Recently in Musical Category

Okay, so, firstly, go and read this now. I posted it on Facebook a month or so back and it did the rounds on digg so you might have seen it already, or you might have opened, seen how insanely long it was, and not bothered. That would have been a mistake. Seriously, make yourself a cup of tea, print it out if you like, but read it before continuing.

I just read it for the third time and it's just as full of energy as it was on the first read. It's a stunning, rambling tirade on the state of the music industry and it's absolutely the best thing I've read on a very complex, difficult matter with no clear resolution in sight. And you can even feel the conflict even in the author- he doesn't want a world where artists don't get paid for their music, but recognizes that it's inevitable. This is important. I watched a debate between Charles Firth and Cory Doctorow at the Melbourne Writer's Festival earlier this year, and the most important point to come out of it is that it doesn't matter if you agree with file-sharing or piracy or DRM. It's going to happen. CDs have been replaced by mp3s, and the morality or even legality of it really doesn't matter at this stage. It's done. You can get indignant about it, which doesn't solve anything, or you can recognize the new reality and get to work on making that into a business model. Either way, the age of the rock star bathing in champagne is over, and that is not necessarily a bad thing.

Several things have happened since this article was written that further bolster its essential point. If you think his characterization of the clueless music exec was a bit cliche, check out this one-part jaw-dropping two-parts hilarious interview with the CEO of Universal Music Group, the most powerful music licenser in the world. For an industry that goes on about the fans feeling entitled to free music, he sure seems entitled about charging the fuck out of you. Here's an excellent parody of the interview that, like all great satire, is barely a parody at all, just a retelling. And that's the problem. The labels are clueless money machines. They are rackets, and we're the patsies. Or at least, we were. And you know, you may well say, a lot of the bands I like, my favourite bands, bands that have really changed my life, Radiohead and U2 and Muse and NIN, I would never have heard of them if they hadn't been popularized by the labels. This is true. But we really don't need them anymore. The fragmentation of popular culture means that we can get in direct communication with music we like, not just take what is shoved down our throats.

Yes, this means a certain kind of artist can no longer exist- but it creates the potential for whole tiers of artists who have never had any exposure to get some. The last three new artists I've seen were all local, Melbourne bands who I saw live. I've bought music from all of them. None of them are rich, but they are doing what they love. I know certain people, perhaps the majority of artists, are only in a band because of the promise, the hope, that they might one day get signed and become rich. Yes, the odds of that happening are only slightly better than winning the lottery, but still, take that hope away, and maybe they'll stop trying. Well, yes, some will. Others can't stop. They just love making music and will do it regardless of how it rewards them financially- those are the best musicians. And there's still a fuckload of money in the music industry- it's just getting distributed more evenly, and that is pissing the labels off.

Three albums have been released recently that have impacted on this issue and got me thinking about it more. They are:

In Rainbows
Niggy Tardust
Year Zero

...and I'll be talking about each of these over the next three days.

These are my new headphones, I got them about two weeks ago and have been enjoying them a lot. You may think it odd that I'd mention my headphones so specifically, I mean, headphones is headphones, right? Well, these are a bit different to any headphones I've had before. You may have already encountered the whole 'in-ear' headphones thing before- if so, this post will be no great news to you, but let me tell you, if you haven't encountered the whole in-ear headphones thing before, they actually are quite different.

So, back in the 80's, headphones sat completely on top of your head, didn't really do much other than sit over your ears, right? Then you got the ear-bud ones, the sort that come with your iPod, and these kind of sit, or kind of hang really, in your ear canal. Well, these in-ear ones go a step further- the little rubber seals actually slot right into your ear canal, so that they cover them up completely, make a seal rather than sitting on top. This is quite different from the earbuds I had before, for the following reasons:

1. They block out pretty much all other noise. They're not just headphones, they're earplugs. When I have them on, even if I am not listening to anything, I can't hear someone who is standing in front of me and talking. This is quite useful when dealing with ambient noise- with my last earphones (the iPod ones) I was always having to turn the volume up and down, depending on what environment I was in- on the train, volume goes up. Get off the train, volume goes down. Not exactly a chore, but because I was generally in motion when moving from one environment to the other, often in crowded areas, it helps not to have to do this.

2. Possibly as a result of the above, the fidelity of the music is definitely the highest I've ever had on earphones. Earphone music frequently loses the lower frequencies as they try to compete with the other noises around you, which is why earphones often sound 'tinny', or higher registered. These don't- you hear the whole song as it was meant to be heard, not just part of it. This makes a pretty profound difference, especially when listening to sonically dense music like Radiohead or Nine Inch Nails (which is pretty much all I've been listening to lately- more on this later in the week)

Now, so far this all sounds pretty good. But there are a couple of downsides: For starters, it really does feel invasive having something come right into your ear. It's not just going into your ear, it kind of goes down your ear, as well. If you're the sort that is touchy about having stuff in your ears, you will not enjoy them. Having them go so far down is disconcerting because you worry about what they might be doing to your ear drums- they're snuggled up right close. If earphones do damage to your hearing, and I hear that they do, then these are the uber-earphones in more ways than one.

You also feel kind of spacey wearing them. We all use subtle audio cues to place ourselves in our surroundings and keep track of what is going on around us, and most of us are familiar with the feeling of being a little bit displaced, or at least in a different mental space, when you have earphones on and are walking around. These amplify that feeling because now you hear no other noise- it's like your ears are in a completely different place to your body. I often walk the streets at lunchtime with my headphones on and I feel oddly disconnected from the world.

And finally, when I said they blocked out all other noise, I neglected to mention the fact that this does not include noise that directly touches the rubber wires that connect the buds to the iPod. If you touch these with your fingers, you hear a big 'wub' through the ear buds. If the wind blows, you hear the noise of the air on the wires through the ear buds, quite loudly. No joke- if you hold the wires to your chest, it acts as a rudimentary stethoscope. This can be quite annoying in the wrong conditions.

So, what's the verdict? Well, I was on the fence until yesterday. Did the improved audio quality match up against the invasive feeling? Was hearing no other noise a good thing or a bad thing? Well, yesterday I found my headphones in my washing machine, along with the jeans I'd clearly left them in. They'd had a 30-minute rinse with a 90-minute drying cycle. And they still work perfectly.

Wow.

This is kindo neat: a playlist generator that lets people stream music right from your site. Great if you like the idea of podcasting but don't actually want to make a podcast- just choose your tracks (it seems to have, well, everything, and if they don't have it, you can submit it), and people can browse/skip through them at their leisure. Not something I will use very much myself, but I'd love to see it on other people's sites. Here's a tester so you can see what I'm talking about:

Now here's the interesting thing about this- I don't own any of the tracks on this list. They're all being streamed from various sites. How cool is that? It's basically free music, insofar as I can tell, ready for sharing. Nice one. Here's a meme for ya: Go make a playlist and post it. Matt, Nat, Ian, you're all tagged, bitches.

*UPDATE* Could everyone who watches the video please give it a star rating on YouTube so we can know in cold hard stars just how good it is. Cheers.

A wee while ago, some friends and I entered a music video competition with a fairly interesting pedigree. The competition was put forth by a band called Loka, and they described their songs as 'music for films that haven't been made yet'. Their idea for their next album was to supplement it with a DVD which had a different music video for each song, so that you could 'watch' the entire album as well as listen to it. The competition started with an ideas phase, and Chris and I had a really neat story breaking session where we bounced an idea around until it formed into a cool shape. At the time I was working on a short story about a man on a space station who was slowly coming to the realization that nobody about him was actually there, but Chris was sick of making sci-fi videos, so we bought it down to earth and beat it about for a bit until it took the shape of the video that we have now (which is very, very different from the story I ended up writing). The initial idea outline was accepted into the first stage, but so were two other ideas for each song, so we had to make the vid to beat out those two competitors to make it into the final seven.

After storyboarding (also loads of fun), it left my domain of ideas and went to the true artists, Rob and Chris and Jayne, who I'm constantly in awe of because they are so creative and talented and inspiring. They took background photos and perfected the 'triangulization' effect you see in the vid (although to be honest the effect is lost somewhat in the YouTube encoding). We then spent a couple of really fun nights against a bluescreen filming the footage to layer over the photography, and this is a big thank you to all my friends who showed up and were extras in the vid- you were all great. Then Rob and Chris and Jayne all worked ludicrous hours to get the footage and effects matched and edited before the deadline, which was an extremely tight schedule.

We made it into the final seven (which means we make it to the DVD!) and were invited to Colchester a few weekends back to attend the premiere of the videos and the announcement of the winner. We all agreed that, from the seven videos shown, we were somewhere about the middle, and that there were videos that deserved to win far more than ours. The video that did win, however, was a piece of pretentious nonsense that was bereft of humour or spirit, as was its creator, who said as part of his acceptance speech (I kid you not): "I'd like to thank my brain." However I don't think we minded losing and a bottle of Bailey's on the train ride home cheered us no end.

Anyway, here is the final vid, take it for all in all, it's something I was proud to be a part of, and proud of the friends who came and helped us out on it.

I'm just about to post another exciting edition of the destruct\hour (calm down, please, you're embarrassing yourself), but I thought it might be a good time to recommend some of the other podcasts I listen to.

Pretty much the only podcast that comes close to being like the destruct\hour is the Muzak for Cybernetics Mixtape, which is run by a couple of incredibly dry Canucks who have an amazing range of new music to play. How these guys find the time to listent ot so much new music is beyond me, I listen to music almost continuously and it still takes me weeks to digest a new album. The voicebreaks are insanely droll, the boredom almost becomes amusing.

Close second is the BuRBS podcast, which is a mixtape of British independent bands, put together by Barry Burbs, who seems to have been collecting obscure British music for decades. He's obviously very passionate about British music, but also keeps his voicebreaks to a minimum.

I'd also highly recommend Claire Sturgess' podcast, which isn't updated often but it always a quality listen when it is.

If you're looking for a non-music show, Nobody Likes Onions is racist, sexist, homophobic, right-wing, fat...and hilarious! Takes a few listens to get into but it has had me gripping my stomach in laughter on many occasions.

And finally, much job is to be found in Mark Kermode's weekly film reviews. Here's a guy who gets really mad at bad films. His review of Little Man this week had me laighing out loud.

That should tide you over until the next show!

d

I like this:
I hate those promotions that like, make you jump through hoops to have a chance at winning something. In fact I hate any kind of chance in my promotions. I'd say the best promotion was that one where you won another bottle of coke by looking under the bottle cap. That ruled. I think I won like 12 cokes off of $1 when that thing was playing.

But this is a neat idea. I mean, I get a coke, I get a free song. Simple. This will make my buy more coke. Of course it will. I get a coke for 79p, and I get a 79p song. A song a day. What could be nicer? A maximum of five songs per person, apparently, but still a neat idea. If I max out my song limit I will start posting my additional codes here.

Ugh- I just went to the iTunes music store to buy my track and its auto-recommendation system was way off-base. I bought a bunch of tracks recently, because I was DJing at a friends' wedding reception, and she wanted some music that wouldn't ordinarily buy, so I downloaded some songs, like, 80's music, really. Now iTunes thinks I am an 80s-freak and keeps recommending me the best of George Michael.

Anyway, my track for the day...any suggestions? I just trawled through the top 100, nothing very interesting there.

UPDATE! Ended up getting 'We Are Your Friends" by Justice vs Simian. Mainly because I liked the video, but it's pretty catchy, too.

This meme, which I encountered simultaneously on several different blogs, is just too magic-eight-ball-cute not to do. I should caveat that my iTunes at work only has a couple of albums on it, and they all happen to be different to my iTunes at home, oddly.

1. What do you think of me, Random Music Player?
Lighten Up, by The Beastie Boys

Uhm, okay.

2. Will I have a happy life?
Martha's Foolish Ginger, by Tori Amos

"We talked until the moon came up,
about how life without love isn?t worth very much."
True enough. A melancholy, reflective song about looking sadly backwards on the life you've led. Hmm. Not exactly what I wanted to hear, but probably a fair assessment, sadly.

3. What do my friends really think of me?
Get Ready, by Concorde Dawn

Hardly conclusive, since the song barely has lyrics. It does contain the line "Ain't no-one like me." which is something of a compliment. And "How many dudes you know flow like this?"
It's a very high-energy song, actually the song I always put on when I'm getting ready for a big night out and want to life my spirits- for some reason I always taste IRNBRU in my mouth when I hear it.
"So put your hands up, `cause I'm about to lift my game up."
That's my motto! Laugh. This is fun.

4. What does my S.O. think of me?
Jenny Was a Friend of Mine, by The Killers

"There ain't no motive for this crime." No, no connection here that I can see, particularly as I have no SO. I think Morrissey's "The woman of my dreams, she....she never came along. The woman of my dreams? Well, there never was one." would have been more appropriate. Dumb iTunes! Pick the right songs!

5. Do people secretly lust after me?
The Collector, by Nine Inch Nails

[specifically ignores the lyrics about being a plague and a swarm and jumps to:]
"And they'll make me stay...they won't let me leave.
There are so goddamn many of them it gets hard to breathe"
Yeah! That's right! I rule! Thanks, Trent! You are most wise, as I've always said.

6. How can I make myself happy?
Electioneering, by Radiohead

"When I go forwards you go backwards
and somewhere we will meet.
Ha! Ha! Ha!"
Wha? Oh Thom, your lyrics are so hard to parse. So just keep going as I'm going, then?

7. What should I do with my life?
Unintended, by Muse

"I?ll be there as soon as I can
But I?m busy mending broken pieces of the life I had before"
Oh, man. I'm in trouble. You just had to pick the most heart-achingly beautiful/sad song in existence for my direction. What are you saying, iTunes? What life did I have before? Make sense, my good sir!

8. Why must life be so full of pain?
All Alone, by Gorillaz

I'm not kidding! This is really what it came up with. Firstly, who's writing these questions? Life is hardly 'full' of pain. Secondly:
"Close your eyes and see,
(when there ain't no light)
all you'll ever be.
Come and save the night,
`cause I don't believe,
when the morning comes: it doesn't seem to say an awful lot to me."
True dat.

9. How can I maximize my pleasure during sex?
The Hardest Part, by Coldplay

"I could feel it go down. You left the sweetest taste in my mouth"
I swear I am not making this up.

10. Can you give me some advice?
Such a Twat, by The Streets

"I didn?t want to waste my youth in a girl?s house to the sound of spliffs,
And when she got in a mood with me in that text about that thing
I just switched off the phone when she started shouting,
Coming to a conclusion I couldn?t be bothered with anymore."
Er....all interpretations welcome.

11. What do you think happiness is?
Railway Xing by Grande Cobra

"When I was older well I wanted to be younger,
but now I'm younger well I feel like I'm older.
And I know that may sound confused
But I'm the one with a rich man's shoes Wah-ha!"
Happiness is....unattainable? I dunno.

12. Do you have any advice to give over the next few hours/days?
The Last Song, by the Foo Fighters

"You got to walk the walk, the walk, the walk
To make any ground"
Good advice. I'll get going. Thanks.

13. Will I die happy?
Your Latest Trick, by Dire Straights

"And we're standing outside of this wonderland,
looking so bereaved and so bereft.
Like a Bowery bum when he finally understands:
The bottle's empty and there's nothing left."
Great. Thanks. You've really cheered me up. Asstard.

This is Grande Cobra. If you've been listening to the show recently, you will have heard them and no doubt discovered how much they rock your balls off. You're probably itching to see them perform live. Feel that itch? It's time to scratch.

The Cobras are playing live this Saturday at your favourite pub and mine: The Spice of Life (6 Moor Street). Not only are they being supported by perfect prickly popsters Girlinky, they're also hosting legendary Hamiltron band the Dead Pan Rangers.

So, what I'm trying to say here is: You've got three massive, awesome, kick-your-ass-live bands playing right here in London, THIS SATURDAY. You should come! I'll buy drinks! It'll be like Uborka Fridays, but with ACTUAL drinks.

Right, see you there, then.

As many have confusingly noted, when Bono sings: "un, dos, tres, catorce!" at the opening of 'Vertigo', he's actually singing "one, two three, fourteen!" in Spanish. While some may simply chalk this up to Bono being drunk and/or crap at Spanish, U2 conspiracy theorists have interpreted it as an homage to Steve Lillywhite, the man who produced their first three albums Boy, October, and War and then returned for their fourteenth album How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, seen by many as a 'return' to their rock `n roll roots.

Oooh that Bono is a clever sod, isn't he?

As you know, some time ago Trent Reznor released the 'source files' for his latest single 'The Hand That Feeds', allowing fans to completely remix the song from the ground up. A rather impressive online community has sort of sprung up around this concept. Talk about clever ways to get your fans to engage with a song! The remix is actually a really interesting interpretation/interaction between author and reader that appears nowhere else that I can think of, except maybe directing a play that someone else wrote, but even that is a far cry. I find it quite fascinating as a concept and can't wait to get my teeth into remixing 'Only', when those source files are released.

Anyway, over the last month or so there has evolved a fan-run competition to determine which is the best mix out of the first 500 submitted. Most of the mixes are pretty pedestrian, so there was a lot of chaff cut away in the first few weeks, but after a month of much haranging and discussion and Big Brother-esque evictions from the rock-in-da-house, we've narrowed it down to the final 40 contendors, which we're all currently in the semi-finals of voting to determine the winner.

This is where I need your help. I've narrowed down my favourite three mixes from this round, but I can't decide which of them is the best. What I was mainly listening for were dramatic departures from the original mix. Just sticking a new beat on the same song does not a good remix make- especially as NIN are famous for their remixes which almost recreate the entire song.

So I need some thoughts from unbaised minds (it's tough to keep focused when you've listened to twenty mixes of the same song) to help me decide which of these three mixes is the one I should vote for. Each of them has a very different flavour to the others, which makes them difficult to compare side-by-side.

So give them a listen* and give me your thoughts. Heck, you can even go and vote for the winner.

Kid Mix - Fantastic synth-heavy electropop remix that vocodes Trent into a robot! Very danceable with serious a Kraftwerk overtone. Still maintains the structure of the original but with R2-D2 running the desk.

Orphan Mix - Really mellow, atmospheric mix with an Oriental feel that would not sound at all out of place on 'Still' or the quieter sections of 'The Fragile'. The only problem is that it never really peaks, it just flows, which is nice enough. Certainly about as far from the original song as you could get.

Red Room Mix - Insane "tear it down and completely remake from the ground up" mix that can definitely trace its influences to the insane Starfuckers remix at the end of 'Things Falling Apart'. Quite hardcore, the way NIN should be.

d

*If you don't have the ability to download/play tracks off the `net, as it happens I have the entire top 20 on a CD that can be played on any old CD-player. In the znaddanz.com tradition of giving away free shit, comment and I'll send it to you, complete with nifty packaging I made myself. It's like a whole new Nine Inch Nails remix album that no-one's ever heard.