MetaFilter posts tagged with electronicmusic

The best of Bleep and Warp Records

kid ichorous — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 12:18:27 -0800

The Best of Bleep "To celebrate Bleep's 5th birthday, we asked a select cast of people working in music to pick their 5 favourite releases or tracks from the entire Bleep (Warp Records) catalogue." Of note: Thom Yorke, Chris Cunningham, Tricky, Kid 606, and Fennesz

Been hypnotized lately?

flatluigi — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 23:00:34 -0800

Been hypnotized lately? Anthony Burril's video for Acid Washed's "General Motors, Detroit, America" is pure eye candy.

SWEDEMASON

flatluigi — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 09:35:03 -0800

The Works of Swede Mason: "Jeremy Clarkson," "Get in the Back of the Van," "Jungle All The Way," "Bill Wyman's Metal Detector," "Put the Lotion in the Basket, *" "Got The Sucka," "The Gobshite, *" "Squashed Thingy," "Spare Me The Madness," and the pair of tracks based on Neighbors deaths "Coffee And Croissants" and "Todd....Dead." note: starred tracks have NSFW audio. mp3 downloads can be found here.

Techno Pop Triple Play

SansPoint — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 19:38:33 -0800

Three Japanese Techno-Pop Bands rock it back-to-back-to-back on a kid's show. [SLYT]. The bands, in order, are P-Model, Hikashu, and Plastics. You're welcome.

Voice Farm

hippybear — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 11:19:48 -0800

Electronic Music pop band Voice Farm was formed in the early 80s when Charly Brown and Myke Reilly started performing in the San Francisco area together. Their earliest single perked up a few ears, and by 1982 they had recorded a full album of material. Later albums would help draw audiences to their outrageous live shows, and the band finally settled into their own studio. Their breakthrough single, Free Love (bonus extended dance mix), was well reviewed, but the video was unfortunately banned by MTV. That didn't deter Depeche Mode from selecting them as warm-up act for their 1991 World Violation tour. But just when Voice Farm was about to make the leap, their record label collapsed and forced the band into long years of silence, except for their television commercial and visual art soundtrack work. But Voice Farm has suddenly resurfaced. With a new single, apparently new live shows, and the entire new album available for free listening. The new album and a reissue of their seminal album F are also available at iTunes. (iTunes store link) (much of the material is NSFW)

I Can't Hear You

40 Watt — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 07:03:59 -0800

Former member of The Orb and electronic musician Andy Hughes passed away June 12th after a short illness. While he may not have been the most well-known member of The Orb, he definitely added a unique sound to many of their albums and remixes, including their groundbreaking Live 93 and Orblivion albums. In addition to his work with The Orb as well as his own solo material, Hughes also worked with Basement Jaxx, The Pet Shop Boys, Tina Turner, and David Bowie.

A real cut-up

flatluigi — Tue, 26 May 2009 11:54:39 -0800

You've probably seen (and heard) his version of Alice in Wonderland, but have you seen The King and I, Harry Potter, The Sword in the Stone, or Mary Poppins?

He ain't heavy, he's my guitar ...

woodblock100 — Fri, 08 May 2009 06:34:34 -0800

"The StringStation introduces a fresh and inventive playing surface allowing one musician to play in real time on an instrument that offers thunderous bass, compelling rhythm, 3-D orchestration and melody. It uses new ways to approach groups of strings that find amazing intertwined performance techniques. It opens and lays out new paths to evolve tactile music composition skills." It's the baby of engineer/inventor Jim Bartz, who is on a mission to bring his invention into the musical mainstream. Start your exploration of what the StringStation can do with this video of Bartz playing his prototype model (actual performance comes in at 2:25). If you're in the Northwest you have a chance to catch him at some upcoming gigs in the Seattle area. "The current working model is assembled from a customized triple neck 8-string slide guitar, a 10-string Chapman Stick and a modified 6-string electric guitar. It plays well as a proof-of concept model but has few of the advanced features of the eventual design." Bartz has a proposal for funding (.pdf) to assemble a team to create the actual instrument itself.

Wicked keyboarding skills

hippybear — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 00:35:02 -0800

Vangelis: The Man And His Music (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4) profiles prolific Greek keyboardist and composer Evanghelos Odyssey "Vangelis" Papathanassiou in a rare 1984 television interview. After helping drive the opaque brilliance of Aphrodite's Child, he struck out on his own in the early 1970s, and redefined music along the way. Perhaps best known for his soundtrack albums, including Chariots Of Fire and Blade Runner (in many iterations), his music was also used during Carl Sagan's Cosmos. and 1492: Conquest Of Paradise, and Alexander, and he recorded pop albums with Jon Anderson and... and... and... Notoriously interview-averse, there are nevertheless some other choice Vangelis media bits to be found, such as a 1992 interview with Judi Spears (Part 1, 2), or waxing philosophic about music and recording for German television, or from 2001 speaking about his Mythodea concert. Particularly stunning is this lengthy French program from (it appears) the early 1990s huge amounts of wonderful performance bits (Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8) [no subtitles, none needed. just sit and wait for the next musical bit to come along.]

work. buy. consume. die.

40 Watt — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 09:40:26 -0800

UK design studio The Designers Republic has apparently gone out of business after 23 years. Highly visible throughout the 1990's and early 2000's, tDR's work tended towards flashy, blocky shapes, tech-heavy styling and deconstructed images that spawned a host of imitators and influenced the look of the early phase of the web. Perhaps best known for their work on the Wipeout series of games, it was tDR's close association with fellow Sheffield residents and electronic music purveyors Warp Records that gave them heavy exposure to a generation of consumers and produced some of their most memorable designs. Some images from the Designers Republic(mostly album covers, as it's the easiest to link to): Aphex Twin - On EP Autechre - Basscad EP Autechre - Chiastic Slide Autechre - Envane Autocreation - Mettle B12 - Time Tourist tDR in Emigre Magazine Fluke - Risotto Gas - 0095 Joey Beltram - Caliber EP LFO - Advance Locust - Weathered Well Plaid - Spokes Pop Will Eat Itself - This Is The Day...This Is The Hour...This Is This! Seefeel - Starethrough EP Speedy J - Krekc Sweet Exorcist - C.C.C.D. Various Artists - Blech Various Artists - Blech II Various Artists - em:t1197 Various Artists - Ischemic Folks Various Artists - We Are Reasonable People Wipeout 3 Woob - 1194 If you hurry, you might still be able to score some tDR goodies from thepeoplesbureau online shop.

Untitled

Blazecock Pileon — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 23:09:54 -0800

Accompanied by Aphex Twin's classic Selected Ambient Works II, we have the rarely-seen experimental video Stakker (Westworld) in nine parts: Z Twig / Radiator | Rhubarb | Hankie | Grass | White Blur | Parallel Stripes | Z Twig / Lichen | Blur | Match Sticks Stakker (Westworld) was an experimental video published by the seminal IDM electronic music label Warp Records and made in the mid-1990s by Stakker, the pairing of video artists Mark McClean and Colin Scott who later collaborated with Brian Dougans of The Future Sound of London and Humanoid on the release Stakker Humanoid.

Ich bin ein Berliner

namagomi — Tue, 20 May 2008 01:55:35 -0800

Do you like Berlin? The hippest city on the planet has some interesting video blogs. My personal favorite is First We Take Berlin which is pretty off-beat and covers a lot of not so hip areas of the city. In their current episode they go to the annual may riots in Kreuzberg (after a weird little mouse story). Then there is Mayda3000 which is the longest running video blog about Berlin. Watch Berlin is a sort of compilation of many different video blogs most of which are in german but there are some are in english as well. And last but not least there's Verbundstoff which is in german only and takes a look at the very underground Berlin electronic music scene.

Edgard, Iannis and György.

flapjax at midnite — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 19:23:43 -0800

Edgard Varèse : Ionisation. Iannis Xenakis : Rebonds. György Ligeti : Artikulation and Poème Symphonique For 100 Metronomes. [NOTE: see hoverovers for link descriptions] Ionisation Wikipedia. Edgar Varèse, actor. Who knew?

Ondes Martenot, or, When Maurice Met Leon.

flapjax at midnite — Tue, 25 Dec 2007 23:04:37 -0800

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 videos: Claude-Samuel Lévine in a performance of Messiaen's Feuillets Inedits, from Google video. And here Levine demonstrates his prowess on the Ondes Martenot as well as the Theremin in this (" He played with RADIOHEAD ! ") YouTube clip. Here's the same clip on Google video. This clip opens with a very good shot of the instrument being played, filmed from the player's perspective. Here's the English homepage of Japanese Ondes Martenot virtuoso Takashi Harada. Here's Harada serenading the shoppers at a department store. Here's a page from the Canadian Music Centre's "Electronic Frontiers" series, featuring a composition by Jacques Hétu: Concerto for Ondes Martenot. Here's an article on Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood, in which he talks about his interest in the Ondes Martenot. And here's Greenwood's interview with Ondes Martenot player Jeanne Loriod. Here's a page from MusicWeb International on Thomas Bloch's album Music for Ondes Martenot, with some info on various Ondes Martenot compositions featured on the recording. Here's a new version of the instrument, from the UK's Analogue Systems, which they call the "French Connection". And... for anyone who'd like to hear more from Theremin virtuoso Clara Rockmore, here's her MySpace Music page. And finally, I should note that the Ondes Martenot made a brief appearance in this MeFi post previously.

So you like electronic music?

milarepa — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 07:37:44 -0800

If you like electronic music, you probably already know about some of the blogs that offer free live set downloads. You might even know about mpiii. But, they all pale in comparison to the one and only mixes db.

Tenori-on: sound on your palm

moonmilk — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 15:35:43 -0800

The Tenori-On is a new electronic musical instrument by Toshio Iwai [wikipedia], the creator of Electroplankton [previously]. It was just released commercially by Yamaha [flash site], to great excitement among those of us who get excited about such things. But what does it sound like? [more inside]

oscillate

oneirodynia — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 12:30:23 -0800

Youscope is the result of hooking up an oscilloscope to a soundcard. [youtube] 3rd place winner in Short Films at Assembly 2007.

"I felt that the world was like one big vault with sounds inside."

sveskemus — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 15:59:31 -0800

Else Marie Pade (b. 1924) is a phenomenon in the history of Danish music. As a child she was often ill and bedridden. She would listen to the sounds around her... on the stairs, from the yard and the room next to hers. This is where her audio universe began. During the Second World War, she was arrested by the Gestapo and placed in solitary confinement. Rather than despair, she began composing music on the bare prison walls, where she scratched the notes with the fasteners on her garters. After the war and her discovery of the concrete music of Pierre Schaeffer and the French avant-garde, she realized that the sounds resembled those she had heard in childhood, and that this was the music she really wanted to compose. Read a long interview with Else Marie Pade here and listen to her collected works here. (Last link in Danish. Left column is production year, middle column is title. Click the bit rates on the right to listen to each work.)

"We were just trying to write songs about prostitutes and lesbians, that's all."

Blazecock Pileon — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 21:25:09 -0800

Introduced to Western culture by the Beatles in their single Norwegian Wood, the sitar has featured prominently in North Indian classical music for centuries. Princeton-based computer scientist Ajay Kapur updates the instrument with his ESitar, an audio and video controller that uses gesture input (PDF) and machine learning algorithms to facilitate joining the computer with Ajay in his sitar performance. Undergraduate engineering students at the University of Pennsylvania work from the other direction, building RAVI-bot, an award-winning, self-playing robotic sitar (YouTube) programmed to generate music from classical Raga scales and melodies all on its own. For those in the Philadelphia area, be sure to check out a live performance of RAVI-bot at the local Klein Art Gallery.

Party at NASA!!!

loquacious — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 14:08:56 -0800

Bay Area Yuri's Night 2007 Bay Area Yuri's Night 2007 Yuri's Night Bay Area will be held at Moffett Field in the NASA Ames Research Center's massive SOFIA hangar, home to the world's largest aerial observatory. Our host for the evening is pioneering space traveler Anousheh Anasari, the first privately funded female to reach orbit. She is joined by Dr. Chris McKay, world renowned expert in astrobiology and terraformation with the Space Science Division of NASA Ames Research Center, as they welcome you to a dazzling array of interactive art installations and science demos, interwoven with musical and acrobatic performances by some of the world's finest entertainers. Complete write up. Partially via MeFi's own lannanh.

Raymond Scott dot com

Kattullus — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 23:23:23 -0800

Raymond Scott dot com — you might not have heard of the man, this cartoon composer, inventor of electronic musical instruments and leader of the world's largest quintet, but his impact on modern music is hard to overstate [Realplayer, NPR]

Deep Listening

serazin — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 16:35:13 -0800

Pauline Oliveros, pioneer of electronic and new music, and Deep Listening. Inspired by Valerie Solanas, utilizes just intonation, plays accordion. Hear her . Watch her .

Travis Castillo's electronic music DJ and live PA archive.

loquacious — Sun, 31 Dec 2006 12:07:02 -0800

A massive collection of live DJ and PA sets of electronic music sorted by year and genre. Enjoy.
(Coral Cache link. Please use this to help archive and propagate the files.)

The Toriton Plus - Water and light music interface.

loquacious — Sat, 11 Nov 2006 12:48:46 -0800

The Toriton Plus A new electronic music interface using water and light. (YouTube). Make your own. From Little-Scale, which is chock-full of cool and wonderous stuff.

And my beat goes boom... tschak!

loquacious — Wed, 11 Oct 2006 10:45:02 -0800

WaxDJ.com - an excellent source for free downloads and streams of original electronic music mixes of all sorts, from seasoned pros to beginning bedroom amatuers, all told numbering in the hundreds or thousands. My current brand new favorite is the very diverse and well-versed Detriot/Chicago techno stylings of DJ Rubsilent. Recomended mix: Future Funk 23: (Direct MP3 link) (Streaming mp3 link) But don't let me divert you - search for your favorite local DJ or browse for new ones.