Boing Boing » music

Police chief upset by 1988's "Fuck tha police"

Rob Beschizza — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 15:38:33 +0000

Straight Outta Cape Cod: "an incident involving Police Chief Jeff Jaran and a rap song about police brutality playing at a restaurant he was at on May 7. ... Jaran said he was not familiar with the song, but as he listened he became uncomfortable and offended." [via Gawker]

Metal from 12 year olds

Cory Doctorow — Sun, 16 Jun 2013 01:23:36 +0000

Unlocking the Truth is an an awesome heavy metal band made up of 12-year-old schoolkids who've been playing together since they were five. They totally, utterly rock.

Videos - Unlocking the Truth (Thanks, Lachlan!)

Atoms for Peace play a surprise intimate show in Los Angeles

Xeni Jardin — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 22:20:09 +0000

"This is the rehearsal, right?" Thom Yorke teased the audience last night inside Club Fais Do Do, renamed for the evening "Club Amok" for a surprise/secret Atoms For Peace performance. "You were the lucky ones who got tickets."

Amok is the title of the new Atoms For Peace album, released in February, and many inside the club got their tickets free from local record shops after buying the record.

I was one of the lucky ones who got in. And man, if this was only a rehearsal, those of you who catch them on their forthcoming world tour which kicks off in Paris on July 6 are fortunate souls indeed.

The performance swayed between trance-y, ethereal, hypnotic grooves and taut, muscular jams; afrobeat-inspired droning rhythm meets electroglitch meets merciless funk. An epiphany I had halfway through the set: "Flea" is an anagram for "Fela."

The show location was secret until late Friday afternoon, and was then revealed to be the 80something-year-old West Adams district building where jazz greats like John Coltrane once played in the 1960s.

The building's brick walls were covered in "Club Amok" flyers, featuring Stanley Donwood's artwork.

Radiohead's Thom Yorke is Atoms for Peace's frontman, and played guitar and piano; the band features Flea (Red Hot Chili Peppers) on bass, Radiohead superproducer Nigel Godrich on keyboards, Joey Waronker on drums (Elliott Smith, Beck, REM), and Brazilian percussionist Mauro Refosco (who often tours with RHCP) rocking a bunch of awesome instruments I can't identify (well, one was an electric berimbau).

It may be full of stars, but don't call Atoms For Peace a "supergroup"—or Yorke might "knock your fucking teeth out."

Writing about music is hard and it's a beautiful sunny Saturday afternoon at the beach in Los Angeles, so I'll link to music critics' work instead: LA Weekly, Rolling Stone, and the Los Angeles Times all had reviewers and photogs at the surprise gig last night. Here's a set list, at LA Weekly.

The final encore included one of my favorite Yorke compositions, "Rabbit in Your Headlights," from the late-1990s UNKLE compilation.

Ever seen the Jonathan Glazer video? And you know how certain songs become anthems for certain moments in your life, and take on new meaning? The track was on my "chemo" playlist during infusions, and I remember lying back in the La-Z-Boy from hell, nodding out on the spoken-word interlude.

Photo: Xeni Jardin

Atoms for Peace.

Thom Yorke, Atoms for Peace, June 14, 2013 in LA. Photo: Timothy Norris, LA Weekly

Photo: Xeni Jardin

During the second encore, Yorke soloed an acoustic version of "The Present Tense."

Some (some assholes) in the crowd continued to talk among themselves. Yorke stopped playing.

"Who the fuck is talking?," he demanded to know. "Did you come here just to show up? You can fucking talk when I'm done."

They shut up, and he continued, and it was beautiful.

I agree with Rolling Stone's Steve Appleford: "It was a reasonable question on a night of concentrated beats and passion delivered gratis from a team of sound scientists who were there to be heard and don’t know how to make background music."

Among the attendees who were there to listen: Yorke's sometimes-collaborator Flying Lotus, DJ/multi-instrumentalist Madlib, and The Gaslamp Killer, who performed a smoking turntable set after Atoms for Peace. If you ever have an opportunity to see him live, do it.

There's lots of candid short video on the Atoms for Peace YouTube channel. Nigel Godrich's Vine account is cool to follow, too.

Don't miss Godrich and Yorke's recent set on LA radio station KCRW, during which they debuted new material.

tl;dr: Buy the record, see the tour.

Photo: Xeni Jardin

Watch and listen live to your favorite bands playing Bonnaroo

Xeni Jardin — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 21:06:31 +0000

If you're too old, broke, tied to your job, or crowd-phobic to have made it to Bonnaroo in person but still want to hear all the bands, no sweat bro! Just tune in on Ustream. Here's the dual-channel video feed, and here's the artist schedule.

Highlights today: Wilco (at right, and performing "Shot in the Arm" above) at 630pm Central Standard Time today, Paul McCartney from 9:00pm-10:00pm, Wu-Tang Clan is scheduled for 7:30pm-9:00pm, and from midnight to 2:00am, a Superjam with RZA, DJ Jazzy Jeff, Schoolboy Q, Earl Sweatshirt, Solange, and Chad Hugo featuring Lettuce plus special guests.

Neil Young loves model trains

David Pescovitz — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 17:05:54 +0000

Neil Young talks model trains with David Letterman. Young isn't just a model train enthusiast, he's also an inventor. From Dangerous Minds:

Young first created a research and development company, Liontech, to help the storied Lionel, LLC train manufacturing company, founded in 1900, create model trains with sound systems and control units. Young then became part owner of Lionel, along with an investment company. It was Young’s designs and inventions for Lionel that helped to bring the company out of bankruptcy in 2008. Young’s first train-related invention was a control unit, the Big Red Button, that enabled his son, who has cerebral palsy, to control the trains.

"Neil Young, Model Train Geek"

Art of Punk videos

David Pescovitz — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 15:41:20 +0000

I am overjoyed about the new video series, "The Art of Punk," from the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles. The project comes from Bryan Ray Turcotte, author of the fantastic art book Fucked Up + Photocopied and Bo Bushnell (Teenage Teardrop, Kill Your Idols). The first episode is about the icongraphy of Black Flag. Future episodes dig into BB pal Winston Smith's Dead Kennedys artwork and Dave King's Crass logo, which he wrote about earlier this year for Boing Boing. (LA Weekly)

Lawsuit: "Happy Birthday" is not in copyright, and Warner owes the world hundreds of millions for improperly collected royalties

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 03:51:52 +0000

Copyright scholars have long been pretty certain that "Happy Birthday to You" is in the public domain, despite the fact that Warner/Chappell claims copyright on it and charges impressive licensing fees to use it in public performances. Those fees, however, are much lower than a copyright lawsuit would be, so everyone shrugs and pays them. Until now.

A documentary film company working on a movie about "Happy Birthday" has assembled a huge body of evidence showing that the song has been in the public domain since the 1920s, and is suing Warner to get them to return the hundreds of millions they've improperly charged in licensing since. This is gonna be great.

The full lawsuit, embedded below, goes through a detailed history of the song and any possible copyright claims around it. It covers the basic history of "Good Morning to You," but also notes that the "happy birthday" lyrics appeared by 1901 at the latest, citing a January 1901 edition of Inland Educator and Indiana School Journal which describes children singing a song called "happy birthday to you." They also point to a 1907 book that uses a similar structure for a song called "good-bye to you" which also notes that you can sing "happy birthday to you" using the same music. In 1911, the full "lyrics" to Happy Birthday to You were published, with a notation that it's "sung to the same tune as 'Good Morning.'" There's much more in the history basically showing that the eventual copyright that Warner/Chappell holds is almost entirely unrelated to the song Happy Birthday to You.
The detail in the filing is impressive, and I can't wait to see how Warner/Chappell replies. As the filing notes, there are a variety of copyright claims around the song, but all are invalid or expired, and the very, very narrow copyright that Warner/Chappell might hold is not on the song itself. In other words, Warner/Chappell is almost certainly guilty of massive copyfraud -- perhaps the most massive in history -- in claiming a copyright it clearly has no right to.

Lawsuit Filed To Prove Happy Birthday Is In The Public Domain; Demands Warner Pay Back Millions Of License Fees [Mike Masnick/Techdirt]

(Image: 53/365 - 02/22/11 - Happy Birthday, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from shardayyy's photostream)

Mark Dery radio interview about his Boing Boing ebook!

David Pescovitz — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 19:51:34 +0000

We just released Boing Boing's first short ebook, Mark Dery's "All The Young Dudes: Why Glam Matters," and the feedback has been terrific. Mr. Dery was just a guest on New Hampshire Public Radio's "Word of Mouth" show talking about this subculture that served as a glitter bomb of fashion and attitude and briefly relieved the malaise of the '70s. You can hear the interview here, read a free excerpt to whet your whistle, or take the plunge and buy the ebook for just $2.99 from Amazon.

Edison cylinder inscribed on a beer-bottle

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 17:00:55 +0000

Mathew sez,

19th Century technology meets 21st Century music over a bottle of beer in the latest extension to the Beck's Record Label project. This time, the art label has evolved, and been replaced by the grooves of Auckland band Ghost Wave. Their new single was inscribed into the surface of a beer bottle which could then be played on a specially-built device based on Thomas Edison's original phonograph.
The idea originated with creative agency Shine in Auckland NZ, but making the world's first playable beer bottle was a formidable technical challenge. The clever people at Gyro Constructivists first had to design and build a record-cutting lathe, driven by a hard drive recording head. Then they reinvented Edison's original cylinder player, using modern materials and electronics and built to very fine tolerances. The Edison Bottle made its public debut at SemiPermanent in Auckland in May to a standing ovation from the assembled media and design community.

The Beck's Edison Bottle

Here's that Beastles album you've been waiting for!

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 15:00:02 +0000

Last weekend, I let you know that a new Beastles album was forthcoming from djBC, who was reprising his mid-2000s project to mash up the Beatles and the Beastie Boys, which disappeared thanks to legal threats from EMI. Now, djBC writes,

The third and final Beastles album, Ill Submarine, is now out. 20 songs mashing the Fab Four with the B-Boys.
Some folks seem to be discovering this stuff for the first time, which is cool. I guess that makes sense- its been about 9 years since the first album came out- 2004! and 6 or 7 years since "Let It Beast." It seems like ages ago.
For those who are catching up, Silence Seven from Beastiemixes.com is kindly hosting the first two albums of Beastle mixes as well.
Dedicated to the memory of Adam Yauch.

I've been listening to this all week now. I suggest starting with No Sleep Til the Sun Comes Up, Brrthday and Twist That Train.

The Beastles : Ill Submarine (Thanks, djBC!)

Frances Ha and Hot Chocolate

David Pescovitz — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 22:49:06 +0000

The delightful film Frances Ha has a wonderfully-eclectic soundtrack including tracks by David Bowie, Paul McCartney, T. Rex, Dean & Britta, and Harry Nilsson. I especially enjoyed the use of Hot Chocolate's 1978 hit, "Every1's A Winner." Harvey Hinsley's gritty, weird guitar sound comes from a Marshall Time Modulator, a curious analog effects processor loved by Joy Division producer Martin Hannett and Stevie Wonder alike! Frances Ha: Music from the Motion Picture (Amazon)

Synthesizer cake

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 22:38:47 +0000

Here's a spectacular Monotribe synthesizer cake, apparently last year's birthday cake for Moonbuz.

Happy Birthday with Monotribe Cake (via Crazy Abalone)

Symmetry and sound

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 21:35:05 +0000

This fantastic video by Vi Hart shows you what the math of music looks like in a visual representation — or, should that be "what visual frieze patterns sound like when turned into music"?

Frieze patterns are symmetrical repeating patterns that show up in architecture, art, and even our model of DNA. According to Hart, this video is:

A visual and musical expression of mathematical symmetry groups. The transformations done to the video are equivalent to the transformations done to the notes.

Very cool to watch! Here's the video link.

Thanks, Peter Newbury!

Man does "karate dance" to Offspring tune

David Pescovitz — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 17:32:08 +0000

"Karate Dancing To Offspring" (Thanks, Gabe Adiv!)

Vision-tweaking minimalist music video

David Pescovitz — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 18:05:33 +0000

Chris Kirk/Mindbomb Films' mind-bending minimalist music video for Brian Grainger's "Swamp Bike." Watch it full screen. Try not to look away. (Thanks, Syd Garon!)

Asami Ike's zero-gravity animal animation for Metome song

David Pescovitz — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 17:41:00 +0000

Japanese animator Asami Ike's animated video for Metome's "Paper Moon." It's from the album "Phreatic Surface" out now on the King Deluxe label.

Beastles are back: double-album of Beastie Boys/Beatles mashups imminent

Cory Doctorow — Sun, 09 Jun 2013 06:46:29 +0000

Here's some wonderful musical news: djBC has revived the Beastles, the inspired Beastie Boys/Beatles mashups that resulted in two spectacular albums, ultimately censored off the Internet thanks to legal threats from EMI.

The new double, 20-track Beastles album, "Ill Submarine," is about to drop, and djBC has a lot of teasers to get you ready for it. As this post goes us, RadioClash is running a live podcast special about it:

Sunday is Beastles Day on Radio Clash Live from 6am BST (British Summer Time). djBC has a new Beastle album about to drop - Ill Submarine and he's created an exclusive mix for RCL,This is a special 3 hour show with an exclusive mix of Beatles covers from Ian Fondue as part of a new 'Done To Death' mix series, and many more Beatles/Beastles mashups, remixes and shows throughout the day, including from 8am the 7 Radio Clash Beatles Podcasts in sequence
(Above: poster by Yo Yo Yosef, click to embiggen)

There's also the video for the title track, "Ill Submarine, above, and some poster art from Yo Yo Yosef. I've had a preview of the album on heavy rotation for two days and it is spectacular.

She & Him on the Tonight Show

David Pescovitz — Sat, 08 Jun 2013 00:26:28 +0000

Mid-century AM radio-inspired joy from Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward (aka She & Him) on The Tonight Show last evening. The track, "I've Got Your Number, Son," is from their fabulous new LP titled Volume 3.

Nine Inch Nails' new single, and all the prior ones too

David Pescovitz — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 17:27:16 +0000

Above, Nine Inch Nails' new track "Came Back Haunted," from their forthcoming release Hesitation Marks to be released September 3. Below, listen to all of Nine Inch Nails' singles in order, starting with 1989's "Down In It," and culminating with the latest.

Ross Sisters sing Solid Potato Salad

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 22:00:31 +0000

Here again is a clip of the amazing Ross Sisters performing a wonderful song about potato salad while performing the most amazing contortions and acrobatics -- like Cirque du Soliel crossed with Hee-Haw performed by the Andrews Sisters. It's from 1944's Broadway Rhythm. Xeni did this one back in 2010, but it warrants a re-watch.

The Ross Sisters - Solid Potato Salad (DVD Quality) Full Video

Buzz Aldrin and Thomas Dolby sing "She Blinded Me With Science"

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 14:26:49 +0000

If you've ever felt bad about your moves, this should provide some comfort. One of the coolest men on the planet (and the Moon) doesn't have much of a sense of rhythm, either.

The performance was part of a one-day Smithsonian conference on the future of technology and innovation. It's worth bookmarking the page for the conference because, over the next several days, organizers will be posting video of presentations made by Aldrin, Dolby, and a host of other great tech thinkers — including neuroscientist André Fenton; Eric Green, director of the National Human Genome Research Institute; and mathematician Maria Klawe.

Video Link

Hurrah! It's a new Barenaked Ladies album!

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 21:46:30 +0000

Here's some great news! It's the 25th anniversary of Barenaked Ladies' first album, Gordon, and they're celebrating with a new record: Grinning Streak , which comes out today. They did a Reddit AMA yesterday to promote it, and they're headed out on tour.

I've been watching the band since they were playing the Scarborough Town Centre plaza and promoting a self-titled, single-sided cassette that their moms sold in the crowd, and I've enjoyed all the music they've created since.

Grinning Streak

All the Young Dudes: Why Glam Rock Matters, by Mark Dery -- Boing Boing's first ebook!

Mark Frauenfelder — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 20:02:26 +0000

“All the Young Dudes,” glam rock’s rallying cry, turned 40 last year. David Bowie wrote it, but Mott the Hoople owned it: their version was, and will ever remain, glam’s anthem, a hymn of exuberant disenchantment that also happens to be one of rock’s all-time irresistible sing-alongs.

Bowie, glam, and “All the Young Dudes” are inseparable in the public mind, summoning memories of a subculture dismissed as apolitical escapism, a glitter bomb of fashion and attitude that briefly relieved the malaise of the '70s.

Now, cultural critic Mark Dery gives the movement its due in an 8,000-word exploration of glam as rebellion through style, published as a Kindle e-book (and Boing Boing's first published e-book): All the Young Dudes: Why Glam Matters. As polymorphously perverse as the subculture it explores, “All the Young Dudes: Why Glam Matters” is equal parts fan letter, visual-culture criticism, queer theory, and true confession.

In bravura style, Dery teases out lines of connection between glam, the socioeconomic backdrop of the '70s, Oscar Wilde as a late-Victorian Ziggy Stardust, the etymology and queer subtext of the slang term “dude,” the associative links between the '20s-style cover of the Mott album on which “Dudes” appeared and the coded homoeroticism of the '20s magazine illustrator J.C. Leyendecker (considered in the context of the 1970s fad for all things 1920s), and Dery’s own memories of growing up glam in '70s San Diego, where coming out as a Bowie fan -- even for straight kids -- was an invitation to bullying.

Glam emboldened kids in America and England to dream of a world beyond suburbia’s oppressive notions of normalcy, Dery argues, a world conjured up in pop songs full of Wildean irony and Aestheticism and jaw-dropping fashion statements to match. More important, glam drew inspiration from feminism and gay liberation to articulate a radical critique of mainstream manhood---a pomosexual vision of masculinity whose promise remains only partly fulfilled, even now.

Buy All the Young Dudes: Why Glam Rock Matters, by Mark Dery

All the Young Dudes

(Excerpt: 730 words)

Reviewing Mott the Hoople’s All the Young Dudes for The San Diego Door, 15-year-old Cameron Crowe had no doubt that the title track, written by Bowie, was “a very English, very metal, very risqué ode to homosexual rape. ‘I’ve been wanting to do this for years,’ admits the aggressor...”[i] (Perhaps Crowe’s bizarre reading of the song was the result of a mondegreen---a misheard lyric. For the line “gonna race some cat to bed,” some listeners heard the homophone “gonna rape some cat to death.”)

And what, exactly, was a young dude? In the ‘70s Southern California of my adolescence, “dude” was the universal form of address among teenaged males. A verbal virus spread by the surfer scene, “dude” was a jocular hi-sign, the verbal fist bump of male bonding. Variously inflected, it could also be a remonstration (dude!), a quizzical exclamation (dude?!), or a backslap of bong-loaded bonhomie (duuuuude, underscored with a Cheshire-cat grin). With the right verbal spin, the term could even signify Jeff Spicoli’s idea of satori, a kind of Tao of Whoahhh---the existential weightlessness common to surfers, stoners, and slackers, a state of mind incarnated by Jeff Bridges as The Dude in The Big Lebowski. But whatever else it was, “dude” was an expression of Dude-ism---straight guy-ness, distilled down to its bro-mantic, brewski-chugging, perpetually adolescent essence.
It’s doubtful Bowie spoke fluent Dude, in 1972. More likely, he reached for the word because of its historical associations with dandies and other Dedicated Followers of Fashion---the sort of “handsome young man, curled, well-dressed, pomaded, painted and powdered” (Edmond de Goncourt, on one of Proust’s friends) whose flamboyance or excessive fastidiousness in dress struck a note of unmanly vanity, even effeminacy.[ii]

As early as 1897, the New English Dictionary (as the O.E.D. was then known) defined “dude” as “a factitious slang term which came into vogue in New York about the beginning of 1883, in connection with the ‘aesthetic’ craze of the day”---“aesthetic” in the sense of the Aesthetic movement whose public face, Oscar Wilde, was a Late-Victorian Ziggy.[iii] Wilde’s 1882 lecture tour of the States was a triumph of branding and P.R.: audiences delighted in his epigrammatic bon mots and the papers had a field day with the foppish prince of the “ass-thetes,” mocking his shoulder-length pre-Raphaelite hair, velvet knee breeches, and silk stockings in cartoons that forged an associative link between Aestheticism and the effeminate affectations of dandyism.

Revealingly, the American Century Dictionary, published in 1889, kicked the blame for dude-ism back across the pond, tracing the word’s origins to London, “where it first became known in general colloquial and newspaper use at the time of the so-called ‘esthetic’ movement in dress and manners, in 1882-83.”[iv] Like the O.E.D., the Century Dictionary despaired of unearthing the word’s origins, dismissing as apocryphal the notion that it arose from “duds (formerly sometimes spelled dudes), clothes, in the sense of ‘fine clothes.’” But it was unequivocal on the word’s association with “a fop or exquisite, characterized by excessive refinement of dress, speech, manners, and gait, and a serious mien...”

Seth Lerer argues compellingly, in Inventing English: The Portable History of the Language, that there’s a cultural logic to the Century’s etymological payback:

The dude is some undefinable other. The lexicographer, whether British or American, refuses to claim ownership or origin. [...] In these entries, both the Century and the N.E.D. offer social criticism through philology. Their extended definitions center on the theater of dudedom: the logic of costume and affectation.[v]

Undefinable others of bent gender and blurred sexuality, the Wilde boys of 1883 were the original dudes, precursors of the dissolute, pill-popping mods in Bowie’s 1966 song “The London Boys” (“A London boy, oh a London boy/ Your flashy clothes are your pride and joy”), the glitter kids in “All the Young Dudes, “ and maybe the “handsome young men” on the cover of the Mott album, smartly turned out in their upscale tailoring.

[i] Cameron Crowe, “Mott the Hoople---All the Young Dudes,” The San Diego Door, November 4, 1972-November 18, 1972, archived on Crowe’s personal website, The Uncool, http://www.theuncool.com/tag/all-the-young-dudes/.

[ii] Quoted in Edmund White, Marcel Proust (New York: Penguin, 1999), p. 45.

[iii] Seth Lerer, Inventing English: The Portable History of the Language (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007)), p. 215.

[iv] Lerer, Inventing English: The Portable History of the Language, p. 216.

[v] Lerer, Inventing English, p. 217.

Horska: Gypsophilia mixes ska and klezmer

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 14:57:45 +0000

I'm very fond of Gypsophilia's brand of klezmer-infused jazz, and so I'm very excited to learn that they've got a new release. Ross from Gypsophilia sez:

"Horska" is our newest release and is many things: a 7" vinyl single with a dub remix, a 6 song digital EP, and a brand new stop motion animation music video.
We recorded the tracks for “Horska” at Montreal’s Hotel2Tango with noted producer Howard Bilerman (of Arcade Fire fame). The single, composed by guitarist Alec Frith, plays with superimposing a Jewish hora over a ska riddim – hence the title. The 7" includes a dub reggae-style remix as a b-side. The other tracks on the EP range from the nostalgic-sounding “Bir Hakeim” and “Stikm,” which showcase Matt Myer on (mostly muted) horn, to the at-times frenzied Klezmer-influenced piece “Corentin Cariou” and the melancholy “Oh my Oma,” featuring Gina Burgess’ plaintive violin.
As a partner to the song a stop-motion animation was created by Halifax artist Sydney Smith and filmmaker Jason Levangie in the style of their beautiful 2011 video "Agricola & Sarah". This time around Gypsophilia's music is set to a vignette about a bumbling inventor (a likeness of our bass player Adam Fine) trying to get his mechanical flying machine off the ground.

The Gypsophilias have made the dub remix available as a free download for Boing Boing readers for a limited time

Gainsbourg and Bardot's "Bonnie and Clyde" (1968)

David Pescovitz — Sat, 01 Jun 2013 04:13:48 +0000

Serge Gainsbourg and Brigitte Bardot's "Bonnie and Clyde" from 1968. The lyrics (in French) are based on Bonnie Parker's poem "The Trail's End" that she wrote several weeks before she was killed. You can find the song on several releases, including Gainsbourg and Bardot's fantastic collaborative album "Bonnie and Clyde" and also on multiple Gainsbourg compilations, including Monsieur Gainsbourg: The Originals. (And yes, Mad Men viewers, it is indeed the tune playing at the Electric Circus in the "To Have and To Hold" episode.)

Open hardware effects pedal on Kickstarter

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 31 May 2013 02:24:08 +0000

Martin sez, "Rebel Technology launches a Kickstarter to fund the OWL reprogrammable effects pedal: an open hardware, open source effects stompbox with a potentially unlimited library of effects written in C++ and powered by a powerful ARM Cortex M4 processor. It allows musicians to load any available effect or effect chain from their computer onto the pedal. Martin, Tom and Giom, the engineers behind the project, met each other at the London Hackspace in Hoxton. They all come from different backgrounds: Tom is a sound engineer and university lecturer, Giom a DSP engineer and musician, and Martin a software and hardware engineer. They have a shared passion for audio signal processing and hacking."

It's £165 and up to get your own fully assembled pedal (assuming they ship, as with all Kickstarters, caveat emptor).

OWL Programmable Effects Pedal

Wire-and-paper animation for Professor Kliq song

David Pescovitz — Thu, 30 May 2013 16:48:23 +0000

Patator Prod's fantastic wire-and-paper stop motion animation for Professor Kliq's "Plastic and Flashing Lights." (via Juxtapoz)

Lightning Dust - “Diamond” (free MP3)

Amy Seidenwurm — Thu, 30 May 2013 16:36:05 +0000

Sound it Out # 48: Lightning Dust - “Diamond” (MP3)

This song gives me an ache. A good kind of ache. I get a delicious tightening in my chest that can only be (temporarily) relieved by hitting PLAY again.

Josh Wells and Amber Webber are Lightning Dust. They’re from Vancouver, BC and create wonderfully intimate music. They also play in a fantastic rock-your-face-off band called Black Mountain that couldn’t be more unlike this project.

Grab a free download of “Diamond” below for 48 hours...starting now! Their new album Fantasy is out on June 25.

Living-room pipe organ

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 30 May 2013 12:56:16 +0000

Nora sez, "My father, a retired software engineer, amateur musician, and OG-maker, is building a pipe organ in his and my mother's living room. The project (which has involved moving to a new house, selected in part due to its organ-friendly design) is being documented on his blog. My dad is awesome."

Yes, yes he is.

Although the organ is far from complete, I’ve been having fun playing it. Yesterday one of the Gemshorn pipes (F below middle C) kept sounding after I released the key — a cypher!
Quite apart from its other meanings, the term “cypher” is used to describe an organ pipe that keeps playing after the key is released (or in some cases, before any key at all has been pressed).
In most cases this is due to a mechanical problem with the valve which controls the pipe. Sometimes playing a series of staccato 64th notes on the key will clear it, but not this time.

Pipe Organ Blog (Thanks, Nora!)

Awesome Tapes from Africa

David Pescovitz — Wed, 29 May 2013 16:17:00 +0000

Awesome Tapes from Africa is just that. They also issue some of their finds on vinyl, CD (and, duh, tape), including the fantastic sounds of Ethiopia's Hailu Mergia posted above.

Hailu made his name in Walias Band and later went on to do some visionary solo recordings. Hailu Mergia's beautiful and surprising 1985 foray into traditional Ethiopian songs via analog synth, electric piano and accordion has been remastered and will be available June 25 on LP/CD/MP3/C60.

Awesome Tapes from Africa (Thanks, Patrick Kelly!)