Mellodrama: The Mellotron Documentary
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on February 12, 2009 by admin in Music
Thursday, February 12th, 2009Whether you’re old enough to have listened to the Beatles and the Moody Blues when they were new, or if you’re into the Beastie Boys, or any of thousands of current artists in rap and pop, the music you listen to owes a lot to an instrument you may have never heard of: the Mellotron. [...]
Whether you’re old enough to have listened to the Beatles and the Moody Blues when they were new, or if you’re into the Beastie Boys, or any of thousands of current artists in rap and pop, the music you listen to owes a lot to an instrument you may have never heard of: the Mellotron. The Mellotron was “the original sampler”, using actual sounds on recording tape which were manipulated mechanically to alter pitch with a keyboard. Sounds barbaric by todays digital sampling standards, but part of the beauty of the Mellotron was the fact that the sound it made was NOT accurate; it tended to have a haunting quality all its own. Sunday is the world premiere of Dianna Dilworth’s Mellodrama: The Mellotron Documentary at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival in Missoula, Montana. The trailer is featured here, and I hope this film gets decent distribution. It looks very well done if the trailer is any indication.
Pitchfork 50 Best Albums of 2008
[ 2 Comments ]Posted on December 26, 2008 by admin in Music
Friday, December 26th, 2008The Enhanced, Condensed Version
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As I said a few weeks ago, I’m helpless without Pitchfork Media’s Top 50 list. It has totally dictated my January listening habits for three years running. Well, the 2008 list is finally available, and as usual they’ve spread it across five web pages, which is a minor annoyance to me and a few other people I know. So, I’ve done you all a little favor, and summarized the list without reviews. I’ve also gone one step further and provided product and torrent search links for most of the list. I tend to torrent, review, then buy if I like it or delete if I don’t. Try to be cool and support the artists if you do the same. By the way, the The Pitchfork 500
Casiotone for the Painfully Alone – White Corolla
[ 2 Comments ]Posted on November 6, 2008 by admin in Music
Thursday, November 6th, 2008Back in my day, we only had flip books and one channel of MTV…
It’s weird for me to hear so many bands that do music that sounds exactly like awful music I did in the 80′s. Music that I think even we knew was awful back then, while we were doing it (sometimes I think we did all the drugs we did just so we could stand to listen it). Anyway, it’s even weirder when I find myself kind of liking the stuff. In the case of the White Corolla video at left by Casiotone for the Painfully Alone , I’m sure the video helps. The animation was apparently provided by Julia Pott of London (web site, blog). Drowned In Sound has an interview with Owen Ashworth (who essentially is Casiotone for the Painfully Alone) which highlights why I’d never be able to get a job with the British pop press: whereas I would describe the music as “that plinky Casio stuff our manager wouldn’t let us include in the set list and IRS Records laughed at us for sending them“, DIS’s interviewer James Gracey describes it as “…simple yet incredibly addictive: a barrage of reverberated beats, shuddering with a raw, almost dirty intensity; melodic yet often lifting, blown-out chords wrapped around Ashworth’s baritone, guttural observations that form articulate, Raymond Carver-esque character studies…” I guess it’s not hyperbole if you’re British…
Sometimes You Just Have To (inter) Face The Music
[ 2 Comments ]Posted on November 1, 2008 by admin in Music, Technology
Saturday, November 1st, 2008Two Tune Tables and No Microphone
Years ago I had a dream in which I was playing an amazing instrument that responded to my hand gestures and thoughts, creating sublime, transcendent music that moved the soul. Then I woke up. The best that I had at my disposal at the time was still my electric guitar, because a velocity sensitive keyboard, although it’s pretty cool, had been around for awhile. The evolution of the musical instrument interface has amazing possibilities these days, as evident in the reactable project created by students at Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona. As is so often the case though, the same technology seems to be more immediately applicable to practical needs, like selling cocktails. The clip at left is the brick, a “Tangible & Multi Touch Sonification Instrument”. Which is one of the more creative and purposeful interfaces I’ve seen. Many of these concepts are clever, but end up being rather non-musical or like the reacTogon, just a a clever redesign of existing ideas. Coming at things from the other direction, Japanese artist Daito Manabe lets the music play him (YouTube clip). If you watch that video, you’ll get a feel for what it means to “surrender to your art”. That can’t feel good. Daito Manabe’s YouTube page is here; he also seems to do interesting public performance art projects like whitebase + Daito Manabe and disturbing video experiments like Milk. Yucky.
Elbow Room Only
[ 2 Comments ]Posted on October 31, 2008 by admin in Music
Friday, October 31st, 2008You’ll need some sharp elbows to queue up in my music collection…
If you care about me, stop introducing me to music I like. I’m rapidly running out of time and hard drive space. The other day, a friend sent me a link to some British band’s web site, asking me what I thought. I think my remark at the time was something like “it’s a good thing their web site’s so pretty, ’cause they’re a fugly bunch of fellows”. After giving their music obsessively repeated listens, I now officially retract anything unkind I’ve ever said about Elbow. Their newest release, The Seldom Seen Kid