the Volcano and not enough time researching the Battle of Appomattox Court House. And for a second, I totally thought this dude could pull a Jandek and release hundreds of albums in a lifetime.

You may think “Electric Feel” doesn’t feel like a sports anthem (although I bet they had it cued up at the Grizzly Bear pool party show if Jay-Z stepped in the dodgeball pit). But we’ve secretly always thought it was the perfect accompaniment to those lime-green throwbacks the Hawks wear from time to time. Sure, they could play basketball if they must, but if the game comes to a sudden halt when MGMT comes on and an all-out rave breaks out at Philips Arena.

So we were right there with NBA2K10 when they decided to put MGMT on their soundtrack/game along with Miike Snow, Ratatat, Illinois and some exclusive hip-hop tracks from Izza Kizza and Donnie Bravo. Check the full tracklist here.

On a sidenote, there’s a special feature in the game where you can play as (among other rappers) Kanye West, and his song (”Amazing”) is featured in the game. This means in theory Yeezy could be playing a video game as himself at center court of Madison Square Garden with his own song in the background, which has to be some sort of daydream come true for him.

(Via: 2KSports)

In the world of downloadable music, the 40-minute album is obsolete. It took six years and the latest Illinois release to make me realize this, but here I am. In fact, with the deterioration of radio along with the eradication of physical properties entirely, pop music’s ties to tradition are the demons of the art itself to slay. Simply said, if you make a 3+ minute pop tune nowadays, you only did it because everyone else did so before you. By this logic, the sans-time music world should allow unstoppable song-making machines like Prince to release an album (or whatever could be quantified as an “album” now) every week. It also makes me question the motives of artists today: Why do they wait until they have 40 minutes of material to release a “full” record any more? Can they only fill 40 minutes? Or were those just the best 40 minutes of 80? Are they happy for the resurgence of vinyl, so they can have a physical limiter of their material? The whole system is in flux and it’s freaking me out.
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