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In the clip below, their devotion to the show inspires Howard to play a bit of The Beets' music, which reminds him of recordings he made in the 6th grade.
So then Howard Stern plays some of his own lofi recordings...and they're really awesome! One of the songs, "Psychedelic Bee," is an anti-drug song about addiction. The other is "Silver Nickles and Golden Dimes."
"My singing style is very much like The Beets," Howard acknowledges. He encourages The Beets to cover his music, too: "I don't approve of cover versions, but in this case I will."
I'm guessing that's only become Stern's covers policy after "Psychedelic Bee" was covered by Sugar Ray. I wonder if that was done with his approval though, because you don't need approval to cover a song as long as you pay the compulsory license... Anyway, some other clips of these two great songs, plus the ridiculously awful Sugar Ray version, after the jump!
The world's premier international chipmusic event event, the Blip Festival returns to NY May 19-21. WFMU will be there live streaming direct from Eyebeam to your home computer!
Produced by 8bitpeoples & The Tank, the Blip Festival celebrates the best and brightest from the realm of chipmusic and its related discilplines. This year, artists from all over the world will converge at Eyebeam, the leading not-for-profit art and technology center in the USA, for three days of arresting music and visual art utilizing former heavyweights of computing like the Commodore 64 and Amiga, the Atari ST and 2600, the Nintendo Entertainment System and Game Boy.
WFMU will once again be webcasting live from the Blip Festival! So if you’re not able to make it to Eyebeam in the flesh, you can surf on over to wfmu.org each night for the live stream, Accu-Playlist, photos and a realtime comments board. WFMU DJs Bennett4Senate, Marty McSorely, and Jason Sigal will be joined by special guest DJ XC3N from Montreal CISM | 89.3FM to host and DJ between sets both on the stream and in-person at Eyebeam.
In the early 1980s, Ellen Fullman began developing the "Long String Instrument," stringing tuned piano wire across her Brooklyn studio. In the last thirty years, she has moved this instrument all over the country, and for one day she'll perform in ISSUE Project Room's new space at 110 Livingston, in Downtown Brooklyn (May 22: 3 pm & 7 pm: brand-new ISSUE members get two free tickets). It's been compared to standing inside an enormous grand piano, or "some cyclopean subterranean grotto" (The Wire). She has an upcoming release on Important Records, Through Glass Panes, and the mix below includes a few of these tracks as well as collaborations with the artists she'll be joined by later this month.
These comparisons, like "standing inside an enormous grand piano," don't quite convey the symbiosis between Fullman's instrument and her way of playing it. It's true, the audience is sitting in a room with seventy 80-foot, precisely tuned wires strung across it, but the comparison seems to fall apart when you realize you've never quite heard a piano that sounds like this. Instead of playing digitally, Fullman's playing seems to live on the threshold of audibility. The on/off of the piano seems distant — can a light brush on a single string be counted as a "note," in the same way that pressing a key constitutes a note?
The careful tuning of the strings causes sympathetic resonances among them. The wire is strung between resonator boxes made of Sitka spruce, built by a harp builder, and the sound is entirely acoustic. This setup, which on the surface seems simple, like a giant guitar with no frets or a harp with no pedals, creates infinitely complex resonances and acoustic effects. In a resonant space, the line between the instrument sounding and not sounding could be blurred.
The uploaded tracks include collaborations with the musicians she'll be performing with on May 22. Through Glass Panes, her new CD on Important Records, includes a duet with Theresa Wong, "Never Gets Out of Me," and other tracks include a duet with percussionist Sean Meehan ("untitled 3," out on cut), electronic musician David Gamper, and trombonist Monique Buzzarté ("Fluctuation 5," from the album Fluctuations on Pauline Oliveros's Deep Listening label).
Brown wax cylinders, the primary medium for commercial recordings between 1895 and 1901, were in circulation much longer as wax “blanks”—to be recorded on and "shaved" (erasing the old grooves) and recorded on again.
The following is a selection from our minor collection of these. Each recording is a small wonder, for it is highly doubtful that their creators would ever have imagined that they would be heard so many years later.
A boy recites a psalm in the sober, headlong fashion of a child. How old is he? Men sing to the tune of “John Brown’s Body.” Have they had too much to drink? The vocal duet of Suwanee River—is that a husband and wife, brother and sister, friends? And then there are the animal noises--is that a real cat or someone imitating a cat? We hope it is the latter...
These few minutes of sound give us an aural snapshot of the lives of people from a previously silent era. This glimpse into the quiet past has its complications though. Since amateur recording practices weren't standardized at this time, level discrepancies, speed fluctuations, and unintended noise were recurring issues that we have to deal with while preserving and digitizing these cylinders today. In spite of these engineering problems, the essence of the past remains. It is this, more than anything, that keeps us listening. [Berto Solis @ Free Music Archive]
DRAM (originally the Database of Recorded American Music), is a non-profit source for institutional research of contemporary and historical composed and improvised music. The database grew out of the original Anthology of Recorded Music project which, in 1976, released a set of 100 LPs of American music to libraries all over America in celebration of the U.S. Bicentennial.
In keeping with that spirit, DRAM features some of the work of America's most important contemporary composers and performers, including Robert Ashley, Phill Niblock, Pauline Oliveros, Elliott Carter and others through partnerships with such labels as Mode, XI, Pogus, Lovely, Deep Listening, Firehouse 12, Porter, Edition Wandelweiser, B-Boim, Albany, New World Records, CRI, and others...as well as a growing number of recordings brought on through archival preservation and curation, including upcoming archives from Niblock's Experimental Intermedia, early Sun Ra recordings curated by John Corbett, live performances from Mills College, and Ben Hall's amazing collection of Southern Gospel 45s with an introductory essay by Rick Moody.
We are incredibly fortunate to have Nate Wooleyas our guide to the DRAM archives. The Jersey City-based trumpet player is already a household name for anyone who follows the Free Music Archive's free jazz, improv, and experimental genres; his solo performances and collaborations with C. Spencer Yeh, Chris Corsano, Mary Halvorson, James Ilgefritz, Audrey Chen, Reuben Radding, Joe Morris and more have been curated by ISSUE Project Room (where he was a recent Artist-in-Residence) and hometown radio station WFMU.
Much more to dig into at DRAM's FMA portal, where new sounds are being added as we speak! And if you like what you hear, DRAM is also exploring options for individual subscription to have streaming access to all the great music featured at dramonline.org, which has previously only been available to college libraries -- contact Nate Wooley for more information.
We thought about throwing an anniversary party this year, but at this point there is so much incredible music events flowing through the FMA from all over the world that it would be difficult to sum it up in one cohesive event. We've come a very long way since April 4th 2009. The library has grown from 5,000 to 33,500+ mp3s, all curated by an ever-expanding worldwide curatorial consortium. We have some exciting new features in development including a recommendation engine that will bring the library to life, and an expanded API that will open up a new world of possible uses for all the great music that wants to be shared.
Leading up to the launch of the FMA, we curated two FMA Samplers (volume 1 / volume 2) to hand out at the Free Music Series of concerts, previewing some of the sounds that would appear on the FMA. I think they hold up pretty well as a template.
Here's a new mix of 50+ of the many highlights that've been added over the past two years. As always it's just the tip of the iceberg, so keep on diggin' deep and helping get the word out about good music that wants to be shared!
When home recording pioneer R. Stevie Moore left New Jersey last year to return to his birthplace of Nashville TN, it left a void in our hearts here at WFMU, where R. Stevie is a former DJ and our most frequent live guest. Fortunately, we now have the opportunity to lend a hand in his first album since returning to Nashville.
RSM has been doing the "Direct-to-Fan" thing since way back before the Internet came along. So this feels like a natural step for the DIY icon to be going the crowd-funding route via Kickstarter. RSM is also an innovator in home video since before the days of YouTube -- he now shares over 400 videos via RSMTV. The video for our hero's Kickstarter campaign finds RSM swingin his guitar around Nashville past sights like the Parthenon replica, the Ernest Tubb Record Shop, and the Batman building.
R. Stevie Moore's been keeping busy in Nashville, as a 2-hour special appearance on WRVU-FM's Loud Love program can attest (click the link to listen). It's no surprise for the man who's been recording constantly since the 1960s, building a cult following that seems to be growing exponentially in our interconnected online era. One fantastic example is the free ongoing tribute project from Sick Of The Radio, which has now reached 8 volumes and over 200 contributions including some prominent followers like Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti, Throwing Muses, Jad Fair, Jason Falkner, Penn Jillette (Penn & Teller), Dave Gregory (XTC), and James Richardson of MGMT. To further this spread of his music, R. Stevie Moore has kindly offered two tracks off of his recently released REPLICA series under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license. REPLICA is available in three volumes via iTunes: vol 1 / vol 2 / vol 3
The Golden Festival is New York City's massive annual Balkan and East European music and dance bacchanal. For its 26th year, the Golden Festival moves from Inwood to Brooklyn's Grand Prospect Hall (263 Prospect Ave), for a two-night event this Friday and Saturday. On the schedule are 60+ groups from the Balkans and beyond, plus a dance workshop starting things off tonight, and several stations' worth of craft beer, wine, spirits (slivovica, raki and ouzo), and complimentary "meze" (snacks). All proceeds go to charitable causes. The Golden Festival is truly unlike any other event this side of the Dragačevo Trumpet Festival and not to be missed!
WFMU's Transpacific Sound Paradise will be on-site again this year to broadcast a portion of the festivities from the GPH Ballroom Stage (Saturday Jan 15th, 6-9pm). Previous broadcasts can be heard streaming at WFMU [2009 | 2010] and with mp3 collections available on the Free Music Archive [2009 | 2010]. Host Rob Weisberg previewed the Golden Festival during last Saturday's program with a live in-studio performance by Zlatne Uste Balkan Brass Band. North America's first and finest Balkan band are also the founders and ringleaders of the Golden Festival. The live session was followed by selections from Slavic Soul Party, Black Sea Hotel, and Raya Brass Band -- just a few of the many local and not-so-local artists who'll be performing this Friday and Saturday at Grand Prospect Hall. Here's the playlist from last week's Zlate Uste preview session, with mp3's below, plus a mix of highlights from last year's Golden Festival. Irene Trudel -- whose engineering virtuosity helps make the Golden Festival broadcasts possible each year -- also previewed the 2011 lineup during her show on Monday, with selections by Zlatne Uste, Veveritse Brass Band, Black Sea Hotel, Zikrayat and the What Cheer Brigade (playlist).
WFUD's "day-long celebration of fair use, creativity and remix culture" digs deep into the audio universe for this, their second year with a a panel titled "This Is the Remix: Fair Use in Hip-Hop Culture" (featuring all three members of Das Racist), Dan Lynch of Negativland joining in on a "Visual Art and Fair Use" discussion, and a keynote by Jace Clayton aka multidisciplinary hero DJ /rupture.
2010 was great! Maybe too great!! Here's a freeform series of lists of some of the music that grabbed me the most, including some Assorted Awards. Take a look and a listen...
= hear more of the artist's music on the Free Music Archive ♫ = a streaming archive mostly from Talk's Cheap, my radio show here on WFMU
If WFMU reaches our Lift-Off campaign goal this Wednesday and sends Station Manager Ken into space with 25 tanks-worth of helium balloons affixed to his lawn chair, it will be a triumphant moment. Can you picture it? I'm not actually sure what it's going to look like (fortunately there'll be a live video feed) but I can already imagine the feeling of looking up at the sky to see Ken -- a tiny speck burried in a sea of multicolored balloons -- and all of us down in the parking lot here in Jersey City smiling with great pride, just knowing that the station will be able to stay afloat through the frigid dark winter months ahead. Why? Because everybody chipped in -- either by pledging to the station and/or by putting their lives at risk -- to keep freeform radio afloat!
But did you know that our visionary leader would not be the first person to take flight through the power of helium? In fact, there's an entire website devoted to "Cluster Ballooning," and I've been reading up on some of the most famous examples in an online science magazine called the Darwin Awards:
Father Adelir Antonio de Carli (left) was a Brazilian priest who attempted to break the world record for helium-propelled flight back in April 2008. The stunt was meant as a fundraiser for his parish. He set flight from the port city of Paranagua on April 20th 2008, never to return.
In 1982, "Lawn Chair Larry" (right) spent 16 hours on his favorite lawn chair eating sandwiches and drinking beer at 16,000 feet above Los Angeles. "The Federal Aviation Administration was not amused," but he did inspire a whole generation of cluster balloonists.
Both of these stories end in tragedy, but WFMU's story will be different because we are taking some precautions. For example, they didn't think to use a safety harness, or to hire a sniper to take out a few balloons in case the wind picks up and Ken floats into air traffic control space (good idea Rich Hazelton!). Many of us have even gotten a jump start on pledging, since pledge-fuel is the only variable that is not yet fully accounted for. And earlier today, Ken was hovering right outside my window testing the strength of his harness. Hey wait a minute -- he's still out there! And his harness seems to be holding strong despite today's snow flurries and 10-degree wind chill... that is a good omen.
As we prepare for Wednesday morning's launch and figure out a safe place to store these 25 extremely volatile helium tanks, I'd recommend reading more about the history of helium-balloon powered flight and watching a rare video of Father Adelir Antonio de Carli after the jump.
Also, be sure to tune in to this Tuesday's Thunk Tank (7-8p ET). Station Manager Ken joins WFMU's Chief Science Office Bronwyn C. to discuss the aeronautic research behind Wednesday's lawn-chair-and-balloon fundraising launch.
With Human Eye, Timmy "Vulgar" Lampinen takes the raw punk spirit he brought to his earlier Detroit bands (Clone Defects & Epileptix) and steps into new dimensions that reflect reality through science fiction. So one of the songs they performed live on Talk's Cheap this week is "about goin' to the party store in Hamtramck," while another deals with impregnating the Martian queen.
With deft wah-control, Timmy's guitar transforms into a laser cannon, and he's backed by a team of Detroit all-stars: alien pianist Johnny Lzr also fronts 70s glam-rockers Conspiracy of Owls, whose debut LP on Burger Records is one of Evan "Funk" Davies' top albums of the year (which is an extremely high recommendation if you dig 70s rock, punk and power pop!). Drummer Billy "Hurricane William" Hafer also plays in ET Habit, and The Big Bang, an "adult percussion" group. Bassist Brad Hales runs People's Records, a second-hand shop in Detroit specializing in northern soul (so he sees a lot of Mr Finewine, host of WFMU's Downtown Soulville).
Meanwhile Timmy's Organism -- originally conceived as Timmy Vulgar's solo 4track recording project -- has taken off with a nice set of 7-inches and the brand new Rise of the Green Gorilla LP (on Brooklyn's Sacred Bones label). The organism has blossomed into a three-piece, and plays Brooklyn on Saturday November 20th for "The Return of Detroit" with Tyvek, Terrible Twos, The Mahonies and guest DJ Mick Collins (Gories/Dirtbombs). [details]
RE: Song played Oct. 21st 2010 from about 10am-10:45am -one long epic song
On Thu, Oct 21, 2010 at 4:09 PM, Rick wrote
Hello Jason,
I was driving into Jersey this morning. At 10:20am, I turned on your show. This piece I listened to had lots of strings, cellos and stringed basses in it. It was epic. It was quite long. Yes, [the] piece was probably performed on a very expensive keyboard but it sounded like the Boston Symphony was behind it: I had visions of WWII in my head. Who is the composer and where would I find this most excellent piece of music that I've ever heard. It was something I've never heard before.
Listener Rick from Pa was pretty psyched when I passed along this link to Thrones' epic live performance on Talk's Cheap yesterday. And his description is particularly awesome because there was no Boston Symphony orchestra involved -- all sound in this recording was made my one super human: Joe Preston. You might recognize Joe Preston's name from Earth, Sunn O))), Melvins, High On Fire, Men's Recovery Project, Harvey Milk, Thor, Snakepit, and many other great bands. But if you're not already familiar with his one-man experimental sludge/doom project Thrones, then it is time to join the cult!
After this mindblowing live session (which harkens back to the Thrones set at No Fun Fest 2009), Joe talked a bit about how he founded Thrones in 1994, at the encouragement of fellow bassist Vern Rumsey (of Unwound). Joe had put aside his own bass after parting ways with the Melvins; in fact, he "didn't touch an instrument for about a year" until he set about recording the solo tape. That became the first Thrones release, on Vern Rumsey's label Punk in my Vitamins. Since then, Thrones has gone on to release a steady stream of recordings on labels like Kill Rock Stars, Vermiform, 5rc and Southern Lord. Most recently, Thrones released a DVD & LP collaboration with Daniel Menche titled Cerberic Doxology, which featured Joe Preston's vocals sans-vocoder and is inspired by nature including the recreated Stonehenge (Joe talks about this during the interview). Conspiracy Records has also released a new Thrones 7'' titled Late For Dinner with the jams "Wage War" b/w "Trmph Lfe".
Thrones is currently on tour with Christian Mistress, a killer metal band on the 20 Buck Spin label. They're in Texas tonight making their way up the West Coast back to native Pacific NW USA. More info & tourdates. More from Rick from Pa after the jump:
I'm spinning off the podsafe portion of my regular ol' WFMU radio show into a Free Culture-themed podcast called Grey Area. Each week I'll deliver "all the hits that fit" straight outta the Free Music Archive, plus conversations with guests about the grey area surrounding music and free culture in digital era.
The first episode features Eric Steuer from Creative Commons (also of Wired Magazine and the electronic/hip-hop group Meanest Man Contest). We talk about the licenses that facilitate sharing, openness and innovation everywhere from The White House to Al Jazeera to the Free Music Archive to this very podcast. We also talk about CBC Radio's recent decision to stop using Creative Commons music -- once a prominent feature of programs like Spark -- due to the usage restrictions of CC's more popular noncommercial licenses. To gain a better understanding of the situation, we crack open CC's recent Study of How the Online Population Understands “Noncommercial Use” and discuss how this might play into the future of Creative Commons. And speaking of The Future, the nonprofit organization is currently in the midst of their Superhero campaign, so we talk about some of the exciting things on the horizon.
Next week, we'll talk with Sam Brylawski, the co-author of The State of Recorded Sound Preservation in the United States. It's a new congressionally-mandated study, and it's subtitled "A National Legacy at Risk in the Digital Age"...but wait, wasn't the digital revolution supposed to solve this problem? The former executive director of the National Recording Preservation Board will outline some of the hurdles that stand in the way of our utopian digital archive.
This week the Free Music Archive rolled out a bunch of site tweaks + improvements, including Recent Activity Feeds for user profiles, the oft requested last.fm scrobbling, and the long-awaited Message Board (aka "the Forum")!
With 26,473 26,525 curated mp3s and counting, the FMA has many web pages, which means a lot of different spaces where conversations can take place. Up until now these discussions have been kind of decentralized, so I'm excited to see what happens to the FMA community now that we have a centralized Discussion Forum for announcements and conversation.
We're a pretty unique global network of musicians, label-owners, industry folk, multimedia artists, bloggers, podcasters, video producers, radio storytellers, documentarians, archivists, people who love music, free culture advocates, copyright/left-ies, open source hackers. Most of us actually seem to wear quite a few of these hats. And we've all come together in the midst of this extremely disruptive yet incredibly innovative moment for music. To share music, of course. But also to talk about the tech and legal currents that surround us. And maybe to start the world's raddest animated gif thread, and share homebrewing recipes for Free Beer.
There is so much potential in the FMA Forum, and it's entirely up to you where it goes from here...so c'mon and introduce yourself!
Brass bands are a big deal in Serbia. And ground zero is the legendary Dragacevo Trumpet Festival held annually in the small rural village of Guča, located about 100 miles South of Belgrade. This summer marked the 50th anniversary of the largest trumpet competition on the planet. For a few days every August music fans from all over the world flood into Guča for one the wildest music parties anywhere. This year the raucous festival lasted ten full days and drew crowds exceeding half a million.
There is a lot at stake for the hundreds of Roma (Gypsy) and Serbian bands that play at Guča: prestige, bragging rights, and most important, money. Most of the brass bands make a living playing at weddings and other celebrations marking rites of passage. Guča is THE place to get noticed and gain notoriety. It’s like the brass equivalent of a networking event.
I traveled to Guča with a group of six filmmakers from the Meerkat Media Collective, to film a feature-length documentary called Brasslands. Over the past year we have been following the NY Balkan brass band heavyweights Zlatne Uste as they gear up to compete in Guča’s international competition round. Once we arrived in Guča we were introduced to Demiran Ćerimović and His Orkestar, a Roma band from the South of Serbia.
The tracks featured here are by four-time Guča winner Demiran Ćerimović and his Orkestar. They competed in this year’s finals round. I recorded Demiran on two occasions. Some tracks were recorded in the informal setting of a restaurant concert, where the band played for tips. You can even hear some of the customers in the background. The other two recordings were made behind a school before the competition finals.
Keep your eyes and ears out for the film Brasslands, which chronicles Demiran, as well as other brass luminaries (Goran Bregovic, Dejan Petrovic, Marko Markovic). To view the trailer and movie stills, and more music visit www.brasslands.com.
This is a post by Adam Pogoff of the Meerkat Media Collective, who will be Rob Weisberg's guest on Transpacific Sound Paradise this Saturday 6-9pm ET
"Street conversation, soundbyte insertion, vinyl exhumation, observation..." That'd be The Dusty Show, a WFMU radio program and podcast hosted by journeyman broadcaster Clay Pigeon. And there's nothing quite like it here on WFMU or anywhere else. I want to tell you more about this amazingly tape-spliced mix of music, real talk, and fictional narratives, like about how the show used to be mailed in via cassettes that'd stretch over into the next show or end early depending on the warpedness of the tape. But I think this new animation by Greg Harrison goes a long way to illustrate Clay's jam-packed truth-coaxing interview style
You might recognize Greg Harrison's visual style from the Seven Second Delay banner, the Free Music Archive pre-launch sampler CDs [v1, v2], and also the concert posters he's designed for some of the finest musicians from his/our homestate of NJ (Ted Leo, The Black Hollies) and beyond...and speaking of Jersey -- freeze that frame 4 seconds in!
Clinic made their triumphant return to Terre T's Cherry Blossom Clinic this past weekend for a live session was chock-full of new material from their forthcoming album Bubblegum (Domino Oct 2010).
Word is Bubblegum introduces new layers of majestic orchestral pop to Clinic's distinct vintage synth-laden post-punk stylings, and you can see a video for the opening track after the jump. The live set has more of a raw garage-psych feel; a classic Stu Rutherford / Diane Kamikaze production. Starting with 5 new tunes ("Bubblegum", "Baby", "Lion Tamer", "Orangutan", "Milk + Honey") the set ends with "Shopping Bag" off of 2008's Do It!
Liverpool's surgical-masked 4-piece first stopped by WFMU back in 2001, and were actually slated to swing by on September 11th but that didn't work out so well...read what host Scott Williams had to say at the time while you listen to this incredible set which got us all hooked on Clinic (those of us who weren't already!)
Here at WFMU, we've all been real het up on Clinic ever since their album Internal Wrangler showed up in our new bin over a year ago. We've been trying all summer to get them here, and lo, it's all paid off! Clinic was due to arrive here on Tuesday, September 11th - sadly, that didn't happen. Imagine our delight when - 3 days later - they showed up at our doorstep exclaiming "We're bored - we've come all the way to NYC from Liverpool, and can't play anywhere! Can we play here?" And Clinic played here, yes!
The August 16th episode of Talk's Cheap featured live music from two bands who are part of the "Columbia Diaspora". This term's been used to describe a mass musical migration from Columbia Missouri to Chicago in the early/mid oughts, led by scene progenitors Mahjongg and Warhammer 48k, resulting in groups like Michael Columbia and Chandeliers. The Columbia expats brought a new sound infusion to Chicago -- ranging from brute sludge to new wave dance -- which has continued to develop and branch off into new forms. The expats found a home in Griffin Rodriguez/Blue Hawaii's Shape Shoppe recording studio, and may have drawn some inspiration from the city's musical history (I'm especially thinking of 80s electronic/house and late 90s rhythmic post-rock), but these sounds are not textbook 'chicago' music by any means. It's more like diaspora music from some delocalized point in the future, where electronic elements like drum triggers, computer sequencers, and vocoders have become extensions of the human body.
CAVE inhabit the more organic side of this spectrum; its trance-inducing kraut-rock grooves flow like lava. The four piece consist of three Columbia expats -- Cooper Crain (guitars/organ), Dan Browning (bass) and Rex McMurry (drums) -- plus Chicago native Rotten Milk (also of Stress Ape and the Terry Plumbing label) on synthesizer. Have a listen to Cave's live set below, check out their discography for releases on Permanent Records, Drag City (who released the Pure Moods 12'' pictured), and Important Records, and check here for tourdates as Cave explore Europe this fall,
In case the title of LAZER CRYSTAL's debut LP (MCMLXXX, Thrill Jockey 2010) didn't tip you off, they dig the '80s. Probably more for the psychedelic visions of our digital future than anything else; check out the Max Headroom-style video for Love Rhombus after the jump. The LP compiles their two previous 12'' EP's released by Chicago's HBSP-2X (aka Captcha Records). For this recording, Lazer Crystal were the trio of Nicholas Read (electronics & vocals), Josh Johannpeter (percussion), & Mikale De Graff (vocals & electronics).
There is a lot of overlap between these "Columbia Diaspora" bands -- Cooper of CAVE once played in Lazer Crystal, Josh and Mikale of Lazer Crystal are also in Mahjongg, etc. Check the Chicago tag on the FMA for more, or dig back into a time before the Free Music Archive launched with our Chicagoland FMA preview back in July '08.
It's the first and probably last time the Free Music Archive will ever tweet about Justin Bieber (though he is the preeminent trending topic). But I just had to this week on the occasion that multiple major labels have lent their support to a hugely popular (and quite excellent) 800-x-slowed-down remix of Beiber's song "U Smile". This, despite the fact that it is arguably "an infringement of both the sound recording (owned by Universal’s Island Records) and the musical composition (owned by both UMG and EMI)" (Billboard). I mean, with the same free open source program that producer Nick Pittsinger aka Shamantis used to create this 30-minute glacial epic, it could just as easily be shrunk back into the actual song.
If you just listen, clearly this is a transformative work that meets the conditions for Fair Use. But Fair Use has yet to reconcile with US laws pertaining to sound recordings, and the influential Bridgeport ruling seems to imply that there is no such thing. Meanwhile, Soundcloud who are hosting the file are based, one of many countries where "fair use" doesn't even exist (though a court in Germany did recently reverse their decision and declare that a 2-second sound recording twisted beyond all recognition and not used as the basis of a new composition, is legal [BBC / Techdirt]).
Fortunately, there was no need for the law i this scenario as it clearly stood to benefit all parties. Beiber's tweeted about it (link) and this new form of public announcement from our young king of tweet-pop declared it to be good, it shined an interesting light on Bieber's own music for new fans (and twitter followers) who now have a much deeper appreciation for his music. All of which is invaluable in our increasingly fragmented Attention Economy.
In cases like these (#musicblogocide, for example) I often think of Lawrence Lessig's chart describing the Law as one of four forces that impact reality. Our society and the structures of the music industry are changing rapidly. Soon -- with any luck -- remixes like this which clearly just draw attention to the artist in a purely noncommcercial environment may even be declared legal! Or at the very least, we should be able to publicly acknowledge that there are certain noncommercial forums for shared creativity where the law need not interfere. Transformative remixes are already kind of impossible to stop, and seem to stand to everyone's benefit. Quite an artistic and politicized cultural statement by our friend Shamantis.
Maybe even Prince will come around to this. Or -- since he's already declared the end of the Internet -- maybe he'll simply sit back and let his music (and the people who love it) take care of spreading the word on his behalf.
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