WFMU's Beware of the Blog

Free Music Archive (in the) news (MP3s)

The Free Music Archive, a new collaborative project from WFMU and friends, has almost doubled in size since launching in beta this April. With nearly 10,000 curated mp3s, there's a lot to scope out, which is one reason I've been relatively absent from Beware of the Blog recently. Well, I'm back with this weekly feature that aims to highlight some "hot new added". Of course I'd rather just highlight everything, but you can keep tabs on that yourself by subscribing to the FMA's Recently Added RSS feed. Or follow us on twitter. Anyway, let's see...

Fellow curator KEXP is adding new tracks as I type, and I just had to re-post this, from Portugal's progressive kuduro group Buraka Som Sistema: Sound Of Kuduro/Luanda-Lisboa (Live at KEXP) (mp3)

Climax Golden Twins stopped by ISSUE Project Room last week, and brought some Sublime Frequencies videos with them to boot. If you're kicking yourself for missing out on the show, at least there's this archive of the CGT set (follow the link for the mp3).

The world's greatest insurgent country label, Bloodshot Records, shares promo tracks from the likes of Andre Williams, Dex Romweber Duo, and Jon Langford/Sadies/Waco Brothers. They've also curated a selection of archival recordings from their Bloodshot Revival series, like this 1960 song by The Sundowners - It's My Way (mp3)

Doncbruital did an excellent write-up of Montreal's Grand Trine, who originally released the warped anthem "Monochromatic Youth" (mp3), on cassette. Read more about them via the FMA here.

Podcaster Macedonia spotlights a world of hip-hop and electronic goodies from California to Budapest. Check out "With Or Without You" (mp3) from a free EP by Opio of Souls of MIschief, and "Funny" (mp3) by Hungarian artist Suhov via the BudaBeats label.

..and hey! The FMA was recently covered in The Wire, and in Billboard Magazine (where Vivian Girls were featured alongside Mudboy!?!?). Here are some other nice write ups that you can read on the internet:
The Portland Mercury called the FMA "incredibly awesome". Portland OR is also home to curator KBOO
CNET | Paid Content | Pitchfork | The Daily Swarm | and an in-depth g-chat interview by Rhizome Magazine

A Child's Garden of Noise

In June 1994, Drone Records released probably the least droney item in their catalog to date with the nutty single for children "A Child's Garden of Noise".
Always one of my favorites of the things I co-produced and engineered while with Big City Orchestra (now celebrating their 30th anniversary),
the first pressing, on clear vinyl, sold out in about a month and so a second edition on candy yellow with lovely red center was put out.
Since the originals ran at 33&1/3rd we knew the fidelity would suffer a bit, and so years later I finally got around to transferring the original tapes to CD. Thus the mix of Side One of the record presented here is not the exact same as on the record.
I had always wanted to hear the huge amount of bacon cooking/record surface noise that I'd wallowed in while making side one in a 'clearer' format.

Friend Brook Hinton had been meaning to use the title for years, and graciously let us release ours. What can ya do- it's a phrase I'm sure many have kicked around. I should mention the awesome vocal work of six-year-old Annie X on much of side two. Which I'm not gonna play, but check it out anyway.
Also included today is a bonus unreleased track from the same sessions using an American history record we all loved. Oh, yeah, and there's also the wonderful first edition covers- all different on both sides, all of the fronts drawn by children and the backs done in our studio using vinyl and rub on letters tediously applied in the dead of night by das.
Hoping your young'uns enjoy it---this is one of my few posts suitable for children- so run with it!

A contemporary review is here.
the MP3s:       A Child's Garden of Noise
                      The Santa Fe Trail

Mourning the Death of President Bongo

Lately I have been pretty upset about my gullibility problem, which is second only to my little hoarding problem in the list of My Upsetting Oddities. (Not being able to touch doorknobs is third and, rather surprisingly, being unable to recognize human faces has recently fallen to fourth.) But then I was looking at the news today, and saw that some camera crew found a middle-aged Korean man wandering around Macao  and decided he was Kim Jong Nam (“the Small General”), eldest son of Kim Jong Il. So maybe I’m not the only one.

The Local (“Sweden’s News in English,” which for some reason I cannot stop calling “The State”) had an entertaining story today, too. Supporters of those Pirate Bay file-sharing guys who were convicted of copyright violations in Sweden last month have won election to a seat in the European Parliament. Candidates of the Pirate Party campaigned on the issue of reforming copyright and patent law, and won 7.1% of the vote in Sweden, putting them into the EU government.
Huzzah! I mean, Arrrrrh!

Mark Flood NYC Exhibit

Few bands revelled in the seedy underbelly of the American stripmall like Houston's Culturcide, a band fueled by the Boss' 80s bluejeans back pocket lint and grizzle from the bottom of a Burger King deep-fry tray; they were also purveyors of possibly the greatest holiday single ever, "Depressed Christmas" (MP3). Chelsea Whores is an exhibition by Mark Flood, an artist well-involved in that band's general orbit, running here in New York at the Zach Feuer Gallery (520 West 24th Street), from May 22 through July 10th and features his collage works and what he's termed "broken paintings" from 1979-2002 (though one recent review from Los Angeles states that all of the materials claiming to be decades old were actually made in the last two years). The refuse of American consciousness Flood chooses to deal with has included literal debris from Hurricane Ike, modified road or food service signs, and as we see left, lots of mutated iconography (one of my fave images he has made in the past has Annie Lennox on the Eurythmics' Touch LP cover being rearranged into garish Elephant Man-style paste-up). Great quote on Germany in NYC about the Chelsea Whores exhibit that makes me even more down with it: "His influence is comparable to that of the American artist Andy Warhol, but whereas Warhol's work features talent, Flood unintentionally devises a tedious formal vocabulary, layered with meaning and metaphor."

Egnekn Montgomery's 8 Track Magic

After 15 years we now have the follow up volume to Brooklyn sound artist/laminator Egnekn Montgomery's 8 Track Magic, a CD compendium of the sounds of damaged 8-track tapes. The first volume took a thrift-store Led Zep IV cartridge (purchased for a quarter), setting the listener on a sea of queasy Robert Plant warble in even more damaged mode, Page's "Stairway to Heaven" intro sounding like Jandek, a new association with the song in your head occuring through natural (or perhaps Crowley-induced mystical) playing process. Egnekn claims this new volume is less "magic" than previous, but it definitely stands as a signifier of crumbling technology that once reigned supreme, a remark on de-evolution, or even a lesson to all the Blu-Ray fans out there. Check out Egnekn (aka Gen Ken's) ATMOTW (Artist Throwing Money Out the Window) site for more info and releases.

"Going Off the Deep End" (MP3)
"Fever Down" (MP3)
"Hey Hey Number Nine" (MP3)
"I'm a Clown" (MP3)
"I Won't Do That" (MP3)

and one from Volume One:
"Lonelytime" (MP3)

Megapolis Audio Festival, Boston : April 24 - 26

Heads-up Bostonites, a cool DIY audio arts festival is headed your way: Megapolis, April 24-26.

"Artists, documentarians, musicians, and fans come together to share secrets on producing and presenting challenging audio works online, on-air, and on the stage."

Tons of cool sessions are planned: learn about field recording, circuit bending, illegal art, activist films, sound art and collage, audio production, radio wizardry, electro-acoustic instrument building, and more! Folks from the Third Coast Audio Festival, free103point9, WZBC, WYPR, WNYC, Mecca Normal, MIT, and tons of other groups and working artists will be representing.

On top of all this wonderment, Jason Sigal and I will make a mind-blowing presentation about the Free Music Archive on Sat Apr 25, 11:30am-1pm (@ Public Radio Exchange, 3rd Floor, 50 Church St., Cambridge UPDATE: venue change.... Nelson Mandela room at the Democracy Center, 45 Mt. Auburn St).

Hope to see you there!

Megapolis Schedule | Ticket Info | Blargh

WFMU's Free Music Archive: Jump in!

Hey folks, in case you haven't had your ear to the pavement, WFMU recently launched a new site, the Free Music Archive!

The FMA is a fantastic resource of free, legal, and (most importantly) good music downloads. WFMU teamed up with audio curators like KEXP, Dublab, KBOO, CASH Music, Issue Project Room, Phoning It In, and even a fantastic internet radio station in Israel (Halas.am) to offer up wonderful and free music for the masses, and we expect the site to grow even larger and better with time.

Most of the songs offered on the Free Music Archive are licensed using Creative Commons, which is a more flexible version of copyright. The CC licenses used in the Free Music archive allow for non-commercial use with attribution (by-nc). This means you can download songs for free under two conditions:

1. You aren't making any money off of whatever you use the song for (listening on your ipod = ok, e-mailing the song to a friend or posting on your non-ad-driven blog/podcast = ok, using the song in your company's shoe commercial = not ok).

2. You credit the artist.

Some songs even allow for remixing (under the share-alike clause). Anyway, enough about the rules, go forth and explore!

As I was poking around on the site, I came across a great live set by the band Weave, which I found in Dublab's portal of the Free Music Archive. Since I originally hail from the northern sector of California, I am by nature skeptical of anything to make a peep from the state's lower half. I swallowed my pride and took a listen to Weave anyway, and loved what I heard: melodic yet slightly dissonant and hopping post-punk tunes with fun sing-along multi-lady vox. Fans of Liliput, the Slits, the Shaggs, Vivian Girls, and early B-52s, take note! Take a listen to Weave's live set right here, and download away!

New Podcast: The Media Squat with Douglas Rushkoff

WFMU is pleased to welcome a new member of the freeform family, Douglas Rushkoff! Mr. Rushkoff's program, The Media Squat, can be heard live on our airwaves and webstreams every Monday at 7pm EDT, and streaming archives are available here.

The Media Squat is freeform, bottom-up, open source radio looking towards similarly open source, bottom-up solutions to some of the problems engendered by our relentlessly top-down society.

It isn't pure '60s or Whole Earth radicalism and self-sufficiency (though it's certainly related) but a 21st Century, cyberpunk reclamation of all technologies and social contracts as essentially open source, up for discussion, and open to modification. It's an application of the hacker ethic and net collectivism to everything, done in the spirit of fun and adventure.

The Media Squat is also now available as a podcast: click here to subscribe via iTunes or hit WFMU's podcast page for more options.

If you're not familiar with Douglas Rushkoff's work, dive in by reading his excellent analysis of the economic downturn for a refreshing view.

WFMU: Now With More Video

Hello, please enjoy WFMU's first VIDEO PODCAST, VIDEO QUEST.

Subscribe to the feed here, watch it up there, or download it and put it in your pod.

Watch this space for more info, next episode coming mid-April.

WFMU-curated Free Music Archive Party 4.4.09 @ The Bell House (mp3s)

WFMU is throwing a launch party for FreeMusicArchive.org on April 4th at The Bell House in Brooklyn. There'll be live music from Thee Oh Sees, Excepter, Catatonic Youth Sightings, and Pink Skull, a DJ set from WFMU music director Brian Turner, a live broadcast booth, dub pies, libations, mayhem, special guests and the unleashing of positive post-WFMU-marathon energies.

The Free Music Archive will combine the curatorial approach that stations like WFMU have played for the last few decades, and the community generated approach of many current online music sites. It'll be a valuable resource for those in search of legal audio; each track will have a clear set of rights associated with it, as determined by the artist, letting podcasters, bloggers, remix artists and music fans know what uses the rights-holders will and will not allow. The project began here at WFMU, but we are just one of several curators who've been gathering audio for the Free Music Archive, freeing archival audio into the public domain, adding to the Creative Commons and building an open forum for participation that we're very excited to share with you. Stay tuned to our pre-launch blog for more previews and announcements as we get closer to launch. In the meantime, here's the launch party info:

WFMU Presents: FreeMusicArchive.org Launch Party
Saturday April 4th, doors 7pm, 18+
@ The Bell House: 149 7th St, Brooklyn [map]
admission: $10 adv. [tix here] or a roll of the dice
Thee Oh Sees / Excepter / Catatonic Youth Sightings / Pink Skull

11pm Thee Oh Sees
John Dwyer's latest project, based out of San Francisco, with a new album on the way from In The Red. The(e) Oh Sees is not to be confused with OCS (Dwyer's backporch underwater psych-folk collabo with Patrick Mullins of Burmese). This is more akin to the Coachwhips but with more breathing room and crazy Pink-and-Brown rhythms.
listen: Thee Oh Sees - The Freak Was Clean (mp3) from the oop Peanut Butter Oven 12'' EP (Awesome Vistas 2008)

10pm Excepter
Experimental electronic-improv 6-piece from Brooklyn, with records on 5rc, Load, Fuck It Tapes, Fusetron, Paw Tracks, and their own Excepter Records. They document their notorious live shows in a/v formats at pod-o-matic, and the latest mind-melting vid from Excepter's 17-hour Election Day performance can be found here.
listen: Excepter - Kill People (mp3) from Debt Dept (Paw Tracks 2008)

9pm Catatonic Youth
"Control My Gun" was my favorite song of last year. Listen to it! Catatonic Youth is a solo recording project, but 3 catatonic youths will be performing for this show, their east coast debut.
listen: Catatonic Youth - Control My Gun (mp3) from World's Lousy With Ideas Vol. 5 7'' (Almost Ready Records' 3-way split w/ Christmas Island, Dan Melchior Und Das Menace)

[UPDATE 4/1/09: Catatonic Youth has disbanded and had to cancel the show. Sightings has been added, more info here] listen: Sightings - Perforated (mp3) from Through The Panama (Load Records 2007)

8pm Pink Skull
Kraut-influenced house music from Philadelphia, "for those who love drugs and disco/fans of zongamin, soccio, faust and DC recordings." Pink Skull are awesome DJs and remix artists, and they'll be performing with a full band for this show.
listen: Pink Skull - Unicorn Harpoon (mp3) from Zeppelin 3 (Free News Projects 2008)

Free Music Archive Sampler CD vol2 (MP3s)

WFMU presents Selected Sounds from the Free Music Archive Vol. 2. Coated in a cool wintry blue, this second volume features an all-new set of sounds from Silver Jews, Vivian Girls, The Ex+Getatchew Mekuria, Old Time Relijun, Indian Jewelry and more.  The compilation includes tracks off some of our favorite commercial releases, as well as previously unreleased exclusives from the WFMU live room and Free Music Series.

These are just a few of the thousands of tracks that will be freely available under Creative Commons licenses when the fully interactive Free Music Archive website launches this December.  All tracks appear courtesy of artists and labels who have benefited from a progressive approach to distribution and intellectual property in the digital era, and we're designing the Free Music Archive to support this approach.

We'll be handing out free copies of the CD at tonight's Free Music Series concert feat. Wire & Times New Viking (it's sold out but we'll be broadcasting live from the Fillmore NYC). We'll also save some copies of the FMA Sampler CD for the WFMU Record Fair, which is just around the corner (Oct 24-26).  If you are unwilling or unable to procure a physical CD, you can download the compilation, along with accompanying artwork by Greg Harrison.

Selected Sounds from the Free Music Archive vol. 2
>> DOWNLOAD THE WHOLE ALBUM w/ ARTWORK as a .zip (.zip) <<

Tracklist:
1. Kurt Vile - Freeway (mp3) from the album Constant Hitmaker (Gulcher Records 2008)
2. Sic Alps - Message From the Law (mp3) from the albums Description of the Harbor (Awesome Vistas 2007) and A Long Way Around to a Shortcut (Animal Disguise 2008/Drag City 2009)
3. Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti - Jules Lost His Jewels (mp3) from Worn Copy (Paw Tracks 2005)
4. Bird Names - We Want To Be Old (mp3) from On Opaque Things (Pecan Crazy 2006)
5. Borful Tang - John And Mary: The Restaurant (mp3) from Root (Snurp 2005)
6. Mary Halvorson & Weasel Walter - Rare Vodka From The Fourteenth Century (mp3) from Opulence (ugEXPLODE 2008)
7. Getatchew Mekuria & The Ex & Guests - Eyeway Setenafegagn (mp3), based on a Sudanese traditional song, from the live album Moa Anbessa (Terp Records 2006)
8. Dälek - 3 Rocks Blessed (mp3) Live at WFMU on Mike Lupica's show July 11, 2002
9. Illusion of Safety - I Could Be Wrong (mp3) from an unreleased recording (2008 Finite Material Context). Virtual and acoustic guitars: Daniel Burke
10. US Girls - Buzz Chant (mp3) from the Ladyz In Noyz 3xCD compilation (Spleencoffin 2008)
11. Indian Jewelry - Swans (mp3) Live at WFMU on Liz B's show July 7, 2008
12. Plastic Crimewave Sound - I Feel Evils (mp3) from the album Painted Shadows (A Silent Place 2008)
13. Old Time Relijun - Cold Water (mp3) Live at Southpaw, Brooklyn for WFMU's Free Music Series Oct 13, 2007
14. Teeth Mountain - Keinsein (mp3) from their Shdwply/Infinite Limbs LP / Nail In The Coffin CD-R (2008)
15. Black Pus - Land of the Lost (mp3) from Black Pus IV: All Aboard the Magic Pus, recorded by Hundred Arms in Providence, RI (2008)
16. Fósforo - Desconocido (mp3) from the Macondo EP (Raya Records/Vagalumi Music 2007)
17. Silver Jews - Horseleg Swastikas (mp3) Live at WFMU on Benjamin Walker's Theory of Everything Sept 8, 2008
18. The Yolks - I Do What I Do (mp3) from the Introducing...7'' (Criminal IQ 2008)
19. Vivian Girls - Tell The World (mp3) Live at WFMU on Choking On Cufflinks Sept 6 2008 (cd-r)

The mp3s in this post are shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Uited States license except tracks 1 and 15 Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 United States, and track 7 Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Netherlands

Vol. 1 is still available for download here, with tracks from Lucky Dragons, Dan Deacon, Citay, Fursaxa, Kinski and more!

Playin’ Free in PDX: A Free Music Archive mp3 sampler of Portland, OR (MP3s!)

via Tommy E at the Free Music Archive

It's time for another heaping offering of mp3s from WFMU's Free Music Archive!  This time, we're going to Portland, OR. A few things I've learned about the city: Portlanders have appropriated the  PDX airport code to signify anything related to Portland, which seems like a pretty rare regional culture phenomenon.  It is the only large city in the U.S. that is still run by a commission-based government.   The term "rad" is still heavily used.  The city isn't too large, and most musicians there have either collaborated at some point or know each other.  This last new nugget of information is especially rad because it not only leads to some interesting collaborative projects, but also keeps everyone on their toes, constantly creating in a joint effort to make Portland one vibrant and bountiful music city. This post samples some our favorite PDX artists to have joined the FMA so far. MP3s from Ilyas Ahmed, Jake Anderson's Tape Mountain label, Argumentix / James Squeaky's Below PDX label, Au, Black Elk, Dragging an Ox Through Water, Explode Into Colors, Glass Candy, Grouper, Here Comes a Big Black Cloud!!, Pulse Emitter, and more after the jump!

Tacos, Tacos, Tacos, Tacos: A Sample of Los Angeles, Via the Free Music Archive

"It is as though London stretched unbroken from St Albans to Southend in a tangle of ten-lane four-deck super parkways, hamburger stands, banks, topless drug-stores, hippie hide-outs, Hiltons, drive-in mortuaries, temples of obscure and extraordinary religions, sinless joy and joyless sin, restaurants built to resemble bowler hats, insurance offices built to resemble Babylon, all shrouded below the famous blanket of acrid and corroding smog."

Ah, Los Angeles: huge both in population and square footage, unseasonably warm even in January, and home to an awe-inspiring amount of taco trucks (pictured). I don’t know about the topless drug stores that are mentioned above, but the corny restaurants and that irredeemable smog still persist. Luckily, that’s not all you’ll find in the West Coast’s center for sensory overload, and how could it be? Here is but a mere sliver of the Angeleno goodness that the Free Music Archive will have to offer this November. We hope you like it, and please let us know if there’s anything you’d like to see on the Free Music Archive by emailing us at fma [at] wfmu [dot] org. You know, we tried to streamline these city-spotlight posts, but Los Angeles (and Chicago) simply wouldn’t let us.

MP3's from the Los Angeles Free Music Society, Abominog,  Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti, The Bad Trips, Caldera Lakes, Fósforo, Gang Wizard, Hecuba, Infinite Body, Kevin Shields, Lucky Dragons, Pocahaunted, Robedoor, Softboiled Eggies, Tleilaxu Music Machine, Upsilon Acrux and more after the jump!

Free Music Archive Sampler CD (MP3s)

WFMU presents Selected Sounds from the Free Music Archive vol. 1. This compilation previews 21 of the thousands of tracks that’ll be freely available under Creative Commons licenses when the fully interactive Free Music Archive website launches later this year. We’re working with a group of fellow curators to fill the library with great music, and this sampler represents a piece of what WFMU brings to the table.

We’ll be handing out free copies of the CD at the July 4th Sonic Youth/Feelies show (we’re lending special support as part of our Free Music Series). And you can download the comp, along with accompanying artwork by Greg Harrison, right here!

Selected Sounds from the Free Music Archive vol. 1
>> DOWNLOAD THE WHOLE ALBUM w/ ARTWORK as a .zip (.zip) <<

Tracklist:
1. Lucky Dragons - Mercy (mp3) - from the 555 Recordings release Dark Falcon
2. Mahjongg - Tell The Police the Truth (mp3) - from the K Records release Kontpab
3. Psychedelic Horseshit - Country Punk (mp3) -  live at WFMU 12/18/07 on Brian Turner’s show
4. Pierced Arrows - Guns of Thunder (mp3) - from the Tombstone Records release Straight to the Heart / Dead Moon Music
5. New Bomb Turks - So Long, Silver Lining (mp3) - live at WFMU 11/10/2002 on Mike Lupica’s show
6. Kinski - Shelley Winters Overdrive (mp3) - live at WFMU 4/22/2003 on Brian Turner’s show
7. Jason Willett and Jad Fair - Or So I’ve Been Told (mp3) -from the MT6 Records release The Sounds of Megaphone Unlimited
8. Dan Deacon - Piggled (mp3) - live at WFMU 7/23/03 on OCDJ’s show
9. Food For Animals w/ Faust - Planet Say (mp3) release tba 2008
10. Brian Joseph Davis - The Ambient Honky (mp3) from the Blocks Recording Club release The Definitive Host
11. Big Blood & The Bleeding Hearts - Oh Country (mp3)
12. M. Nguyen Van Minh-Con - Nam Nhi-tu (mp3) from the Dust-to-Digital release Black Mirror: Reflections in Global Musics (1915-1955) curated by Ian Nagoski
13. Fursaxa - Song of the Spindle Berry (mp3) from the Sylph release Kobold Moon
14. Nautical Almanac - Rolling in the Green (mp3) from the Heresee release Cover the Earth
15. Strapping Fieldhands - In the Pineys (mp3) from the Siltbreeze release In The Pineys
16. Tommy Jay - I Was There (mp3) from the Columbus Discount Records release Tommy Jay’s Tall Tales of Trauma
17. Citay - On the Wings (mp3) Live at WFMU on Liz B’s show 3/24/08
18. Sounds of Taraab - Mahaba Wa Taka Nini (mp3) from the album Zanzibar, New York
19. People Like Us & Ergo Phizmiz - A Chase Posthaste (mp3) from the digital single Music to Run Fast By
20. Clockcleaner - Caliente Queen (mp3) from the Load Records release Babylon Rules
21. Alan Vega with Oneida - Rocket USA (mp3) live at Southpaw 10/13/2007 for WFMU’s Free Music Series

Baltimore: "The Greatest City in America" (mp3s)

It's a city with 1000 slogans, but no defining song. Baltimore's bred and acted as a magnet for untraditional instrument builders, Wham City's Fort-Thunder-inspired transplants, and the Baltimore Club stylings of DJ Technics, Rod Lee and many more, as heard on television's The Wire.

What follows is an audio sampling of some of the many Baltimore artists who will be making their music available for free non-commercial use on WFMU's Free Music Archive. Afternoon Penis, The Agrarians, Arc and Sender, Dan Deacon, Double Dagger, Food for Animals, Fuzz Unlimited, Human Host, Lexie Mountain Boys, LO MOdA / Low Moda, Nautical Almanac, Newagehillbilly, Ponytail, Sejayno, Teeth Mountain, Jason Willett, and WZT Hearts. There are many more who we're hoping to get in touch with, and we welcome your ideas by email or comment.

Meat Beat Manifested

Everyone has seen a live visual presentation (i.e. Shakespeare in the Park), and everyone has heard a live audio presentation (i.e. WFMU).  And most people have seen a TV show or a movie (i.e. Beavis and Butt-Head, Baby Mama).  Some people have even been told they're being treated to an audiovisual presentation (i.e. Dark Side of the Moon Laser Light Shows). Until last week, I didn't think anyone had made an live audiovisual presentation that really truly was aural and visual at the same time, together.  Then I saw Meat Beat Manifesto on Saturday at the Highline Ballroom.

Zillion-dollar budgets can give electronic music performers like Daft Punk and Kraftwerk an edge in creating visceral visual thrills at their concerts - you can't really do much more for a techno fan than have real robots playing a concert.  But Meat Beat Manifesto has taken a well-worn and considerably less expensive approach - collaging video behind the performers onstage - and taken it to a new zenith of accomplishment in that medium.

Meat Beat mastermind Jack Dangers and Mark Pistel from the political hardcore band Consolidated stood onstage controlling the otherworldly jungle-dubstep-trance beats and squiggles, and at the far right live drummer Lynn Farmer kept incredible pace throughout the entire performance.  On the far left stood Ben Stokes, the visual programmer for the show, who's worked with everyone from Ministry to Public Enemy to Levi's.  He grabbed video samples of Captain Beefheart, old BBC Radiophonic Workshop-esque explanations of sonic technology, Dali's eye-cutting nightmare, The Invaders, Sammy Davis Jr., Harrison Ford as President James Marshall in Air Force One, Star Trek, Billie Holiday, and even Animal, playing in tandem with a live feed of the drummer.

Unlike so many other video shows, clips didn't just sit lay flat and stuttery in the background.  They were accompanied by audio, and were layered over existing beats, scratched, stretched, and re-sampled in a way that fit in with the theme of the song - video of nuclear bomb blasts dropped to the beat, sounds and videos of Rastas burning weed edged their way into a drugs song (well, at least the one that referenced them the most overtly).  Dangers and Stokes were always working together in the audiovisual realm, as well - you could almost imagine the behind-the-scenes dialogue:  "Jack, I've found about 15 clips of people falling from the tops of buildings, can we work the sound of them screaming into the set?" or "Ben, could you work on finding a video of James Brown playing this one sample I use in this song?" Magic like that doesn't just pop out of a video mixer, or an audio mixer for that matter.

The most impressive part about the whole thing was Meat Beat's mastery in weaving overt political commentary into the show. 

Ben Franklin Airbath: Philadelphia FMA sampler (mp3s)

Philadelphia's got a lot to be proud of. According to Philly Boy Roy, well there's hoagies, Rocky, Frank's Soda, them Eagles, Dead Milkmen, them Hooters, and laser GG Allin. With Mr. Ziegler's endorsements duly noted, what follows is a sampling - by no means comprehensive - of some of the other Philadelphia artists you'll be able to hear on WFMU's Free Music Archive.

Mp3s from Bad News Bats, Boogie Witch, Clockcleaner, Fursaxa, King Kong Ding Dong, Mincemeat or Tenspeed, Mountain High, The Original Sins, Phil Moore Browne, Sonic Liberation Front, The Strapping Fieldhands and Kurt Vile after the jump. Feel free to suggest more by email or in the comments.

The Married...With Children Theme Music is Wrong on Hulu

There I was just cruising Hulu to see how my dad's favorite television show holds up 15 years down the line.  Kelly is still hot, Bud is still a dick, Al is still stuck in the shoe store etc etc but THE FUCKING THEME MUSIC IS DIFFERENT!  It's supposed to be the VOCAL VERSION of "LOVE AND MARRIAGE" but now it's some goddamn terrible royalty-free bullshit MIDI instrumental impression of a song that might sound like "Love and Marriage" if you are Tiny James and had been stuck inside a Regular Size Vodka Peach for four days.

What the HELL??

Hello from Columbus, Ohio (mp3s)

The great state of Ohio has raised legends. Cleveland's known for hall-of-famers Pere Ubu and the Electric Eels. Dayton nurtured Kim Deal and Bob Pollard. And from its well-situated spot in between those two cities, the state capital of Columbus is starting to have some sort of cohesive musical identity thrust upon it. What with NME and MTV creaming on Times New Viking and Psychedelic Horseshit. Not to say it's undeserved - I think their excellent live sets in the WFMU studios (TNV) (PHS) are testament enough.

What follows is a sampling - by no means comprehensive - of some of the other Columbus musicians you'll be able to hear on WFMU's Free Music Archive. MP3's from The Guinea Worms, Necropolis, Tommy Jay's Tall Tales of Trauma, Mike Rep & the Quotas, Mors Ontologica, The Lindsay*, El Jesus de Magico, Ryan Jewell, and Sword Heaven after the jump. Feel free to suggest more in the comments.

People Like Us Retrospective Exhibition

WFMU's own sound/image/video collage mistress People Like Us (aka Vicki Bennett) is being featured in a gallery exhibition next month. In case you weren't already aware, People Like Us is an amazing artist, DJ, and podcaster, sampling and reappropriating audio, music, film, television, found footage, and anything else she can get her hands on, resulting in surreal and sublime juxtapositions that bend one's perception of culture.

We Edit Life: a retrospective exhibition
alt.gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

Opening Night: 15 May 2008, 6 - 8pm
Exhibition: 16 May - 12 July 2008

The exhibition will focus on the concept of collage, showing an edited selection of Vicki's work, including twenty album releases, numerous singles and remixes, live sets, seven films and over a hundred and fifty radio shows. Dr. Drew Daniel of Matmos even composed an essay for the the exhibition! On top of that, We Edit Life also marks the launch of a new compilation CD, "Smiling Through My Teeth," curated by People Like Us for the Sonic Arts Network.

People Like Us has previously shown work at Tate Modern, Sydney Opera House, Pompidou Centre and Sonar, and performed radio sessions for John Peel and Mixing It, as well as WFMU. In 2006, she was the first artist to be given unrestricted access to the entire BBC Archive, no small feat.

Links:
Do or DIY radio archives on WFMU

Do or DIY Podcast

Codpaste (with Ergo Phizmiz) archives

People Like Us back catalogue

People Like Us homepage