Dj BC (previously) writes, "I'm the producer behind Ghost Cave. You might know me from the mashup albums The Beastles, Ziggy Stardust Remixed, Wu Orleans, the Santastic Christmas Collections, and others. Up next is a glorious 7" vinyl record package, in a limited edition of 500 (100 purple, 400 black). And it's LEGAL!" Read the rest
Shardcore (previously), "I made a video for Saddy Waddy by The Private Sector using a new deepfake lipsync method to get Boris Johnson to sing the words." [Ed: Warning, strobe effects] Read the rest
My latest Locus Magazine column is DRM Broke Its Promise, which recalls the days when digital rights management was pitched to us as a way to enable exciting new markets where we'd all save big by only buying the rights we needed (like the low-cost right to read a book for an hour-long plane ride), but instead (unsurprisingly) everything got more expensive and less capable. Read the rest
I got told by a friend as I described what I was having for lunch "enjoy your sandwich". With the way that my brain works, I instantly heard, insdie of my skull Bruce Springsteen singing Warren Zevon's My Ride's Here from the Enjoy Every Sandwich tribute album that popped after Zevon's death in 2003. This, in turn led me to a wicked heartache over the fact that there will never be another Warren Zevon tune brought into this world.
Listening to him play Play it All Night, acted as a bit of a balm against that pain. I'm pretty sure that this video would have been snagged by some lucky audience members attending the concert tour where Zevon's Learning to Flinch live album was recorded. His writing's pretty dark, but damned if it never fails to bring a smile to my face.
Image via Wikipedia Commons Read the rest
Pedro Bell, the visionary painter whose astonishing psychedelic art (and liner notes) appeared on numerous Funkadelic albums and shaped the P-Funk mythos, died on Tuesday at 69. Free your mind, and your ass will follow. From the New York Times:
“The artwork of Pedro Bell was an essential component of the alternately utopian and dystopian world of P-Funk, which placed African-American reality in the context of a science fiction future that was both scary and hopeful,” (art curator Pan) Wendt said by email. “Pedro was a brilliant autodidact who was a key source of George Clinton’s ideology through his readings of science fiction, media theory and environmentalist tracts, as well as his knowledge of Sun Ra’s Afrofuturism..."
Mr. Clinton was especially fond of what Mr. Bell came up with for Funkadelic’s “Standing on the Verge of Getting It On” (1974): an alien landscape that was both scary and whimsical.
“It was a combination of Ralph Bakshi and Samuel R. Delany and Superfly and Fat Albert and Philip K. Dick and Krazy Kat and Flash Gordon,” he wrote in his book, “all mixed together in Pedro’s brain with some kind of blender that hadn’t even been invented yet.”
We lost the Master Mind behind the Graphic's & Artwork of Funkadelic. Mr. Pedro Bell is an American artist and illustrator best known for his elaborate cover designs and other artwork for numerous Funkadelic and George Clinton solo albums. Thxs for yr service our brother.😲🙏 pic.twitter.com/PsD8TRxlRU
— Bootsy Collins (@Bootsy_Collins) August 28, 2019
Read the rest'Free your mind & the rest will follow...We believed where the funk was going to take us.' Chicago's Pedro Bell told his funk-tastic philosophy to @kspak in @Suntimesstory.
"Bang Your Head (It's a Celebration)" by the talented Bill McClintock, featuring Kool & The Gang's "Celebration," Quiet Riot's "Bang Your Head," and a little riffage from Free's "All Right Now."
(via Laughing Squid) Read the rest
Ishkur's Guide to Electronic Music traces the history of electronic music from the early 1900s to the present through a timeline/map that has links to playlists to different subgenres. Read the rest
Founded in 1623 in Turkey and now based in Norwell, Massachusetts, Zildjian has manufactured cymbals continuously for almost 400 years. This is how they do it now.
"The sponsors said it was going to be three days of peace and music. It was that alright, and much more." Read the rest
I've been putting up with a heart murmur for a few decades now. It's never been a big deal. During my last physical, however, my doctor took a renewed interest in what's going on in my chest. I'll be going in for a stress test on my ticker, in a little under a month. Since I got the news, I haven't been able to get this song out of my head.
Honestly, there's worse ear worms to suffer. Read the rest
Iskhur's guide to electronic music is a true classic of the web, now freshly updated for a new generation of fabulously obscure and ephemeral subgenres. [via Metafilter] See also Every Noise at Once. Read the rest
I particularly like the Flaco Jiménez tee.
This song has been in my rotation since MP3s made it easy for there to be such a thing. Read the rest
Jonathan Mann (previously) writes, "Like many people, I've been disturbed by the borg-like tweets coming out of the Amazon Ambassador program. I took a few of the bleakest ones and set them to music. It turned into an incredibly sad song." Read the rest
Next month, Impulse! Records will release Blue World, previously unheard recordings that legendary jazz pioneer John Coltrane recorded with his quartet in 1964. Most of the tunes are different versions of known Coltrane songs with the exception of the title track that you can hear above. From Spin:
...Coltrane recorded Blue World between the sessions for his landmark albums Crescent and a Love Supreme, at Van Gelder studio in New Jersey, where he cut many of his albums, including the aforementioned two. He had been approached by a Quebecois filmmaker named Gilles Groulx, who knew Coltrane’s bassist Jimmy Garrison, and asked Coltrane if he would record music for use in an upcoming film called Le chat dans le sac. Coltrane obliged, but Groulx only ended up using 10 minutes of the 37-minute session in the film.
In the 1980s, Stuart Swezey was at the epicenter of Southern California's underground culture. The co-founder of Amok Books, Swezey was also known for organizing extreme industrial and avant-garde outdoor happenings in remote locations like the Mojave Desert that featured performances by Sonic Youth, Einstürzende Neubauten, Survival Research Laboratories, Minutemen, and many other experimental and transgressive artists. Now, Swezey has made a documentary about those extreme experiences. Above is the trailer for Desolation Center.
