(edit: there’s some garbage in the dj sets page from hosting issues – just ignore it, do. should be fixed tomorrow.)
Some days, you just don’t feel as bright as some of the supernovas that masquerade as people around here. Meet Theo Jansen and his Strandbeests:
These are…sculptures that move. They’re also a kind of mechanical artificial intelligence. They’re also utterly beautiful. Vidoes can be found here and here, and really must be seen to be believed.
I would like to invite each and every one of you to the UVic Music 105 concert on December 6th. It is at 4:30 PM, in the Philip T. Young Recital Hall, in the Music wing. There will be something like 30 pieces being played, including one of mine. If you thought I made weird music, you ain’t heard nothing yet. It is also free. Can’t really say no to that, can you?
Also, I posted some new clips, including the Rent edit, and the first of hopefully many Castles In The Sky tunes. Why am I making so many breaks things these days?
I’ve kind of had a crush on the Monome for a while, for good reason: It’s totally sick. I had the idea to load each button with a sound, or a MIDI pattern, or a tempo change paramter, or an effect parameter, and so on, with some random organization and some random set of things. The performance would then be this drunkard’s-walk style game of discovering what sort of things are in the interface, then how they’re organized, and then how to make a pleasing sound with them. One could then add proximity based rules and really make shit interesting.
I also had a flash of mad genius when I should have been studying math, and instead watched Hollas play some air violin for a bit. This, obviously, ended with three or four of us sketching out the controls for Violin Hero using the Wii remote and nunchuck, including microtonality, bow position, pizzicato, glissando, and vibrato. But, as you can see, we were (kind of) beaten to the punch. Betcha can’t play Ligetti on that though.
Our man in Memphis talks about genres, DJing, and production. Give it a read here. You can find The Sky Patrol’s Tide Pool catalog here.
As you may have heard, Amazon just dropped Kindle: a wireless e-book, e-paper, and blog reading device. I, obviously, have never used one, and I am loath to disagree with luminaries like Mr. Gaiman when he says it’s wonderful…but I certainly won’t be using one when they cost $400, are ass-end ugly, and aren’t solar powered.
Kindle is a nice idea, and is probably a good implementation of that idea. (Again: it could not be ugly and it really must be solar-powered.) But it’s an idea that has not yet arrived, and that won’t arrive until books are traded like music was before the iPod hit. Napster peaked in February 2001 – the iPod launched in October of that same year. Until e-books are that ubiquitous, Kindle is so much kindling.
There’s also the classic argument about why books will never stop being made, but I’ll leave that as an exercise for the reader.
Unrelated: a great post from Test Industries about Amato going out of business. Ah,vinyl. I’ll miss you.
Firstly: This Thursday, Hush, mad techno and dance music. Come. Yes.
Secondly: The Laptop Club is, amazingly, a collection of 7 to 9 year old kids who draw out designs for laptops. These are astonishing. I am twenty-five of your earth years old, and I parse The Intertubes in a totally different way from these kids. Absolutely worth looking at.
Thirdly: Burial – ‘Untrue’. This is a fantastic album. I don’t know if it’s as good as his first one, but it’s very close to that high bar, and it’s far easier to listen to: lots of vocals, lots of lush pads, lots of pretty / melancholy depth. Really, “melancholy” is the word I’d use for this one. ‘Untrue’ comes from a sad, sad place. It kind of has to. After all, it’s been 15 years since hardcore, and all the drugs have finally started to take their toll on the ravers who are suddenly staring at the wrong end of 30. Buy the ticket, take the ride. With that said, even if you didn’t take that particular ride at that particular time, ‘Untrue’ is still very much worth listening to, as a memory of whenever Things Were Like That, for you.
This is some sick shit. Yes. I speak nothing but the truth to you, and if you have even the most cursory interest into popular music and sampling culture, this album is a must hear. The obvious standout is the amazing ‘Paper Planes’, which lifts the entire guitar riff from The Clash’s ‘Straight To Hell’, along with gunshots and cash-register sounds as percussion hooks. The main producers for the album appear to be Diplo and Switch, along with M.I.A. herself, and they did a job. Other standouts are ’20 Dollar’, ‘Boyz’, ‘Mango Pickle Down River’, and ‘Bird Flu’. Well recommended.
Play it!
Radio Free Sasha – Dead Reckoner [Bootleg]
Fairmont – Fade To Saturate [Border Community]
Spooky – Stereo [Generic]
Mendel – Out Of The Dark [Unsigned]
Luke Chable – Skyline Road [68]
Stel – Heart Full Of Napalm [Hope]
Led Zepplin – They Just Won’t Let Me Be (Phil K vs. PQM) [Abducted]
Hybrid – Sleepwalking [Distinctive]
I am also djing with the immortal DJ What at Hush on Thursday, November 22nd. It will be ridiculous. Come out and drink too much with us.
(also bought the new Burial and M.I.A.’s latest, but more about those later)
The Dumpster is a visualization of ~20,000 break-ups that were posted to blogs, LiveJounal, MySpazz, etc, in 2005. Welcome to the future, two years ago. William Gibson (and Marshall McLuhan, for that matter) would be proud.
The interesting thing for me is that The Dumpster only displays excerpts from each blog, and no links to the blogs in question. Obviously, this is done for privacy reasons – but there’s no need to do so. And wouldn’t it be just so Internet if you could link out to to these people?
Perc linked me to this video of Richie Hawtin playing the original / tool mix of my track “Up”. Richie, you’re so dreamy.