"
my interest in a lot of old game music now has very little to do with "nostalgia" or any associations i had with the games, and much more to do with the way the different kinds of hardware used created interesting compromises for composers that led them [to] making some really interesting sounds,"
Liz Ryerson collects
sounds from the abyss. In her blog post
here she details the history and appeal of five (mostly forgotten) game soundtracks which push the limits of the both the genre and the hardware.
[more inside]
posted by codacorolla
on Nov 26, 2012 -
24 comments
In February 1964, when the Beatles played the Ed Sullivan Show, record executives in America were faced with the question of how to get a piece of the Beatlemania action. The result was an explosion of knockoff Beatles records, promising things like “The Beetle Beat”, “Beat-A-Mania” and “The Original Liverpool Sound”, credited (often in type far smaller than the famous song titles) to bands with names like The Bearcuts, The Manchesters, The Moptops and the Liverpool Kids, and featuring cover models with varyingly plausible approximations of the Beatles' haircuts, as detailed by WFMU's Gaylord Fields (
SLVimeo).
posted by acb
on Nov 22, 2012 -
34 comments
Jazz prodigy Austin Peralta has died. Announcement and links to his music at
Brainfeeder. Peralta contributed to Flying Lotus' recent album Until the Quiet comes; on Twitter this morning Flying Lotus wrote "it kills me to type that we lost a member of our family, Austin Peralta. I don't really have the right words right now." From
Fact: "In his tragically short life, the California native had proved himself to be a fearsome and precocious talent. At 15 years old, Peralta was already touring the world with his own trio, and performing alongside legends like Chick Corea and Omar Hakim. Whilst still at high school, Peralta headed up ensembles featuring luminaries like Ron Carter and Buster Williams. He also released two LPs (2006′s Maiden Voyage and Mantra) in Japan before the age of 16." His entry on
Wikipedia. Tribute from
Frank Ocean.
posted by jokeefe
on Nov 22, 2012 -
12 comments
With their brutal, simple riffs and aggressive, fast tempos, Accept were one of the top metal bands of the early '80s, and a major influence on the development of thrash. Led by the unique vocal stylings of screeching banshee Udo Dirkschneider, the band forged an instantly recognizable sound and was notorious as one of the decade's fiercest live acts. -
AllMusic
posted by Egg Shen
on Nov 21, 2012 -
29 comments
Airing in 1979,
The New Sound of Music was a BBC documentary which depicted and demonstrated the history of recorded and manipulated music, from the earliest paper rolls to electronic synthesizers and the cutting and manipulation of tape.
[more inside]
posted by Pope Guilty
on Nov 19, 2012 -
13 comments
“Her early records are collectors’ items. Her writing and playing have become part of the pattern of jazz history. She has transcended the difficulties experienced by women in the music field and through several decades has held a position of eminence as one of jazz’s most original and creative pianists. She speaks softly: ‘Anything you are shows up in your music—jazz is
whatever you are playing yourself, being yourself, letting your thoughts come through.’”
Mary Lou Williams: Into The Sun, a conversational profile by fellow pianist Marian McPartland, 1964.
[more inside]
posted by koeselitz
on Nov 16, 2012 -
6 comments
"The "Tugboat" 7" single, Galaxie 500's very first release, cost us $980.22 for 1,000 copies-- including shipping! (Naomi kept the receipts)-- or 98 cents each. I no longer remember what we sold them for, but obviously it was easy to turn at least a couple bucks' profit on each. Which means we earned more from every one of those 7"s we sold than from the song's recent 13,760 plays on Pandora and Spotify. Here's yet another way to look at it: Pressing 1,000 singles in 1988 gave us the earning potential of more than 13 million streams in 2012."
Making Cents: Damon Krukowski of Galaxie 500 and
Damon & Naomi breaks down the meager royalties currently being paid out to bands by streaming services and explains what the music business' headlong quest for capital means for artists today.
[more inside]
posted by anazgnos
on Nov 15, 2012 -
85 comments
Radio Colifata is a beloved weekly Buenos Aires radio show run by psychiatric patients that breaks down boundaries between the "interned" and the "externed." During his Argentina tour, radio supporter
Manu Chao invited a few Colifatos to join him.
LT22 Radio La Colifata is 94 minute a documentary (in Spanish) shot over ten years that celebrates the station and the tour.
posted by madamjujujive
on Nov 14, 2012 -
7 comments
In the long history of love songs the attention of a beautiful woman has been compared to many things – but perhaps only in Pakistan's tribal belt would it be likened to the deadly missile strike of a remotely controlled US drone.
posted by infini
on Nov 11, 2012 -
28 comments
Every month, Ian Anderson, editor of the UK music magazine
fRoots, puts together a
free 80-minute podcast of the past few weeks' best world music and folk music tracks. He has excellent taste - by which I mean it coincides largely with my own - and provides by far the best substitute I've yet found for Andy Kershaw's much-missed Radio 3 show. The same link has an archive offering the past four years' worth of
fRoots shows for you to catch up on.
posted by Paul Slade
on Nov 10, 2012 -
8 comments
MR-808 is a replica of the famous 1980s electronic drum machine TR-808 – with robots playing the drum sounds.
posted by dng
on Nov 7, 2012 -
23 comments
It’s a fierce object, many-layered yet taut as could be. It’s a dense field made of raw materials so rarefied that even in combination the resulting effect is singular, tensile. The album in question is Fugazi Edits, for which Chris Lawhorn took the extensive discography of the hardcore band Fugazi and combined multiple songs into new hybrid compositions.
posted by Egg Shen
on Nov 3, 2012 -
10 comments
It has been 30 years since it was first recorded, and almost that long since it was released as a
single and a
extra-long music video (alt. link:
YT), but
Thriller has remained at the top of lists for
best Halloween songs (
2,
3,
4,
5) and
best Halloween videos (
2,
3,
4,
5). You know
the dance, and you've read
Vanity Fair's extensive Thriller Diaries (
previously), or at least
Los Angeles Times' 25 Thriller facts, but have you seen
the almost hour long making of the video? Have you heard
the voice-over session with Michael and Vincent Price, with the bonus unreleased "rap" vocals by Price? You remember that
Vincent did Thriller just to make fun of himself, like he did when he
worked with Jack Benny and
Red Skelton, right? Or maybe you're in the mood for more of the comedic horror that Michael liked, such as
his collaboration with Stephen King,
Michale Jackson's Ghosts (HD, with Japanese subtitles and intro).
[more inside]
posted by filthy light thief
on Oct 30, 2012 -
19 comments
225 years ago today, in the
Teatro di Praga, there premiered a new opera - conducted by the 31 year old composer, who was in demand after his success in Vienna the year before. Although he had completed the
overture less than 24 hours earlier, the opera was an instant smash - with the composer being "welcomed joyously and jubilantly by the numerous gathering". In the years to come, Kierkegaard would agree with the French composer Charles Gounod that the opera was "a work without blemish, of uninterrupted perfection". Flaubert would call it one of "the three finest things God made". Today, it is the 10th most performed opera in the world. It is Mozart's
Don Giovanni (spoiler).
[more inside]
posted by Egg Shen
on Oct 29, 2012 -
20 comments
We last discussed music discovery site
TheSixtyOne back in 2009, but it's changed pretty radically since then. Out with
pages of spare, Facebook-like charts, in with gorgeous full-screen imagery peppered with photos and information about each track and the artists behind them. Anybody can submit music to the site, where community listens and ratings elevate the best to the top, and users can directly tip their favorite musicians with purchasable credits. Explore
by mood, by
Creative Commons tracks, indulge in some gamification with
quests (in the top bar), or follow development on the official blog
areasixtyone. Returning soon: user-created listening rooms for dedicated playlists or topics. And if you own an iPad, don't miss the free companion app
Aweditorium, which sprawls the site's entire collection into
an endless grid of playable audiovisual fun.
posted by Rhaomi
on Oct 28, 2012 -
15 comments
She sat zazen, concentrating on not concentrating, until it was time to prepare for the appointment. Sitting seemed to produce the usual serenity, put everything in perspective. Her hand did not tremble as she applied her make-up; tranquil features looked back at her from the mirror. She was mildly surprised, in fact, at just how calm she was, until she got out of the hotel elevator at the garage level and the mugger made his play. She killed him instead of disabling him. Which was obviously not a measured, balanced action--the official fuss and paperwork could make her late. Annoyed at herself, she stuffed the corpse under a shiny new Westinghouse roadable whose owner she knew to be in Luna, and continued on to her own car. This would have to be squared later, and it would cost. No help for it--she fought to regain at least the semblance of tranquillity as her car emerged from the garage and turned north. Nothing must interfere with this meeting, or with her role in it. "Melancholy Elephants," an enthralling, Hugo Award-winning short story by Spider Robinson about a disciplined operative, a powerful senator, and a crucial mission to preserve humanity's most precious resource.
(some spoilers inside) [more inside]
posted by Rhaomi
on Oct 27, 2012 -
14 comments
In honor of the release of their
new album, the experimental instrumental hip-hop group 3:33 (a side project of
Parallel Thought) have released the free album
7 Sets of 7, an amazing series of surreal/atmospheric/old-school remixes of various hip-hop artists including
Del The Funky Homosapien, Bone Thugs N Harmony, and MF DOOM. They're also offering for free their horror-influenced album
The First Thousand Days.
[more inside]
posted by Frobenius Twist
on Oct 27, 2012 -
5 comments
