In the last decade, no organ of music criticism has wielded as much influence as Pitchfork. It is the only publication, online or print, that can have a decisive effect on a musician or band’s career.... [W]hatever attracts people to Pitchfork, it isn’t the writing. Even writers who admire the site’s reviews almost always feel obliged to describe the prose as “uneven,” and that’s charitable. Pitchfork has a very specific scoring system that grades albums on a scale from 0.0 to 10.0, and that accounts for some of the site’s appeal, but it can’t just be the scores.... How has Pitchfork succeeded where so many other websites and magazines have not? And why is that success depressing? A lengthy history and review of
Pitchfork [Media], from an inexpensive online alternative to a music zine, to "indie" music kingmaker, and thoughts on pop music (criticism).
[more inside]
posted by filthy light thief
on Jan 24, 2012 -
109 comments
Omaha rockers Cursive are selling their new album for just $1... No wait, it's $2... $3... $4... WTF?? In yet another twist on the whole, name-your-price (
Radiohead), fan-financed (
Jill Sobule), take-shrooms-and-cruise-hollywood (
Josh Freese) tiered pricing experiment being carried out by what's left of the music industry, Cursive are increasing the price of their new record by $1 each day until its "official" release. Given the popularity of sites like
Did it Leak (and the corresponding file-sharing forums that I won't link to here) it seems to me like this is a pretty good way to reward well-intentioned but impatient fans who might otherwise resort to less honorable means of getting the latest stuff from their favorite bands. Or maybe it's just another hare-brained scheme that will only hasten the end of record labels as we know them. Either way, they got my $1... And that was after I already got my hands on the mp3s!
posted by idontlikewords
on Mar 2, 2009 -
23 comments
More business innovation from Radiohead Radiohead, iTunes and GarageBand are giving you the opportunity to remix the band's new single "Nude". To make remixing easy, the separate 'stems'* from the song are available to purchase from iTunes
_here_. The 'stems' available are bass, voice, guitar, strings/fx and drums. You can mix them in any way you like, either by adding your own beats and instrumentation, or just remixing the original parts.
posted by psmealey
on Apr 2, 2008 -
69 comments
When
Maurice Martenot met
Lev Sergeivich Termen in the early 1920's and heard his revolutionary new musical instrument the
Theremin, he was
inspired to create
his own electroacoustic
instrument , which he christened
Ondes Martenot. Next year will mark the 80th anniversary of the first performance of this remarkable hybrid keyboard which, aside from its lovely and ethereal sound, is also
aesthetically pleasing visually, with its handsome
collection of
multiple speakers. See and hear the instrument being played and explained in this
video interview and demonstration by Jean Laurendeau, which closes with a lovely rendition of the theme from Star Trek. And, here's the instrument in use, live, alongside who else?
Radiohead.
[more inside]
posted by flapjax at midnite
on Dec 25, 2007 -
20 comments
Name your own Paste price. Paste Magazine, arguably one of the best music magazines available today, is taking a page from the Radiohead playbook by letting subscribers pay whatever they want for a 12-issue/12-CD subscription (minimum $1).
posted by jbickers
on Nov 6, 2007 -
22 comments
OK X - Radiohead's
OK Computer covered by 12 modern artists. Free download.
posted by puddleglum
on Jul 11, 2007 -
50 comments
Excellent music video for an interesting cover version of Radiohead's Just (originally off of
The Bends) by British musician Mark Ronson. Song is done in a more 1960's
Stax-Volt Records style, using gratuitous horn samples; video is shot on the streets of an English city (I believe London, but am not sure) and features animated graffiti coming to life & dancing to the song, as well as a cameo by the tiled creations of
Invader. First link goes to a page about the song, with video download links in wmv & qt at the bottom.
Still no answer as to what that guy was saying in the original version of the video, sadly.
posted by jonson
on Mar 9, 2006 -
32 comments
It's Rodeohead, (MP3 download), the radiohead country and western medley. Please note there is absolutely no reason to post this apart from it's Friday, it's a bank holiday weekend and it made me laugh. If you're looking for in-depth then move along, nothing to see here...
posted by ciderwoman
on May 28, 2004 -
26 comments
Electronic music buffs cite Radiohead's Kid A as their best work. How many know that Idioteque, arguably the stand-out track
owes a debt to
Paul Lansky, sampling as it does Lansky's
Mild Und Leise [mp3 file], a track composed in 1973 on an
IBM 360/91 mainframe. I didn't. Should you find your interest piqued, you might want to read an
interview with Lansky. If that was then, this is now: The excellent
music video to Zeal [Quicktime] by
Plaid, which, although a very different beast, is an excellent indicator of how far electronic music has come. [Probably NSFW].
posted by nthdegx
on Feb 9, 2004 -
42 comments
Radiohead are taking over the
BBC this Christmas. For one week, from the 22nd to the 28th of December,
the band will assume control of BBC digital staion
6Music, choosing music, selecting shows, co-presenting programmes and contributing website material. The station is streamed worldwide. Christmas this year may be a little less jolly.
;)
posted by Blue Stone
on Nov 11, 2003 -
33 comments
Radiohead TV: Welcome To The Most Gigantic Lying Mouth Of All Time! Yes, fans and detractors - it's that time of the year again. But look before you hear, mind!
My favourite band The world's most lyrically evolved band Radiohead is about to
unleash, after the wonder that is
There, There [
Full videoclip here] a
new long-playing record and with it, on May 26th, a
new television channel [
Please scroll down a bit for details]. They're going: "
I haven't had this much fun in years". Well, indeed! I wonder how many fans get the dark, gallows humour of Radiohead. And what beautiful songs! I put it to you Thom Yorke is the new Leonard Cohen, another much-funnier-than-he-sounds songwriter and performer.[
Windows Media req. Quicktime version of TV channel here; Real version of "There, There" video here. Please go to the website for other details and lower res alternatives..]
posted by MiguelCardoso
on May 13, 2003 -
54 comments
John Darnielle has written a song by song defense of Radiohead's amnesiac (
1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7,
8/9,
10,
11), among
other overly wordy and passionate music reviews, including many pleas for us all to learn to love
doom/death metal. John is a
prolific songwriter himself, under the name The Mountain Goats. All the TMG's music, including their
newest, is recorded on the
Panasonic RX-FT500, a cheap boom box with the gears audibly churning in the background as extra musician.
posted by malphigian
on Mar 6, 2002 -
25 comments
Heard an interesting MP3 the other day (4.6m). With about 8 gigs of MP3s in random rotation at home, there are some songs that I have never even heard before. A live Radiohead song I got off of Napster started off innocently enough, but then broke into a sparsely instrumented and gravelly voiced song by someone who professes to love a part of the female anatomy that rhymes with mulva. I was struck by peer to peer's potential for art-thug type abuse, and wondered why I hadn't run into it before. Anyone else find some gems buried within their tunes?
posted by machaus
on May 25, 2001 -
11 comments
