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From the beginning, all I’ve ever cared about is things being great. I never cared about when they were done. Because I also feel like I want the music to last forever. And once you release it, you can’t go back and fix it, so you really have to get it right. And that takes time.
A chat with Rick Rubin. You may not know the name, but you definitely know the music (and you’ll probably never forget the beard).
Thoughtful piece from Cord Jefferson on Kanye West’s retrograde attitude towards women (and particularly white women) on his recent album, Yeezus.
Kanye West has never advocated raping anyone. His persistent fixation on conquering white women — the lure of white women, injuring white men via their women, etc. — is troublingly retrograde for a multimillionaire who some consider to be the harbinger of a neo-Black Power movement. It ultimately gives lie to the fact that Kanye sees himself as “a god,” as he claims on Yeezus, or, as he told Jon Caramanica in that winding New York Times interview, that he is “so credible and so influential and so relevant.” I’ve yet to see a black man who is truly confident in his human worth and his power spend time crowing about ejaculating onto white chicks. What’s more, what does it yield West in the end? As Kiese Laymon asked the other day: “Do you think the white men who run these corporations you’re critiquing really give a fuck about you dissing, fucking, fisting, choking white women?”
I listened to Yeezus a handful of times when it first came out (and loved it, especially the production and beats) but had to stop because of just this issue. There is undoubtably something critical to be said about race and sex in America, but West’s hamfisted lyrics definitely aren’t it.
DJ BC took the Beastie Boys and mashed them up with The Beatles.
He did more than 40 songs…get them all here. (via ★glass)
Are those your drums? The Late Show host likes drums so much that when musical guests finish up their sets on the show, Letterman often asks the drummer about them.
(via @hodgman)
This is great…Daft Punk’s Get Lucky as it would have sounded in every decade from the 1920s to the 2020s.
This is what singles should be from now on…you get the original song, a 30s jazz version of the song, a 1800s classical version, an 80s new wave version, and so on.
Jon Caramanica talks with Kanye West about his work, his past, his impending child, and all sorts of other things in the NY Times. I started pulling interesting quotes but stopped when I realized that I was copy/pasting like 96% of the article. So, you only get two:
I sat down with a clothing guy that I won’t mention, but hopefully if he reads this article, he knows it’s him and knows that out of respect, I didn’t mention his name: this guy, he questioned me before I left his office:, “If you’ve done this, this, and this, why haven’t you gone further in fashion?” And I say, “I’m learning.” But ultimately, this guy that was talking to me doesn’t make Christmas presents, meaning that nobody was asking for his [stuff] as a Christmas present. If you don’t make Christmas presents, meaning making something that’s so emotionally connected to people, don’t talk to me.
And I don’t want to ruin the amazing last few paragraphs, but I just had to include this:
I think what Kanye West is going to mean is something similar to what Steve Jobs means. I am undoubtedly, you know, Steve of Internet, downtown, fashion, culture. Period. By a long jump. I honestly feel that because Steve has passed, you know, it’s like when Biggie passed and Jay-Z was allowed to become Jay-Z.
When Commander Chris Hadfield covered David Bowie’s Space Oddity on board the International Space Station:
how were the intellectual property rights handled?
The song “Space Oddity” is under copyright protection in most countries, and the rights to it belong to Mr Bowie. But compulsory-licensing rights in many nations mean that any composition that has been released to the public (free or commercially) as an audio recording may be recorded again and sold by others for a statutorily defined fee, although it must be substantively the same music and lyrics as the original. But with the ISS circling the globe, which jurisdiction was Commander Hadfield in when he recorded the song and video? Moreover, compulsory-licensing rights for covers of existing songs do not include permission for broadcast or video distribution. Commander Hadfield’s song was loaded onto YouTube, which delivers video on demand to users in many countries around the world. The first time the video was streamed in each country constituted publication in that country, and with it the potential for copyright infringement under local laws. Commander Hadfield could have made matters even more complicated by broadcasting live as he sang to an assembled audience of fellow astronauts for an onboard public performance while floating from segment to segment of the ISS.
We live in a world where sending a guitar into space is trivial while ironing out rights agreements is the tough part. (via waxy)
And why should Boards of Canada have all the fun? Sigur Ros has a new album coming out as well, to be released the week after on June 18. Two singles from Kveikur are already out:
And the album can be pre-ordered on iTunes, at Amazon, or direct from the band.
Oh hello new Boards of Canada single. Nice to see you.
Sounds goooood. The entire album will be out on 6/11 in North American (6/10 in the UK) and is available for pre-order on iTunes and at Amazon.
I enjoyed and agree with much of Sasha Frere-Jones’ take on Daft Punk’s recent album, Random Access Memories.
Daft Punk’s fourth studio album, “Random Access Memories,” is an attempt to make the kind of disco record that they sampled so heavily for “Discovery.” As such, it serves as a tribute to those who came before them and as a direct rebuke to much of what they’ve spawned. Only intermittently electronic in nature, and depending largely on live musicians, it is extremely ambitious, and as variable in quality as any popular album you will hear this year. Noodly jazz fusion instrumentals? Absolutely. Soggy poetry and kid choirs? Yes, please. Cliches that a B-list teen-pop writer would discard? Bring it on. The duo has become so good at making records that I replay parts of “Random Access Memories” repeatedly while simultaneously thinking it is some of the worst music I’ve ever heard. Daft Punk engages the sound and the surface of music so lovingly that all seventy-five loony minutes of “Random Access Memories” feel fantastic, even when you are hearing music you might never seek out. This record raises a radical question: Does good music need to be good?
PepsiCo is dropping Lil Wayne as a Mountain Dew spokesman because of “vulgar lyrics” referring to Emmett Till after the Till family put pressure on the beverage giant. What lyrics? Because of its ridiculous policy against including bad words in such an august publication, the NY Times doesn’t even say what the lyrics are! Which makes the entire article worthless from a journalistic perspective. The lyrics are the entire story…without them, it’s just a bunch of press release bullshit. FYI, because we are all adults here (and your kids already know the lyrics), here are the lyrics in question courtesy of Rap Genius:
Pop a lot of pain pills
Bout to put rims on my skateboard wheels
Beat that pussy up like Emmett Till
Yeah….
Two cell phones ringin’ at the same time
That’s your ho, callin’ from two different phones
Tell that bitch “leave me the fuck alone!”
See, you fuck her wrong, and I fuck her long
I got a love-hate relationship with Molly
I’d rather pop an ollie, and my dick is a trolly
Boy, I’ll bury you like Halle
How can people even discuss the artistic merit and/or offensiveness of the lyrics if you can’t print them? The Times should either simply publish whatever it is they are talking about or not run the story at all. (via @bdeskin, who has been giving the Times shit about their profanity policy on Twitter)
You know the drill: it’s a new mixtape from The Hood Internet:
Downloads, tour details, and more info on their site.
Update: I made a playlist on Rdio of the songs The Hood Internet used in Mixtape Volume Seven…sifting through their sources is a great way to discover new and previously overlooked music.
There are maybe 3-4 songs I couldn’t find on Rdio…they are either unreleased or mixes from Soundcloud. Enjoy.
Update: And here’s the same playlist for Spotify. (via @Afterschool)
What the heck is going on? New recent albums after long hiatuses from Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Justin Timberlake, Daft Punk, and Boards of Canada and now Neutral Milk Hotel is reuniting for a tour? Jesus H Musical Christmas.
After a weirdly abrupt ARG, it has been revealed that the new Boards of Canada album will be called Tomorrow’s Harvest and will be out on June 11 (the 10th in the UK). Pre-order at iTunes.
Rumors surfaced last year of a new Boards of Canada record. The other day, someone walked into a record shop and bought a Boards of Canada record that contained a single track of a few seconds of music and someone reciting a six-digit number:
So maybe we’re getting a new BoC album soon? Please? (via @crazymonk)
Today’s much-needed levity: an accordion that plays when you resize the browser window. (via waxy)
This is supposedly a leaked version of the song Get Lucky from Daft Punk’s forthcoming album, but from what I can tell, this is just an extended version of the song cobbled together from this minute-long commercial that ran during SNL this weekend. Not that that’s a bad thing…I’ve had it on repeat for the last 30 minutes.
The duo have, however, given their first interview about the album to Rolling Stone. (via kyleread)
Update: Hmm, getting some reports that this is the actual radio edit of Get Lucky…and it does have some Pharrell lyrics that weren’t in the promos and commercials. And if not, we’re getting closer!
(via @djrange)
Update: Ha! Probably still fake. But it’s the best fake so I’ll take it for now. Would probably take DP, Pharrell, and Rodgers themselves to top this one. (via @Robbie)
Update: Guess that last one actually was the genuine article, which is now available on iTunes, on Spotify, on Rdio, and at Amazon.
What if each member of the Bluth family made an album? The album covers might look something like these.
(via @aaroncoleman0)
Oh hello, what’s this? M83 did the soundtrack to Oblivion, the new sci-fi movie where Tom Cruise plays Wall-E? That will do quite nicely. Here it is on iTunes, Amazon, or Rdio.
I don’t read music so it’s difficult for me to say how useful this is, but the folks behind Hummingbird claim their new system of music notation is “easier to learn, faster to read, and simpler for even the trickiest music”.
Roll over, Beethoven. (via @veen)
I have checked the publication date on this story ten times and it’s not April 1st, so I guess Daft Punk really is launching their new album at a farm show in the small town of Wee Waa, Australia.
Streaming music service Rdio (which I have been enjoying the hell out of for the past couple months1) is launching a streaming video service called Vdio.
The first thing you’ll notice about Vdio is that it’s designed to solve the “what to watch” problem. It’s not just that we’ve got amazing content, but that the experience is now geared to get you from searching to watching faster. We’re introducing the notion of Sets — playlists for TV shows and movies — so anyone can make and share lists of their favorites, making it easier than ever to discover new stuff. Or, you can just check out what your friends are watching in the moment and jump in. Beyond that, Vdio has the beautiful design and social features that people love about Rdio, with plenty more to come.
I haven’t played with it too much, but it looks like it’s not an all-you-can-eat service like Rdio…you buy/rent movies and TV shows just like iTunes, Amazon, etc.
[1] And that’s actually a huge understatement. I ignored streaming music services like Rdio and Spotify when they came out, opting for the familiarity of iTunes, but Rdio has completely reignited my love of music over the past two months. Should write a whole post about this at some point. ↩
When Elvis Presley died in 1977, legendary rock critic Lester Bangs wrote a piece on the singer for the Village Voice.
I got taken too the one time I saw Elvis, but in a totally different way. It was the autumn of 1971, and two tickets to an Elvis show turned up at the offices of Creem magazine, where I was then employed. It was decided that those staff members who had never had the privilege of witnessing Elvis should get the tickets, which was how me and art director Charlie Auringer ended up in nearly the front row of the biggest arena in Detroit. Earlier Charlie had said, “Do you realize how much we could get if we sold these fucking things?” I didn’t, but how precious they were became totally clear the instant Elvis sauntered onto the stage. He was the only male performer I have ever seen to whom I responded sexually; it wasn’t real arousal, rather an erection of the heart, when I looked at him I went mad with desire and envy and worship and self-projection. I mean, Mick Jagger, whom I saw as far back as 1964 and twice in ‘65, never even came close.
(via @gavinpurcell)
This is a nice article about how memes are often made or promoted deliberately by financial interests and not because of a spontaneous popular uprising, but mostly I wanted to highlight this statement:
Google’s YouTube, not Apple’s iTunes, is now the dominant force in music.
I’ve been convinced for awhile now that YouTube and not Android or Google+ will be their main source of revenue if/when Google’s search business wanes. (via @claytoncubitt)
Technically this photo was taken several years (probably in 1986 or 1987) before Radiohead officially came to be, but it features four out of the five members, back when the group was called On a Friday.
From left to right, Thom Yorke, Phil Selway, Ed O’Brien, and Colin Greenwood. This occasion marked one of the last times that Yorke smiled for a photo. (via buzzfeed)
Daft Punk is coming out with a new album called Random Access Memories. It’s out on May 21 but you can preorder on iTunes. Here’s a brief ad for the album:
For Homework, their 1997 debut album, Daft Punk drew on a large number of musical influences. Here’s two wonderful hours of the music that influenced them.
Weird day (fuck, weird week) but this totally totally made it. Some genius took Carly Rae Jepsen’s Call Me Maybe and mashed it up with Nine Inch Nails’ Head Like a Hole:
Totesally amazingballs. Way way better than I expected. (via the verge)
Late in his life, just after the invention of the metronome and after completely losing his hearing, Beethoven went back and adjusted the tempos of his symphonies to much faster than you might expect. Radiolab investigates.
The entire soundtrack for Shane Carruth’s Upstream Color is available for streaming on SoundCloud.
From what I can gather, Carruth did the soundtrack himself. So for those keeping track at home, Carruth wrote, directed, starred in, did the soundtrack for, produced, edited, did the cinematography for, and operated a camera for Upstream Color. Oh, and he’s self-distributing the film through his own production company. No wonder I like this guy.
The film opens in US theaters beginning in mid-April and will be available for sale in early May: pre-order at Amazon or on iTunes. (via @gotrlelo)
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