Music Technology

[Music] WORM Pirate Bay is launched

/ Rudy Carrera / Leave a comment

I’m having a bit of trouble seeing the connection between WORM, the Rotterdam-based collective lending out materials and The Pirate Bay, who are, in every sense of the word, pirates when it comes to copyrighted material (whether that is good or bad depends on how you see this issue, as a case can be made either way). Still, congratulations to WORM for bringing back the idea of sharing tangible product. As much as I adore digital media, it’s just not the same. Music I can make an exception for, but books? No.

Thanks to The Wire Magazine, who originally shared this post.

[Music] Is Bandcamp the Holy Grail of Online Record Stores?

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I’m a big fan of Bandcamp. So much so that I not only have a personal account with them, where I’ve bought over 630 albums, but I’ve also released 9 albums on my own online label. They have a great model to work with, and are the equivalent of an incredible indie record shop, but they need only to develop a social media platform in order to allow people to really connect. Otherwise, Bandcamp is really something else.

The New York Times writes about them here.

[Music] RLW / PAAK – Zur Arbeit I

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From Attenuation Circuit’s Bandcamp site:

Ralf Wehowsky and Peter Kastner, aka RLW and PAAK, present their third collaborative album in a series of concept albums dedicated to various subjects. This record, their first on attenuation circuit, is about work, and as on the previous records (about food and religion, respectively), the titles, liner notes, and the sound itself suggest a rather sarcastic take on work, or more precisely, the situation of working people today.

Ralf Wehowsky has been a fixture on the international experimental scene since his 1980s work with P16.D4 and related projects on the Selektion label. The fusion of electronic sounds and non-musical, musique concrète material is characteristic of much of his work. Peter Kastner, working both in improvised sound and visual arts, brings a low-fi approach to jerrybuilt sound objects to the collaboration. By contrasting everyday noise that might well have been recorded in a factory, or factory canteen, with startlingly artificial, almost deliberately cheesy harpsichord and mellotron sounds, they create a tension between a nostalgia for beauty and the barrenness of everyday life, in three pieces, or perhaps movements. The liner notes leave no doubt as to what the three movements stand for: The 19th century with its mass exploitation of industrial workers (courtesy of a quote by Karl Marx), the 20th century with its progress toward more social security for working people, and the 21st century, which sees an erosion of solidarity as neoliberal policies take away social benefits such as rent-controlled housing.

Crap Marxist verbiage, but great music, as always.

[Music] Album of the Day: Various Artists, “Radiating Light: Orchid Tapes & Friends” — Bandcamp Daily

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It’s alarming to note the number of rock genres that have roots in a specific compilation album. The 1960’s folk revival sprang to life as a result of Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music; punk rock got a jump start by Lenny Kaye and Jac Holzman’s Nuggets; indie pop became a new shorthand after the […]

via Album of the Day: Various Artists, “Radiating Light: Orchid Tapes & Friends” — Bandcamp Daily

[Music] Simple Minds: From Beauty to Bombast, the early 1980s — Progarchy

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For those of you who read progarchy, you know that we often (maybe not often enough, but often) review things that are, at best, vaguely prog. We often veer into art rock and art pop. My favorite genre outside of “straight” prog is progressive pop such as PET SOUNDS, SONGS FROM THE BIG CHAIR, and […]

via Simple Minds: From Beauty to Bombast, the early 1980s — Progarchy

[Music] Benjamin Aït-Ali – Ballet and Other Works

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This release, by French experimental music composer Benjamin Aït-Ali, is, and probably always will be, the shortest release I’ve had the privilege to review. Ballet and Other Works clocks in at around 3 minutes, but as with the legendary Cinéma Pour L’Oreille series released by Metamkine in the early 1990s, the compositions waste no time in getting to the point.

Aït-Ali is among a new vanguard of composers who will take the flame from the legends of electroacoustic music such as Pierre Henry, Pierre Schaeffer and François Bayle. It sounds like a tall order, but I’d challenge you to study his work. You can listen to Ballet and Other Works here, via OBS Records, based in Rostov-on-Don, Russia, or at Benjamin’s Bandcamp site. More samples of his work can be heard via Soundcloud.

[Music] Silber Records: New Guitar Experiments, Lo-Fi Pop, & Post Punk from Azalia Snail, Electric Bird Noise, & Dyr Fazer

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From our friends at Silber Records!:

Hello,

Hope all is going well with you. You may have already heard about it on Facebook or Twitter, but last month my parents’ basement flooded destroying about a fourth of the physical inventory, but if you even mildly follow the music industry you know that physical sales have been in dramatic decline for ten years so I am trying to play it positive as making me clear out some trash rather than $10,000 worth of CDs. My main regret of the experience is it really highlights that I should have done lower press runs the first 15 years & then I could’ve helped more bands. Live, learn, & move on, right? The future looks good. Anyway, we’ve got three new releases for you.

Electric Bird Noise: Nighttime Tides
Electric Bird Noise is back with a 32 minute epic ambient guitarscape. Longtime fans who loved the Le Vestibule era of EBN should definitely check this one out. Feel the pull of the ocean as the fog rolls in, or is it a smoke machine?
Buy or listen on Silber: http://www.silbermedia.com/ebn/nighttime.shtml
Buy or listen on Bandcamp: https://silbermedia.bandcamp.com/album/nighttime-tides
Listen on Spotify: https://play.spotify.com/album/6Vi7uO0NXwR7vpuUgSb4fD
Special! – Download all 8 EBN releases on Silber for just $12! Half-price! – http://www.silbermedia.com/sale

Azalia Snail: Dream Dazzler
We’re super happy to work with lo-fi queen Azalia Snail again here at Silber. She made a 5in5 of lo-fi dance jams & such. Dive in to the broken toy daydream.
Buy or listen on Silber: http://www.silbermedia.com/5in5/as-dreamdazzler.shtml
Buy or listen on Bandcamp: https://silbermedia.bandcamp.com/album/dream-dazzler
Listen on Spotify: https://play.spotify.com/album/6FJSxVKn1ZDGYH3czPs8l8

Dyr Faser
Dyr Faser is Eric Boomhower & part of Boston’s growing lo-fi post-punk/proto-goth scene. Taking notes from godfathers of the genres like Joy Division, Depeche Mode, Suicide, Durutti Column, & Coil – Dyr Faser blends it all together & gives you five one minute shots that hit you like $2 shots at an after hours bar. You can’t help but nod your head to the drum machine rhythms as you wait for the creature lurking in the darkness to destroy you. Don’t worry; the monsters have always been your friends.
Buy or listen on Silber: http://www.silbermedia.com/5in5/dyr-faser.shtml
Buy or listen on Bandcamp: https://silbermedia.bandcamp.com/album/dyr-faser
Listen on Spotify: https://play.spotify.com/album/37Ypl00iqiUZEdbrd90WvY

We still have some download codes left for anyone who orders a physical copy of any of the Lycia or Lycia related releases (Mike VanPortfleet, Tara VanFlower, Black Happy Day) through Silber to get a free download code for the new Lycia album A Line That Connects.
http://www.silbermedia.com/lycia

New Releases coming soon from Cloaca, Ms, Koyl, Fullness Off Lack, Jon Dawson, Moodring, Hotel Hotel, Lum, Premature Burial, DR, & more in the coming weeks. A batch of comics about Robert E Howard coming soon. & of course inevitably a new QRD. Also thinking about re-starting the Silber Blog, let me know what you’d want in it – http://silbermedia.com/blog/?p=6231

Thanks for your interest & support & spread the word about the new releases if you can & if you want to be taken off the mailing list just let me know.

Hrt
Brian John Mitchell
www.silbermedia.comhttps://www.facebook.com/silbermedia
http://twitter.com/silberspy
https://play.spotify.com/user/silberspy

[Music] Coming Soon: ‘Twin Peaks’ Original Score, Reissued on Vinyl — Heathen Harvest

/ Rudy Carrera / Leave a comment

As we nervously await the rebirth of Twin Peaks on television, we’ll at least be able to do our fretting to some dreamy music. Death Waltz Recording Company will be reissuing Angelo Badalamenti’s iconic soundtrack for the original TV series later this month. The reissue will a deluxe affair, in a die-cut, gatefold cover, with David Lynch-approved artwork and […]

via Coming Soon: ‘Twin Peaks’ Original Score, Reissued on Vinyl — Heathen Harvest