Belbury is an English market town with a picturesque 11th century church, and some notable modernist architecture, including the Polytechnic College. None of which exist except in the constructed world of the
Ghost Box record label, whose founder Jim Jupp records under the name
Belbury Poly, and publishes the
Belbury Parish Magazine.
[more inside]
posted by reynir
on Feb 11, 2012 -
5 comments
With Sonic Youth on
indefinite hiatus, the band members are keeping themselves busy with other projects. Thurston Moore is playing
solo shows centered around his latest solo album, the Beck-produced
Demolished Thoughts, with a band he jokingly(?) referred to this past Friday night as "
Dush Krew" in honor of his crush on actress Eliza Dushku. Kim Gordon recently
designed clothes for French brand Surface to Air, is currently playing shows with Bill Nace as part of the noise improvisation duo
Body/Head, and was kind enough recently to share
her favorite taco recipe. Lee Ranaldo is poised to release his first song-oriented
solo album on Matador Records; he debuted
the music video for the first single ("Off the Wall") today on his website. Steve Shelley played drums on Lee's new album, recently
collaborated with Pete Nolan of Magik Markers (Sonic Youth's most
interesting protégés) on Nolan's side-project Spectre Folk, and is currently drumming for Chicago's
Disappears whose
new album is out via Kranky records in March. Meanwhile, Jim O'Rourke is preparing to curate the All Tomorrow's Parties
I'll Be Your Mirror Festival in Tokyo this April, where he will also perform his 1999 album
Eureka in full with a 12-piece band.
posted by Houyhnhnm
on Feb 7, 2012 -
53 comments
Left and to the Back is a blog exploring the dark and dusty world of flop singles and albums, the kind you may find lingering near the stock room of your local second hand record store (if you still have one), or perhaps going for extortionate sums on ebay. [Found whilst trying to answer
this AskMe].
posted by unliteral
on Feb 6, 2012 -
4 comments
Here is a lovely acoustic version of "The Dragonborn Comes" courtesy of blogger Makulah.
posted by Ipsifendus
on Feb 1, 2012 -
10 comments
The band "OK Go" are using their signature blend of pleasant indie pop and quirky, home-grown videos to teach kids about
primary colors in a new short for Sesame Street. - SLYT
posted by Slap*Happy
on Jan 31, 2012 -
37 comments
The Story of Trip-Hop's Rise Sinuous and mysterious as a plume of drifting smoke, a new sort of groove wafted two decades ago from Bristol, a bohemian university town in the west of England.... Not all local grooves take flight, but trip-hop most certainly did. Over the next two decades it was re-imagined as chill-out, downtempo, illbient and lounge music.
posted by modernnomad
on Jan 31, 2012 -
50 comments
A decade after the death of renowned folklorist Alan Lomax, his vision of a "global jukebox" is being realized: his vast archive — some 5,000 hours of sound recordings, 400,000 feet of film, 3,000 videotapes, 5,000 photographs and piles of manuscripts, much of it tucked away in forgotten or inaccessible corners — is being digitized so that the collection can be accessed online. About 17,000 music tracks will be available for free streaming by the end of February. NYT article
here.
posted by flapjax at midnite
on Jan 30, 2012 -
39 comments
78 78s - In Search Of Lost Time - is a streaming mix of beautiful 78s from around the world, collected and curated by Ian Nagoski. "I started sifting through boxes of junky old 78s that no one else wanted about 15 years ago, and almost right away, I made a rule: Anything that wasn't in English, buy it."
[more inside]
posted by carter
on Jan 29, 2012 -
15 comments
Colombian video artist Dicken Schrader covers Depeche Mode songs with the help of his young children, Milah and Korben, using some unexpected objects as instruments and illustrative props. Three split-screen videos: "
Strangelove", "
Everything Counts", & "
Shake The Disease".
posted by flex
on Jan 29, 2012 -
22 comments
Contrary to popular belief,
cats can make great DJs. It's just a small sample, but it's nice to see him really get into it as the set progresses.
posted by gman
on Jan 27, 2012 -
32 comments
Musaic Box is a puzzle game that uses music to define the pieces. Find outlines for songs, and then try to put them together...very fun and addicting. Don't try to play with the sound off obviously.
posted by schyler523
on Jan 27, 2012 -
6 comments
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
What do you do when your viola recital gets interrupted by someone in the audience getting a call on their cellphone?
Improvise.
posted by scalefree
on Jan 24, 2012 -
26 comments
"We were so dumbfounded at the noise that was coming out of our instruments it took us a while to get a handle on what we were hearing, let alone thinking in terms of how any records would be structured." Music journalist Ned Raggett assembles the oral history of British experimental rock group
Disco Inferno's five EPs.
posted by Houyhnhnm
on Jan 23, 2012 -
17 comments
