A new DJ Shadow album: The Mountain Will Fall
Out just yesterday, DJ Shadow’s new album is pretty great so far.
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kottke.org posts about Music
Live: Sigur Ros Circles Iceland with Generative Soundtrack
Icelandic band Sigur Rós is doing a live slow TV event: a broadcast of a drive around the entirety of Iceland with a soundtrack generated by software based on a new song of theirs.
driving anti-clockwise round the island, the journey will pass by many of the country’s most notable landmarks, including vatnajökull, europe’s largest ice-sheet; the glacial lagoon, jökulsárlón; as well as the east fjords and the desolate black sands of möðrudalur.
the soundtrack to the journey is being created moment-by-moment via generative music software. the individual musical elements of unreleased song, and current sigur rós festival set opener, óveður, are seeded through the evolving music app bronze, to create a unique ephemeral sonic experience. headphones, external speakers and full-screen viewing are recommended.
How “My Boo” got its name
This is fun: an oral history of Ghost Town DJ’s 1996 hit “My Boo.” Did you know that Lil Jon started out in A&R for So So Def? Or that he picked the title “My Boo” over “I Want To Be Your Lady” and pushed to include it on an early label comp? (I did not.)
I was also very late to hear about the Running Man Challenge, which put “My Boo” back into circulation and the sales charts back in April, but in my defense: I am old.
You may also like: this oral history of hyphy and the Bay Area hip-hop scene at the turn of the millennium. It’s a little distended and the photo layout almost feels like Beats By Dre sponsored content, but it’s a loving look at a moment that’s gone.
And who shows up halfway through, helping to break hyphy nationwide? Lil Jon! That guy is everywhere.
(Hat-tip: @xohulk, @myhairisblue)
How the Seinfeld Theme Song Was Made
This 90s TV interview with Seinfeld theme song composer Jonathan Wolff is more interesting than you’d think. He talks through how he matched the theme to Jerry’s standup delivery tempo and how each episode’s song had to be customized the match the pacing of Jerry’s particular monologue that week. (via digg, which is particularly good today)
Update: The Sideshow podcast featured Wolff on an episode last year.
The show’s producers were having difficulty finding music that wouldn’t overpower the comedian’s opening routines. “Jerry, you’ve already given me the melody and theme,” Wolff told Seinfeld. “My job is going to be to support you and the organic nature of your voice.” Wolff sampled his own mouth noises and slapped some funky bass over it and the rest is history. He built the theme to be manipulated - the rhythm of the mouth pops, shakers, and bass notes changed ever so slightly to fit the different monologues that opened every show.
(via @TheFarceur)
Update: Here’s a recent video about Wolff and how the Seinfeld theme came to be.
Of course the network hated the song. Of course.
Slow guitar sped up sounds like a violin
The Samurai Guitarist recorded himself playing the Beatles’ Here Comes the Sun reeeeally slowly for 30 minutes and then sped the audio up by 20 times, which made his guitar sound like a violin. He explains how on Reddit.
Ok so my original plan was to rerecord the guitar normally when the video was done. I have a musical notation software that I plugged in everything exactly how I wanted to play it. I then added a metronome to trigger every 1/32nd note and set the tempo to 7 bpm, knowing that when sped up 20x that would be a nice tempo. It would also take 30 minutes or so which should be about the perfect time for a sunrise.
(via digg)
The dance number in Ex Machina works well with pretty much any song
In Ex Machina, Oscar Isaac’s Nathan Bateman performs a dance number with one of his AI robots, played by Sonoya Mizuno. It’s the scene where I decided I was going to like the movie. Mizuno is a ballerina as well as an actress, but Isaac has no problem keeping up with her as the pair dance to Get Down Saturday Night.
Now, Twitter account @oscardances is showing how you can plug pretty much any song into that scene and the dance still works. Here’s Michael Jackson’s Thriller:
thriller - michael jackson pic.twitter.com/JabWfGd49N
— oscar dances (@oscardances) April 29, 2016
Intergalactic by the Beastie Boys:
intergalactic - beastie boys pic.twitter.com/OxrVZNbPX4
— oscar dances (@oscardances) May 25, 2016
And Oops I Did It Again by Britney Spears:
oops i did it again - britney spears pic.twitter.com/ewnqRhSVHz
— oscar dances (@oscardances) May 26, 2016
And there are dozens more here. (via @gavinpurcell)
A rare live performance of Creep by Radiohead
Creep is perhaps Radiohead’s best known song, especially in the US. But the band is a bit ashamed of it, so they don’t play it all that often. They played it last night at a show in Paris for the first time since 2009. When I saw them in 2001, they played it for the first time since 1998 (and it was awesome).
There’s a certain point in everyone’s life when they’re unable to appreciate their younger selves. Between this and putting True Love Waits on their latest album, perhaps Radiohead has become more accepting of the band they used to be. The genie’s out of the bottle, mates, you might as well use the wishes.
The Evolution of How Rappers Construct Their Rhymes
In this video, Vox’s Estelle Caswell and Martin Conner break down how rappers construct their rhymes and how it’s changed and evolved since rap’s early days. As someone who doesn’t know a whole lot about music and even less about rapping but appreciates both, this was super entertaining and informative.
Huge archive of hip-hop mixtapes
The Internet Archive is now hosting thousands of hours of hip-hop mixtapes. Jason Scott explains:
The code I had to write to pull in these tapes (which are often distributed via torrents, because the albums generally range between 80-200mb), then to clean up the resulting downloads, and make sure the right cover is the “official” cover in the collection, took me a while. It’s “human/machine augmented” stuff, because there’s massive variation in how the files come in. Let’s not pretend it’s real work — the real work is even keeping track of all this stuff.
I have a list of 17,000 tapes to access at the exact moment, and so something close to that number might end up at the Archive across the next couple months. Keeping track of new releases will have to be automated, I suppose. I’ll probably need help.
A list of Radiohead’s entertaining business names
Radiohead compartmentalizes various parts of its overall business dealings into several smaller companies. Here are some of them as detailed in this Guardian article.
Random Rubbish LTD
LLLP LLP
Over Normal LTD
Ticker Tape LTD
Unsustainabubble LTD
Unreliable LTD
_Xurbia_ Xendless LTD
You could whip up a really good Radiohead Business Name or Radiohead Song Title? quiz with these.
Every Radiohead album and song ranked from best to worst
On the occasion of the release of Radiohead’s latest album, Consequence of Sound has ranked every album and every song by the band. I won’t tell you the exact order, but Kid A, In Rainbows, and OK Computer are their top 3 albums (spot on…Kid A is my #1) and Airbag, The National Anthem,1 Fake Plastic Trees, and Everything In Its Right Place make the top 10 songs (mine is Everything In Its Right Place or maybe the live version of True Love Waits).
My kids and I were listening to Kid A in the car last summer and when The National Anthem came on, Ollie read the display, scratched his head, and said, “this is a really weird version of the national anthem.”↩
Alanis updates Ironic with modern situations
On The Late Show with James Corden, Alanis Morrissette sung an updated version of her hit song, Ironic. Here are the lyrics:
An old friend sends you a Facebook request
You only find out they’re racist after you accept
There’s free office cake on the first day of your diet
It’s like they announce a new iPhone the day after you buy it
And isn’t it ironic, don’t you think?It’s like swiping left on your future soulmate
It’s a Snapchat that you wish you had saved
It’s a funny tweet that nobody faves
And who would’ve thought it figures
Get Alanis in the studio (alone), produce it, cut it, release it.
Radiohead, A Moon Shaped Pool
Radiohead’s ninth studio album is out and it’s called A Moon Shaped Pool (with a studio version of True Love Waits!). You can buy it directly from the band or on iTunes. The album is also on Apple Music but doesn’t appear to be on Spotify yet…dunno whether it will show up there later. There’s a special edition that ships in September that will have two extra tracks.
Update: The names of the tracks are in alphabetical order. I’ve just started listening, but they didn’t think track order was important? Lemonade this is not, I guess.
Update: From Buzzfeed’s list of 37 Things You Might Not Know About Radiohead, these two tidbits about A Moon Shaped Pool:
36. At the end of the track “Daydreaming” off the new album, Yorke’s voice is played backwards, singing the lyric “half of my life” over and over. Yorke, 47, was divorced from his wife last year after 23 years of marriage.
37. “True Love Waits” was originally recorded when Thom Yorke was first married. The fact that it has only now turned up as the final track on an album released following the end of his 23-year marriage is, well, devastating. The first word on A Moon Shaped Pool is “Stay” … the last is “Leave.”
An interactive timeline of the top Billboard songs
From Matt Daniels at Polygraph, a moving timeline of the 22,000 songs that hit the top 5 on the Billboard charts from 1958-2016. Whoa, there is a lot of pop music I missed in the late 90s through the late 2000s.
See also The most timeless songs of all time and Interactive timeline: listen to the #1 rap songs from 1989-2015.
Radiohead and PT Anderson collaborate on Daydreaming
Let’s not bury the lede here…Radiohead’s new album will be out on Sunday, May 8th at 2pm ET. !!!
The video is by Paul Thomas Anderson for Radiohead’s second single, Daydreaming (buy direct, listen at Spotify, etc.) Why PT Anderson? Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood did the soundtrack for Anderson’s There Will Be Blood.
Update: In my haste to post this earlier, I forgot that Greenwood has done the music for several of Anderson’s projects, including The Master and Inherent Vice. (thx, all)
Teen born with no fingers is a piano virtuoso
Humans are amazing. Alexey Romanov has no fingers, took up music only two years ago, and can play the piano better than 99.9% of world’s population. (via the guardian)
Burn the Witch by Radiohead
Two days ago, Radiohead withdrew its forces from the internet. Today, they dropped a new video on YouTube. The rest of the new album soon? Please?
Update: It’s on Spotify now and available for sale on Radiohead’s site and iTunes. Also, I am liking this song a lot.
The cinematic influences of Beyonce’s Lemonade
From Nelson Carvajal, an examination of the visual influences of Beyonce’s Lemonade visual album, from Pipilotti Rist to Terrence Malick to David Lynch.
The biggest influence present in Lemonade, is that of the great Terrence Malick. Imagery from his films To The Wonder and The Tree of Life (in particular a standout sequence involving a bedroom underwater) definitely inspired a lot of the overall tone of introspection and spiritual reflection that Beyoncé is striving for here. One of Lemonade’s directors, Kahlil Joseph, shot B-roll on Malick’s To The Wonder, so the impressionistic style of filmmaking has obviously carried over.
Yes, I’m posting Beyonce fanfic
This is the best thing I’ve read about Beyonce’s recently released album/film Lemonade.
*Beyoncé opens the door and Solange Knowles and Tina Lawson walk in.
Solange throws a reverse roundhouse kick that Jay Z lazily dodges.*
Solo: I’m sorry. I’m just very inspired right now.
Bey: Mommy! Solo! What a pleasant surprise! Neither of you could have had better timing
Jay: Sister-in-law. Mama Tina.
Mama T: Stereotypical Black Man
Solo: Blubberlips McSlutdick
Blue: LMAO
Bey: Baby, take your elevator to your playroom. Mommy will FaceTime you on your IPhone 8 when dinners ready.
Blue: Yes, mommy dearest
Solo: Rihanna called me to congratulate you.
Bey: She couldn’t call me?
Solo: Because you were gonna answer?
Bey: hahahahahahahahahaha
Solo: hahahahahahahahahaha
Mama T: lol omg
Bey: You may laugh
Jay: eh heh heh
Mama T: You are pathetic. The universe wasted good water creating you.
Bey: Mama. *high fives*
Prince, remembered in 11 songs you might not know he wrote
You’re probably aware of Sinead O’Conner’s Nothing Compares 2 U but The Bangles, MC Hammer, Chaka Khan, Stevie Nicks, and others also made use of songs written by Prince.
OMG Prince Doing James Brown on Stage With James Brown Is SO GOOD
Prince rides in on the back of a bearded man at around the 2:05 mark, yes you read that right. I had never seen this clip before and when he really gets going on stage, I started clapping and yelling in my apartment. Glorious. (via David Remnick at the New Yorker, who is almost annoyingly good at blogging)
Hamilton: now in book form
The Broadway musical Hamilton is having a bit of a moment right now. Ok, not really. Lin-Manuel Miranda’s smash hit has seemingly had one loooong moment since he performed “Alexander Hamilton” in front of the President and Mrs. Obama at the White House in 2009.
The show is sold out1 until who knows when, the original cast album went gold and won a Grammy, and they’re doing spin-off productions in Chicago, LA, and SF — all this scarcely more than a year since Rebecca Mead wrote up Miranda and Hamilton in the New Yorker.2 Bernie Sanders took in the show last week. And this week, a book about the production of the play came out.
Hamilton: The Revolution gives readers an unprecedented view of both revolutions, from the only two writers able to provide it. Miranda, along with Jeremy McCarter, a cultural critic and theater artist who was involved in the project from its earliest stages — “since before this was even a show,” according to Miranda — traces its development from an improbable performance at the White House to its landmark opening night on Broadway six years later. In addition, Miranda has written more than 200 funny, revealing footnotes for his award-winning libretto, the full text of which is published here.
Add to that a flurry of articles (several from the NY Times, which has a dedicated staff of 162 reporters on the beat) that came out in the past week or so: Why Hamilton Matters, Lin-Manuel Miranda: By the Book (he’s never finished Infinite Jest), ‘Hamilton’ and History: Are They in Sync?, A Hamilton Skeptic on Why the Show Isn’t As Revolutionary As It Seems, and The C.E.O. of ‘Hamilton’ Inc. How much bigger can this thing get?
Update: And now Miranda has won a Pulitzer.
Hey, if anyone’s got a ticket and wants to take me, I’m free literally any time/day/year. Hahahaha. No seriously, email me. Hahaha. (No, really. AFTER ALL I’VE DONE FOR YOU UNGRATEFUL MOTH ↩
You know who else Mead wrote up in the New Yorker many years ago?! Hint: it’s not actually Hitler this time…↩
Unbelievably clear recording of Louis Armstrong from 1929
If they survive at all, recordings of a lot of older music (pre-50s or -60s) don’t sound great because they were taken from old records that aren’t in the best shape. This 1929 recording of Louis Armstrong & His Orchestra playing Ain’t Misbehavin’ was taken from what’s called a “mother record”, a metal disc that’s produced from the master disc. As you can hear, recording directly from a mother gives you an incredibly crisp and clear result:
Wow. It sounds so much better than the same song recorded in a more conventional way:
We’re so conditioned to hearing 90-year-old music with that muddy record hiss that the mother recording is a revelation, like seeing early color photography and film.
Phil Collins past and present
When six of Phil Collins’ albums were recently remastered, he went back and recreated the covers as well. That’s fun! (via @pieratt)
Update: Patrick Balls was the photographer for the reshoots.
New EP from Com Truise
Com Truise’s new EP, Silicon Tare, comes out tomorrow but you can listen on Soundcloud right now. Grab the mp3s or vinyl at Ghostly or Amazon. (Previously.)
An early Beatles gig for only 18 people
You’ve got to start somewhere, and for The Beatles, that somewhere included Palais Ballroom in Aldershot, England, where they played in front of only 18 people in 1961.
When the Beatles arrived after being driven nine hours from Liverpool by Leach’s friend Terry McCann, their posters were nowhere to be found, and they had to wait to be let into the venue.
That night, the Beatles played their usual covers of Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis to about 18 very bored people.
Founding Fathers, the untold story of hip hop
Founding Fathers is a full-length documentary film about the history of hip hop narrated by Public Enemy’s Chuck D. Everyone knows that hip hop originated in the Bronx. What this film presupposes is, maybe it didn’t? Maybe hip hop started even earlier than commonly thought in places like Brooklyn with DJs like Grandmaster Flowers.
I don’t know if this film ever found release anywhere…it’s not even on IMDB or Wikipedia. (via @sampotts)
Wii music turns Koyaanisqatsi jaunty
Koyaanisqatsi isn’t quite as haunting if you replace Philip Glass with the music from the Wii Shop Channel. pic.twitter.com/PkN9X4ucMZ
— Andy Kelly (@ultrabrilliant) March 22, 2016
In this clip from Koyaanisqatsi, Andy Kelly replaced Philip Glass’ score with music from the Wii Shop Channel. As he notes, the movie doesn’t seem quite as haunting now. (via @daveg)
A history of electronic music in 476 songs
UbuWeb is hosting a massive collection of electronic and electroacoustic songs from 1937-2001.
This is from a 62 CD set called “The History of Electroacoustic Music” that was floating around as a torrent, reputedly curated by a Brazilian student. It’s sketchy. The torrent vanished and the collection has long been unavailable.
It’s a clearly flawed selection: there’s few women and almost no one working outside of the Western tradition (where are the Japanese? Chinese? etc.). However, as an effort, it’s admirable and contains a ton of great stuff.
Take it with a grain of salt, or perhaps use it as a provocation to curate a more intelligent, inclusive, and comprehensive selection.
(via open culture)
Update: The tongue-in-cheek Flash-only interface is terrible, but if you get past that, Ishkur’s Guide to Electronic Music is an amazing resource. (via @xRageous)
Dire Straits’ Walk of Life Improves Every Movie
It is the assertion of The Walk of Life Project that the Dire Straits song Walk of Life is the perfect thing to play at the end of movies. I have watched more than a dozen of these and they are all great, but I picked Lost in Translation, There Will Be Blood, and Terminator 2 to embed here.
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