January-February 2013 AUDs & ENDs

DEM is: New electronic music mixes/news • Anniversaries in music history

AUDs & ENDs (A “sticky” added-to all month long)

* The music of Washington, DC duo Bluebrain adapts to the location it’s playing at through the use of GPS. Not quite create-your-own-mix yet, but a step on the way.

MIX DJ Mag offers a new tech house mix from duo Donewrong.

MIX Electronic Explorations podcast #225 is a spicy techomix by London duo ‘Posthuman’. (m)

MIX A mix by Chris Carter (of Throbbing Gristle) is a guaranteed NOVEL experience, and a kick-ass one can be found here. (57m) Made for the Ninja Tune Solid Steel Radio series (started in ’88 on KISS in London), which has over 100 shows online. How about, oh say, Coldcut meets the Orb? (71m)  [via Feuilleton]

MP3 Solace (link to the .zip tops the BB interview) is a synthesized album called a “soundtrack for a game that doesn’t exist” by artist Tettix. (with artwork, 77m)
The great majority of these 22 tracks were put together “in-box” using Propellerhead’s Reason software.

MIX XLR8R’s #282 is a fine house mix by London duo Dusky.
While ur at it you might check their best of 2012 reader’s poll. The artist list is topped by duo Disclosure, which won a UK#2 this month with White Noise. (Their first album’ll be out in March.)

MIX Silent Thirteen #54 is a fine Hearts of Space-style ambient mix as mysterious as Easter Island. Biosphere (Norwegian Geir Jenssen) does a fine job of recreating a Pete Namlook-like atmosphere. (60m)
The mixes on the Silent Thirteen site are chosen “to companion you through your journey in finding your passage on a higher level of existence.” Bon voyage.

Off topic The Street Kids of San Francisco

POD Tank Riot episode 133 is part one of a punk rock history. (136m) Earlier episodes include 112 Link Wray, 93 Great Music, 88 Les Paul, 54 Devo, 48 Leon Theremin … and more on a wide range of topics, one to two hours+ each.

MIX An uptempo dance mix from Mat Zo. Have a ball. (get it?) (119m)

* She won a bid on … Greta’s Records. And started a blog. [via MeFi]

* Forbes: The world’s highest-paid DJs.

While Skrillex and his peers have gained popularity by producing their own music, they generally release it free, rendering piracy, the bane of traditional artists, irrelevant. Instead, they make their money from the road, and because even the best DJs travel light—often toting nothing more than a thumb drive—they take home the bulk of their gross pay, sometimes more than $100,000 for a few hours’ work.

(They’d better keep working hard at it, because 17-year-olds like TheLateDecember ain’t exactly sitting on their hands.)

* Retronaut’s music history photo archives (take for just one example Celebrities and Vinyl) are just one of many categories hosted.

* How Elton John infuriated Chinese authorities. (I’m guessing Sorry will remain the hardest word. P.S. I did not hear about: “Björk shouted “Tibet! Tibet!” … during a performance in Shanghai” in 2008. )

MIX CDM has put up, for the adventurous, several electronic experimental mixes, from Norwegian artist Biosphere, Berlin-based Bill Kouligas, and UK-born Samuel Kerridge … many trax are from artists playing CTM.

* Gendered Tech During the Rise of Radio is a quick look at the social-engineering going on in the early 1920s. (Longer article: follow the link to the Richard Butsch PDF.) [via BoingBoing]

In place of earlier depictions of women operating radios in the absence of any male help, by 1924 there appeared more pictures of pretty young women in swimsuits listening to radio …. Claims of women’s interest spanned jazz broadcasts for girls’ dance parties at home, high-culture broadcasts to appeal to upper-class women’s tastes, and home economics broadcasts to help women fill their domestic roles.

* If I’ve mentioned it before, it’s been a while. The International Music Score Library Project has put over 228,000 classical music scores online. It has taken many years. These are PDFs – some are scans of original publications! If a piece was written before 1900, there are very good odds you’ll find it. Good for learning the innermost secrets of your favorite music. A rich treasure chest for which the Petrucchi Music Library and their many contributors deserve long international applause.

* Pressing records on old x-ray plastic? Da … verrrrry limited edition … just like old Soviet Union.

VID The Talking Piano

* Motherboard shares A brief history of the wah-wah, a musical accident.

A subsequent redesign of the Super Beatle into a cheaper solid-state amp (as opposed to one that used more expensive vacuum tubes), and the marriage of the organ and the guitar led to the accidental invention of a more groovy expression pedal.

VID 21 years after their last album, My Bloody Valentine‘s new mbv is streaming on Youtube. (If all the trax were like Only Tomorrow, it’d do well I think.)

* How the 808 drum machine got its cymbal (w/pix fm NAMM) [via MeFi]

POD XLR8R’s #280 offers some mid-90s DnB freshly assembled by Ulrich Schnauss. (78m)

* Variety: SoCal’s Amoeba.com sells digitized vinyl and shellac rarities. Site includes “4,500 artist bios and 6,500 record reviews.”

* Gearheads: CDM pictures from NAMM 2013

MP3 Fans of Pole and Autechre will enjoy the Alicia Hush podcast over at Igloofest. (60m) And probably the Misstress Barbara one as well. (103m)

* Cymascope – sound made visible.

* CDM introduces us to the new Prophet-12 synth. Quite the knob-per-feature beast. Whether it even approaches the Waldorf Q soundwise remains to be seen.

* Read an article about the 30th anniversary of MIDI at the The Quietus. @DrElectro.

MIX Audio blog Aquarium Drunkard, at a new location, has put up Sidecar Transmission #10. 28 welcome m.

MIX Getcher red hot, recent, NSFW DJ Shadow mix here here. (86m)

MIX Need a couple for the weekend? DJ/rupture has put up 8+hours of mixes (2001-2012) with notes on each. In this 21m vid from Gel 2011 he demos the craft. [via MeFi]

* Vice magazine has taken it upon itself to hire Clive Martin to Explain Rave Culture to Americans.

Now, thousands of your previously clean-cut, “Euro-fag”-hating teenagers are trading in their Ozzfest tickets for Skrillex stadium shows and making signs that say “Daft Punk Rocks!” at Coachella.

POD Montreal Igloofest launches today, and they’ve put together a whole series of podcasts from past and upcoming acts.

* Wolfgang Palm, founder of PPG (1975-87), inventor of wavetable synthesis, maker of the PPG Wave line of synths, tells the story of those heady days at some length in the “History” section of his blog. “Today, nearly every digital synthesizer implements wavetable synthesis in some form.”

* Chris Roberts has an opinion on Bowie’s upcoming (March) album.

* BoingBoing visits the Library of Congress’ audiovisual archive.

AUD 1981 Black Flag interview in England. (Youtube, 11m) [via idealistpropaganda blog]

* How (from almost nothing!) Guitar Hero became a Billion-Dollar business

* Think you’re a King Crimson fan? Young Person’s Guide to King Crimson Album Art. In 17 parts. [via MeFi]

* Even after 5 years, WogBlog continues to find things to say about the Beatles. Roger says: “if we hear about something that has yet to be reported by other Beatles news services, we tend to write about it.”

* Dave Maier at 3 Quarks Daily offers us a Space Music Primer. If you want to delve deeper, try the immortal Hearts of Space website, andor the Ambient Music Guide. (don’t miss the mixes).

………………… December 2012 AUDs & ENDs