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[ Comments Off ]Posted on August 21, 2008 by admin in Music
Thursday, August 21st, 2008GameBoy Groupies, Chiptunes & Circuit Bending
I’ve always believed strongly in tolerating others’ musical tastes as much as possible, and hoped for the same in return. That’s why, in spite of the fact that hearing these sounds actually gives me minor headaches and panic attacks, I thought I’d touch on Chiptune and Circuit Bending. If you were a GameBoy fanatic growing up (and alas, I was not) you might really get into the sounds being created by artists like the members of 8bitpeoples Crew and 2PlayerProductions. Imagine an ecstasy-addled throbbing dance floor fueled by…yes…a nerd sweating furiously over a modified GameBoy. Fueling some of this low-tech raving is Circuit Bending, the practice of hacking and re-wiring guitar effects, toys and small synthesizers to create new and often “dirty” effects. Circuit Bending isn’t limited to musical devices though; if you dig through sites like GetLoFi.com, you can also learn how to do things like Hacking a Portable DVD Player into a Cheap LCD Monitor. Being such an über-nerd, you may have some trouble getting a date for the GameBoy Rave. Don’t worry, you can always call Lara, the Dancing Lego Robot (YouTube clip; Lara doesn’t really start throwing down until about 1:15).
Everything That Happens Finally Happened Today
[ Comments Off ]Posted on August 18, 2008 by admin in Music
Monday, August 18th, 2008The new Byrne Eno Release is available with streaming previews
David Byrne sent me an interesting e-mail today. He let me know that the The new Byrne/Eno collaboration Everything That Happens Will Happen Today was happening today. They’ve done some creative things with this release, one of them being the dirty trick of offering a Deluxe Package for $69.99 that includes four bonus songs, a short film about the album, a screensaver app (meh), an “Everything That Happens” miniature hardbound book, and immediate access to download all the songs in various formats. They’ve also cleverly offered the little embedded player seen here. A little advice David: you’re pretty tech savvy; your people could’ve made it resizeable, and they could’ve included a frigging volume control! I’m going to ponder spending the $69.99 after I stream the songs for a bit, a nice option.
Before the Music Dies
[ Comments Off ]Posted on August 8, 2008 by admin in Music
Friday, August 8th, 2008I wonder if Don McClean did the soundtrack?
If you listen to pop music with any regularity and intelligence, you may have noticed an extremely high suck quotient in the major label releases of the past couple of years. This, while the quantity of really high quality indy material has grown almost exponentially and provided the artist with a higher income-making potential while unit prices plummeted. Well, someone else seems to have noticed too, and made a film about it. Perhaps a bit melodramatically titled, Before the Music Dies features interviews and performances with Erykah Badu, Eric Clapton, Dave Matthews, Branford Marsalis, ?uestlove and a wide variety of others. The film promises to explore the phemomena of “the homogenous corporate product that is spoonfed to consumers and the diverse independent music that finds devoted fans online and at clubs across the country”. The teaser with Erykah Badu, left, is hilarious.
Building a PC-Based Studio for Less Than $100 (Part 2)
[ Comments Off ]Posted on August 6, 2008 by admin in Music
Wednesday, August 6th, 2008Downloading and Installing dyne:bolic
Downloading and Installing dyne:bolic
This is part II of a series. See part I here.
The Machine
So, there were no organic life forms living in the PC we’re using, which was surprising, given the spider-infested storage area from which the machine was retrieved (see photo). Next, we need to download dyne:bolic. Their download page is a little hard on the eyes. What you’re looking for is either the link that says “download using BitTorrent” (provided you know how to use BitTorrents ) or the section that says “download via ftp from mirrors”. We chose the BitTorrent option, although we aren’t endorsing it; our download still took almost an hour-and-a-half because the torrent wasn’t very well-seeded. You might want to try a regular FTP download. Read the rest of this entry »
Only 151 Shopping Days…
[ 2 Comments ]Posted on August 4, 2008 by admin in Music
Monday, August 4th, 2008…and this JingleBabies CD is already driving me nuts.
…left until Christmas, and this collection of samples of baby sounds turned into Christmas carols is going to drive me nuts. If I don’t buy it now, I’ll forget about it until Christmas, when I’ll be saying to myself “damn, I wish I’d bought that JingleBabies CD, it would be really fun in this Xmas mix I’m making”. If I DO buy it now, when Christmas rolls around, I’ll be saying to myself “damn, what a waste of twelve bucks, this was really only funny for about ten seconds as an audio preview”. Decide for yourself. Listen to Silent Night, as sung by babies.