Tag: Music
Legendary west coast music outpost Amoeba Music has taken a decidedly modern step in the archiving of their collection of out-of-print and otherwise rare vinyl: digitizing the records and making them available for download to the general public. They’re relatively inexpensive (not free, though–we haven’t yet reached that level of open-source utopia), and the collection […]
Lyrically, Animal Collective’s “Applesauce” is a song about the simple sensory pleasures of eating a good fruit, and possibly the fear of death and environmental collapse that comes with a good fruit’s decay. Sonically, it’s complete overload, taking the more-is-more approach of 2007’s Strawberry Jam to its logical conclusion–all polyrhythmic drumming, burbling synthesizers, and frantically melodic vocals. Enter […]
On Thursday, a low-quality mp3 of the 10-minute first single from the Knife’s first album in seven years leaked onto the internet. Later that day, it was pulled down. The next day, the track’s epic, slightly NSFW music video popped up on a Swedish streaming site. Later that day, it was pulled down. If you, like […]
Happy Friday! Mykki Blanco dropped the video for Cosmic Angel highlight “Kingpinning” today. It’s a romp through runways, bedrooms, and darkened New York City streets, and it’s fucking awesome. What I like most about the video is that it highlights both sides of the rapper’s persona–the gothy, threatening “Join My Militia” Mykki, and the shade-throwing, take-the-club-over “Wavy” […]
Aphex Twin, Nine Inch Nails, Disasterpeace and in all likelihood, many other musicians have been hiding images in their songs for years. These Easter eggs can be found using something called a spectrograph, an application or instrument that creates visual renderings of audio signals. Other programs out there, like this one, or this one, do […]
In an effort to better understand the science behind a relatively new form of musical expression, a team of researchers at the University of Southern California conducted an extensive MRI study of the various sounds produced by one 27-year-old beatboxer. The scientists made audio and x-ray video recordings of each sound in the man’s repertoire, […]
By some unknown digital wizardry (Melodyne? An Echo Nest API?) a relatively anonymous digital artist has changed R.E.M.’s colossal “Losing My Religion” from dark and impressionistic to sunny and Smiths-y. The secret? Taking every minor note in the song and raising it by a half step (putting the song in its parallel major key, for […]
Perhaps the strangest thing about Spring Breakers, Harmony Korine’s very strange latest project, is that RiFF RAFF was reportedly asked to play the James Franco role. While the Houston rapper never actually made it into the film, Franco’s character was clearly heavily based on the man and his signature style. After the trailer dropped yesterday, MTV Hive […]
Unitl yesterday, Lil B the Based God, the most positive person on the planet and godfather of the current generation of internet-bred rappers, was on his way to The Gig of a Lifetime. That is to say, he was a nominee in the Grammy-sponsored contest of the same name, which would have B performing at […]
As far as I can tell, the Guilford Avenue Bridge, a multicolored Baltimore landmark, does not appear in the video for Dan Deacon’s instrumental track of the same name–but just about everything else in America does. Director Alan Resnick takes us on a time-lapsed journey across the country with Deacon, his bus, and his band […]
