Noise Throng Double-Feature?

I spent the entirety of President's Day (yesterday) updating long-time (entering tenth year) pet-project Noise Throng. That's not really the point of this post, but there are new archival recordings available there for interested parties.

Today two DVDs, both ordered while psyching myself up for said updates, arrived. I just realized that they essentially define the envelop of the Noise Throng catalog - from sampling/unapologetic copyright infringement to sheer, psychedelic, endurance-test noise. I also realized they'd make a terrific double-feature: People Who Do Noise followed by Copyright Criminals. Here are their respective trailers.

People Who Do Noise


Copyright Criminals


Enjoy.

Science Is Interesting

Get more Richard Dawkins here.

In B-Flat Two-Point-Oh

Check out in Bb 2.0. It's the result of a collaborative video/music (okay, multimedia) mixing project. It goes at least one step further than Kutiman's "Thru You" by putting the controls at your fingertips.

Spotted via Create Digital Music.

(Our) Life Inc.

Life Inc. The Movie from Douglas Rushkoff on Vimeo.

It is with some regret that I admit, I've had a galley copy of Douglas Rushkoff's new book Life Inc.: How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take It Back which I have been unable to devote enough attention. Between medical issues and my wedding, I just haven't had the time to sit and read much. Hopefully I can squeeze out a review before the book hits store shelves in just under two weeks (Sorry, Douglas, I really appreciate the advance copy and hope this doesn't negate my chances for advances of future publications). Everyone can read Chapter One here courtesy of BoingBoing, where Rushkoff has been guest blogger this week.

For the time being, I highly recommend Life Inc The Movie (above), which sets up the book's premise. In light of the current economic woes worldwide, I think it is crucial to examine the path that got us here: corporatism. You may be surprised to learn how it all began, and even more surprised to discover how much corporatism has become ingrained in the way we behave. Pre-order Life Inc. on Amazon.

UPDATE:
Great continuation of the conversation, with more excerpts from the book, here at BoingBoing: Everything's Open Source but Money.

Panic Or Something!

This one's a compare and contrast, my dear readers.

The article and essay below feel, to me, like they're making a lot of the same considerations. [Am I being too hasty, or is the impending "panic" essentially just a bad reaction to the realization that we've behaved like morons for far too long? Or is it a mixture of both?]

T.R.O.Y. claims, "I think a key ingredient is a sense of practical hope, a real feeling based in experience that what one is doing matters." I suspect Sterling might agree, since his writing seems to come from a similar sense of hope based on experience and "what matters". Read the pieces below and decide for yourself.

Bruce Sterling - "2009 Will Be A Year Of Panic"
[article]

-- vs --

T.R.O.Y. - "The Challenge Of Utopia"
[interview w/ link to .rtf]

Thoughts? (Post a comment.)

Le Wrath di Kahn

The latest episode of Robot Chicken came up with (what IMHO is) perhaps the finest tribute to Ricardo Montalbán. It brought tears to my eyes. So brilliant.

I suspect Robot Chicken saved their best segments for this single episode (past handful of episodes have been remarkably unfunny). In addition to Le Wrath di Kahn were Clash of the Titans, Speed Racer and Wizard of Oz parodies. All worth watching.

Are You Gonna Make a Best (Albums) of 2008 List?

I wasn't going to either.

But after a few recent feeble answers to that question like, "No, but if I did I'd put [Artist/Album] on there...", I ended up with a list anyway. Maybe it's my Most Referred releases, Most Shared, or simply Most Memorable of 2008. Perhaps it's Anything, Off The Top Of My Head, Released In 2008 That Had A (Somewhat) Formative Effect On Me. In no particular order. Enjoy.


Portishead - Third
While I would have bought it anyway out of long-time fandom, I really this one. I also like that they successfully tried to shake their trip-hop fan base loose by going prog. [link]


Ladytron - Velocifero
I was never all the way into Ladytron until this album. Now I am. Big sound, catchy tunes, tight production and, as Maria says, "they always have the best hair." [link]


The Duke Spirit - Neptune
This band's singer turned up on the last UNKLE album, and this album had the same producer (Chris Goss). But it's probably her voice that quickly made this standard listening around our house. [link]


Atlas Sound - Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel
There's an overabundance of chimey indie rock laced with whispery vocals, but this was one of those albums that changed the trajectory of my listening habits for weeks, if not months. [link]


School Of Seven Bells - Alpinisms
Turns out the tune on Prefuse 73's last album is also on this, and it is but one of many intricately woven tunes here. Maybe you should just give them a listen. [link] [bonus]


Christian Prommer's Drumlesson - Drum Lesson Vol 1
One of the Truby Trio busts out on his own with one of the most creative albums of the year. Check out what this guy did to Kraftwerk and Daft Punk songs. Amazing. [link]


Double Dee & Steinski - Who Owns Culture? (Live)
The founding fathers of mash-ups, bastard pop, blends (whatever you call them), Steinski and Double Dee open for DJ Shadow and Cut Chemist's The Hard Sell (made even better by the Ben Stokes visuals). [link]


Instigator - Reduced Materials
Full disclosure: shameless self-promotion. However, strictly speaking, this is the music I listened to most in 2008. It's my final release as "Instigator", much as this is my final post of 2008. Cheers! [link]

Skinny Puppy's American Memory

Favorite author / occasional email pal Douglas Rushkoff, while guest-blogging at BoingBoing, posts today about American Memory - which features the music of Skinny Puppy (well, Ogre and Mark Walk as OHGR).

Rushkoff may perform with the group when this tour stops in NYC. For those of you around these parts, watch for The 2008 OHGR DTour (supporting Ogre's new solo effort, Devils In My Details) at Double Door on Sunday, 30 November [tix].

I wish it was at a better venue, and not on a Sunday night, but might have to go check it out anyway. (Hopefully the club isn't the same death-trap it was in August when it flooded twice during the Melvins show.)

It Takes A Nation Of Monkeys...

Last night, Analog Monkey Video tipped me off to some freshly released work of theirs. Particularly this three-part piece (1, 2, 3) on Public Enemy while in town for an appearance at the Chicago Cultural Center and another at Pitchfork Music Festival last month. E and I took photos of the Cultural Center event, but I haven't posted pics yet. Mine don't compete with the videos, frankly. Seeing PE talk about how they made their music -- music I have listened to regularly since it first came out -- was inspiring. After E shared with me his extra ticket to the group's performance at Pitchfork Fest, I went home and stayed up for hours tweaking my own music, inspired to see "live" the music that taught me about sampling some twenty years ago.

And cheers for Analog Monkey Video. They've been at this a while and it looks like it's starting to pay off. As E points out, you can spot the crew in the mirror in the third installment of the also-recently-released Daytripping with Brandon Cox series (also on P4K.tv).

[I like Pitchfork so much better when they're not over-writing music reviews.]

Find Some Time

This Last month's posts were almost entirely about music. Time to switch it up a bit, and what better way to do that than with a few of my favorite sites for daily "finds". Today we'll cover four sites, each focused on a different realm of "found" content. You'll want to have a few minutes to get the full effect of each.

Sorry I Missed Your Party
This blog trolls Flickr for photos tagged "party" and posts some of the more provocative ones. Occasionally there's video, but it's usually a Flickr photo - which often links to an entire set of party photos that probably shouldn't have been made public. I recommend checking this site daily, as it never disappoints.

Photoshop Disasters
There are a few sites like this out there, but this one posts the most frequently and, usually, has just the right balance of snarky and savvy. If this site proves anything, it's that having a copy of PhotoShop does not make you an art director, or even teach you anything about composition. You'll learn to spot the marks of an amateur yourself after just a few pages of this site.

The Fail Blog
Evidence of failure is what this blog is all about. The nature of the "fail" varies, and sometimes it's a little hit or miss. But, in the same spirit of Photoshop Disasters and Sorry I Missed Your Party, this blog rarely fails to entertain with frequent updates that help you laugh at others' misfortune (usually the result of their own ineptitude).

FFFFOUND!
Considerably less hilarity than the previous links, but more about inspiring graphic design and photography which the sites' contributors find around the Internet (a lot from the Behance network, as it turns out). It's a bit like a visual tappas menu, with a slew of new tastes for your eyes to sample each day. Maybe that was a bad analogy, but take a gander anyway.

Of course, these and many others are always here for your perusal. Just check the link roll to the right for new additions each time you visit.

Home Studio Interview with Portishead's Adrian Utley

Music Thing points us to Sonic State's three-part interview with Portishead's Adrian Utley. With his daughter in his lap, Utley discusses the making of Third from the comfort of his home studio. Plenty of gear porn and shop talk for you, my fellow music geeks.

Part 1:


Part 2:


Part 3:


Previously on PYLB: Third, Finally.

Google & Radiohead Build House Of Cards

Here's a nice companion to my last post: Radiohead's new video for "House Of Cards". No cameras were used in the making of it. Google Code has a page dedicated to it, where you can download said code and mess with it yourself, and check out the making-of footage. That's pretty cool, and very "open-source" of them.

Here's the video.



Here's the making-of.



It's worth noting that this is not just a Radiohead promotion. This is a significant marketing move for Google, tying a major international rock band to a variety Google properties like YouTube, iGoogle, Gadget Ads and Google Code in one succinct effort. Smart stuff, even if the song's lyrics seem to contradict the actions of the Google empire.

Meeting The Walrus

I've traditionally stayed away from most things having to do with The Beatles -- partially because I always thought they were a bit too corny too often, and partially because I felt they already had more fans than they needed -- but this is one of the few exceptions: I Met The Walrus. The video's description does it more justice that I would do in paraphrasing...

In 1969, a 14-year-old Beatle fanatic named Jerry Levitan, armed with a reel-to-reel tape deck, snuck into John Lennon's hotel room in Toronto and convinced John to do an interview about peace. 38 years later, Jerry has produced a film about it.

I can't imagine what it's like for Jerry Levitan to see this interview animated and go on to an Oscar nomination for best short. The animation is brilliant, but I'm sure the subject matter has a little to do with the over-flow of attention as well.

"On To Something" Coming Soon

Music Thing links to a trailer for the new Raymond Scott documentary On To Something, produced by Scott's only son, Academy Award winning cameraman and editor Stan Warnow.


Documentary Trailer for RAYMOND SCOTT: ON TO SOMETHING from Stan Warnow on Vimeo.

If you're not familiar with the innovative genius that is Raymond Scott, odds are you'll recognize his music - courtesy of one cartoon or another. If you've had the pleasure / displeasure of living with me in the last ten years or so, you know that the only way I can watch professional sports for any duration is with the broadcast's sound turned down and Reckless Nights & Turkish Delights playing loudly instead. (Try it; it's especially great with basketball.)

See also:
Manhattan Research - Book / 2-CD set detailing Scott's early, hand-made electronic instruments - which he often used in commercial work. This collection includes a collaboration with pre-Muppets Jim Henson and notes about the room-sized computer Scott used to essentially generate a click track.

Soothing Sounds For Baby - a three-part series of tone-poems designed to lull your little ones to relaxation, using instruments Scott created himself (in the lab featured in Manhattan Research, no less). Minimal, ambient music with a pop sensibility, years before Brian Eno or Kraftwerk.

Tuning In This Week

It's been an interesting week for music. Well, for the kind I pay attention to...



My Bloody Valentine played a warm-up show at a small London venue last week. Wired's Listening Post points to MP3's of the show (sounds like they were recorded in the room, not off the board). This tease of what's to come around Chicago in September might not be enough to make us forget that the much-anticipated MBV re-issues are delayed (again) because Kevin Shields is allegedly still writing the liner notes. Maybe he should have started those sooner.... like, in 1991?




Another bit of mixed disappointment came from Illegal Art this week: the new Girl Talk album. See, I paid for this album months ago as part of a four-release deal the label offered (I did it mainly to secure a copy of the Steinski retrospective). Well, the Girl Talk album, Feed The Animals, was delayed. Then released for free earlier this week. Hmpf! So in six weeks when the CD arrives (a schedule that still baffles me), I'll be long-since tired of an album that I legitimately downloaded yesterday. Girl Talk told Pitchfork that he pushed the release (wait, it was delayed... how can he call this a push to release it early? WTF?) because of the timely samples he's using, admitting that they'll be stale by the time the CD is pressed. Well, why bother pressing a CD at all, dude? And why ask me to pay for it several months before you're going to just give it away? You could have refunded me the purchase price, given me store credit at the label store, and made a better fan of me. Instead, I feel a bit swindled. I suppose I asked for it, but it's probably the last time I bother to buy Girl Talk's collage of what amounts to random preview clips of everyone else's songs in no apparent order. First listen: it's cute. Second listen: I think I could have done this better myself.




Things got better this morning when I was greeted with an email from Amon Tobin regarding his new online store. In addition to an official release of his soundtrack for Taxidermia, there is a slew of freebie content - live mixes and DJ sets mostly. There's also a feature called This Month's Joint, which is a new track available for purchase (MP3 or WAV) every month. This will help me keep my fix of Tobin until his Two Fingers collaboration is released. Nice. This guy is one of my favorite recording artists, and has been a big inspiration on my own recording endeavors.




Oh, yeah, there are also rumors flying about a leak of eight tracks off the much-fabled Guns-N-Roses album Chinese Democracy. If you're into that kind of thing.

Venture Brothers Season Three is On

Yes. This is the clip reel shown recently at some Comic-Con or another, with scenes from the first three episodes. Last night was the premiere of episode one, Shadowman 9: In The Cradle of Destiny, which examines the origins of The Monarch and Dr. Girlfriend (Maria and I call dibs on these characters for Halloween costumes, if she can get her voice low enough). Watch the full episode here.



This season, each episode has its own T-shirt, thanks to the Amazing Shirt Of The Week Club. I've already ordered my Guild Of Calamitous Intent shirt, but am not about to subscribe for a dozen $22 T-shirts. I'll just check back every week for the good ones.

Go Team Venture.

June the first feels so far away.

Lately I've been rounding out my collection of my favorite J. G. Thirlwell side-projects, namely Manorexia and Steroid Maximus (thanks in part to foetus.org's digital shoppe). Listening to Steroid Maximus often turns my thoughts toward a certain cartoon I'm sure some of you know... Particularly when I hear Fighteous on Quilombo -- a track that was re-worked into the Venture Brothers opening theme. Knowing that Thirlwell is hard at work on next season's soundtrack only intensifies my craving for new Venture Brothers episodes.

Throwing gas on the fire, I read the LiveJournal lamentations of show creator Jackson Publick. Apparently, Cartoon Network aired very rough cuts of a new episode on April Fool's Day. To his dismay. Publick also reports that Kid Robot has created action figures of Dr. Girlfriend and The Monarch, to be sold in blind boxes with a variety of other Adult Swim characters. There was one other nugget of news...

Venture Brothers Season 3 June 1

With or without Stephen Colbert. In high-definition. Action figures drop April 17.
Go. Team. Venture.

Untooned

Pixeloo does an awesome job of untooning animated characters. Here's his rendition of Homer Simpson, and his follow-up post on the source material used to make it. Click the image to view larger.

[via BoingBoing]

Profanation

Praxis is one of those super-groups with an evolving cast of heavily decorated recording artists. The kind that manages to continually defy genre boundaries with extreme prejudice. Praxis had a fairly significant influence on me (mostly because of Transmutation, Sacrifist and their contributing artists), which is why I'm typing this post right now...



I'm listening to Praxis' new album, Profanation, currently available as a Japanese import (or a .zip file here). It's Bill Laswell with the likes of Bernie Worrell, Mike Patton, Iggy Pop, Serj Tankian, Brain, Rammellzee, Otomo Yoshihide, Killah Priest, and of course Buckethead. It's interesting to hear what happens when musicians from such varied backgrounds hook up with a prolific guy like Laswell. Interesting to me, anyway. Take a listen and decide for yourself.

R.I.P. Sir Arthur C. Clarke

His influence has had an effect on all of us in one way or another, whether we realize it or not. So rather than tip your proverbial forty, just drop a little science today for the recently departed Arthur C. Clarke.

Below is a clip of Clarke's latest reflections, recorded on his 90th birthday.