Hot off the presses, it's WFMU's very own iPhone app!Not so
long ago, WFMU became the first radio station to offer streams for the
iPhone, way before the app craze took off. We've finally joined the
teeming masses...
Click here to get the free WFMU Radio app
via iTunes (or go to the iPhone app store, and search for "WFMU"). The
app is complete with song title, artist and show info as well as two,
count 'em, two streaming options - 32k and 128k MP3. It's the easiest
way yet to listen to WFMU from anywhere on a phone!
You can of course
still use the Public Radio Player app,
which is also free. Many thanks to Webhamster Henry, tech Czar Doron
and DJ Frangry for help with the new free WFMU iPhone app.
The Free Music Archive is growing every day, with mp3s curated by WFMU and friends like KEXP, ISSUE Project Room, and dublab.
Here are some recent highlights, and for more entry points,
follow us on Twitter or subscribe to our Featured RSS
Herr
Professor of the True Chip Till Death mp3 blog has been curating weekly
8bit/chip-tune recommendations every Tuesday morning. Entries so far
have included
the banjo wieldingBud Melvin, gwEm and Counter Reset, an exclusive album fromStarpause, and an Eastern European collective called AY Riders that centers around "an affordable competitor to the Commodore64 computer" known as the The ZX Spectrum. Here's a ZX Spectrum track called Industrial Fucking Part 2 (mp3), by Yerzmyey from Poland. More from Herr Professor here.
We're also continually reaching
back into the archives, incuding a trifecta of Brian Turner live sets
from To Live & Shave In LA (Tom Smith's supergroup, often featuring Andrew WK, Thurston Moore, Weasel Walter, Mark Morgan of Sightings). Dan Melchior (und Das Menace / Broke Revue) also shared a few of his live sets from over the years, and with a pack of unreleased Melchior rarities, including this song "A Wizard Doesn't Need a Computer" (mp3)
If you like what you hear, please follow the links to the FMA for lots more free tunes and album purchase links.
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.
Now you too can decorate your computer desktop the way the Movie Stars do, with our amazing WFMU Wallpaper! To take advantage of this fabulous offer, simply click the link below for your desired selection, and once it loads, right click over the image and choose "Set as Wallpaper". Or, if your computer doesn't have that option, you can right click on the image (once it loads) and choose to "Save Image As.." and then set the wallpaper via your computer's control panel settings. This site has more information on how to set your wallpaper up, or you can drop me a line if you are still stuck.
These recently added wallpaper designs adorned various Marathon goodies of the past.
Radio Ballet 1024x768, 254k. 800x600, 180k.
Nick Dewar choreographed this beautiful design for the WFMU sticker and postcard set back in 2006.
Where Dead Air Lives 1024x768, 316k. 800x600, 205k.
Marco Almera dug up this festive design for WFMU's 2004 T-shirt.
Bumper Sticker Streetscape 1024x768, 172k. 800x600, 120k.
J. D. King took a stroll to Coolsville and brought back this design for the 2007 Bumper Sticker.
Baby Loves WFMU 1024x768, 208k. 800x600, 145k.
As you can tell from this image, babies and kittehs love WFMU, and you can show that you do too! Dr. Phrankenshop cobbled together this sweet scene for WFMU's 2006 sticker and postcard set.
Eat Flaming Death, Fascist Media Pigs! 1024x768, 174k. 800x600, 120k.
The copiously talented Dr. Frankenshop also manufactured this image, for WFMU's 2006 T-shirt.
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.
At the risk of sounding like a salesman, I want to tell you about a promotional event that happened Wednesday night at Southpaw in Brooklyn, not because I'm particularly enchanted by what was being sold - I'm more in awe of the way the event was put together. Yamaha hired a bunch of excellent experimental electronic musicians to sell its blinky handheld version of the future, the Tenori-on. Robert Lippok of To Rococo Rot, Pole, I Am Robot and Proud, Sutekh, Safety Scissors and Nathan Michel were given one of the instruments a few weeks before the mini tour (NYC and
San Francisco) began, and each created a set that was based on
Tenori-on to some degree. Here's what it looks like:
Robert Lippok, Sutekh, and Nathan Michel used the small but functionally expansive unit to create almost every aspect of their performances; the lights glow on both sides of the instrument, so while they programmed beats, melodies, and soundscapes on the fly the audience was able to see from the other side exactly which buttons were being pressed.
I Am Robot and Proud and Safety Scissors used the device sporadically throughout their performances, and Pole, who put on the most entrancing performance of the night, only seemed to be using Tenori-on a little bit, mostly to trigger the internal synthesizer sounds - they sounded kind of limp on top of the rest of his throbbing basslines and expansive reverb.
The middle of the set, though, was the real-deal pitch of the night: the creator, Toshio Iwai, took the stage for about an hour to describe in vivid detail how the Tenori-on evolved from concept to completion. And it was a pitch straight from the heart, unlike anything I've ever witnessed.
Freezepop are not just a band. They're the first band in the world to become popular almost entirely because of their appearances not in newspapers, radio, magazines, or the blogosphere, but in video games. As a result, they're a convincing picture of the near future of music, gaming, and the worlds of art and commerce that surround both.
Just a few years ago, Freezepop's songs were sharing the stage with karaoke-style covers of "Smoke on the Water," "Ziggy Stardust," and "Spanish Castle Magic." Now, through a combination of good timing and great songwriting, they're sitting right up there with Bowie, Radiohead, and Blue Öyster Cult. Not karaoke-style Blue Öyster Cult, but the REAL Blue Öyster Cult...in a way. *
The Boston 3-piece has at its core The Duke of Pannekoeken, a programmer of infectious synth-pop and also of music for highly infectious video games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band. Liz Enthusiasm is Freezepop's bouncing, purple-haired frontwoman whose deadpan delivery is every bit as plasticky and cutting as their synth lines. The two were kind enough to answer a bunch of my stupidly detailed questions about music, licensing, the Cardigans, and the concepts of "fun" and "songwriting" in rhythm gaming. If you haven't experienced rhythm gaming or Freezepop, you might want to watch these videos to get an idea of what you're dealing with. The first is Freezepop's official video for "Less Talk More Rokk," and the second is the same song being played to perfection in Guitar Hero II.
Trent Wolbe: How have your audiences and concerts changed and/or grown over the years?
Liz Enthusiasm: Well, when we were in the smaller games (Frequency and Amplitude) it was more hardcore gamers who came to our shows, but Guitar Hero has really opened it up to a lot of people. One thing I really like is that there are all kinds of people there, all ages groups and different scenes. It's pretty cool.
TW: Duke - you work at Harmonix, the company that makes the best Rhythm games in the world. What is Freezepop's relationship to Harmonix, exactly?
The Duke of Pannekeoken: why thank you kindly for the praise... i hope to think that harmonix has worked really hard to try and bring fun, interactive music experiences to people! the relationship is pretty straight-forward... just after freezepop was started back in '99, i joined harmonix as a sound designer and composer and was tasked with writing music for our first game FreQuency, as well as authoring a number of other tracks in the game. after a couple of years doing that, i moved up and became the audio director for the Karaoke Revolution series of games, AntiGrav, and Guitar Hero 1 & 2. Since then, i've transitioned over to being a producer and lead the team that made Phase for the iPod which was released last fall. All of this has opened up a great opportunity for freezepop to include tracks in almost all of those games and reach whole new groups of fans. it's been amazing the reaction we've gotten to our songs in the games and has brought out lots of gamers to our shows.
TW: Do you write Freezepop songs and hope they'll end up in Rock Band, or see a hole in Rock Band, for example, and write to fill it?
LE: We generally use pre-existing songs of ours. There are certain ones that are just more obvious choices as to what would work well in the video game context.
DoP: For the most part, it's just a song we've written, and have gotten an opportunity to include it in a game, and then we've made some changes to the track that will make it play more fun. the only exception to this really was Less Talk More Rokk which was pretty much explicitly written knowing it was going to go into Guitar Hero 2. But it sounds pretty much like our other songs so it wasnt much of a stretch. We have added guitars and beefed up some of the instrumental parts in Brainpower to make sure it's super fun to play in Rock Band.
The sale of social networking site Bebo.com to AOL last week for $850 million prompted Billy Bragg to write an editorial in the New York Times about how artists are getting shafted out of royalty payments by web 2.0 websites who use their work to build their businesses. Though it's true that every artist that creates a profile on MySpace or any other social networking portal is legally waiving their right to royalty payments, he raises a good point: musicians and record labels using these sites to communicate to their fanbases are underselling their own worth.
I just spent a week in Austin, Texas for SXSW and I observed two completely different business cultures at work; first, the "interactive" (internet) dudes held court, then later in the week most left and the town gave way to the music fest folks. The vibe in the conference center spelled out the different trajectories of the two industries. Venture capital is currently pouring cash into every half-baked disemvoweled idea set to a powerpoint deck, so the internet guys are whooping it up. But as the music panels began the central theme congealed fairly swiftly: abject fiscal despair.
This much is clear: the retail market for music is drying up. But that doesn't mean it's time to fold in cards.
Comments from an entry on 90 Day Jane (note 2: site no longer exists, ), a blog with the tagline "I'm Going to Kill Myself in 90 Days."
You should put out too, because its not going to matter if you get pregnant or get aids.
You will be dead before either really matter anyway.
I was wondering if i could get an interview with you for my college newspaper, it would definitely leave us both annonymous but i would be extremely interested in getting a one on one chat with you.
roses are red violets are blue I want fuck you with a rake
Instead of blowing your brains out with a shotgun, blow your brains out with a Super Soaker loaded with gasoline as you hold a match in your mouth.
I am a cannibal living in the Steglitz region of Berlin. I want to know if you would like to join me on your day of 'no more'.
POST NUMBER 32 WHOOO!
I don't think there's anything seriously wrong with Jane...Who knows - I'm not Frasier Crane.
Why are you wating so long? Just kill yourself now. BTW, halo 3 was eazy EVEN ON LEGENDARY!
Everytime a laundry detergent or toiletpaper commercial comes on TV, I'm moved to transports of rage. Who are THEY to tell US what to do?
I think you should do it by cutting off your ugly head with a chainsaw.
I hope you get hit by a bus tomorrow, you attention seeking whore :)
Superglue your hands to your head (You'll understand later)
I live in Germany (as mentioned) and according to OUR law it is not a crime, nor an offence to give verbal help to someone who want to commmit a suicide if you don't assist the process...However, I need to go for 60 mins but I will be back.
Did you hear about the guy who died on youtube? Everybody's sad about that.
Sometimes you like to pat yourself on the back for having a fun idea like "Guitar Hero? What about Techno Hero!!!! That would be so much fun, like haha stupid what would you do, sit there and push play.....haha stupid idea."
Then someone from Japan blows your fucking brain away.
That person (female, I think, because of the spotty nail polish) is playing beatmania IIDX 15 DJ:Troopers. As you might be able to tell from all the postfixes, it's the latest in a very long run of titles Konami's Bemani series. It's included games like Guitar Freaks, that featured a guitar controller way before Guitar Hero came out, portable (!) rhythm games called Bemani Pocket, and most famously, Dance Dance Revolution. The IIDX iteration, which has been around since 1999, features two one-octave keyboard pads and a turntable controller (yes, she's using it in the video - check the pinky). Instead of a meager 50-someodd songs like Guitar Hero and Rock Band come with, they have...500 songs. Blam!
In December, there was a gigantic "Bemani 10th anniversary Memorial Event" concert in Tokyo called Gitado Live:
How in the goddamn fucking hell had I not heard of this entire world before this morning? It got me thinking. Right now, video gaming - in the United States, at least - is a world of extremes.
Most liberal, enlightened, grown-up Americans have become that way by working hard at it. Some have to slough off the cultural impositions of conservative and religious ideologies; I'm one of those children-of-a-child-of-the-sixties who fights to rid himself of ideas like, "root chakras" and, "meaningful coincidence."
But sometimes I can't prevent myself from making superstitious connections: the 001 Collective, a contemporary collective of musicians who are distributing their music for free using powerful peer-to-peer technology, were meant to cross my path. And yours too, I reckon.
It happened the day after New Year's. Google alerted that my name had made a new appearance on the web and after investigating the link I was left completely mystified. My name was nowhere to be found on the entire website But "secret download society?" How could I (I who am professionally charged with the task of discovering and licensing free music) not click through?
What I found on the other side of that link is the 001 Collective and I think it's a combination of a few social forces that haven't stood in the same room together. It's a music blog / BitTorrent index / record label / authentic freak folk / new twee / 8 bit scene. Unlike a lot of other interesting music sites on the web involving experimental distribution, this is a group whose first orienting principle is aesthetic and cultural alignment. No one's looking for an ad-driven revenue stream or seeking VC funding. They're just getting their art out there the most hyper-efficient way they know how.
You don't really need very much money to start a label-esque collective these days: It just takes one computer geek. This one's name is Secret Owl. (Or no, Luke Morris. But he makes wonderful music under the name Secret Owl and for all I know, he writes PHP under the name Secret Owl too.)
Stone Oakvalley's Authentic SID Collection is a project to convert every Commodore 64 song of the High Voltage Sid Collection into MP3 format (145449 of them!) using the actual machine rather than PC emulators. The sound difference between the analog chip and digital emulation is startling- the analog being much warmer, deep and possessing various natural inconsistencies. Each song was recorded from the three different versions of the Sid chip that was used in the Commodore 64. This sometimes results in diverse playings of the same composition as the three chips process information differently.
I have been sifting through the HVSC for a couple years, converting choice bits to MP3, so it is nice to have this massive library online where I can grab the authentic sounding version. Here are a few of the best ones I found recently:
Having gone through a New Year's Day cleaning of my gifbox, here is my biggest, most mind-blowing collection of animated gifs ever. Beware! By clicking on the jump link, you'll be downloading 11 megs of ram-sucking giffy goodness. Computers without much memory may fall over and die.
Coming soon at a WFMU Gifbox near you:
The Animated Recursion Film Festival, and (if I dare):
Nobody loved neon green, pink and orange more than me (probably true, actually), but all things good and gaudy must come to an end, and WFMU has redesigned its homepage for the first time in ten years. You can see the results here. Let us know what you think in the comments. (Actually, the homepage was re-designed briefly for four days in 2000 but let's not discuss that.)
Among the new features on wfmu.org: links to the most recent blog articles, expandable news items, better layout and organization overall, plus, a vomit-inducing background color which is completely Doron's fault. Also to blame: Kenzo, Marcus, Liz and Listener Scott Emmer. We all had a much nicer background color chosen, but Doron said: "No, something more... vomity."
Next on the redesign agenda: this very blog. And by "next," I mean: after the marathon (Feb 25 to March 9). Although you may notice a critical addition to this blog: at the bottom of the main page, there is now a link that says: "Older Posts." What a concept, eh? Thanks to typepad for adding this feature five years too late!
You might notice a brand new array of WFMU homepage pictures on wfmu.org as well. We just retired about 400 of the images that once graced our homepage, but you can always keep up with every image we've ever had (past, present and future) at the top of wfmu.org with our WFMU Homepage Image Gallery.
Serious thanks to Doron, Kenzo, Marcus. Liz, and Scott E.
Happy holidays everybody. Put the Krampus back into Christmas.
The keeper of Kempa.com wrote a wonderful article detailing the history of 70s and 80s era computer games distributed on vinyl as super-precious bonus track. The programs were recorded to isolated locked grooves as messy noise blasts meant to be recorded to tape and played back to a personal computer. Read on for details on what must be the geekiest promotional exploit ever, pioneered by Pete Shelley of the Buzzcocks, The Thompson Twins, The Stranglers, and more.
Having gone through a New Year's Day cleaning of my gifbox, here is my biggest, most mind-blowing collection of animated gifs ever. Beware! By clicking on the jump link, you'll be downloading 11 megs of ram-sucking giffy goodness. Computers without much memory may fall over and die. 
