Archive for the 'music' CategoryPage 57 of 70

The Magic of Looping: David Ford, One Take, One Camera.

published
on April 21, 2008
by
Sandra
in artist/album reviews, music, technology, and video
. 3 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Looping is clearly one of the fundamental aspects of digital music making. From watching friends play with Fruity Loops in college to seeing an ex-roommate perform a live looping concert for New Years last year, I’ve become increasingly interested in the magic of looping.

Thanks to one of my favorite bloggers, Eliot Van Buskirk of the Listening Post, I discovered this video of David Ford, in which he records his song “Go To Hell” – in one take – using looping and household kitchen appliances, in addition to instruments and a microphone. Badass.

A perfect example of the modern multi-instrumental recording artist looking for creative new ways to make music. He would do well as a MixMatchArtist. To compare this rendition to the original, click here. I think I like the homemade one better.

IFPI – Representing Themselves

published
on April 17, 2008
by
ACtual
in music
. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

In an interesting tidbit of musical news today, the IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry), has been caught with its hand in the same virtual cookie jar as the RIAA found itself a few weeks ago when it turned out none of the legal proceeds from lawsuits was ever actually going to the artist. In an attempt at a lawsuit on the ubiquitous BitTorrent site Pirate Bay, the IFPI attempted to include the Swedish rapper Max Peezay as someone who had been cheated out of his rightful profits. The lawsuit sought financial compensation to Peezay for his “stolen” music. Sounds like a recording industry union going to bat for an artist they represent, right? Wrong.

Turns out, IFPI doesn’t own or have any hold over any the rights to Peezay’s music, and Peezay, whose lyrics often support file sharing, never wanted to be included in a lawsuit targeting a file sharing site. In fact, he was never approached, nor asked about his desire for involvement, and has informed the IFPI of such, effectively eliminating him and their claim for $19,000 in lost revenue for his music from their $2.5M lawsuit. The best questions are these: considering the IFPI never asked Peezay if he wanted to be included, how many other artists are in the lawsuit against their will? If they are involved unknowingly, how can they remove themselves? And finally…the most important question to me…if IFPI claims Peezay lost $19,000 on illegal file sharing, and actually succeeded in recovering this money through the suit, how much of it would Peezay have ever actually seen in his bank account?

Industry execs wonder why the music business is turning to mixmatch methods of distribution and artists are looking at ways to be profitable without the man in the suit sitting in the skyscraper. How can they possibly wonder? They treat their artists like cattle, herding them into slaughter houses of record deals and online distribution lawsuits claiming it’s for the good of their client. Then they pretend to be shocked that the artist is upset when, left with the bloody carcass and grisly remains of their music career, their creativity and earning power is turned into nothing but ground beef for the labels to sell at a profit. The greatest hoax perpetuated by the major labels is that they’re actually paying the cows.

Ultraviolet Sound – Another Great Music 2.0 Band

published
on April 16, 2008
by
Sandra
in artist/album reviews, culture, music, and video
. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , , , , .

Recently, I had the pleasure of discovering a band that totally rocked my world from the second they walked on stage. Following the Presidio 10 race, an event put on by The Guardsmen and the Ashlyn Dyer Foundation (two San Francisco-based charity organizations), there was a party for the runners, organizers, supporters etc. Click here for more great pics of the event taken by Guru Khalsa of TheAList. Though I was only able to catch a few of their songs, Ultraviolet Sound secured itself a place on my list of Hot immediately.

Not only do they have that funky, gritty, electro pop punk sound that I love, but they (like more and more bands every day) are challenging convention and embracing the changing music industry. Ultraviolet has teamed up with TrueAnthem, which is an “advertiser supported online music promotion and distribution company” all about connecting the band to the fan. You can listen to and download their songs on TrueAnthem for free, because at the start of each song is a brief “sponsored by” message delivered by the band itself. Howard Stern, anyone? Not sure if he was the first one to read the radio’s commercials himself, but he certainly popularized the concept.

While this model won’t work for everyone, I know I for one will gladly listen to a quick message if I get the song for free. Honestly, I’m surprised more media outlets haven’t embraced the Howard Stern style method of having the person/people/band people are tuning in for deliver the ads. San Francisco’s dance station, Energy 92.7, does this well. With any other radio station (yes, I still listen to traditional radio in the car) I change the station when commercials come on. But when Fernando and Greg are doing their show, I gladly listen to all their ads cause their delivery is priceless – they make going to the dentist or mattress shopping sound fun. Since I have come to trust their recommendations I am more likely to check out the things they advertise than what I hear elsewhere.

We see more and more examples of free music, almost-free music, listen-for-free music and pay-the-band-not-the-label music sources everyday. Those who are still clinging onto traditional models – and can’t pull their heads out of their asses – sit around and bemoan the crumbling of the music industry, stressing over declining CD sales and cursing today’s youth and their sense of entitlement and wanting everything for free. Meanwhile, others are watching with interest as the industry evolves, are adapting to it and celebrating the myriad new opportunities being created.

Last.fm is a great example. They recently demonstrated that giving users access to free streaming music encourages music purchasing. Since their “free, on demand” service launched, they have experienced a 119% increase in their sales through Amazon. Those are some nice stats, people. Even MySpace Music is looking to the stream-for-free model to increase record sales.

Let’s support bands like Ultraviolet Sound, explore the many new ways of discovering, making, and distributing music, and evolve the shit out of this industry, shall we?

Big Boi Does Ballet

published
on April 10, 2008
by
ACtual
in culture, dance, genres, and music
. Closed Tags: , , , , , , , , .

Imagine the well-heeled, tuxedoed crowd of ballet sharing a sip of champagne with a group of hoodied hip-hop heads ready to crunk. This could very well be the scene in Atlanta, GA tonight at the Fox Theater as Big Boi of the Outkast launches his first attempt at a ballet show.

That’s right, you read me…Big Boi of OutKast has teamed with a ballet troupe in Atlanta headed by Lauri Stallings to bring together a fantastic mixmatch idea in the form of bringing Big Boi’s hip-hop music into ballet with a show called “big.” Fresh off his musical turn in Idlewild, Big Boi was approached by the ballet, and the show that will combine hip-hop and ballet, dancers and audience, is set to kick off tonight with the encore being Boi’s new single “Sir Lucious Leftfoot Saves the Day.”

The idea is not just to bring a new media look to classical ballet, but to help cross-pollinate the fans of the two, introducing hip-hop to classical ballet lovers and introducing those dance watchers to the vibrant world of hip-hop. The dancers are calling it different from anything they’ve done before, which I can only imagine is incredibly true. How many ballet dancers have you seen leaping off the stage to crank it in the audience? Whatever the outcome, the fact that Big Boi is willing to branch out into ballet, and Ms. Stallings is brave enough to attempt to choreograph it makes this an endeavor worthy of some attention in a MixMatch world.

Lollapalooza Going MixMatch

published
on April 9, 2008
by
ACtual
in culture, genres, and music
. Closed Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

In a press release today, I read a most interesting thing about the long-running mega music marathon known as Lollapalooza. Founded in 1997 by Perry Farrell to say good-bye to the legend of Jane’s Addiction, the tour stalled out on the national level to be revived in a format similar to Bonnaroo, Coachella and this year’s Outside Lands Festival in San Francisco. While not a multi-day festival like these, the Bridge School Benefit has been doing much the same at the Shoreline Amphitheater for more than 20 years now.

Of course, the most frustrating portion of these festivals is the opportunity to see a wide variety and assortment of acts, and then never hearing their music or their collaborations again. In recent years, Bridge School has started recording and releasing acts by the artists, but it seems to me that in this day of high quality live recording and digital distribution, it shouldn’t be that difficult to release an entire live set from one of these festivals a few days after it ends.

For the charitable festivals (Outside Lands/Bridge School), this can increase the revenue poured into the cause, and for artist-centered festivals, it can help increase their revenue from the show. But really, it’s the unique collaborations that happen on stage between dissimilar artists that are usually the highlights of these shows. Tom Waits performing with the Kronos Quartet at Bridge School, Tom Petty sharing the stage with Neil Young. These are musical moments that are incredibly memorable to the audience (“Man, you should have been there when X and Z performed together!”) but retaining the way it sounded in your mind is much more difficult over time.

Now, with the line-up at this year’s Lollapalooza, featuring distribution revolutionaries Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead, odd couple Gnarls Barkley, Bloc Party, Broken Social Scene, G. Love and Special Sauce and the rapidly diversifying Kanye West, the potential combinations are endless. How about Trent and Thom settling their digital download dispute through a mash-up of “Hurt” and “Idioteque?” Or Kanye and Barkley going “Crazy” over “Diamonds From Sierra Leone?”

Well, in an idea that sounds like it came straight from the MixMatchMusic garage, Farrell has announced that he will be attempting to collaborate with the Empire that is Apple and iTunes to release iTunes-only music from the festival in digital formats that could include on-stage collaborations followed up with studio releases of those collaborations for download. Whether Farrell is actually focusing on the release of the live performances isn’t too clear, but he talks openly about his idea of having bands who have performed on stage together at the concert working through the internet and various worldwide recording studios to put the songs together in a more polished format.

The talk of all of these artists coming together in music in some way gets my pulse racing. One can only hope now that Farrell doesn’t stop short. Sure, the idea of studio versions of these collaborations is very cool, but he should well know that with a festival like this, fans would love to get their hands on copies of the entire live set, and will certainly want to download the various combinations of these artists. All that’s left is to let Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails debate over which file format the songs should be available in to download.