Cheap Trick on 8-track
Cheap Trick’s new album, The Latest, is due out this month and is available on 8-track.
Your move, Meat Loaf. (via things magazines, which is still rocking the web equivalent of the 8-track, the .htm file extension)
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kottke.org posts about Music
LP by Discovery
I’m sure the nearest college student can tell you what “an electro-pop project from members of Vampire Weekend and Ra Ra Riot” means, but I can tell you that I’m really enjoying this album by Discovery (on sale at Amazon for $3.99 today only). I almost want to say that it reminds me of The Postal Service except 1) that would be wrong and 2) someone could get themselves slapped around for saying something like that.
Music Catch 2
Catch musical notes as they fly by to the rhythm of a classical soundtrack. I enjoyed this game way more than I thought I would…it’s likely my love of games where you tidy up. (thx, dylan)
Bach Bach Revolution
Two women play Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor on a giant piano at FAO Schwarz.
If that’s too much for you, just start with chopsticks or caper around like an idiot and knock over toddlers. (via cyn-c)
Danger Mouse’s new album: a blank CD-R
Due to a dispute with EMI, Danger Mouse will release his next album (a collaboration with Sparklehorse) as a blank CD-R, on which the buyer can then burn the album downloaded from the file-sharing network of their choice.
Please note: Due to an ongoing dispute with EMI, Danger Mouse is unable to include music on the CD without fear of legal entanglement. Therefore, he has included a blank CD-R as an artifact to use however you see fit.
99 classical mp3s for $8
Whoa, 99 “essential” classical music songs on mp3 for only $7.99 at Amazon. “Album Savings: $80.12 compared to buying all songs.” (thx, martin)
Update: Here’s another good deal: all 9 of Beethoven’s symphonies for $7.99. (thx, egghat)
Update: And another: 48 classical guitar mp3s for $0.99. (thx, mona)
Update: And still more good deals: 99 songs by Mozart for $8, 99 relaxing songs for $8, and 99 Beethoven pieces for $8.
Update: Five Hours of Classical Favorites for $4.
Update: Five Hours of Classical Adagios for $8 and 50 Essential Classical Film Moments for $8. If you bought everything in this post, you’d have more than two days of music for less than $60.
Update: Cripes, 160 Chopin tunes for $5.
Dixie Upright and his friends
The pace of baseball is such that one wonders about all the baseball players whose last names are adjectives.
Woody Rich, Pop Rising. Harry Sage. Several Savages. Mac Scarce. Bill Sharp. Bill, Chris, Dave, and Rick Short. Many Smalls. One Smart guy (JD). Three Starks. Adam Stern. Of course, there’s Doug Strange (and Alan and Pat, too). Jamal and Joe Strong. Even a guy named Sturdy, literally: Guy Sturdy. DIck Such. Bill Swift, x2.
Update: See also musicians whose names are sentences. (thx, colter)
Auto-Tune
The voice modulation technology isn’t just for pop songs anymore. Check out Blake tries to talk to Jack about the homepage:
Babies crying in Auto-Tune is pretty hilarious: Baby T-Pain 1, Baby T-Pain 2.
But Auto-Tuning the News takes the prize.
Pay particular attention to Katie Couric at 1:20. Awesome. (thx, matt)
Update: Whoa, Martin Luther King’s I Have A Dream speech run through Auto-Tune. (thx, matthew)
Update: Winston Churchill + Auto-Tune = [you don’t need me to tell you the answer to this].
Media packaging mashups
Recently a number of efforts have been made at re-imagining the packaging for movies, books, video games, and other media, mostly mashups and in the illustration style of typical of Saul Bass’ movie posters or Penguin Classics book covers. I’ve collected several examples below.
Olly Moss made Penguin-like book covers for video games like Ocarina of Time and Half-Life.
M. S. Corley made Penguin-like versions of the Harry Potter books.
In his I Can Read Movies series, spacesick imagines Penguin-like book covers for movies like Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Sixteen Candles, and Back to the Future.
Forrest Lucero designed Penguin-like book covers for songs from The Postal Service and Daft Punk.
Olly Moss also did simple red/white/black posters for some of his favorite movies, including Die Hard and The Deer Hunter.
A bunch of people on Flickr imagined Nintendo DS tie-in games for movies like Andy Warhol’s Empire, Eyes Wide Shut, and 8 1/2. They also did some for TV shows, magazines, web sites, and all sorts of other media.
The folks on the NeoGAF message board made Criterion Collection-style box art for video games like Super Mario Galaxy, Black and White, and Super Mario 64.
Nikolay Saveliev made simple two-color album covers for the likes of Kanye West, Jessica Simpson, and Franz Ferdinand.
Update: Modernist editions of classic album covers. (thx, zach)
Update: Logan Walters is redoing Wu-Tang Clan album covers.
Update: Classic albums reimagined as Pelican books.
Update: Simple Star Wars posters.
Update: Brandon Schaefer did some simple Blu-ray sleeve for movies, very much in the style of Olly Moss. Exergian did some posters for TV shows; the one for Weeds is particularly nice.
Update: Books as web services.
Update: Panic made some Atari 2600-themed packaging for their software. (thx, daniel)
This music piracy business
A study from the BI Norwegian School of Management has found online music bootleggers are much more likely to pay for music online than those who don’t steal music.
The Norwegian study looked at almost 2,000 online music users, all over the age of 15. Researchers found that those who downloaded “free” music — whether from lawful or seedy sources — were also 10 times more likely to pay for music. This would make music pirates the industry’s largest audience for digital sales.
Not surprising that some people are so crazy for music that they’ll *pay* for it. Crazy!
Update: Rebecca Blood thinks this article is crappity crap crap and points to a better take at Ars Technica.
The show must go on
After bad flying weather delayed the orchestra and kept the vocal soloist from arriving altogether for an event at Carnegie Hall, most of the musicians played in street clothes and — after some furious backstage cramming — the orchestra’s conductor, David Robertson, performed the challenging vocal piece in his debut as a singer.
Mr. Gruber intended for the texts to be delivered in a kind of speech-song, complete with nasal squawks and patter. You do not need a proper singing voice to perform the part, but you do have to be uninhibited. Mr. Robertson’s performance was a tour de force of uninhibition.
(via clusterflock)
Understanding emotions in music
When western music was played to members of the Mafa people from Cameroon who have never been exposed to western music, movies, or art, they were able to recognize the emotions conveyed by the music, even though the Mafa don’t associate emotions with their own music.
Update: Radiolab did a thing on the universal appeal of country music. (thx, jason)
Banned album covers
Thirty controversial album covers. I had forgotten about Nirvana’s “Waif Me”! A bit NSFW. (via design observer)
More than one in a row
The A.V. Club picks 25 albums that work best when listened to from start to finish. +1 for In The Aeroplane Over The Sea. I tend to listen to albums more than individual songs…Sigur Ros or Boards of Canada doesn’t make any sense on shuffle.
Some old music and some new
I am really enjoying the new Röyksopp album and the remastered Ten by Pearl Jam. I got turned on to the remastered Pearl Jam by Acts of Volition:
The original producer, Brendan O’Brien, remixed and remastered the tracks and the result is remarkable. It sounds like it was recorded yesterday, instead of on the muddy banks of 1990s grunge. […] The remixes confirm what I’ve always thought about Pearl Jam. The label of “grunge” described a new variation of modern (at the time) rock music. Nirvana was grunge, Soundgarden was grunge. Pearl Jam was always just plain old Rock ‘n Roll®.
Oh, and the new album by the Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs isn’t too bad either.
Frank Black’s process
In a 1989 interview for Dutch television, Pixies frontman Frank Black talks about his songwriting process as creating a “poetic structure” with the melody and letting the lyrics flow from there. The Dutch graphic design studio Experimental Jetset took inspiration from Black’s approach.
When we get an assignment (which usually comes in the form of a question, a theme, a problem or a riddle), we feel as if the solution is already enclosed in the assignment itself. The design is already there; it just has to be released. Like the fist from Frank Black’s shirt.
Free Cage
The first movement of John Cage’s 4’33” is free on iTunes today. For the uninitiated, that’s one minute and forty-five seconds of silence. For free.
Sssh. I’m listening.
thx, liam m.
“Thank You, Vocoder”
“Vocoders are an instantly recognizable synthesizer sound, having been used in popular music since the 1960s. They allow you to ‘talk like a robot’, which while fun, is often not musically useful.”
This from “Introduction to Vocoders,” proves the point that the vocoder does not, in fact, turn a song into music. The voice analyzer/synthesizer system that was originally developed in the 1930s to facilitate early telephony has now become a seemingly inescapable accessory to popular music.
Rapper Ice Cube also awkwardly reflected on the negative effects of vocoders on rap:
“Records sales really not concerned to me as much as doing it my way. And doing the kind of records I want to do. Without some A&R dude trying to tell me to go find T-Pain and get you a voice box. Ya know, all this stupid stuff that they do that mess up a lot of records, mess up a lot of artists.”
This clip of T-Pain v. His Vocoder is the audio equipment equivalent of Stephen King’s Christine, and it certainly backs up Mr. Cube’s claim.
Update: Turns out that the actual device Mr. Pain uses to alter his voice box is referred to as an Auto-Tune, and it’s the weapon of choice for Cher, Kanye, and T-Pain, who seems just as oblivious as this author was. The two machines are entirely different.
Thx jason freeman
8-bit hip hop
Rap and hip hop tunes played with sounds from 8-bit Nintendo games. Ocarina of Rhyme is a similar effort with a better name but not as good, IMO.
Licence to Ill, $1.99
You’ve had 22 years to get this album, but just in case you haven’t, The Beastie Boys’ License to Ill is available in mp3 format on Amazon for only $1.99. Today only.
YouTube, remixed
Thru You is a site that showcases remixed YouTube videos…the singing from one video combined with the drums from another and the piano from a third and so on. I was skeptical but these are really well done. Do I even need to say that this reminds me of Christian Marclay’s Video Quartet? (via sfj)
Alexis Phifer
I now know who to thank for Kanye West’s wondrous 808s and Heartbreak: his ex-fiancee Alexis Phifer. She’s gotta be the Robocop, right? No short-term romance stings that bad.
Happy Up Here
Royksopp just pushed out the video for Happy Up Here, the first single from their forthcoming album, Junior.
Somewhat related: did you know that Amazon sells vinyl? I had no idea.
Truly limited edition music
Drummer Josh Freese is releasing his second solo album in eleven different limited-edition packages. The $75,000 option includes:
-T-shirt
-Go on tour with Josh for a few days.
-Have Josh write, record and release a 5 song EP about you and your life story.
-Take home any of his drumsets (only one but you can choose which one.)
-Take shrooms and cruise Hollywood in Danny from TOOL’s Lamborgini OR play quarters and then hop on the Ouija board for a while.
-Josh will join your band for a month…play shows, record, party with groupies, etc….
-If you don’t have a band he’ll be your personal assistant for a month (4 day work weeks, 10 am to 4 pm)
-Take a limo down to Tijuana and he’ll show you how it’s done (what that means exactly we can’t legally get into here)
-If you don’t live in Southern California (but are a US resident) he’ll come to you and be your personal assistant/cabana boy for 2 weeks.
Oh yeah, and the music on CD or via download. (thx, ainsley)
Update: Jeff Stern comments (the link is mine):
instead of 1,000 true fans, 1 wealthy fan
Lo Heads
Rapper/producer 88-Keys is a Lo Head, an obsessive collector and wearer of Ralph Lauren Polo clothing and accessories. He’s been wearing nothing but Polo every single day since 1993. This interview with rapper and Lo Head Rack-Lo functions as a sort of Lo Head manifesto.
A lot of street dudes have paved the way and paid a hefty price for all of you to even be able to rock Lo and all those other name brands as well. Other names like North Face, Benetton, Gucci, Spyder, Gortex, Louis Vutton and the list goes on - Lo-Life’s did it all first. So let me school ya’ll for a second. This Lo movement officially started in 1988. And even before 1988, the movement was in development. Have ya’ll ever heard of Ralphies Kids or USA (United Shoplifters Association), that’s the foundation right there. Those are basically the two crews that Rack-Lo united as Lo-Life’s to form voltron on the Hip Hop world. And a lot of you dudes probably weren’t even born then. So what the fuck are you really saying? So I’m just making it clear that if your going to rep that Lo shit and be apart of a fashion institution there’s a certain way to do it. Word, it rules and laws to this shit. This aint no fly by night shit where u wake up one morning and decide to rock Lo like Kayne West did. That shit there is a fairy tale a lot of heads are living.
Kanye defended his status as a Lo Head in the song Barry Bonds from his Graduation album.
Daft Punk’s greatest hits
Amazon’s mp3 deal of the day: Daft Punk’s greatest hits album for $1.99, today only.
Eminem is having a Relapse
Just what has Eminem been doing for the past three years? According to this profile of the now-reclusive artist: recording.
As a result - and this is critical when considering the potential impact of Relapse — Eminem’s so-called “missing years” have actually been surprisingly productive. “He’s never stopped recording. Ever,” adds Simaan. “I hear they’ve got over 300 songs in the can from what he’s produced in the last three years. I’ve seen him write. He’s a fast worker. He’ll write one line, then three lines, then four lines, in all separate parts of the page. Then he’ll come back to it, and say this is a sweet line, or that’s working for him, and just pull everything together almost instantly. The guy’s a total genius.”
His new album, Relapse, is due out sometime in the next month or two.
New stuff from Royksopp
New album called Junior from Royksopp due in late March.
We have a certain schizophrenia — we want to make both energetic and really quiet music.
That’s exactly what I like about them. The group also mentions that they’ll release an album called Senior near the end of 2009.
The Beatles’ last concert
Video of The Beatles’ last public performance in three parts: one, two, three. They performed on top of the group’s own building with an audience situated on rooftops and down on the street. (via the year in pictures)
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