Bebe Barron, 82, Pioneer of Electronic Scores, Is Dead. Best known for the soundtrack to the 1956 sci-fi classic Forbidden Planet -- the first full-length feature to use only electronic music -- she and her husband Louis Barron recorded the film's pre-synthesizer "electronic tonalities" with electronic circuits of their own invention. She never scored another feature film, but remained active in the avant-garde music scene.
posted on May 8, 2008 - View this thread

Kumeyaay.info welcomes visitors and indigenous peoples of all tribal nations and provides a casual village environment to share and network their culturally relevant creative work, information and opinions. (previously)
posted on May 2, 2008 - View this thread

"The sort of artist who survives at the long tail is the sort who would be happy doing nothing else, who willingly sacrifices security and comfort for the chance to communicate something meaningful, hoping to catch the attention of those few in the world who seek what they also find meaningful." Musician Robert Rich on the new realities of making a living at art.
posted on Apr 24, 2008 - View this thread

The pop music industry has sadly come to depend on “heritage acts” – wrinkled, dyed-hair, aging stars – to pack houses and make money.

“Whatever a future superstar act will be, it won’t be as ubiquitous as the acts from the ’60s because we were all listening to Top 40 radio.”
posted on Apr 11, 2008 - View this thread

Generative Creativity is a course offered by the University of Sussex through their Informatics department. The lecture series discusses tools and techniques for generating graphics, music, jokes and riddles, and more.
posted on Apr 7, 2008 - View this thread

The University of South Carolina recently completed an ambitious survey of all medieval texts in the state for an exhibit at the university library. All the works were scanned and archived electronically. However, not only can you view the texts online, you can hear the university's chorus sing (MP3) the musical manuscripts.
posted on Mar 18, 2008 - View this thread

The Amen Break and the Golden Ratio by mathematics educator and author, Michael S. Schneider. Schneider, having already researched and written about the golden ratio extensively, noticed it right away when hearing the the amen break for the first time (amen break previously on the blue). While some composers have been known to intentionally incorporate fibonacci numbers and the golden ratio into their works, perhaps this is just another one of the many instances of the ratio showing up in nature.
posted on Mar 12, 2008 - View this thread

Anglo-Finnish artist Sanna Annukka's vibrant, flat design work (especially her Icons series) got me curious about her, well, iconography.

She mentioned The Kalevala previously, the Finnish national epic poem (in Finnish here), a tale of creation and heroism that arguably spurred the Finns to independence from the Russians.

Like so much else epic and awesome, it spawned a '70s prog band, with three albums.
posted on Feb 25, 2008 - View this thread

Sonic Youth fan? Got a spare 5 million dollars? Then you can be the proud owner of the original art for 'Daydream Nation' - Kerze by Gerhard Richter.
posted on Feb 25, 2008 - View this thread

Ron Murphy cut records, but not just any records. Responsible for cutting the actual vinyl master plates of much of the now revered Detroit Techno including Jeff Mills, Carl Craig, Underground Resistance's seminal Knights of the Jaguar, and much more - he demonstrated impeccable craftsmanship and skill in both mastering records for sound and aesthetics at company known as Sound Enterprises source link AKA National Sound Corporation. Schooled in Motown, dubplates and jukeboxes, he is the bespoke-crafted, analog link between the digital future and analog past that is the roots of Techno music and modern techno DJ culture.
posted on Feb 13, 2008 - View this thread

Scotch mist. An hour long film with Radiohead in it made for New Year's Eve, 2007. Features every song on their album In Rainbows.
posted on Jan 5, 2008 - View this thread

CASH is the Coalition of Artists & Stake Holders, a project conceived and initiated by musician Kristin Hersh. CASH is "read-write" — more than consumption; a collaborative online effort — helping make music ownership more of an interactive affair facilitated through Creative Commons licensing.
posted on Jan 5, 2008 - View this thread

Half-human album covers. Also known as "sleevefaces."
posted on Dec 26, 2007 - View this thread

New York No Wave Archive. "No Wave was a short-lived but influential music and art movement in downtown New York in the late 1970s and 1980s. The name was a reaction to the sanitized Punk Rock trading under the name 'New wave' for those people who wanted a sanitized version of punk." Also, outside of "No New York."
posted on Dec 17, 2007 - View this thread

Public sound sculptures can be beautiful ways of drawing passersby into creating music. Whether they're melodic chimes in subway stations, theremins in public parks, or the sounds of rivers and clocks in a art museum, all of them can add a little bit of magic to the everyday world. Paul Matisse is an artist who has created multiple public sound sculptures across the Boston Area. He built three sound sculptures in the Kendall Square subway station in Boston, and another in Charlestown, called the Charlestown Bells.
posted on Dec 6, 2007 - View this thread

With the wild success of the Guitar Hero series, using video game controllers shaped like guitars is nothing new. However, the duo at Modal Kombat actually use guitars as video game controllers. They won't reveal all of their tricks, but you can read a bit about their technology here and at this interview with Urban Guitar. The results are awfully impressive. View the original Modal Kombat here, and their newest installment, the admittedly trippy GuitarKart here. via
posted on Dec 3, 2007 - View this thread

Mick Turner: The melodies stagger and dance and swing and fall like events, emotions and thoughts. For me this...is a celebration of life, all of it, good or bad, for me it's a way to understand things I can't say with words.
posted on Nov 10, 2007 - View this thread

Interview with United Visual Artists: Anyone who saw Massive Attack's 100th Window tour will remember the amazing 'stream of data' graphics they used on stage, these guys did that and other work for the likes of U2 and Basement Jaxx
posted on Oct 22, 2007 - View this thread

"Not much chance for survival, if the Neon Bible is right." Presented by Arcade Fire which is a band that hails out of Montreal. Okay. So I'm easily entertained, but you will believe a turkey can roast marshmallows. Requires flash.
posted on Oct 15, 2007 - View this thread

Are you a fan of Faerie's Aire and Death Waltz? Then you will like this, (via here), as well as all of these!
posted on Sep 19, 2007 - View this thread

Musical positions. Not safe for a music stand. And really, the triplet bracket belongs in the final measure.
posted on Sep 18, 2007 - View this thread

A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust - an overview of the people and events of the Holocaust through photographs, documents, art, music, and literature. It is designed to prepare K-12 teachers to approach this sensitive topic. The content is presented from three perspectives: Timeline, People, and The Arts. Produced by the University of South Florida.
posted on Aug 29, 2007 - View this thread

Steve Mann's hydraulophone with sculpture gallery and performance video snippets: [1] [2] [3]
posted on Aug 27, 2007 - View this thread

Mefite Fans of rock concert posters are probably familiar with gigposters.com, but here's an interesting list of over 20 other individual designers concert posters sites with tons of designy goodness.
posted on Jun 21, 2007 - View this thread

Ubuntu Studio is a Linux distribution focused on creative audiovisual pursuits.
posted on May 10, 2007 - View this thread

Pi to 1,000 places on piano is just one of the many catchy tunes on math sonifications. And check out more interesting things on on artist Tom Dukich's site.
posted on Apr 28, 2007 - View this thread

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.
posted on Apr 19, 2007 - View this thread

Punk rock in north-central Iowa, 1977-2007 as featured in The Secret History of the Cedar Valley, an exhibit at Wartburg College (Waverley, Iowa). The opening reception is this Saturday, March 17, with performances by Modern Life is War, Beat Strings, Brooks Strause, and The Torpedo Darlings [WARNING: these four band links have music on them!]. --more inside
posted on Mar 14, 2007 - View this thread

If you've ever thought that music can be an extremely intuitive and effective way to communicate things, then Stanford Professor Jonathan Berger (samples of his music) is doing some research that might interest you. (via)
posted on Feb 6, 2007 - View this thread

While Courtney pulled an Albini, Jeff handed out the bread. Are the peasants acting like emperors, or do they still want something shiny, aluminum, plastic, and digital? Debacle or cage, something's got to give (pdf). Alternatively, you can just roll your own.
posted on Feb 4, 2007 - View this thread

Striking photographs of the masked wrestlers of Mexico, Lucha Loco by Malcolm Venville. [via the amazing everlasting blort] [more inside]
posted on Feb 3, 2007 - View this thread

Visual acoustics is a concept for interactive expression.
posted on Dec 28, 2006 - View this thread

In 1973, Berlin, Lou Reed’s somber follow-up to his upbeat, glam-rock Transformer, was described by Rolling Stone as “a disaster,” by others as “horseshit,” and was never performed live — until now.
posted on Dec 15, 2006 - View this thread

The Central City by Steve Tanza
posted on Dec 10, 2006 - View this thread

"Sonic fabric (woven from 50% cotton and 50% audio cassette tape) emits sound when you run a tape head over it. Because the tape retains its magnetic quality through the weaving process, it acts as a big wide band of tape." Here's an interview with the creator. {via Apartment Therapy}
posted on Oct 29, 2006 - View this thread

Music makes you smarter if you get an early start. Certainly debatable given the incredibly small sample, but perhaps it's a prelude to an emerging 21st-century collaborative scientific suite or symphony that can explain why we love music so much.
posted on Sep 20, 2006 - View this thread

Futures, organic abstraction in motion in this music video directed by Robert Seidel (previously) for Zero 7.
posted on Sep 20, 2006 - View this thread

10 greatest beat-making videos ever* "*Or, you know, today." A Music thing thing.
posted on Aug 23, 2006 - View this thread

Color of My Sound. Choose a color of a sound or song and see how others have voted with their comments. Add your own audio files. (more)
posted on Aug 22, 2006 - View this thread

To work around the proprietary whims of digital audio software developers and laptop processor limitations during the mid- and late-1990s, a small band of technically-minded people, including the electronic musician Blitter, pulled together in the late 1990s to engineer the open-source OPEN DSP EZ-Kit platform, a 16-bit computer designed entirely with a focus on low cost and extensible control and DSP arithmetic capabilities. While this project and similar commercial offerings never seemed to gain the critical mass needed to sustain long-term interest, perhaps the new Arduino hardware project from MIT's Processing hardware group may gain a foothold with Processing and Pure Data audio software hobbyists and artists alike, allowing the creative community to extend, enhance and share inventive uses of new technology. Arduino's use has already begun in fascinating museum installations around the world, and has become a part of this year's SONAR and Ars Electronica festivals.
posted on Aug 12, 2006 - View this thread

2 years ago I FPP'd FlavorPill, a company that sends out permission-based emails for books (Boldtype), music (Earplug), and fashion (the JC Report). They've since added ArtKrush (it's art, stupid! - nsfw) and Activate (world events) to their aresenal. In addition to the topic-specific mailing lists, they offer city-specific lists for London, New York, SF, LA, and Chicago. Sample issues are archived on the site.
posted on Aug 11, 2006 - View this thread

Sonic Postcards - winner of the New Statesman New Media Award. Explore sound. Via the Sonic Arts Network, UK exponents of Electroacoustic music.
posted on Aug 2, 2006 - View this thread

James Patten creates interactive works in diverse media with themes including performance and social commentary. Projects include Tactile Photography and, most impressive to me, The Audio Pad.
posted on Aug 1, 2006 - View this thread

Lustfaust, an expiremental noise band from West Berlin has been steadily building an online retrospective archive of band photos, memorabilia from past gigs, and collected submissions of artwork that fans created for their own mix tapes. They can also be found (of course) on MySpace. For those of you in the NYC area, tomorrow is the final day of a show at The Volume Gallery that features artwork created by fans of the underground group . What they've pieced together is a pretty loyal and diverse following for a band that doesn't really exist.
posted on Jul 21, 2006 - View this thread

Inner City Youth, London "In 2002, Simon Wheatley began photographing London's publich housing developments...and was able to obtain a level of intimacy with his subjects that provides a true picture of the daunting project of growing up in the intimate confines of drug use, societal neglect, and poverty." This (Flash-based) narrated slideshow features Wheatley's work, and is a look at the culture...and also the music (grime) "as an artistic response to the place and circumstance, an expression of the violence, bleakness, and neglect..." (via Future Feeder)
posted on Jul 20, 2006 - View this thread

David Webber makes awesome sound art things from christmas trees, pot plants, household stuff, food blenders and hard drives. His good friend Ray Wilson builds awesome modular synths. Ray will also show you how to make your own Weird Sound Generator.
posted on Jul 5, 2006 - View this thread

Are they music? Unusual ideas about musical notation.
posted on Jun 27, 2006 - View this thread

Yesterduh. [more inside]
posted on Jun 16, 2006 - View this thread

Len Lye: New Zealander Len Lye was a restless maverick - a pioneer of films without cameras (drawing directly onto the celluloid) and kinetic art (CD available through Atoll, sound samples here and here), and he was also quite handy with poems and inks. More about his Windwand and recently installed Waterwhirler on Flickr. Coralised open directory of short Waterwhirler movies here.
posted on May 30, 2006 - View this thread

The Lifelong Friendship Society produces some comfortably disjointed art/video/music/writing that is sometimes incredibly cheesy. (quicktime is pretty much required for all these links)
posted on Apr 14, 2006 - View this thread

Six-String Masterpieces. Dean Guitars invites tattoo artists and musicians to decorate 50 Deans in a tribute to Dimebag Darrell. The results range from popstar kitsch to cronenbergian delight. Via Needled.
posted on Apr 14, 2006 - View this thread

Laura Levine's works are themed around music, from her classic rock photos to her funky illustrations. Her children’s illustrated books about musical pioneers are delightful: Honky-Tonk Heroes & Hillbilly Angels is due out in May. Previously: Shake, Rattle & Roll and a collaboration with the B-52's, Wig! She also runs a curiosity shop in Phoenicia, NY. (via Internet Weekly)
posted on Apr 11, 2006 - View this thread

An interactive Shockwave-based look at Bach's Well-tempered Clavier. Go one level up and explore the entire coverage of Bach.
posted on Apr 10, 2006 - View this thread

"Ten Favorite Offbeat Musicals" by Jonathan Rosenbaum
posted on Apr 4, 2006 - View this thread

Nomi I just discoed Nomi. Here, here and here( that site is broke in way that I think is some sort of artistic statement. Or it could be just bad html.) I was a teenager then and had never heard of him, but I'm strangely impressed. He's a bald Gary Numan, he's like the Cirque du Soleil playing bluegrass.
posted on Mar 31, 2006 - View this thread

Money on the Wall: PostMichael McKeeism meticulously perfects the art-form that Warhol dreamed of, The Who toyed with, and and others are desperate to avoid. Transactionism is an observation of art, the artist/patron relationship, and our own values, such as they are.
posted on Mar 19, 2006 - View this thread

Piero Scaruffi is a normal person. Like so many others, he ponders knowledge, language, and art from time to time. When he travels, he takes pictures. Just like everyone else. Sure, he has his thoughts about politics and world affairs, who doesn't? And when he's done with all of this he just wants to rock. Exactly like you. See?
posted on Feb 23, 2006 - View this thread

The Memory of The Netherlands is an extensive digital collection of illustrations, photographs, texts, film and audio fragments from a large variety of Dutch cultural institutions. There are about 50 collections (in english).
posted on Feb 19, 2006 - View this thread

For all the hoo-ha about Callas first bringing real acting to the operatic stage, one has only to view the footage of Risë Stevens legendary 1952 “Carmen” to see what kind of Method she brought to the Met. Stevens was the definitive gypsy wanton, and her performance has it all— fire, ice, and that impossible balance between elegance and sluttiness. Her technique is superb—licking her fingers before extinguishing the candles in what will be her death chamber, then flicking off the wax; flinging her unwanted lover’s ring at him, spitting out a contemptuous “Tiens!”.
The Metropolitan Opera Guild honors the Bronx-born singer, now 92. More inside.
posted on Feb 9, 2006 - View this thread

Self-organization leads to swarm synthesis
posted on Jan 31, 2006 - View this thread

An awesome short commercial (quicktime) that's a sort of visual music mashup from a DJ equipment company. [via tween, a cool video effects blog]
posted on Jan 29, 2006 - View this thread

NAMM 06 oddities. Guitars as works of art. Also found on that page: the Mikey guitar which functions as a frettted or fretless instrument with the flick of a switch.
posted on Jan 29, 2006 - View this thread

I got 99 problems ...but a witch ain't one. Witches are everywhere nowadays. No need to spend your days trying to hunt 'em down. Some are for the kids. Some are focused on manual labor. Perhaps most importantly, some are in britches, while others are in bikinis. Want to join the coven? Take an online course!
posted on Jan 27, 2006 - View this thread

The Art of Chris Turnham. Vivid, highly-stylized illustrations. The first four 2D images are part of a series that depict scenes from Decemberists songs.
posted on Jan 16, 2006 - View this thread

"The spiritual, physical, intellectual, social or economic well-being of the general public".
Within the MacDowell Colony's rustic stone and clapboard cottages, Thornton Wilder wrote Our Town, Aaron Copland composed Appalachian Spring and Dubose and Dorothy Heyward wrote Porgy and Bess. Jonathan Franzen finished writing The Corrections and Alice Sebold worked on The Lovely Bones. For decades, the town considered the colony a tax-exempt charitable organization. Not anymore.
posted on Nov 14, 2005 - View this thread

Apparently before Jed had left us
he wrote some poems
wrote them for no one
I guess I'll show them
here's one of Jed's Poems.
[via the ape]
posted on Nov 11, 2005 - View this thread

"The Car Music Project was conceived in late 1991 by composer Bill Milbrodt, when his personal car, battered and road-weary, was nearing the end of its useful life. It had endured close to 200,000 miles of road life with little mechanical maintenance and even less cosmetic attention. It would cost more to repair than it was worth and the poor thing had virtually no value as a trade-in. The paint was faded, pesky springs poked through the upholstery, knobs and handles were missing, and the electrical system was iffy. It dripped oil, blew smoke, and made more noise than a cement mixer. It was time to turn the car into music."
posted on Nov 11, 2005 - View this thread

Discography as iconography of a po-mo epoch. Relayed from Boing2 because it's the glorious visual epitaph for GenX nostalgia. I'm almost crying over here, and activating eBay.
posted on Oct 18, 2005 - View this thread

Music is nothing.
Sound could become music.
The end must be in the beginning,
and the beginning in the end.
I am here because I am not here.
Music lives in the eternal now.
Music is the now becoming now.
What I learned from Sergiu Celibidache, by Markand Thakar. More inside.
posted on Oct 14, 2005 - View this thread

ArtsConversations , the archives of the C/IAF's Netropolitan Museum.
Browse works of art, sculpture, photography (some NSFW) , and more. [via->via->via chunky bacon]
posted on Oct 13, 2005 - View this thread

Beethoven's Ninth -- the score.
posted on Oct 11, 2005 - View this thread

" Jim's ghost was in my ear, and I felt terrible". Like all top classic-rock franchises, The Doors can exploit a lucrative afterlife in television commercials. Offers keep coming in, such as the $15 million dangled by Cadillac last year to lease the song "Break On Through (to the Other Side)" to hawk its luxury SUVs. To the surprise of the corporation and the chagrin of his former bandmates, drummer John Densmore vetoed the idea. He said he did the same when Apple Computer called with a $4-million offer, and every time "some deodorant company wants to use 'Light My Fire.' "
posted on Oct 5, 2005 - View this thread

This jewel case makes its own music. One Bit Music is a project by composer and artist Tristan Perich. Merging his interests in physical computing and electronic music, Perich programs and packages electronics in a standard CD jewel case. The device plays minimal glitch/dance music when headphones are plugged in. You may remember him from such classics as the push button telephone to cellphone conversion.
posted on Sep 17, 2005 - View this thread

Collected works of Enrico Caruso. Approximately seven hours of vintage, public domain recordings of Il Maestro, courtesy of the Internet Archive's 78 rpm collections. Amongst my favourites: Del Tempio Al Limita, a duet with Mario Ancona from Bizet's The Pearl Fishers, and Cantique de Noel. Sublime.
posted on Sep 14, 2005 - View this thread

ITC Sangeet Research Academy - a guide and resource of Hindustani classical music
RealPlayer and Flash recommended
posted on Sep 11, 2005 - View this thread

Dictionaraoke. Your favorite songs, as performed by the audio pronunciation samples from online dictionaries.
posted on Sep 8, 2005 - View this thread

Wagner, the repulsive giant If, on one hand, you ever wanted to know what a swine Richard Wagner was, this is the book to tell you. It does so at length, in reliable detail, calmly, without prurience, perfectly backed with documentation, and in a translation whose only fault is in giving no Translator’s Notes for in-house German references. Joachim Köhler sustains his story with new ideas, revises other interpretations and modestly deconstructs Cosima née Liszt’s creation of “Richard Wagner Enterprises Inc”. (This she developed so far as to keep Parsifal exclusive to Bayreuth, prompting George Bernard Shaw to remark in 1889 that it “would almost reconcile me to the custom of suttee”!).
posted on Sep 3, 2005 - View this thread

The Official George & Ira Gershwin Web Site
[Flash required]
posted on Sep 1, 2005 - View this thread

you'll then have a grave in the clouds where you won't lie too cramped
"No, no, I never met Paul Celan. This poem is too CLASSIC, too cold, and too difficult to follow. It does nothing to me".
Singing, Painting and the Holocaust: Interview with Leon Greenman, Auschwitz Survivor 98288
posted on Aug 29, 2005 - View this thread

Making music entirely from non-musical things: McDonalds Happy Meals, Henry Kissinger, Bread, Salad Tosser, Fluorescent Lamps, the Bible, Hearts, Dot Matrix Printers, Photocopiers, Volkswagen [possibly nsfw], The Postal Service, Blank Tapes, Eiffel Tower, Deportation Orders [scroll down], Cakes, Cucumbers, Furniture [scroll down to #12], Skin, Roads, Underpasses, Frogs, Vinyl Run-Out Grooves, Radios, Natural Geophysical Phenomena, Carly Simon and other stuff.
posted on Aug 7, 2005 - View this thread

PopExperiment

"Anyway, the idea behind this site is similar to stumble: provide links and representations to (of) artists that I love. To that end I've already started populating the music, photography, visual arts and motion arts sections with some art I hope you really enjoy (and real links to the amazing artists responsible)."

[And check: via via via]
posted on Aug 6, 2005 - View this thread

Han Bennink - accomplished dutch percussionist, performed a on a drumkit made of cheese as part of a recent Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art exhibit, "Demons Stole My Soul: Rock 'N Roll Drums In Contemporary Art"
posted on Jul 1, 2005 - View this thread

rand()% is an automated net radio station streaming real-time generative music. All audio is generated by algorithmic software applications and programs written by sound artists and programmers.
posted on Jun 5, 2005 - View this thread

Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities is so called because it asserts that what makes up a city is not so much its physical structure but the impression it imparts upon its visitors, the way its inhabitants move within, something unseen that hums between the cracks. This, however, has in no way dissuaded people from attempting to give form to his works. One such example is the Hotel Tressants, a building in Menorca, Spain containing 8 rooms named after and inspired by various cities from the novel. Meanwhile, artists offer illustrations^1,2,3, installations ^1,2,3,4,5, music^1,2,3,4,5,6 and dance, hypertexts^1,2, computer programs and animations, even View-Master slides, while intellectuals offer readings and commentary^1,2, lectures^1,2, and critical texts^1,2,3 sparked by the man and his writings. It has been dubbed "The Calvino Effect". Do you know of any more?
posted on May 20, 2005 - View this thread

Aspen - The Multimedia Magazine In A Box On The Web. Produced from 1965 to 1971 as an alternative to a bound magazine, Aspen came as a box filled with booklets, phonograph recordings, posters and postcards by a stellar array of contributors.
posted on May 6, 2005 - View this thread

Dewanatron : a family of electronic instruments ‘which hazard unpredictable behaviors and self playing tendencies.’ See, for example, the Alphatron, the Dual-Primate Console, and the Courtesy Modulator. Besides his work as an instrument- and furniture-maker, the Dewanatrons’ co-creator, Brian Dewan, is a musician and singer who has collaborated with They Might Be Giants, among others. He is also a visual artist, who has created numerous filmstrips, and who was responsible for the ‘flying victrola’ design for the the Neutral Milk Hotel album ‘In The Aeroplane Over the Sea.’
posted on Apr 21, 2005 - View this thread

Ivor Cutler - poet, musician, Glaswegian. I first enjoyed Cutler's touching, funny, and often surreal performances on the John Peel Show; and so I was delighted to find a small group of Cutler fans dedicated to spreading the Word of Ivor online. There's some audio links here, including Questionnaire, Little Black Buzzer, and Good Morning How Are You Shut Up. For Ivor fans, there's much more over at Yahoo Group's ivor-list.
posted on Apr 20, 2005 - View this thread

Meet Jakob Lodwick of Blumpy.org. You may be familiar with him because of sites like this or this.
Blumpy.org i s a bit of a step up, however, featuring some pretty nifty skits and a great video-journal.

He has also made a video for Cex, Baltimore's soon-to-be legendary (any day now) basement rock god, whose site also has a huge stash of excellent b-side material and another video.
not the biggest sites, so go easy on'em and be patient.
posted on Mar 22, 2005 - View this thread

"Man, I DO love a good album cover!" -- Dana Countryman
posted on Mar 18, 2005 - View this thread

Location location location [mp3s] The Phonography Archives, field recordings from around the world. Also, DeadSCSI, a global collaborative remix/collage/reremix project of tracks all generated from a single original sound file of a SCSI drive breaking down. These and other music/art projects are on Radiant Slab.
posted on Mar 11, 2005 - View this thread

You heard it here first, ex-soviet, a blog for all the soviet music fan in us all.
posted on Feb 28, 2005 - View this thread

The best music videos ever produced. A list, for those that like to watch.
posted on Feb 23, 2005 - View this thread

Drummer turned sculptor: mellow, intriguing wood sculpture from Dennis Elliott, also known as the former drummer from the hard rock band Foreigner.
posted on Feb 16, 2005 - View this thread

"His voice was otherworldly — you couldn't believe the sound". Everyone who ever heard Klaus Nomi's voice had the same comment: "It can't be real." You hear that response throughout "The Nomi Song," the documentary about the obscure German-born artist who was a fixture on the New York music scene in the late '70s-early '80s, and a legitimate pop star in Europe. He was also a mystery, even to those who knew him. The film primarily covers the years between his 1978 New York club debut - which was captured on film - and his AIDS-related death in 1983 at age 39. Nomi never had an album officially released in the U.S. but was wildly popular among New York clubgoers as well as in France and his native Germany. More inside.
posted on Feb 3, 2005 - View this thread

Bill Dummond has another new project. Previously he had been involved with the KLF, and now seems to run the Penkiln Burn website.
The Open Manifesto is a new offshoot - which admidst some nice design, captures peoples personal art manifestos- there are some true gems on here. There are also some 10 ten 'charts' which seem to have stopped in August 2004 - including judgement by Stewart Home - a fantastic author.

One of Bill Drummonds other projects was previously been mentioned here. More can be found through the fascinating Penkiln Burn.
posted on Jan 2, 2005 - View this thread

Short movies of live performances by some avant-garde musicians, including Derek Bailey, Skeleton Crew, and The ROVA Sax Quartet. Last three links WMV
posted on Dec 11, 2004 - View this thread

Artistic guitars. Check out the Folk Legend, the Skeletar, and the MotorGuitar.
posted on Dec 5, 2004 - View this thread

ArtFilter: Scottrohedron raps and wraps.
posted on Nov 29, 2004 - View this thread

SPREE: An Escape from Reality - music by Ethan Persoff, made from old records, bizarre noise instruments, circuit bent toys and other unusual sounds.
posted on Sep 24, 2004 - View this thread

Warholstars is a comprehensive guide to the colorful cast of characters that made up Andy Warhol's constellation and that Lou Reed sang about in Walk on the Wild Side...meet Holly, Candy, Little Joe, Sugar Plum Fairy, Jackie Curtis, and more.
posted on Aug 29, 2004 - View this thread

Life's like that isn’t it? Only the other day I was walking in the west end and... suddenly I was set upon by hordes of fans and admirers who wanted to... touch my clothes. So I took sanctuary in a nearby cinema. Normally of course I don't go in but... that day I saw something that... really moved me I'd like to share this...wonderful experience with you it was... (more inside gentle reader)
posted on Aug 12, 2004 - View this thread

The Scriptorium's American Sheet Music. North Carolina's Duke University maintains a wonderful, sprawling archive of ephemera, as you, chers linkeurs, know well. But perhaps you didn't know of the vast collection of American sheet music, most attractively explored via these cover galleries (viz.), that awaits within.
posted on Aug 3, 2004 - View this thread

The Movement is a 7-member art project, conceived (somewhat) as a multimedia version of the games Telephone or Exquisite Corpse, in which each member "adds a voice to the work -- a voice which expands the work, a voice which modifies the work, a voice which contests the work" through text, image, or sound. Initiated by writer/musician/radio host Julius Nil, the brother alter-ego of Olias Nil (himself the alter-ego of Seth Cohen) of the late, lamented Fire Show and Number One Cup. Includes work from Nil's Fire Show/Number One Cup collaborator, musician/photographer M. Resplendent .
posted on Jul 21, 2004 - View this thread

Midi is to music as ASCII is to art: Music videos converted to text and MIDI. [via waxy]
posted on Jul 8, 2004 - View this thread

Introduction to the Art of Fugue.
posted on Jul 6, 2004 - View this thread

Gen Art.
posted on Jul 2, 2004 - View this thread

Underexposed displays an exhaustive list of little-known rock bands seen live by the proprietor. With photos and a near-functional guestbook. UK-centric.
posted on Jun 15, 2004 - View this thread

Nick Hornby discusses pop music in this NY Times essay: "Maybe this split is inevitable in any medium where there is real money to be made: it has certainly happened in film, for example, and even literature was a form of pop culture, once upon a time. It takes big business a couple of decades to work out how best to exploit a cultural form; once that has happened, 'that high-low fork in the road' is unavoidable, and the middle way begins to look impossibly daunting. It now requires more bravery than one would ever have thought necessary to try and march straight on, to choose neither the high road nor the low. Who has the nerve to pick up where Dickens or John Ford left off? In other words, who wants to make art that is committed and authentic and intelligent, but that sets out to include, rather than exclude? To do so would run the risk of seeming not only sincere and uncool - a stranger to all notions of postmodernism - but arrogant and vaultingly ambitious as well."
posted on May 26, 2004 - View this thread

Weightless Animals: soundtrack to space.
posted on May 6, 2004 - View this thread

9 beet stretch is the act of using digital tools to slow down Beethoven's 9th symphony to the point where the piece takes 24 hours to complete. Next week, a 9 beet stretch will be taking place in San Francisco, at 964 Natoma, from Friday April 23rd to Saturday April 24. Sleepover!
posted on Apr 15, 2004 - View this thread

One hundred established graphic and fine artists were approached to create the definitive album cover of their favorite recording artist. Each chose an iconic musical subject from the 1940s to the present and from the genres of rock, blues, jazz, country and soul music. The result is an original and highly creative collection of contemporary art. The Greatest Album Covers That Never Were.
posted on Nov 16, 2003 - View this thread

The Knockoff Project. Album cover homages and rip-offs.
posted on Oct 10, 2003 - View this thread

Madonna's being sued for stealing images from Guy Boudin's photography and using them in her Hollywood video. Here are side by sides. When does imitation/homage become theft? And who gets to decide? Should she have been sued for using this image in her vogue video?
posted on Sep 30, 2003 - View this thread

Mitsi Kato's fifth-grade class at Roosevelt Elementary in San Leandro listened to Radiohead and drew pictures of what the music suggested to them.
posted on Sep 19, 2003 - View this thread

Wesley Willis: Rock and roll star, artist, poet, movie star and friend to all he met passed away last night from Leukemia at the age of 40. The six foot five, 320 pound Chicago area musician who cut his teeth on the streets selling city landscape drawings and playing music on his tiny Casio keyboard was infamous for his raw insightful songs and ability to draw his audiences into a schizophrenic's take on reality.
posted on Aug 22, 2003 - View this thread

Excellent gallery of early 20th century sheet music folios, including some very attractive samples, as well as some somewhat outdated images. via memepool
posted on Aug 19, 2003 - View this thread

The Dance of Death. Die Totentanz: A German-language site spotlighting, for example, the dance of death in literature, graphic art, music and film. For those, like me, whose German is not so good, this page offers an English-language history of the phenomenon, and the Catholic Encyclopedia has an article too. See also Holbein's Dance-of-Death; Lübeck's Dance-of-Death; and umm, this.
posted on Jul 3, 2003 - View this thread

Spent my lunch hour today in the company of Tate Liverpool and more particularly the Janet Cardiff installation Forty Part Motet: "Using (a) piece of secular music as a starting point and working with four male voices (bass, baritone, alto and tenor) and child sopranos, Cardiff has replaced each voice with an audio speaker. The speakers are set at an average head height and spaced in such a way that viewers can listen to different voices and experience different combinations and harmonies as they progress through the work." It's an example of art as experience, the viewer (or in this case listener's) perception of the work as important as the thing itself. [more]
posted on Jun 25, 2003 - View this thread

Maggot art! Ah, maggots - some folk find them gross (warning, gross), some find them tasty, some think they're pretty bad-ass, and name their hardcore band or rugby team after them. But truly, their greatest talent must be as artists.
posted on Apr 12, 2003 - View this thread

Nufonia Must Fall is a possibly unique silent film, shot in paperback with a soundtrack for piano and turntable instruments. For any web-enabled numerologists reading, it also has an interesting URL. Check out the flash intro ...
posted on Apr 4, 2003 - View this thread

Songfight is a site where users compose songs based weekly titles. Then the public votes and a winner is decided. While necessarily indie, there is a wide variety of styles present and many great songs (mp3 links) have come out of this site. (Check the archives).
posted on Mar 28, 2003 - View this thread

gigposters -- a collection of posters created by artists and musicians to advertise their shows and events.
posted on Mar 27, 2003 - View this thread

"At the Institute of Militronics and Advanced Time Interventionality we have been committed to time travel based research since 2005." Sure, it's probably just a poker-faced art project by the electronic Writing Research ensemble, but isn't it nicer to think of it as the life's work of the late Rosalind Brodsky (1970-2058), artist, musician, and Martian real estate agent?
posted on Feb 14, 2003 - View this thread

Gigposters.com is a huge gallery of band gig posters, most lovingly silkscreened by hand. It has a good collection of favorites like Art Chantry and Pearl Jam, but also recent upstarts Aesthetic Apparatus. My favorites are on the other end of the musical spectrum, as I have several of the great country posters of Hatch Show Print. What happens when these posters are left up long after the gig? Why, they only become more charming with age.
posted on Nov 20, 2002 - View this thread

The Smithsonian offers an online sampling of its Collection of Aeronautic Sheet Music. From the introduction: "...widespread fascination with flight has inspired an enormous output of historical drawings, paintings, advertisements and illustrations for publications. Some of the most colorful illustrations are those which adorn sheet music. In the Bella Landauer collection, you can find illustrations that range from the bizarre to the commonplace, from the humorous to the mundane. But most are colorful and interesting."
The collection is divided into categories such as "Ballooning", "Biplanes", and "Flying Machines". I love this one from 1914, called "A Hundred Years From Now".
posted on Nov 12, 2002 - View this thread

Legato and Avant La Nuit are two exquisite interactive pieces by Nicolas Clauss, a "painter who stopped 'traditional painting' to use multimedia and the internet as a canvas", working from his Flying Puppet studio in Paris. [ Requires Shockwave. Use your mouse.]
posted on Oct 16, 2002 - View this thread

High Art. Rick Griffin's famous flying eyeball poster is considered by many to be the single finest example of San Francisco psychedelic poster art. The image comes from this fabulous motherlode of eye candy that is Paul Olsen's Fillmore and Avalon poster collection. It is the largest and most complete collection of its sort. He would like to sell it as a whole--The Whitney Museum wants to buy it but can't afford it. That should tell you something. Come step behind the Indian bedspread curtain and smell the incense.
posted on Oct 10, 2002 - View this thread

The Struggle Continues!. Young Hae-Chang's flash classics include Samsung, the frenzied Royal Crown Super Salon, the languid Jongno, and two amusing masterpieces: Samsung Means To Come, and Hallf Breed Apache. More at her site.
posted on Aug 17, 2002 - View this thread

The bride stripped bare by her bachelors, even is usually referred to as The Large Glass but whatever the name, what is it? Also, did Marcel Duchamp hide the stitches in plain site? For that matter, when did he find the time to make music? Would hearing him in his own words help us make sense of him? What do his Francophone fans think? Does it require a lifetime of devotion to get a handle on his work? How about dragging his readymades into the lab and putting them under the microscope? If not answers then more questions can surely be found in the Duchamp world community or perhaps on its bulletin board. But, really, I suppose it doesn't matter how you encounter Duchamp just so long as you do.
posted on Aug 16, 2002 - View this thread

Generative Art The musician Jem Finer (formerly of The Pogues) has created a musical composition, The LongPlayer, that will play, without repetition, for a thousand years (made with SuperCollider). It is currently playing live at a London lighthouse. The Dream House is another example of a generative art piece, in this case one that was set to run for eight years. These are both examples of Generative Art, Art generated by rules. The GA community is an active one. Also, see Virangelic - a random composition generator. Art generated by Artifical Life swarms. NewZoid - A false News Headline generator. And, N-Gen - computer generated Graphic Design.
posted on Jul 27, 2002 - View this thread

When all of the good vinyl albums have been bought from the cardboard box at the local church bazaar, Nick DiFonzio buys the rest and scans the jackets. The result? Bizarre Record Covers. And because beauty, or the apparent lack thereof, is not only jacket deep, check out this trippy collection of 45 rpm labels from No Relevance, and this detailed record label discography, where you can see how record companies from the 1950s thru the 1990s kept trying to update and redefine their image by redesigning their labels.
posted on Jun 23, 2002 - View this thread

mysterio sympatico is the latest collaboration between jazz guitarist bill frisell and cartoonist jim woodring, who designed a few covers for frisell's records. in honor of flash friday, whimgrinder is online for your amusement (though sadly without frisell's score). what are some animation/music combos you'd like to see?
posted on Jun 13, 2002 - View this thread

Hey guys, want to play with some manly paper dolls...er, I mean manly paper action figures? You do? Rev up your printers and sharpen your scissors, then. You can download and play with your very own Elvis or Ziggy Stardust, or maybe Billy Ray Cyrus, The Dead Milkmen's PunkRockEr, Bob Dylan, Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio, Oliver from Green Acres, Professor Henry Higgins, Bedknobs and Broomsticks' Mr. Brown, the fetching dual poses of Mr. Humphries from "Are You Being Served?", Brave Colonists From Mars, Trekkies, Luke Skywalker and his tons of cool duds, Dylan Hunt from Andromeda, Tom Sawyer, Hercule Poirot, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Neil Gaiman's Morpheus, Monet's Young John, or Diego Rivera. (more inside >>>)
posted on Mar 25, 2002 - View this thread

50 Best Album Covers. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that the covers chosen have less to do with artistic or photographic merit than the "statement" that Rolling Stone believes they show. And it might be interesting to see how they measure up to the 100 Best Album Covers.
posted on Feb 14, 2002 - View this thread

American Triumphant and Can't Cry Hard Enough are nice photo montages with music. There seems to be photo montage fever. Post'em if ya got'em.
posted on Oct 3, 2001 - View this thread

O Superman I went to the Laurie Anderson show last night in Toronto. I seriously didn't want to and was praying for a cancelled show. I ended up enjoying it fully. Art really can heal. She began the show by dedicating the music to "everyone who died Tuesday, freedom and sanity." Strangely, many of her songs make reference to airplanes and fire. Spookiest moment of the night: during her signature song "O Superman," the lines "Here come the planes. They're American planes, made by Americans." Read the lyrics - the song is loaded with eerie references.
posted on Sep 14, 2001 - View this thread

When LPs Roamed The Earth: classic album covers for records you have almost certainly never heard of.
posted on Aug 1, 2001 - View this thread

Positive, by Ian Stephens. Not, perhaps, in the tradition of Day Without Art. But... Ian Stephens was a poet, musician, and performer from my neighbourhood in Montreal who died in 1996.
posted on Dec 1, 2000 - View this thread